Republican Reminder
By Kim
April, 6 2002
I don’t know whether the Contract With America was as popular, or as commonly familiar, as the Republicans thought it was. The Republican Revolution of 1994 (when they took over both House and Senate) was, I think, more a sign of voter anger with Clinton as it was with agreement with the Contract.
That said, however, most of the principles of the CWA were sound, and should be repeated:
- lower taxes on individuals and create a friendlier environment for small businesses
- require a 60% supermajority vote to raise taxes
- eliminate some of the more egregious “redistributionist” taxes (death tax, marriage penalty, capital gains etc)
- common sense legal reforms (such as “loser pays”, which in itself is an idea way past its time in the U.S.)
- remove U.S. troops from under U.N. control (most people since 9/11 would agree with this one, seeing how the U.N. has no clue how to deal with terrorism, for one thing)
- create personal IRAs, immune from taxation ... and so on.
For the most part, the Republicans own these issues, regardless of whether the Democrats claim to support them too. (Example: the fact that Clinton took over the Welfare Reduction part of the CWA doesn’t mean that the Democrats owned the issue.) Here are a few commonsense ideas for the Bushies and Republicans in general, which will lose no votes, and improve the Republicans’ standing as the party of commonsense:
- shrink government by demanding that each Cabinet department reduce the number of regulations by 20% (use as an example the stupid regulation that mandates toilet cistern size), and impose a freeze on any new regulations
- demand a review of all environmental impact studies (using the “fixed” lynx-fur data as a reason)
- start killing taxes, and do it quickly: lower income tax rates, put a 2% ceiling on capital gains, eliminate the death tax immediately, etc.
- veto any and every piece of legislation that has to do with guns or gun control (cite the many thousands of gun laws already extant, and show growths in violent crime in Britain and Australia, where guns are mostly banned). This last is quite important: the real “third rail” in U.S. politics isn’t Social Security, it’s GUNS. Always remember that.
Okay, some people are going to squeal about this: the enviro-Nazis, the big-government guys, and so on. (
Memo to Repubs: you’re not going to lose their votes because you never had them to begin with, and wouldn’t get them regardless of what you did.) Don’t panic when their lapdogs in the mainstream media start wailing either: stay on message, always repeat the egregious examples of government wrongdoing (toilet cisterns, fake lynx data, violent crime in “gun-free” countries). Repeat them until they are common knowledge.
The people will understand.
No Contradiction There…
By Kim
April, 5 2002
Lemme see if I get this straight. According to the liberal media:
1. Catholic priests abusing their position of trust by sexually assaulting young boys--bad.
2. Homosexual Boy Scout leaders put in charge of young boys on unsupervised trips and campouts--good.
Or did I miss something?
The Middle East Solution
By Kim
April, 5 2002
No great insights here, and neither side is going to like it, but when the only solution palatable to each is the total destruction of the other....
Partition, like we do at the 38th Parallel between North and South Korea. That’s it. Creation of an artificial barrier (just like the 38th), lined with minefields, fences, walls, guard towers. It would be about a hundred miles long, say about the length of the Berlin Wall (so not especially expensive), and a total ban on either side going into the other’s zone. So the Israelis can wave bye-bye to cheap Pal labor, and the Pals can ask their rich buddies the Saudis to give them money for hospitals, universities etc. instead of for martyrs’ families’ support and bombs. No one wins, but no one loses either, at least not altogether.
And the peacekeeping force can be rotated between the Germans (!) and the Japanese (!), funded by the U.N.--talk about irony. (We might as well see our funds go towards that as towards a new U.N. office building in Geneva, right?)
As for the boundaries, the Pals get Gaza and Eilat, the Israelis get the northern West bank. Jerusalem is shared, and policed by the Canadians (they may as well do something to earn their keep).
Like I said, no one will like it, but no one likes the status quo either. The only way to fix a rock and a hard place is to apply lubricant between the two--hence a DMZ.
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