Anti-tax fervor undermines the common good

• Facing yawning deficits, many years of tough sacrifice and reckoning lie ahead of us. But to use that as an excuse to eviscerate government functions left and right, or push down taxes just when government needs them to remain solvent, represents a strange kind of patriotism.
• The Myths of Austerity
• Hey Tea Party-Republicans: The Founders Are Not Your Guys

Neal Peirce, Syndicated columnist, Seattle Times | WA

Parker & Hart

Where will anti-government sentiment — call it "libertarian," "tax revolt" or "tea party" — take America's cities and towns?

For a top example, Governing magazine's current edition features the draconian measures under way in Colorado Springs, Colo. Responding to anti-tax sentiment that was thriving well before the current recession, the city laid off more than 550 city workers, let street medians go to weeds, closed all its swimming pools and turned off a third of its streetlights.

Beyond all that, Colorado Springs has cut bus service by 100,000 hours, with zero evening or weekend trips — a move that literally strands transit-dependent residents.

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Related:

The Myths of Austerity, Paul Krugman, New York Times | NY

• The next time you hear serious-sounding people explaining the need for fiscal austerity, try to parse their argument. Almost surely, you’ll discover that what sounds like hardheaded realism actually rests on a foundation of fantasy, on the belief that invisible vigilantes will punish us if we’re bad and the confidence fairy will reward us if we’re good. And real-world policy — policy that will blight the lives of millions of working families — is being built on that foundation.
• This isn’t a recovery, in any sense that matters.

Hey Tea Party-Republicans: The Founders Are Not Your Guys, Harvey Wasserman, Common Dreams
Next time those Tea/GOP phonies gaze off in the distance to claim kinship with the Founders, remind (them) who really did win that Revolution and write that Bill of Rights: Those hemp-growing, tree-hugging, corporate-hating deistic free loving and free thinking present-at-the-creation Americans (who) believed above all that the Truth would keep us free.

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