“Tax and spend liberals”

[eridani]

It’s about time that Democrats quit cowering when attacked with this meme, which is fundamentally an attack on the very idea of public goods. Taxing and spending happens to be the government’s job. Government exists to fund the public goods that are the infrastructure of a modern society, without which no private businesses can function. The funding is raised by taxation. Tax and spend liberals want the public goods paid for by taxes to be available to everyone.

Not like “tax and spend conservatives” at all. Tax and spend conservatives want to tax only blue states, counties and cities and spend the money only in red states, counties and cities. They want to tax little people in order to give obscenely rich people even more money.

But public goods are “socialist,” which makes them very bad. The real lovers of socialism are actually conservatives—they think it’s such a great thing that only white people deserve to have it.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/10/27/palin-shares-wealth/

Just last month, in an interview with Philip Gourevitch of the New Yorker, Palin explained the windfall profits tax that she imposed on the oil industry in Alaska as a mechanism for ensuring that Alaskans “share in the wealth” generated by oil companies:

“And Alaska—we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs. … It’s to maximize benefits for Alaskans, not an individual company, not some multinational somewhere, but for Alaskans”

Isn’t that special? Karl the Marxist might have said exactly that, supposing that he had written in schizophrenic word salad instead of academic German.

Breaking conservative framing--it's what's for dinner!

[msongs]

1. wealthy benefit most from our system yet want to pay least to support it nt

[aspirant]

2. Just wait until foreign nationals

start suing Alaska for lost oil profits in TPP tribunals after being prohibited from poking holes in the ground all over the state.

The settlements will eat away at the present socialistic citizen's rebates and will probably result in increased taxes to pay for the upcoming deficits.

Maybe even Wasilla will be dissolved, Good Luck.

[mntleo2]

3. The Poor make the biggest tax sacrifices in WA State

I have been railing about this for years as an activist for the low income in WA State. But it is the same all over the country, WA just has the shame of forcing the poor to pay higher taxes than any other state. The poor here pay 17-19% of their meager incomes in taxes, where 2 of the richest men in the world who live here pay less than 3% of their $Billions in taxes. You can check out what each class pays here: http://itepnet.org/whopays/. Boeing has paid nothing, nada, ziltch, zero in decades while they strong arm communities into giving up their farms and large areas for plants they eventually abandon (cough cough here while saying Kent), laying off thousands to turn to our social service system ~ which the legislature continually cuts and cuts.

Believe me I have been talking about this with my state and US legs over and over ~ and they are the "liberals" in our legislature. They tell me that they are not heard and that they tried ~ even when they were a majority.

Here is a story for you that happened in the mid 1990s when the torches and pitchforks were out for the low income in this state...

I had gone to the capitol with nuns, priests, ministers, teachers and social workers against the backlash of Welfare DEFormed. We were wanting a better tax system and for industries like Boeing to step up to the plate and pay their fair share because even then, almost 20 years ago, it was damaging to those in poverty and going to get worse if we did not do something about it. Before we went we had made appointments with out legs to speak with them. We all arrived at the agreed upon time at our our district leg's office (from Wallingford and Green Lake), about 20 of us. When we got there we were told that regrettably the leg (Greg Nichols at the time) was suddenly tied up in an important meeting and could not meet with us at this appointed time. However we could wait another 2 hours if we still wanted to speak with him. Well we had made the trip all the way to Oly and so we all decided to wait. While we sat there one of the nuns went up to look at the schedule for this legislator and found out that he had bumped us because Boeing had gotten all veclept about some legislation coming up on the floor.

In other words we had come all the way to Oly to tell him what we did not like about the tax system that was hurting the most vulnerable in this state, citing Boeing as a prime example ~ and what we had to say was overshadowed by these Boeing bozos who kept threatening to leave the state if we did not toe the line with them (which they eventually did anyway and are still doing today).

This tax crap has been going on for years. At the time in the 1990s when we were trying to tell citizens and the legs what we saw, we were laughed off the stage and told we were being "too idealistic" and that everything was going to be peachy-keen doncha know. Only until the middle class was affected are we now suddenly alarmed.

Let me tell you something: they use the poor as "canaries in the mine" to see if they can make laws and policies that they know will hurt people. Of course, since nobody cares about the poor, nothing is said or done. Then when those laws and policies actually begin to come to fruition and the middle class begins to suffer as the poor has been suffering for years, well then they get the picture. My advice is to watch what laws and policies they put in for the lower classes, and then you will see what is coming next for the middle class.

My 2 cents, Cat in Seattle

[eridani]

6. The really sad thing about this is that the more likely you are to benefit from

--cutting the sales tax and establishing a state income tax, the more likely you are to be against that policy change.

The sucking up to Boeing is really vomit worthy--even otherwise progressive Dem legislators got sucked in to the blackmail.

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. 'Taxing and spending happens to be the government’s job.'

WELL SAID !

[PatrickforO]

5. You're right it is the government's business to tax and spend. Unfortunately,

when the Republicans are in power they cut taxes and spend more. They just want to spend it on war and the military industrial complex instead of on programs that genuinely benefit Americans.

[eridani]

7. Taxing the rich = punishment for success.

Answer "what kind of amoral sociopath thinks that investing in our common future is punishment?

Class warfare! The 99% are losing, with average family income lower than it was in 1999.

[MisterP]

8. and also "a rising tide lifts all boats"

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/12/the-education-of-david-stockman/305760/?single_page=true

the point, of course, is to get people and pols talking using the slogans: they're constructing an atmosphere, changing the terms of discourse

say "it's YOUR money" enough and now every proposal to tax the ridiculously wealthy first has to fight through waves of "it's UNFAIR," trying to make the liberals defend taxes as some sort of user fee (a football that the Pubs can then take and run with): it doesn't matter if 90% of the country wants the rich taxed out the wazoo if the (that's also how the NRA works--nobody pushes back against them, especially their own members)