Human events Excerpt:Well, the future should be alot more predictable now - right? The folks who drove our country off the fiscal cliff were voted back in charge of the purse strings and their Wall Street crony Ryan will be directing the congressional budget writing committee. What more certainty do the rich need? I'm being perfectly reasonable here, afterall, the whole "certainty" effect is mostly psychological - is it not?
Today there is growing uncertainty about the future tax burden. Those who would build businesses and expand employment hold back when the tax future is unpredictable. These taxpayers need certainty that they will not face a huge wave of tax increases in 2011 and another one in 2013. -- Rep. Paul Ryan
So now I look at the first two editorials after Red Tuesday out from the GOP-sponsored MediaCorpse Janesville Gazette and wouldn't you know it; first up Wednesday is the promotion of a new tollway tax to foist onto the taxed enough already Scott Walker angry mob majority. Even worse, the toll system mentioned are class war tolls that would give the rich their own express lanes on Wisconsin's freeway road system. No mention of an off-setting tax cut elsewhere. Just a brand new tax in the form of a tollway fee.
Thursday's editorial titled, "Voters need patience on economy" seemed like the kind of standard "soothe the suckers" damage control preparatory work you'd expect from your shady neighborhood auto dealer after he's talked you into trading in your old but trusty ride for the polished turd that's been leaking fluids all over the lot for the past six months. You return to the lot two days later to reverse the deal, but find ol' Betsy is gone. "Give the beauty a chance" says the con artist dealer of the bondo bucket he sold you, "have patience and things will all work out."
The core message to their editorial was: Come on now folks, forget all the campaign promises, whatever you do - don't start redirecting your anger toward republicans so quickly. Fixing the economy and bringing back jobs is gonna take years, hee - hee, maybe even decades. Keep your anger and your lunacy focused on Obama and the democrats. We're not through demonizing them and that illegitimate democrat president. Just wait two more years until we can choose a new president!
If the economy doesn't flip within six months, I see buyer's remorse setting in really fast for Red Tuesday voters. When we have the kind empty suits voted into office based primarily on a false narrative of anger, fear, lies and lunacy, don't expect the buyers to take too kindly when they find out they've been royally screwed.
Added Note on Gazette Editorial: They wrote, "Voters ousted ethically challenged Rep. Mike Sheridan of Janesville....
Never mind that the newspaper endorsed him. By rejecting Sheridan, perhaps voters were also rejecting the ethically challenged Janesville newspaper.
6 comments:
Lou,
I commute from the Pewaukee to Madison everyday. I spend less that $15 a day on gas to do so and the drives take up under 2 hours of my day.
According to the train plans, I will have to pay over $60 a day for the tickets, won't get to a station anywhere near my job in the industrial/commericial park in northeastern madison, and the train with the stops will take over 3 hours of my day (not including the commute I would need from the stations they are putting in).
Explain why I am supposed to support this? Who is going to ride this thing for that much? 7.5 million dollars in upkeep a year isn't it? And don't traditional high speed trains need to be repurchased every 15-20 years? Meaning come 2025 we'll need to have raised over 500 million to break even on the train purchase?
A little explination on your part would be nice. Numbers please. At this point, we would be better off digging a hole with the money and filling it in to get the "jobs this will make". The train will only provide Wisconsin with 55 jobs after it is done being built - straight from Jimmy Doyle
If America as a nation refused to move forward (or backward in some views) evolve, progress or grow because of a flat or poor return on investment of tax dollars spent - we would be like Afghanistan. At the same time, the $7.5 million annual estimate you're using seems highly inflated. On the other hand, our roads are extremely high maintenance and the costs of upkeep are through the roof, and there are no guarantees of stable gasoline prices for the future - gas could be $7.00 a gallon tomorrow, nobody knows for sure.
But if you or the rest of Wisconsin or America are only willing to spend tax dollars for public infrastructure based on a projected surplus from a business-like P/L report, then I agree, scrap everything, roads, schools, water supplies, traffic lights...everything.
Curiously, has anyone looked at the cost of upkeep, cleaning and snowplowing our expected new I39/90 interstate expansion? From replacing and plowing 2 lanes wide to three? Will taxes be raised? - Will tolls be instituted? There's a lot of unanswered questions all around, but if trends continue (higher gasoline prices, population, travel and industry growth, etc.) I feel strongly that short distance mass transit will have to play a bigger role or Wisconsin will die on the vine.
The Gazette getting attacked by the left and the new right-wing nutcase at WCLO shows they must be doing something right.
I suppose you can look at it that way. But, there’s a good reason why both sides might be critical of the Gazette’s editorials. Instead of upholding objectivity and reporting with an absence of bias on an event straight as it happens, the Gazette thinks they’re being objective by balancing their bias with their own counter-bias. They regularly attempt to balance a news story by showing both sides, not a problem if there are only two sides AND if they can project all sides objectively. People want reality recorded, not bias. I've written my views about this here and here.
But the Gazette fails to do that in their news reports a majority of the time. Yet, their editorials and political endorsements are supposed to project their bias. That's what editorials do. But because the Gazette is market first, corpo-crony second and GOP third, they attempt to balance the bias in their editorials by building in counter-bias for market satisfaction. Unbelievable! They can’t even stand by their political bias in their own editorials. They think they’re balancing their politics by endorsing an equal amount of republicans and democrats? And you think they must be doing something right?
One of the many reasons why this blog exists is NOT because the Janesville Gazette projects an obvious corpo-crony slush fund GOP dogma, its because they try to cover it up with their own counter-balance every chance they get.
If the so-called liberals editing the paper were true to themselves, they'd have to reject the owner's GOPism, but they'd probably also lose their paycheck. That of course means the obvious - that the message their sending is bought and paid for.
So a newspaper like the Beloit daily gets a free pass from your partisan hyper-bole because they are more biased, more partisan than the Gazette? that doesn't make sense.
Sorry, but I think you're missing the main point here. The BDN editorials in my view are based on a fairly consistent ideology of old fashioned chamber of commerce republicanism. I don't see the undercurrent of activism or the built-in counter-balance to apologize for or counter their political bias. I've yanked on a few of their editorials that seemed hypocritical or just plain dumb, but I view them as legitimate from the heart perspectives even though I don't agree with it most of the time. Same for the Janesville Messenger editorials. They are obviously written by an arrogant bomb-throwing committed far right wanker, but at least it's plain to see and there is no effort to repaint themselves as something different. The Gazette is the mothership for Bliss. They're in a whole different category of socio-political engineering, active journalism and propaganda.
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