Showing posts with label Dave Brat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dave Brat. Show all posts

Saturday, October 21, 2017

Virginia's Dave Brat caves to Conservatism Inc, will vote for tax cuts without spending cuts

Federal spending already is north of 21% of GDP, and government spending at all levels north of 36%. This is taxpayer money diverted from productive purposes, then skimmed to pay the useless intermediaries of The Swamp, and finally distributed for purposes formerly deemed to be the province of individuals but now the responsibility of  The State.

And they wonder why GDP is so low.

Oh please, Allah, send the asteroid Ceres to destroy DC. Our countrymen never will.


From the story here:

“I will vote for the Senate budget and while I applaud the work that Chairman Black did in our budget committee to begin the process of mandatory spending reforms, at this point, achieving economic growth is the first priority and so I want to keep that train moving,” said Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. ... Earlier this year, House Freedom Caucus members had been willing to delay committee passage of the House budget on demands that it include instructions to cut more mandatory spending. Now they are signaling acquiescence to the smaller Senate figures. ... Twenty-two conservative economic organizations under the banner of the National Taxpayers Union sent a letter to House members urging that they adopt the Senate budget.


Thursday, July 10, 2014

What unites some Christians and libertarians is radically unconservative: belief in human change for the better

Here's Christian libertarian economist David Brat, Cantor-killer:

"Preach the gospel and change hearts and souls. If we make all of the people good, markets will be good. Markets are made up of people. Supply and Demand are curves, but they are also people. Nothing else. If markets are bad, which they are, that means people are bad, which they are. Want good markets? Change the people. If there are not nervous twitches in the pews when we preach, then we are not doing our jobs."

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Conservatives generally haven't believed human nature changes for the better, but it is central to the Catholic doctrine of grace that grace infuses the baptized and changes them, and the belief is central also to the doctrine of some protestants.

These were called Schwaermer by Luther, "enthusiasts".

In politics we called them ideologues.

Saturday, June 14, 2014

The problem with free-market ideology in our time isn't about the tax code, it's about patriotism

Free-marketeers in our time want to wipe away the favors of the tax code, many of which go to the middle class in the form of credits and deductions, and to end the taxes on capital which they say deprive the middle of opportunity. 

That seems to be the upshot of the libertarian attempt to co-opt the meaning of the Dave Brat victory over Eric Cantor as expressed by Kim Strassel of the Wall Street urinal, for one. Central to that thesis is poo-poo-ing the importance of the immigration stance of Eric Cantor, which was attacked by Brat with the support of anti-amnesty conservatives, especially Laura Ingraham, and complaining about "the insane complexity of taxes".

What the kerfuffle shows is that Dave Brat is a mighty conflicted person, as are all libertarians, some more some less, a condition they share with liberals, and that he may end up being worse than the man he now replaces. Brat spent much of the campaign talking about closing loopholes and simplifying the tax code, but opposed more immigration because Americans are having massive trouble finding work. The better angels of his nature, all Christian, were at work there. But to his free-market self, there should be no reason why citizenship shouldn't be free. Why should there be a law restricting it to those born here? The federal government has no role "making my life work", he has said. See how well your life works when there's no army to stop an invasion, and there's no will to create one. Just ask Arizona.

Immigration is an issue which ought to direct the attention of the American right toward the bigger picture of what has happened to this country since the Reagan revolution slashed taxes, but hasn't because the right is now obsessed with principles over people. It has become as "ideologized" as any leftist camp. In fact the political discussion on the right deliberately obscures how libertarianism has already impoverished the many and rewarded the few. Some of its adherents today actually foresee an American future more starkly drawn that way, as did Ayn Rand. It isn't capitalism which is to blame for all the income inequality, it's libertarianism.

With the permanently lower tax regime in the US since Reagan also came a headlong plunge into global free trade which has created vast middle classes abroad where there were none before, at the expense of our own. The anchor manufacturing industries of the middle class in this country were exported to places where labor was cheaper, leaving the hollowed out shell of a service industry economy behind to pick up the pieces here.

Where's the patriotism, I'd like to know? Neither side wants to touch the trade argument, mostly because they are all profiting from the new status quo while we are fed a bunch of lies about who are the real conservatives. The answer is none of them are. They've all betrayed us and joined the global investor class where borders no longer matter.

To be a conservative in our time is to be for families with children here, for good jobs here, and for tax and trade policies which prop up those things here and put Americans first, not foreigners and disloyal Americans and disloyal American businesses.

If that's too complicated for you, maybe you shouldn't be in office.