Sunday notes

Perhaps, one of the reasons that the Republicans are in trouble can be found here.

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Evidently, Sarah Palin is out there again railing against taxes and government control. Here is a good indicator of the reality of Alaska, but it also applies to a lot of other "red" states who love to complain about high taxes but actually take in more federal dollars then they contribute.



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Here is a thought. I think one of the toughest jobs in Washington has to be as communications secretary for Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe. I called Senator Inhofe's Washington office the other day as well, and was told by the nice young woman who answered the phone that the Senator had been misquoted. Evidently, he was not misquoted. He still thinks that it is not clear which side our American President prefers. You know, whether Obama sides with the terrorists or the American troops.

Sigh. What an idiot.

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I am not sure how to describe this phenomenon, but it seems to me that a lot of American woes go directly to them being convinced of the exact opposite. So convinced of their own moral superiority, they cannot imagine enacting the very same torture policy of some third world dictator. Or, so convinced of their democratic superiority, it never dawns on them that their own elections might need monitoring. Ezra Klein notes a problem of stagnant wages and increasing wages. In my conversations with people, most don't seem to think that wages have stagnated, and focus only on federal income taxes as the source of their woes, even as the cost of government is simply shifted into other areas. Anyway, as Klein notes, that disconnect may be the reason we are still moving slow on health care reform:

"That slumping line isn't normally called wages-minus-health-premiums. It's called wages. And most workers think stagnant wages mean their employer is paying them less. They don't know that the main reason for stagnant wages is that their wage increases are going to pay for their health insurance premiums. If they did -- if they realized that compensation is pretty much a zero-sum endeavor and their employers don't so much buy them health insurance as garnish their wages to pay for their health insurance -- you'd probably see a lot more general anger at rising health care costs."