No one really wants to talk about the infrastructure debacle, they just want to lay blame.
Wow, how do you think that’s going to go over in 2016? Like a ton of bricks is what I’m betting, and it’s sure to quash any chances the Democrats think they have.
Yeah, that’s right…Democrats think they won this one. They actually think that by keeping $400 million in the bank for two years, they’ve won and voters will overwhelmingly send them to Helena in 2017.
What do you say to that? How do you stand up to that level of childish thinking? And remember, the government and the political parties are nothing but children. Like a child that’s taken to the supermarket and sees a toy they want, they have to have it. If they can’t get it, they’ll make a scene.
It’s important that voters in both parties stop giving these children what they want. We mentioned before how if the government asked you for $10 right now, you wouldn’t give it to them. It’s not because you don’t want to help out the less fortunate and disadvantaged, people that can’t work and really do need help, it’s that the government has shown time and time again that they can’t be trusted to do that.
Even if the government says they’ll use $50 million to feed kids, they won’t. It’ll get sucked down some rat hole and end up in Iraq or God knows where. Local, state, federal…it’s all the same – they take your money, make promises, and then break those promises all over the floor, right at your feet, and then they hold out their hand for more.
Wow, how do you think that’s going to go over in 2016? Like a ton of bricks is what I’m betting, and it’s sure to quash any chances the Democrats think they have.
Yeah, that’s right…Democrats think they won this one. They actually think that by keeping $400 million in the bank for two years, they’ve won and voters will overwhelmingly send them to Helena in 2017.
What do you say to that? How do you stand up to that level of childish thinking? And remember, the government and the political parties are nothing but children. Like a child that’s taken to the supermarket and sees a toy they want, they have to have it. If they can’t get it, they’ll make a scene.
It’s important that voters in both parties stop giving these children what they want. We mentioned before how if the government asked you for $10 right now, you wouldn’t give it to them. It’s not because you don’t want to help out the less fortunate and disadvantaged, people that can’t work and really do need help, it’s that the government has shown time and time again that they can’t be trusted to do that.
Even if the government says they’ll use $50 million to feed kids, they won’t. It’ll get sucked down some rat hole and end up in Iraq or God knows where. Local, state, federal…it’s all the same – they take your money, make promises, and then break those promises all over the floor, right at your feet, and then they hold out their hand for more.
Art Wittich has a guest opinion in the Billings Gazette, today, and he’s right. This nincompoop is actually right – we should have used cash for infrastructure, not bonds.
“Notably, this ‘infrastructure’ bill also required us to borrow $100 million, even though we have a $350 million dollar cash surplus,” Wittich notes. “Many of us instead wanted to spend our available cash,” he goes on to say, “and to prioritize real infrastructure like local road, water, and school repairs.”
Those things didn’t happen, however, and now they won’t for two years. Sure, some interim legislative committees might meet and dole out some of that cash, but the bulk of it will sit there until next year…or until the rich man needs it.
Yeah, that’s something we don’t really talk about much, but which all of use have come to accept hook, line and sinker – we’ll use that huge cash surplus not to fix your sewer lines, but to ensure some rich property owner that built in the middle of a forest will see his investment protected.
Alright, let’s admit it – this investment by the state to protect that person’s property comes at the expense of your investment, which is in your kids. That’s the biggest investment you’ve got, because we know you have nothing saved for retirement and the bank still owns your house (that’s what a mortgage means).
The state isn’t using that money to help you with your investment, instead it’s helping the rich property owners. When you remember that Montana only has a shaky, two-legged tax stool to support itself with, this makes perfect sense. We need rich property owners so they can pay us a richness in property taxes. The bigger, fancier, and more ornate those houses in the woods are, the more they’re worth and the more those owners will pay to the state each year.
The state needs this money, and if the expense is a few young hot shots getting burned to death, so be it. Like we’ve mentioned before, oil revenues for the state are going way down. At the same time, people are working less and those that are working are doing so at two part-time jobs, making barely enough to be taxed anything in the first place. Hell, the state has to give money to most of these people, and not once a year, but continuously each month in the form of dependency benefits just so those families can survive.
That’s right, it’s a vicious cycle. Without the property tax income, the state couldn’t prop up the poor and those that can’t get work in a state with no work. And I’m sorry, but crappy service industry jobs don’t qualify as work, because no one wants to do those jobs. They suck, and they’re demeaning to our citizenry.
“Notably, this ‘infrastructure’ bill also required us to borrow $100 million, even though we have a $350 million dollar cash surplus,” Wittich notes. “Many of us instead wanted to spend our available cash,” he goes on to say, “and to prioritize real infrastructure like local road, water, and school repairs.”
Those things didn’t happen, however, and now they won’t for two years. Sure, some interim legislative committees might meet and dole out some of that cash, but the bulk of it will sit there until next year…or until the rich man needs it.
Yeah, that’s something we don’t really talk about much, but which all of use have come to accept hook, line and sinker – we’ll use that huge cash surplus not to fix your sewer lines, but to ensure some rich property owner that built in the middle of a forest will see his investment protected.
Alright, let’s admit it – this investment by the state to protect that person’s property comes at the expense of your investment, which is in your kids. That’s the biggest investment you’ve got, because we know you have nothing saved for retirement and the bank still owns your house (that’s what a mortgage means).
The state isn’t using that money to help you with your investment, instead it’s helping the rich property owners. When you remember that Montana only has a shaky, two-legged tax stool to support itself with, this makes perfect sense. We need rich property owners so they can pay us a richness in property taxes. The bigger, fancier, and more ornate those houses in the woods are, the more they’re worth and the more those owners will pay to the state each year.
The state needs this money, and if the expense is a few young hot shots getting burned to death, so be it. Like we’ve mentioned before, oil revenues for the state are going way down. At the same time, people are working less and those that are working are doing so at two part-time jobs, making barely enough to be taxed anything in the first place. Hell, the state has to give money to most of these people, and not once a year, but continuously each month in the form of dependency benefits just so those families can survive.
That’s right, it’s a vicious cycle. Without the property tax income, the state couldn’t prop up the poor and those that can’t get work in a state with no work. And I’m sorry, but crappy service industry jobs don’t qualify as work, because no one wants to do those jobs. They suck, and they’re demeaning to our citizenry.
So what can be done? If we continue down our current path, things will look about like this:
This is where things pretty much fall apart. I also think this is why we see such low turnout – regular people just tune out at this point. We know that we’ll never have that rich forest home, and we’ll likely not have our own sewer lines either. We’re poor, and can’t afford property! Remember, the game was rigged against us from the start, and we’ve been shackled with the debt you racked up decades ago to pay for your excesses. So when you talk about infrastructure, most of us regular folk could care less. It doesn’t affect us, and even the ‘however many jobs it could have created’ isn’t going to bump up our minimum wage pay. In other words, why the hell should we care?
Democrats never talk about the 60,000 people in Missoula County that didn’t vote in 2014 because it scares them to death to think about that. They have no answer for why those people didn’t vote, and they have no idea how to make them vote again. Remember, they need to figure this out – Republicans don’t. This is a Republican state, so they can coast on to victory, like Dick Haines just about did against Diane Sands last go-round in the House races. She spent thousands and thousands of dollars and campaigned like hell. He did relatively nothing.
Things will be exactly the same in 2016 – Democrats have given us no reason to think otherwise.
- Democrats will campaign on their legislative accomplishments, which includes trying to get infrastructure passed.
- Republicans will continuously point out that we had the money in the bank for infrastructure, but Democrats refused to spend it, wanted to put your kids tens of millions of dollars into debt instead.
- Democrats will counter, saying we need to remain one of the most fiscally conservative states in the country, and we do that buy having a huge surplus of cash. What’s more, we now have/had enough money to fight fires, protecting countless homes.
- Republicans will counter by saying we’re already one of the most fiscally conservative states, and having that surplus wasn’t going to make us more so. Additionally…well, that’s it, because the Republicans are a party of the rich, so they can never use the rich man in the forest argument to shoot down forest spending. Instead they’ll point out that if property owners had that money in their own pocket, they could better protect their own homes.
- Democrats will counter that by laughing and saying the Republicans want to make society more feudal, with rich and powerful lords looking over their small fiefs to the exclusion of government.
This is where things pretty much fall apart. I also think this is why we see such low turnout – regular people just tune out at this point. We know that we’ll never have that rich forest home, and we’ll likely not have our own sewer lines either. We’re poor, and can’t afford property! Remember, the game was rigged against us from the start, and we’ve been shackled with the debt you racked up decades ago to pay for your excesses. So when you talk about infrastructure, most of us regular folk could care less. It doesn’t affect us, and even the ‘however many jobs it could have created’ isn’t going to bump up our minimum wage pay. In other words, why the hell should we care?
Democrats never talk about the 60,000 people in Missoula County that didn’t vote in 2014 because it scares them to death to think about that. They have no answer for why those people didn’t vote, and they have no idea how to make them vote again. Remember, they need to figure this out – Republicans don’t. This is a Republican state, so they can coast on to victory, like Dick Haines just about did against Diane Sands last go-round in the House races. She spent thousands and thousands of dollars and campaigned like hell. He did relatively nothing.
Things will be exactly the same in 2016 – Democrats have given us no reason to think otherwise.
