Introduction

The entire Teaparty movement is based on ideas that have been continuously discredited for years. Yet the GOP, eager to leverage all the passion and zeal of these misguided populists, is promising policy based on still more of the fiscal absurdity that has already wreaked havoc on our cities.  Over the next few weeks, I am going to collect examples of this ongoing ruination and post them here.

If you have good articles for this reader (I call it a wrapper), please submit as a comment or email it to me and I'll consider including it.

Recent

City cuts into services considered basic by many.

COLORADO SPRINGS — This tax-averse city is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric.  More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

Backgrounders

California's Proposition 13 : The Mother of all Stupidity

The proposition's passage resulted in a cap on property tax rates in the state, reducing them by an average of 57%. In addition to lowering property taxes, the initiative also contained language requiring a two-thirds majority in both legislative houses for future increases in all state tax rates or amounts of revenue collected, including income tax rates. It also requires two-thirds vote majority in local elections for local governments wishing to raise special taxes. Proposition 13 received an enormous amount of publicity, not only in California, but throughout the United States.

Spread the meme. Republicans are the party that wrecked America

So, to begin this process, and to clarify the situation, I urge readers of this blog to identify the Republican Party by its new brand-name: the party that wrecked America.

Related

Myth: Carter ruined the economy; Reagan saved it.

Carter cannot be blamed for the double-digit inflation that peaked on his watch, because inflation started growing in 1965 and snowballed for the next 15 years. To battle inflation, Carter appointed Paul Volcker as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, who defeated it by putting the nation through an intentional recession.

The Great Lie of Supply-Side Economics, By Paul Krugman

The tax cuts that went through were sold on false premises – what it costs us is far greater than advocates said, advocates who claimed it would actually increase revenue and cost us nothing. It does cost us, hundreds of billions of dollars so far, and that cost has not been presented honestly to the public by either the advocates of the tax cuts or the press reporting on the issue. Without an adequate understanding of the true costs, the public discussion on the issue is distorted and the result is bad public policy.

Why The Party that Wrecked America Can't Fix It

The Republican party has a problem. They have based much of their power, over the last several decades, on the idea of ever-expanding (almost exclusively white) suburbs. The thinking was, as those suburbs become less and less dense — as one wag put it, the further away the houses are from each other — the more those suburbanites will vote Republican. As William Levitt, the builder of the first modern suburb after World War II said, "No man who owns his own house and lot can be a communist."

Tweet