Dear Dr. Bones,
Mr. Cobbett (dba ‘Porcupine’) would be the ideal fan of ‘Mittens’ Romney, King of Flipflop, if he is really the same guy I knew in the 1790’s as the whightist of whight-guard Federalists. He never gave a Jacobin an even break, Big Pete Porcupine didn’t - not before becomin’ a Jake himself. [1]
Be that as it no doubt ain’t, not raisin’ "revenues just for the fun of it" is only the start of the Triumph of the Quill Porcky’s account of what Mittens did-- or wanted to do--with the swag that he was obliged to steal from the taxpayers is better still:
| [He] just sent the dollar amount to the town. He said it was silly for the [S]tate to set up artificial little accounts, and that towns knew what they needed to spend money on - maybe they had a big need in a school, but not for a road project. The town would decide for itself. The towns (and unions) went bananas. The cops were sure the schools would steal ’their money’, the schools were sure the seniors were out to get them, and so on. Some town fathers didn’t want to have to make decisions like that. So the [S]tate quickly drew up a budget reinstating the cubicle walls and redundant accounting, and everybody hugged their chains and whined about how mean the [S]tate was. |
Before he went altzheimers altogether, old Ebb Scrooge behaved just like that with the Bad Poor of Dickensville. If it were entirely up to his freelordship, they would get nothing at all, which they richly deserved, but since there are social conventions to be observed if one wants the lower orders admitted close enough to be able to behold and envy, his freelordship would scatter a few guineas amongst the urchins and bootblacks and chimmneysweeps and whatnot, deriving the true OnePercenterly pleasure from their greedy scrambles.
Unfortunately for Mittens, around here the Legislature is answerable, sort of, to the lower orders as well as to the Natural Masters, and so the Brave New Order could not last. Comrade Frank of KA has written a whole book about what the *intermittent* application of Scrooge-Romney-Porcupine managerial techniques leads to. It is called The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Govern. The title may be a little unfair, because our holy Homeland™ has been so long corrupted by liberalism and democracy that their freelordships’ hired-hand pols can never manage to get through Phase Zero of their Thousand Millennium Plan , which phase, very properly, consists of clearin’ the ground [3] an’ evictin’ shiftless tenants, &c. &c. So naturally a hostile like the fiend Frank has no trouble taking cheapshots.
Speaking of whightist Plans, perhaps that should be "Scrooge-Romney-Porcupine-Ryan managerial techniques," for the Smirk of Janesville has notoriously proposed to treat geezers as Uncle Ebb treated street A-rabs. As Mittens (I presume) treated Chelsea or Fall River. From their freelordships’ point of view, to do anythin’ different would not be proper plannin’ at all. OF COURSE, the competent bigmanager starts with budgetin’, and, wherever Charity begins, budgetin’ can only begin at home. Mittens must therefore, all selfishness apart, think about Mittens first, not about urchins or slums or invalids, an’ especially about exactly how many guineas his freelordship has on hand to throw at the mob. [3] That is not quight what whightists understand by "supply-side economics" but it is not far off either.
Now every rule needs a good probative exception. In this case I nominate "If you have to ask in advance what it will cost, you cannot afford it." Individual onepercenterly Scrooges an’ Porcucobbets an’ Romneys an’ siblin’s Koch (&c. &c.) do indeed act like that a lot of the time, inspirin’ awe in the breasts of us fiscal humble. Indeed, the guinea-tossin’ _shtyk_ itself is designed to *look* like spur-of-the-moment, unbudgeted largesse. Well, ever Class has its Class idiots, I daresay, but a kindly Providence has arranged that OnePercenters who really take no thought for tomorrow will find themselves demoted to the Murrayan Underclass (Pat. Pend.) by the day after. ¡An’ serves ’em whight!
So then, "If you have to ask ..." applies only to their freelordships in their personal capacity as consumers. When their Crew is out Wreckin’ in an official or public way, there is no exceptionalism. Or rather, the words of the exception turn up deployed differently: "We cannot afford it, so ¡don’t even ask!"
As usual, it is all even more complicated then that, really. A book could be written about when it pleases, an’ when it displeases, our Natural Masters to be asked. The first Freelord Scrooge hated being asked on the street, obviously; the freelordly guinea toss was a sort of unilateral-preëmptive way of avoiding solicitation from the undeserving. Yet had Oxbridge had come to ScroogeBank with a proposal for "Ebenezer College," her emissaries would have been civilly received, at least, and maybe even gratified more or less as original- intented.
Poor Gov. Mittens actually obtained his "Willardmitt College," sort of, in the form of ‘Romneycare’. Unfortunately only his freelordship’s political enemies get a kick out of rememberin’ exactly who this Willardmitt person was. By Century XXIII or so, it will all be OK, no worse embarrassment to his freelordship’s scions than, say, a Lady Margaret Professorship of Divinity is to the Beaufort clan, but meanwhile . . . .
Meanwhile, it is probably rather important that nobody exactly asked for ‘Romneycare’. My impression, perhaps mistaken, is that Governor Mittens gave us RC largely to show off, to prove that he was the biggest Big Manager of them all, the alone wheeler-dealer an’ olympics-saver who could pull such a trick off, gettin’ quacks an’ shysters an’ insurance corporation freelords an’ even the Demoncrat General Court (¡!) to pull together.
I notice that this is all "supply side" again, though in yet a third distinct sense, the sense in which all my own scribbles are supply-side phænomena, much more fun for me to write than for anybody else to read.
At this point the Muses and you, Dr. Bones, have two General Theories of Mittens before you on the table, Dr. Bones, my own as just expounded and that of Peter, Freelord Porcucobbett, who evidently takes--would like to be able to take--His Excellency for a sort of first draft of the Janesville ’, a voice cryin’ in the wilderness "¡Start by decidin’ how much you’re gonna spend! And then, for porcupine’s sake, ¡¡STICK TO IT!!"
Probably neither of these has ever been present to Mittens himself as a conscious thumbrule, though obviously his freelordship does fancy himself as Big Manager and is also extremely unlikely to reject Porcunomics (let us call it) if there be no more to it than puttin’ everybody in Uncle Sam’s household on a fixed an’ inflexible allowance.
Perhaps we had better have a slice from the horse’s own anatomy. Unveilin’ his RC schemes , Gov. Mittens proclaimed
| With the small percentage of uninsured in Massachusetts, we are in a unique position to give all of our citizens quality health insurance. This will not be a government-mandated universal coverage program or a plan that requires new taxes. It will be a market-based reform focused on the creation of affordable insurance plans. |
Well. Neither McTrickledown nor Freelord Porcucobbett can make much hay out of that. There is no sign of bloc-grantin’ as panacea. and, as to bigmanagerial showin’ off, his freelordship perversely goes out of the way to suggest how easy, rather than how difficult, the "unique position" of our MA ought to make his proposed trick.
Back to the mother lode (now that I found it, presumably the whightists will pick Don Neutrino de Geewhiz and it will be pretty much useless). ¿How about 12 April 2006, a day that shall live in infamy at Rio Limbaugh?
| Former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson commended Governor Romney for signing what Thompson termed “groundbreaking legislation to provide health coverage to all Massachusetts families. Massachusetts is showing us a better way, one I hope policy makers in Statehouses and Congress will follow to build a healthier and stronger America,” said Thompson, a former Republican governor of Wisconsin. |
¡Oops! ¡Not the whight passage at all! What I meant to swipe was
| An achievement like this comes around once in a generation, and it proves that government can work when people of both parties reach across the aisle for the common good. Today, Massachusetts is leading the way with health insurance for everyone, without a government takeover and without raising taxes. (...) This would not have been possible without the courageous work of Senate President Travaglini, Speaker DiMasi, providers, insurers, consumer groups and all the other industry stakeholders who recognized an opportunity to do something historic. |
That’s more like it. His Excellency did not lay undue stress on who it was that knocked all those heads of an industry stakeholder together until ‘Romneycare’ was realized, yet ’tis clear enough what is goin’ on, I think.
Again, no hint of bloc-grantin’.
Freelord Porcucobbett may object, however, with a certain degree of fairembalance, that in one way Gov. Mittens really did make it easy for himself: this is nothing particularly to do with the Commonwealth’s "unique posirion," but rather with the fact that the RC scheme faintly smells of Ponzi to the sensitive political nostril. In particular, that "without raising taxes" is distinctly a case of whistling as one passes the graveyard. Governor Patrick, and most other loyal supporters of ‘Romneycare’, talk nowadays as if making RC financially viable had been specifically discussed and then by agreement postponed to some future rainy day. Whereas I strongly suspect that not talking about it at all was _sine quâ non_.
To refine my own theory in that light, I put it to you, sir, that Mittens must especially fancy himself as a personnel bigmanager rather than as a CFO. . His freelordship got all the ‘stakeholders’ to agree, which is miracle enough in itself and does not require a fool-proof perpetual endowment as well.
Republicanines bein’ what they are--norquisted, that is, into so many pretzels--to say "without raising taxes" was required absolutely of an Otherparty freelord settin’ out to become POTUS. Accordin’ly, Mittens said it. And perhaps we may leave it at that.
Happy days.
--JHM
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[1] His freelordship solicits bein’ taken notice of like this, it seems to me, for that "obedient servant" bologna on the freelordly bottomline can only go with the Cobbett _shtyk_.
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[2] ’Tis s a little *more* than fair, though, that Frank did not shudder-quote either ‘conservatives’ or ‘govern’. "Almost superhuman restraint," I calls it.
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[3] The student may insert her own joke at this point about extemporaneous $10,000 specuvestments.
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