Republicans often complain that government programs pick winners and losers. Nobody is choosing winners and losers more than the GOP Senate. Winners are quite clearly people who are already doing well. Losers are the rest of us.
Senate Republicans are following the model of their ideological soulmate, Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas. The tax cuts they promised would spur huge economic progress have failed to deliver so they are doubling down and cutting taxes more. To offset the transfer of the tax burden to the middle class, they are gutting the biotechnology center, ending driver’s education, and again stiffing our most experienced teachers and most other state employees.
Like the Senate itself, it’s an ideological document, not a practical one. It’s all about keeping money in the pockets of individuals and nothing about public investments that help the state as a whole. It’s governing by Ayn Rand.
The cut to the biotechnology center will almost certainly cost more jobs than it creates. But that’s not what matters to the ideologues. To them, it’s a government funded operation so it must be bad. Combined with the end of the Renewable Energy Standard, high tech and emerging technologies have taken a hit that not only hurts jobs but further damages our national reputation.
The GOP ideologues are living in a fantasy world. They believe that if they just cut taxes and regulation low enough, they’ll create a business environment that will attract industry, spur innovation, and lead to massive economic growth. Unfortunately for them and for us, the rest of the country isn’t living in that world. Other states are investing in infrastructure, offering incentives, and using government investments to create an atmosphere attractive to industry and entrepreneurs. That’s where business will go, including some currently located here.
So far, the states living in the real world are winning. The ones trying to transform the country into a free-market utopia are losing. We’re competing with Kansas. Everybody else is playing on a different field.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
WHY WOULD ONE WANT TO COPY A PLAN OR PROGRAM THAT HAS FAILED MISERABLE? A PLAN, PROGRAM AND POLICY THAT HAS PLACED KANSAS ON THE BRINK OF BANKRUPTCY.
“I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. …The materialism of affluent Christian countries appears to contradict the claims of Jesus Christ that says it’s not possible to worship both Mammon and God at the same time”. –Mohatma Gandhi
I love this new part of the budget which includes tax changes that could result in funding cuts for thousands of nonprofits across the state, including hospitals and universities. this would eliminate any state tax incentive for charitable giving – a factor many nonprofits, including Greater Hickory Cooperative Christian Ministry and Catawba Valley Medical Center, in my area for example, depend on. So basically these in name only “Christian ” have thrown most of the 501(c)’s under the bus to assure that all the multinational CEO’s have enough cash on hand to keep their country club memberships valid..
” Since when is cutting off Christian Minsters a “Famly Value” ??????
The four guys in that photo look really pleased with how they’re helping the rich, and obviously none of them has ever skipped a meal.
Intendor says that the meaning of the Dagney 100 is that the philosophy of Rand is corrupted, as it is business school teaching to pay labor as little as possible.
Alan Watts didn’t make it because he recommended right livelihood over the pursuit of money and power. The Fountainhead was a parable with the woman as the prize to the man whose fame came most from his work, and not the other way around as now you are supposed to be famous first. (Note Kim K’s book of selfies.) or even Hillary, famous first as First Lady.
Howard Roark in fact would be hated, or his type hated by those most enamored of what Alan Greenspan took to be the philosophy. The inability of these people to separate government from business, especially where Glass Steagall simply worked to maintain a trustworthy investment and financial environment that kept the dollar strong is a looming horror.
We are in great danger from “play capitalism”. Young Financial Engineers were taught in school how to loot everyone and every company they are enabled by legalized Meyer Lansky financial engineering. It isn’t Ayn Rand at all really, but Meyer Lansky the Right Wing is really about.
I got this from the book by Eric Schlosser “Reefer Madness” which has nothing to do with marijuana, though it is mentioned. The publisher must have needed a title.
25 percent of the people of NC, working or not, are reported by the Triad Business Journal to be living in poverty.
It is War and Corruption that keep the people poor. To claim that Ayn Rand knew the right way to a triumphant civilization is to ignore Dagney giving the conductor a 100 dollar bill. Of course Rail Roads were given great swaths of land by the US people, and whatever objection that the RR owner might have to the governments interference, the people had a right to that interference.
Intendor to the US Senate from NC Russell Scott Day
This General Assembly may be advancing a Republican Utopia, but it is distinctly not a Christian Utopia. How these ‘conservative’ ‘God, Guns, and Grits’ Republicans can forward a political agenda so adverse to the central tenants of Jesus’ message while in His earthly existence remains allusive to me. I can only surmise they have accepted conventional perversions of Jesus’ teaching, like: the poor will always be with us (so let’s help create more of them) and Jesus as my personal savior (none of this social justice trash talk).
Jesus wept – and so do I.
Anybody else see the uncanny resemblance between North Carolina Republicans and Pharaoh? Believer or not, I invite you to read the book of Exodus: Pharaoh stubbornly held onto his ideological principles and brought down all kinds of suffering on himself and his people. When I read it, I see Phil Berger’s face on the person of Pharaoh.
It may be time to move from North Carolina to a state/region where forward thinking legislation is at the forefront.
ras527: That is just the sort of notion that I suspect many different corporate leaders, stakeholders, and employees are brewing on. And not just because of what the NCGOP is doing (or not doing) for the middle class, education, transportation and the environment, but also because what Republicans are doing (or not doing) on social issues.