Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Everybody approves of Gummint expenditures on his or her own behalf, and disapproves of expenditures for anybody else.

I don't know about this.

The one government program that no Teabagger questions is the military.

And the military only benefits a tiny group of people at the top.

So most people, Teabaggers and just plain folks who hate government actually DO like government expenditures that benefit someone else.

Thought experiment: if the military were the only thing Gummint spent any money on, would people still vote to lower their taxes, or would they not?

It depends.

If a working class white person were asked if he wanted to fund the military by raising taxes on millionaries, he'd say "hell no" and vote to lower taxes on his betters.

After all, he plans on being rich some day.

If, on the other hand, he were asked if he wanted to fund the military via a national lottery he'd sign up to buy tickets.

After all, he just might be that one out of 100 billion who wins. HEY, you never know?

In other words, false consciousness adds a twist to the issue.

People will vote for taxes for what they PERCEIVE to be in their interests and against taxes they PERCEIVE to be in someone else's interest.

".. a general, settled mistrust that actually-existing Gummint will take the dollars I give it and do anything with them that's going to be very good for me -- that mistrust, for the average Joe and Jane, is very well-founded, though it may be more instinctive than thought-out."
exactly

the military is in a different
mental quadrant entirely
---------------
"If a working class white person were asked if he wanted to fund the military by raising taxes on millionaries, he'd say "hell no" and vote to lower taxes on his betters.

After all, he plans on being rich some day"

this is wrong
and if you look into it yopu'll conclude
the washington 200k tax vote
fails to support it

"on the other hand, he were asked if he wanted to fund the military via a national lottery he'd sign up to buy tickets.

After all, he just might be that one out of 100 billion who wins. HEY, you never know"
that is true but hardly a parallel
to your first proposition
more a contrast

------------------
"the military only benefits a tiny group of people at the top"
nonsense
we have a huge sub population with ties to the military on one level or other

-------------------
"People will vote for taxes for what they PERCEIVE to be in their interests and against taxes they PERCEIVE to be in someone else's interest."
a pedantic improvement on mjs
of course to suggest the voters are utterly horn swaggled in the long run
by their electoral choices'
real impacts
probably goes for most of us merit types too

'we have a huge sub population with ties to the military on one level or other'

ties not benefits ...

poverty draft radioactive vets agent orange vets gulf war syndrome vets suicided vets homeless vets alcoholic vets lsd experiment vets

the families and terato-form descendants of the above

oh but i forgot the job secure prison guard vets... that's good and the nearly free chemo for the non-Hodgkin's lymphoma vets....

Anonymous.

While you are not "wrong," you are being highly disingenuous. As I'm sure you know, there are hundreds of thousands of people employed directly by the military who do not all suffer from these ills. Throw in the military industrial complex, and there are plenty of people mighty pleased to go soldiering (or sell to the soldiers) for Uncle Sam's latest imperial adventure. Especially as they are trained to identify deeply with the adventures.

But, you know all this, so...

The real question is not that people are employed by the military and the arms industry.

It's why are people who aren't employed by the arms industry and the mlitary are still willing to pay taxes to fund it?

Saying you're "anti-government" while being pro-military is ludicrous.

It's a bit like attacking the Unitarians, defending the Pope, and claiming you're "anti-religion."

It's why are people who aren't employed by the arms industry and the military are still willing to pay taxes to fund it?

But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the assumption quoted above is accurate. There might be a number of reasons. War is good entertainment -- for those not in the trenches, anyway -- and if you think you have some personal reason to fear the Terrible Towelheads over there in Outer Buggerstan, then paying good money to protect yourself from these menacing figures might seem to make sense.

But this conclusion derives from some quite concrete beliefs about what the towelheads want, and why they do the things they do, and whether the soldier boys are really protecting us or in fact making things worse. Arguing with people about these concrete propositions seems more promising than trying to convince them that in the abstract, government is a Good Thing.

Don't tax you.

Don't tax me.

Tax that feller behind that tree.

Brian M seems to miss Nonny's point.

Trail of Tears is doing an awesome job of hammering and thwacking straw men. Nice work, ToTty.

Part of the problem, MJS, is the size and scope of the "gummint we have." How many Americans really understand the correlation between SAP imposition on, and IMF depredation, in Latin American countries, and the rise of "illegal immigration"? How many people have the time, inclination or capacity to trace the cause and effect relationship between state insurance law and the structuring of regional health plans, or how the states are used to do an end run around marginally stricter federal regulations? How many people really get that the "gummint we have" makes noises about public transit and clean energy while it continues to subsidize the auto industry with roads, ports, pipeline and terminal locations?

Etc ad naus. ad infin.

This assumes facts not in evidence. That was the point of my thought experiment, early in this comment thread.

I'm just basing my argument on the people the media regularly labels as "anti-government." I think it's pretty safe to say that every teabagger rally over the past 2 years that had more than 10 people got covered in the media. Except maybe for some fringe Ron Paul types there was almost no criticism of military spending.

Arguing with people about these concrete propositions seems more promising than trying to convince them that in the abstract, government is a Good Thing.

Agreed.

But this conclusion derives from some quite concrete beliefs about what the towelheads want, and why they do the things they do

But you're also assuming some kind of rationality in the mass "anti-government" state of mind (movement? propganda?)that I don't think exists.

I think that maybe it's the type of taxes used to fund the military and the type of taxes used to fund public schools that matter.

Most "anti-government" people have no objection to funding public schools with a state lottery (even though that lottery puts hard working numbers guys in Harlem out of business).

So what if we funded public schools via deficits and borrowing money from the Chinese and the military with local property taxes?

crow
"How many people have the time, inclination or capacity to trace the cause and effect relationship ...How many people really get ..."

i'm not sure any of us get far enough
into and thru these complexities
of contradictory interconnections
to proclaim

"i have burst thru the final schein ....!!!! "

What would US per cap GDP, average salaries, etc. be if the world were not made safe for McDonald's, Exxon, and Dole? More than just weapons makers profit from the war machine (in the case of oil companies the profit is direct and derivative.) And the booty trickles down, floods down, to every element of American society, even the homeless. I don't say that as a justification of it, but if one thinks "only a small percentage benefit," doesn't know what empire is. Why is it that basically every major corporation supports, even with precious dollars, given over to campaigns, war-mongering politicians?

The American prole or middle class may not get a fair share of the American pie, but gets far more than its share of the world pie - and that's not because the American is so clever and hard-working.

Remember, most occupied countries do not resist.

"So what if we funded public schools via deficits and borrowing money from the Chinese and the military with local property taxes?"

delightful thought
if you consider one white and the other black

and the war on ignorance as open ended as the crusade to make the globe safe for
trans national limited liability corporate ..."investments"

http://www.thenation.com/article/disposable-soldiers

The linked article belabors the point of an earlier comment in this thread. This tale of veterans abandoned deserves wide distribution. The question remains as to why so few in the military-eligible cohorts are able to identify with the victim.

nerf stalinists undaunted
retain neo-browder strategy

chiefdon sam's november theses :

"..keep in mind that the elections were a setback, but not a complete defeat."

" The people's coalition retains bases of power to fight from and the political prospects going forward are better than they were in 1994 "

"History tells us ... regaining the high ground and initiative in current circumstances won't be easy. But it can be done.
But only if we ....

build broad democratic unity,

energize the grass roots,

reject the mistaken and dangerous notion
that
the president and his party
are the main obstacle to progress,

embrace broad strategic and tactical concepts of struggle,

and, above all,

take action."

flak

vet orgs fight these scraps best they can
but what claw hold do they have ??

of course its active duty types
that need to mutiny over stuff like this

mutiny out of theatre
oughta be enough to apply a grip on uncles balls

since its just
a wage earners strike by other means

boston was the locus classicus for the first show time US cop strike
--the suppression of which
was properly political "making" of
then mass gov silent cal--

and of course attica new york will for ever
like in infamy as the quintessence of inmate insurrection
--by in contrast to 1919 boston
gov rocky unlike silent cal
gained litle traction from his
more murderous the hardly more brutish response in '71 ---

my friend and bosnia occ vet
' son of sam '
has long adovated
a north carolina centered
sams club organized
army mutiny

the every bitchy sailor boys and air men
might be more promising org targets...
if they actually faced similar
dismal prospects

among marines ??
unfortunately
only trace elements of rebellion
exist inside the halls and tents of semper fi

and even that
too often
belches forth
out of their retired officers

seems to see
enough of the whole truth
exceeds jarhead capacity

and the war on ignorance as open ended as the crusade to make the globe safe for
trans national limited liability corporate ..."investments"

Even the most frenzied teabagger still wants his grandchildren to go to some kind of school, even if it's a segregated Christian school. And I think he probably wants his great great grandchildren to have some kind of education.

On the other hand, even the most hypocrital liberal Democrat who "supports the troops" at the same time he's bashing the war in Iraq probably looks forward to a day when the military won't exist.

So I can imagine that 100% of the population thinks schools (in some idealized form) are a good thing. And I also think all but a tiny fascist minority thinks war in and of itself a good thing.

So why (does it seem to me) to be more socially acceptable to bash the teachers union than the troops?

I don't think it's the fact that Obama, for example, puts less stress on the Cold War aspect of education than JFK did. JFK was explicit about it. We need schools to beat the Russians. That didn't stop "massive resistance" in Virginia.

In fact, I think if you started teaching Arabic in public schools with the explicit goal of "defeating terrorism" the teabaggers would go batshit insane and pull their kids out of the school.

People who live in places like NY, and other "blue states," routinely vote for higher Federal taxes for themselves, and those tax dollars are shipped off to the "self-reliant, red" heartland. Many red states run surpluses in Fed $$$, while NY, at least NYC, runs huge deficits.

I think it's fair to say NYC voters regularly vote for other people's benefit and not their own, at least regarding Fed taxes.

>>>So I can imagine that 100% of the population thinks schools (in some idealized form) are a good thing. And I also think all but a tiny fascist minority thinks war in and of itself a good thing.

Well put, Trail.

the great balls of hocum
behind our warrior cult
goes back to the era of drafted citizens
to mass armies total war
blah blah blah
battling
for independence
fighting
to end slavery
make the planet safe for democracy
defeat fascism etc

these are past patterns
now we are back to an army /navy/air force
that is just a job or a career
nothing special
when in harms way
about as honorable
as Grant era indian clearance

hence the notion of
leave it to the vets
to lobby for themselves

you and i citizen tax payers
owe them nothing
at least no more then postal workers

honor the brave ??

great
but we don't tax ourselves
for the benefit
of stunt drivers and bull riders

as entertainment
i consider crusades like cable channels

one can calculate
the monthy service fee

example
spread over 100 million households
the iraqathon came in at
35 dollars a month
voluntary subscription would be ...estimating what ??
high high side
50 million subscribing house holds

70 bucks a month
yikes !!!

well beyond most sports channels

for that the armed forces would need to put on much better programming
and that's just the crusades

of course the basic package
--up keep of the armada itself--

is about 5 times that

this lost in washington state 2/1

"Exempt every small business in Washington from the B&O tax with a $4,800 business tax credit;

Reduce the state portion of the property tax by 20 percent, saving typical homeowners $100 to $200 per year;

Create a 5% tax on income over $200,000 singles/$400,000 couples, and 9% on income over $500,000 singles/$1 million couples);
Invest the net revenue — estimated at over $2 billion per year — in public education and health care; "

consider this
washington is one of a handful of states without a state income tax

the notion this is the thin edge of the wedge
the base will crep down the income levels
must have played hob with this intiative
new hampshire the home state of the young owen paine
always goes freako on this too

i think father's notion of deep popular suspicion of their gubmint kicked in here
if a state income tax already existed and this was an initiative to raise rates at the top end or add new higher rate brakets
the outcome i submit
would have been quite different

.

the intiative that hacked off the sales tax on candy etc won
of course
hell you're surprised ???

sin taxes are bull shit to most americans
if they get a chance they hack em

"It was sometime in the wee hours of
election eve, after the reality set in
that voters in Wisconsin had fired
Russ Feingold from the U.S. Senate while
the voters of Kentucky had hired Rand
Paul, that I began to seriously question
America’s future"
from latest counter putsch news litter

sez too much to need a comment

feingold ???

piffle

i wouldn't care too much
if some mob of brat crazed
tea baggers made sauerkraut
out of that pompous fraud

OP: Your post on Feingold is sheer lunacy.

Feingold and Grayson were blowhards who liked to take advantage of their no votes on bills already lost to make speeches.

Feingold also voted to confirm John Roberts as Chief Justice.

But I still think I would have voted for Feingold's "no" vote against the Patriot Act had I been able to vote in Wisconsin.

To name two politicians people on this site will probably crucify me for mentioning, we need a David Lloyd George or a Teddy Roosevelt.

Both of them were masters at rallying public opinion behind bills they knew Parliament (or Congress) wouldn't pass.

Obama needed to come out for single payer, for card check, for the repeal of the Patriot Act and put the burden on the Democrats in Congress.

He needed to do some grandstanding. He needed to say "I'm for single payer and if Congress rejects it, vote against the Republicans and Blue Dogs in 2010."

Lloyd George really provided the model for inspired grandstanding in 1909 when he broke the House of Lords with the "Peoples Budget."

He dared the Lords to veto the Peoples Budget. They did. And the Conservatives got mauled at the next election. After that, the Lords backed down.

Anyway, since I'm sure Teddy Roosevelt and Lloyd George have anti-Christ status here I'll be attacked for bringing them up. But both of them were basically more successful versions of Grayson and Feingold.

link here t of t :

http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2009/12/ils_ne_passeront_pas.html

but the other guy

Grrrrrrr

to have a choice between feingold and tr i'd be forced to take feingold

oddly as a prep school lad
i was taught to venerate teddy ...and i did ...anyway

noted number gap well up above :

"spread over 100 million households
the iraqathon came in at
35 dollars a month"
add on

per household member

op sez:
"the military only benefits a tiny group of people at the top"
nonsense
we have a huge sub population with ties to the military on one level or other

Sorry, but I have to call bullshit on your calling "nonsense".

If the entire military budget were zeroed out tomorrow, no politicians, top-level "defense" industry executives or Pentagon big-shots would be harmed.

On the other hand, millions of enlisted personnel, low-grade officers and "defense" workers would be SOL after losing the livelihood they were making by hitching themselves up to the war wagon.

I should know; I come from an old service family; one of the things that made me into a pinko hippie commie leftie is watching what my parents went through as a result of having to depend on the existence of the M-IC for their living, and setting their values and making their voting decisions accordingly.

Given the company store mentality which governs public education in Washington state, maybe letting public schools implode wouldn't be such a bad thing. If I have to do one more "professional growth and evaluation" chore this year, I think I'm gonna puke.

Unless I missed something, Mike F, Owen was making the same point you made.

There's a persistent confusion showing up in these comments between Teabaggers on the one hand, and jes'-folks who take a dim view of Gummint, on the other.

Real committed energized Teabaggers are loons, of course. But they're not numerous enough or volitional enough to sway elections.

What sways elections are the people who can either cross the party line from time to time, or stay home. Teabaggers can do neither. They are, in a lapidary phrase Owen once employed, "programmed stooges".

But suspicion and resentment of Gummint are pretty widely distributed. You don't need to be a Teabagger nutcase to feel those sentiments. In fact about the only people who don't suspect and distrust Gummint are highly-indoctrinated, oops I mean educated, liberals, and such people are a very small group.

flugster:

as father s notes

the point of my comment was essentially restated ...better by yourself
not contradicted

i like the keen observation

" If the entire military budget were zeroed out tomorrow, no politicians, top-level "defense" industry executives or Pentagon big-shots would be harmed"
this is indeed always true
unlike regular jobsters

if the elite lose their post
they don't automatically
lose their station

the difference ??

wealth privilege and connections

the kold war drafts
and the three draft fueled crusades
WWI WWII Korea and Vietnam have created a huge sub culture
the american legion formed in 1919
from its inception
was an attempt like the contemporaneous klan to harness and hijack ad hoc a body open to hijacking
to meld them into a useable intentional "community"

one thinks of the civil war vet manipulations ..on both sides
as the earlier dry run here

the warrior cult of course has morphed since we became a globe wide imperial culture
and morphed again as we went all volunteer under nixon
and again when a mass ground war with the reds
in europe became
yesterdays pretext

fans of our armed forces are well cultivated
by various cult rituals

one only needs to attend a nascar event
to recognize how serious all this can get

Can't remember an MJS post with which I've agreed less.

Take corporate money and election-via-TV-ads out of this topic, and how do WA voters vote?

Same goes for the hatred of government, which has been hard-peddled via commercial TV for more than a whole generation.

As to schools, every single one of my kids teachers is doing God's work, IMHO. I just don't fathom the Illichian presumption to the contrary, despite the obvious problems in the system. I don't think the public does, either.

But, again, how could one ever tell, when money and advertising are the two rails on which the opinions roll?

There's a persistent confusion showing up in these comments between Teabaggers on the one hand, and jes'-folks who take a dim view of Gummint, on the other.

The real problem is that if you poll "jus plain Americans" they'll say:

1a.) They hate government in the abstract
1b.) Don't cut my benefits

2a.) Deficits are a huge problem
2b.) Don't raise my taxes

FWIW, I don't think that the main emotion driving the Teabaggers is "mistrust of government." It's "mistrust of Melanin."

The media seems to have been successful in branding "government" as a bad word, like "liberal."

But if you poll people about Social Security the answers will be overwhelmingly positive.

You're quite right, ToT. Anti-Gummint sentiment doesn't ordinarily extend to turning down a Social Security check. From which I draw the conclusion that people are actually rather good at recognizing it when something directly benefits them. Perhaps the reason so many people stayed home last week was that they didn't see anything on either the obverse or reverse of the duopoly coin that they believed would benefit them.

Mistrust of melanin may be playing some role in the Teabagger frenzy, but I'm not sure it's a big one. The Teabagger stuff all sounds very familiar to me.

I remember my first exposure to it, which occurred when I made my first trip to California, in (blush) 1964, and was very struck by the difference between the prevailing militant Goldwaterism there, and the kind of conservatism I was familiar with in the small Southern town where I grew up. The Teabaggers sound just like my uncle's raving Orange County neighbors lo, these many years ago. It's a flavor of political nuttiness that I suspect is connected somehow with suburbanization.

"connected somehow with suburbanization"

not deeply causal ...either way
but yup

"Everybody approves of Gummint expenditures on his or her own behalf, and disapproves of expenditures for anybody else."

"Anti-Gummint sentiment doesn't ordinarily extend to turning down a Social Security check. From which I draw the conclusion that people are actually rather good at recognizing it when something directly benefits them. "

I think that's the key issue. To what extent are the non-teabagger swing-vote anti-gubbmint types really against the government in general? Are they just against government expenditures that are perceived to benefit others, while still supporting a lot of current government spending (perhaps the majority of it) that they see as benefiting themselves? In that case I would say that they aren't really anti-government (existing or imagined), and are more likely just full of it.

A good litmus test is probably police spending. Would any of these same swing voters vote against funding more police officers? I doubt it. I don't have any particularly keen insight into the demographic, but I imagine that it overlaps quite tightly with the law and order vote.

I think that this also holds for a lot of other government programs: roads, schools, the military, the courts, the prisons, social security, medicaid, medicare, etc. I'd believe that this anti-government sentiment wasn't just an opportunistic pose if the people in question would pull the no lever for any of the above, but I really don't see that happening. It does just seem like a case of people being against government only when it appears to benefit someone else, rather than doubting the net benefit that they derive from the existing government.

You're quite right, ToT. Anti-Gummint sentiment doesn't ordinarily extend to turning down a Social Security check. From which I draw the conclusion that people are actually rather good at recognizing it when something directly benefits them.

Isn't this just the way people act under ANY authoritarian government?

Whether it's Soviet Communism or American corporate "inverted totalitarianism" people hate the government and still try to get what they can from it.

The ideal of the French Revolution (and the American Revolution and most forms of socialism) is that we'll all "citizens" who have both duties and privilages.

And it works that way in most democracies. People forget that in Britain, most people considered national health care as a reward for fighting fascism.

In other words, isn't the typical American just a French girl in 1941?

We hate the Germans. We tear up when we hear the Marseillaises.

And yet we still sleep with the handsome German SS man for extra rations.

When the Teahadis sign off on taking away guns from cops, I'll believe they're actually anti-government.

fb
i'm sure u'd agree to this extension

votin' tax payin' folks
have implicit if not explicit
categories othey stuff
their fellow americans into

i think they extend their
support
both for largesse par uncle
and even taxes on themselves
not just to benes for categories
that they themselves
now
once
will or might some day
find themselves in
but also to bene
those in categories they feel solidarity with
for any number of essentially historical
incidental and accidental reasons

'relief' (welfare) didn't need reform back when and where only or mostly white people got it. it became controversial after the civil rights acts. ad valorem tax on real estate to support education wasn't a political issue before integration and the creation of christian academies. even such potent hot buttons as "crime" didn't work at the hustings before black people got their rights. (they did get 'em, didn't they? sometimes it is hard to tell.)

the multiracial society seems as much a pipe dream as the classless society.

racism is a convenient elite left alibi for failure to moblize the white wage class behind progressive social measures

what is often over looked ???
integration and the rest of identity politics
is a very effective way to wedge apart the broadest possible anti corporate
popular front
to pit the anti oppression movement
against the anti exploitation movement
is deep folly
to see white wage class race politics
as moral failure is utterly counter productive

frankly i see no reason to laud oneself
because one feels "liberated " from race prejudice
how has this isolated soul self cleaning
changed society or even confronted
society's oppressive modes
its without social value to be a prejudice free soul
only notions deep in our culture about individual salvation
can falsely honor this moral fetish

the racial prejudice of the white wage class is irrelevant to social progress?

welfare didn't need reform when only white people got it.

if op 10:34p is responsive to anonymous 6:18p, then it is not a little confusing.

a whites only workers paradise is redolent of today's zionist state. let the jewish welfare agencies of israel be ever so generous to jews, non-jews find themselves another species. just for example.

and so it was for the new deal.... when things were better for some than they appear to be today for most.

anon
as a settler state
yankee doodleville
has strong analogies to the zionic entity
and often its apt to notice n many ways
but when was welfare whites only ???
jim crow-ed of course for 100 years
after slavery was abolished
a policy period much like present day israel
y
but those days are gone
the reaction of job class whites
formed by the new deal era
to the democrat sponsored
welfare system
since johnson's great society
has gone thru a number of mutations
and is still going thru them

today
anti brown undoc rage
is prolly more wide spread and potent
then anti black anger and fear eh ??

the failure of the Democratic party
since 68
to battle effectively for
the hearts and minds of
what we call Reagan Democrats
has much to do with the policy induced
decline of mc-job class whites
to payroll taxation
to chronic wage rate flat lining
de industrialization
over seas out sourcing
the imperial dollar
and in particular
lip service to
and de facto malign neglect
of the job site self organizing process
add in
me too interventionism over seas
the absurd war on drugs and terror
the higher ed cult
healthcare cost explosion
blah blah blah

all of these policies --and much else--
all these 40 years
have wacked
minority community folks
worse needless to say

but where could any wage class white find solidarity with ....
for example
that perfect new democratic specimen
the man from mass
that wind surfing
Ent like
elitist stiff
senator john kerry-tree ???
or his priorities
proclivities
pedantries
ponderosities
procrastinations
prevarications
and all round
sanctimonious paternalisms

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal#Defeat:_court_packing_and_executive_reorganization

Under 'African Americans':

The WPA, NYA, and CCC relief programs allocated 10% of their budgets to blacks (who comprised about 10% of the total population, and 20% of the poor). They operated separate all-black units with the same pay and conditions as white units.[51]
However, these benefits were small in comparison to the economic and political advantages that whites received. Social Security was denied to blacks, and most unions excluded blacks from joining. Enforcement of anti-discrimination laws in the South was virtually impossible, especially since most blacks worked in hospitality and agricultural sectors.[53]

I exaggerated the plight of non-whites. Probably a hangover from a cotton-southern upbringing.

Principle concern of your article is a deep historical research that will help me to complete five paragraph essay. I'll read more of you in future.