Post-election-day bullspunk

[feren]

You know, I don't expect everyone to be happy about the results, but I do expect people to buckle down and cope.

Waaah, the Republicans are in power. Waaaah! It's a conspiracy! Waaaaaaaaaaah! Waaaaah, I should move to Canada!

Yes, yes you should. Please move to Canada. Move there and spare me your noise.

Comments

[brianblackberry.livejournal.com]

Ugh, need to read my friends' list more regularly, sorry for the lateness of the response...

I suppose what I found most annoying over the whole "Oh no! The Republicans have control over the Congress and the White House, lets move to Canada!" thing is that people assume simply the absolute worst conspiracy theory that somehow this would mean some sort of automatic push into some theocratic, fundamentalist, dictatorship. I suppose they have been saturated by their own propaganda so thoroughly instead of really looking at the voted in congressmen or actually checking the party platform that such a concept is actually plausible, nay probable in their warped minds.

Considering historically when either party in the past (and we can look simply at post WW2 America for this) had the majority in both the legislature and executive that the nation did not suddenly fall into some right or left wing dictatorship, such fears are rather unfounded. Besides, the Congress wouldn't be a rubber stamp for a single party's agenda simply because the majority isn't large enough, have they ever heard of the 'filibuster'? Bi-partican cooperation will still be needed on many issues.

Perhaps they need to read less conspiracy Internet billboards and more actually factual research, but that may be hoping too much.

Personally I only worry for my home state of Illinois, the new governor had promise what is literally hundreds of millions of dollars in new programs and increases in others. The concern being that the money simply is not there as the state budget is one billion in the hole. He will either have to break those promises wholeheartedly, completely strip other programs for the needed cash or majority raise taxes.

[spoothbrush.livejournal.com]

Do politicians not know how to do math, or is it that they've decided that the voters can't?

One of the thing that annoys me most while reading, say, vote-smart.org or anything like that, is to read candidates' positions who talk about increasing funding to programs x, y, and z, but neither about a) raising taxes or raising taxes enough to make up for the spending or b) cutting funding to other programs. The same thing when they're talking live. Hi, not a big fan of debt over here.

Stupid stupid stupid!

[yakko.livejournal.com]

How about not funding pet program X, special-interest program that only benefits 20 people Y, and just plain wasteful program Z? I'd rather they try trimming a bit of fat before hitting the populace up for tax money.

I'm not fundamentally opposed to tax increases, much less to increases which fund something that's necessary, but there're a lot of things that are not necessary.

[spoothbrush.livejournal.com]

"Necessary" is a fairly subjective term, though. I mean, is an alternative energy plant that'll only provide a half-dozen jobs worth spending 1 or 2 million dollars on? Is it worth spending $12,000 a year of taxpayer money on a stipend for a psycholinguistics graduate student? (I think so, but I'm biased).

[yakko.livejournal.com]

no.

All they do is simply double all the toll roads' charges! :o)

I may be wrong, but haven't those roads been paid for for years? I remember going thru the De Kalb and Dixon toll booths when I was a kid, and now, 22yr later, they're STILL there!

Really, as for the promises, they'll probably do a combination of all three in a carefully crafted manner, so they don't lose votes next time.