The Taxpayer Protection Pledge

“I [insert name] pledge to the taxpayers of the state of Nevada and all the people of this state that I will oppose any and all efforts to increase taxes.”

This has been around for quite a while now, but I'd never heard about it until this weekend. So, who is Grover Glenn Norquist and why do we care?

A walking Republican Cancer?

We don't actually.

Just like we don't really care about someone like Sara Palin, who is either an example of America's Cancer made visible, or else, a reflection of ourselves and we should give us a good look before continuing on. The vastness of Sarah's room to improve is second only to the vacuousness of her ability to not finish what she starts. This woman could have become our next President, as running as Vice President, had they won, had something happened and she became President, or once McCain was out of his term, had she run and won, where would America be? Think about it, after four or eight years of McCain, then Palin....

So as much as we want to ignore the insanity, we really cannot.

These are people dangerous to our Country and people should be made aware of them and their weird sense of what is functional for America. Because anyone who has these kinds, whose effect on our Government is so skewed in reality, especially those who can get people in authority to pledge to an absolute, especially one as ridiculous as this one, well, simply put, they are dangerous.

Norquist

Political Activist (that's basically a guy that gets himself involved) Grover Glenn Norquist was born October 19, 1956) and is president of taxpayer advocacy group Americans for Tax Reform. He has been described as "the driving force in pushing the Republican Party toward an ever-more rigid position of opposing any tax increase, of any kind, at any time." Norquist is best known as the founder of Americans for Tax Reform in 1985, which he did at the request of President Ronald Reagan.

Wikipedia mentions: "Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform were mentioned in Senate testimony relating to the lobbying scandal for which Abramoff pled guilty in 2006. Norquist has denied that he did anything wrong. Records released by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee allege that ATR served as a "conduit" for funds that flowed from Abramoff's clients to surreptitiously finance grass-roots lobbying campaigns"

First of all, allow me to point out that this pledge, is an "absolute". Absolutes, tend to be bad, stupid in many cases and typically foolish to make, simply asking for problems. And guess what. We have problems. I wondered why the Republicans were so dead set against raising taxes and now I understand.

When they are going for office or get in, they are asked if they want to sign this pledge. If they say no it can be political suicide. If they say yes and sign, they have trapped themselves. This is exactly the kind of thing that the Founding Fathers feared. This and ignorant groups getting in power. That is why our democracy was set up in America for indirect power by guidance of those better in the know. This is partly why originally only landowners were voters. They tended to have more at stake and had a better possibility of being educated, at least, somewhat.

We really do need the educated to be making the decisions. It's like surgery, which is complicated. Would you want an equal vote with your surgeon while he's performing surgery on you to save your life? Or do you just want this highly educated guy making the decisions and just save your life? Yes, street knowledge or grass roots wisdom is good, but some of the issues today require more and more complex considerations in order to make informed and accurate decisions. This isn't to say, only educated people should vote, but we need to realize why we need some safe guards.

It seems pretty obvious to me that now a days we are seeing more and more less informed and less critical thought involved in decision making. Otherwise, we wouldn't be in this situation that we are in today.

Ya think?