God, hes left as on aur oun.
He thinks he’s won.
This is what Grover Norquist, an American for Tax Reform, had to say about Governor Riley’s attempt to shift the tax burden from folks making $4,600 a year to out-of-state timber companies:
No one’s life is a complete waste. Some of us serve as bad examples. And Governor Riley is going to serve as a bad example. Years from now, little baby Republican governors will be told scary stories late at night, around the campfire, about the sad fate of governors like Riley who steal a billion dollars from their people.
The referendum was voted down by droves of lower-income voters who stood to gain from it. And Norquist is thrilled:
This is a shot across the bow for next year’s decision-making. Every Republican governor who thinks of raising taxes next year will walk past Traitor’s Gate and see Bob Riley’s head on a pike. The voters of Alabama have saved taxpayers from California to Maine billions of dollars.
He thinks he’s won. Let him. He thinks we’re on our way back to the grand old days of William McKinley. We may very well be. We may have forgotten how bad they were, and hard the world can be without the safety nets we fought so hard to put in place so many years ago. Well, we’re going to start remembering, make no mistake: that’s the only “waste” to cut out of state budgets from California to Maine; from Oregon to Alabama.
But we fought our way up and out of those dark days once already, and if we never managed to make it to that shining city on the hill where no one gets left behind, not even the least of us, still. We came up with a pretty good nation, for the most part. We can do it again.
And this time, it won’t be so easy to forget. No one’s life is a complete waste, after all; some of us serve as bad examples. We will tell our children about Grover Norquist, and his disdain for public service, his loathing of the commonweal, his grotesque and brutal selfishness. We will tell them about how he laughed at the idea of seizing the government that makes so much of this pretty good nation possible for us and drowning it in the bathtub. And they will be better people for it, and we will have a better world. We’ll get a little closer to the shining city, and we won’t be so quick to turn our backs on ourselves again.
Gosh, Mr. Norquist. Thanks.
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Well, you beat me to it. Well put. (Can one achieve catharsis when someone else says precisely what one would have liked to say himself?) Grins...
The 19th Century Was Great!
Alabama voters defeated a more progressive tax system (see below):"No one's life is a complete waste. Some of us serve as bad examples. And Governor Riley is going to serve as a bad example," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans...
Testify, brother, testify.
I mostly had this one on my mind because it's THAT DAY... still, it works well here, too.
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Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Chicago Poems. 1916.
137. I Am the People, the Mob
I AM the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted. I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and makes me work and give up what I have. And I forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for history to remember. Then—I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me last year, who played me for a fool—then there will be no speaker in all the world say the name: “The People,” with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.
The mob—the crowd—the mass—will arrive then.
Thanks, Amy.
I think that this is a good short story because your story is not like any other story I have read and believe me I have read alot. I would also like to say keep up the good work.