Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Zell - some thoughts

So I'm only 3 tapes into the Zell Miller book but I already feel compelled to add my 2 cents in

Lets see, far he's covered:

(1) the Democratic party is going to share the same fate as the Wigs (the who? Exactly!). He doesn't provide proof yet, as he's trying to get attention at this point.

(2) He has an interesting childhood and background. He comes across as a swell guy.

(3) He advocates common-sense government. This I totally agree - a lot of what people want isn't right or left, it's just sensible. We should be focusing on the sensible stuff.

(4) Special interest groups are evil and run both parties. No complaint there, I don't think.

(5) Taxes. Basically, he's trying to convince us that Democrats have a history of cutting taxes and we should be proud to do so.

So far, only (5) has raised my blood pressure. I think he misses the point. Our problem in this country with taxes isn't that we have too many or two few. The problem is that we have too much waste.

The Republicans say: any dollar that goes to the government is wasted, so save your money. The Democrats say: we all want services and so we need taxes to pay for them.

Seems to me, if we could reduce the waste of money in this country two key things would happen: (a) the money we do have would go further and (b) people wouldn't mind paying taxes (as much) because they would know that their money was being put to good use - perhaps even by themselves.

So, if I were running for office today my message would be: cut waste, everthing else can wait.

Of course, 30 years from now I'll probably look back at that statement and think it's naive drivel, but oh well.

--Ben

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