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Big government and Bigger taxes - Is it really that scary compared to what we got right now?
Growing up in the Rush Limbaugh revolution, I was brainwashed into thinking that big government = bad. Even now my gut reaction is to prefer the concept of smaller government. But since the Republicans seem utterly incapable at making government smaller nor can they effectively manage an increasingly larger government, why not try big government run by the Democrats?
For me, the defining moment was Katrina. I had just spent a couple days in August 2005 taking a train from LA to Houston, hanging out and playing cards with a bunch of people who were living in New Orleans so watching Katrina unfold on the news was a lot more personal than usual. I volunteered one day and I saw a convention center that housed the Houston Rodeo Livestock Show filled with cots and humans where there were cows in pens just four months ago. When I'm being blunt with myself, I wonder if the feds could have done anything about mitigating that catastrophe. Maybe the federal government did its best. But then I remember that we are fighting two wars halfway across the globe and so if my fucking government can't take care of our own while a city drowns, then something needs to change. If higher taxes are the price we pay for better government I won't complain too much.
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