PJM’s Scott Ott thinks the contemporary GOP leadership could learn well from Coolidge Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, who in 1924 wrote a book promoting the Coolidge pro-growth tax policy.
Of course, this is precisely the kind of hidebound thinking one has come to expect from many contemporary conservative true believers, who continue to cling to the bygone successes of the Coolidge / Goldwater / Reagan GOP tree like Emerald Ash Borers, leaving nothing but dead electoral timber in their wake.
The truth is, such anti-government conservatism — in an age of community and togetherness, hope and change — is a non-starter, as any political realist already knows, and, for all its good intentions and well-meaning civic engagement, the constant, public longing for such by groups like the TEA Party only hurts the GOP going forward, branding it as the party of social Darwinism and selfish abandonment.
Rugged individualism is a relic of the pioneer days, if it ever really existed at all outside America’s own frontier mythology: self-sufficiency is an enduring fiction, but one that we need to shed if we’re to find common ground to work together to rebuild a broken society. Today, people demand community, connectedness, a collective striving toward universal goals: fairness, equality, an end to discrimination and hatred. In order to remain viable, then, the GOP simply must shed its old skin — in which it stood wrinkled athwart history yelling stop — and show the electorate something new, young, exciting; it has to show that, like the Democrats, it, too, can change with changing times — though unlike the Democrats, it needs to show that change is being adopted not merely for change’s sake, or as a way to pander to disparate identity groups, but rather to ease America’s transition into a better, more smoothly-running ship of state, where compassion is paramount, and fixes to our various problems — be it income disparity or the civil rights concerns of undocumented workers and homosexuals — can come about through reasoned, rational, good-faith bipartisan compromise.
This is what the people want. And digging up old Treasury Secretaries from the days of flappers and blackface isn’t likely to make them feel any more assured that the GOP is looking forward.
(h/t sdferr)
Any policy that leaves us out of the euro is a no go.
Wait.
This April first business is tough. I mean, since we’re already living in bizarro-world, if we mean to topsy-turvy stuff on April first we’d practically be required to do nothing but crisp out certainties in order to distinguish the day from any other run of the mill day of the year. But what the heck kind of fun is that?
Oh, yeah. All the fun.
Well, I’m pretty sure I just want everyone to get the fuck off my lawn, so to speak. Unless someone wants to remind me to stay out of Costco on the 1st…
Fun, you say?
Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway Investors Will Voluntarily Pay “Buffett Rule” Tax
Someday coprophagia will will be presented as trendy and healthy. Then “forward” will mean eating shit because experts told us too.
And a happy April 1st to you too, Jeff!
I want everyone ON my lawn. To mow it for me. Because my mower has a dead battery. Which you just know has to be Rand Paul’s fault. Or maybe Wayne LaPierre’s.
Wait — it’s April 1st?
Any policy that leaves us out of the euro is a no go.
Alas, poor Euro! I knew him, Horatio
I just finished reading “Coolidge” by Amity Shlaes. I highly recommend the book.
Andrew Mellon of the Coolidge cabinet, came up with the idea of “Scientific Taxation” in which Mellon asserted that lowering tax rates would ultimately bring in more revenue.
Take that, Laffer.
I am personally tired of making my own decisions. This morning, coffee or tea. I tell you it is maddening.
and doing taxes this weekend. I just want to send all my pay to the government and they can send me back what they don’t need. That would simplify everything.