The tax charge cometh
The North Pulaski Leader brings Ernie Dumas' four decades of coverage of the Capitol to bear in an editorial on the Republican Party's attack on Mike Beebe for voting for tax increases as a state senator. Dumas explains how the Republicans cooked the books (by their methods, you could say Asa Hutchinson cut taxes for billionaires by trillions while he was in Congress); they disingenuously tried to tar Beebe with a tax passed after he left the Senate at the Republican governor's urging and they failed to give him credit for leadership in an income tax reduction that WAS passed on his watch. The essential misleading nature of the attack was already apparent; Dumas provided chapter and verse. But there's a larger issue than the fact-checking of the GOP's serial B.S.
Which services funded by those taxes and endorsed by the Republican governor would the Republicans eliminate if Hutchinson is elected?
Here is the fatal weakness in the Republican election strategy nowadays. The party assumes that voters have only one concern about their government, which is how much it collects in taxes.
Greed does not motivate most people. They like low taxes and fair taxes even more (the party will not be enlisting in that fight), but that is not the sum or even the summit of their civic interests. Republicans make a mistake when they assume it to be so. What voters will insist upon, even when the legitimate subject is taxes, is that either party and any candidate be honest and straightforward and not take them all for saps.
Comments
Republicans do have only one concern and that is money. They're driving the country to hell in a handbasket, just to help the rich get richer.
My 10 year old daughter's share of the national debt is somewhere north of $20,000. Where did that money go? I'll tell you -- it was transferred by the government to big business. It's redistribution of wealth on a major scale.
The only consolation is that the Republican's children will also have to grow up in the f***ed-up world they have created. Deficits, terrorism, perception of the US as the world's bully, and just pure meanness -- those things hit the rich as well as the poor.
Posted by: Roland | April 20, 2006 01:21 PM
Is that what the story said? I got my Arkansas Update from Asa's campaign today, and it described the story like this: "Editorial: Why Beebe's Tax Hikes Are a Good Thing: Editorialists at the Arkansas Leader argue that Mike Beebe's hefty record of tax increases - critiqued by state GOP this week - isn?t a problem because paying taxes is part of the civic interest."
Looks like just more spin and distortions from the Hutchinson camp.
Posted by: Steve | April 20, 2006 01:48 PM
I love press releases like this. It reveals a desparate bunch of losers who are scraping the bottom of their barrel of tricks to come up with somehthing.
Just keep Asa tied to "K" and Ken Starr and he's history.
_
Posted by: LWood | April 20, 2006 02:11 PM
Opps.
Just keep Asa tied to "K" Street-DeLay and Ken Starr/Clinton and he's history.
Posted by: LWood | April 20, 2006 02:17 PM