Stuck on stupid XXV: Parents told childish Blanco "no"

For most people, when they were young and came into a (relative) financial windfall, be it from gifts or from some kind of labor, their parents instructed them not to go out and blow it on candy or whatever, but to save it. That way, we were instructed, you could invest it and have it grow and ready for the future when you really might need it, instead of spending it on some transitory pleasure.

By contrast, Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s parents must have told her something quite the opposite, if we understand correctly the analogy she tried to use to disparage those who support tax cuts from a huge Louisiana surplus: “I think they're like a bunch of spoiled children, and we're on vacation, kind of, and they think mom and daddy can buy them every single toy and balloon in the whole place. And, you know, parents have to say no after a time.” It indicates just how absolutely, totally clueless she is and has been about good public policy that would improve the quality of life that she personally has retarded in this state for the past four years.

Only Blanco, and her Democrat majority allies in the state Legislature, would conceive of investing in the people of Louisiana as something that should be denied. Only this backwards-thinking mob would think you “invest” in economic development by taking money owned by the people in the first place and instead of letting it stay with the best investment around, the productive capacity of the people and the marketplace, you abscond with it and shovel it into growing government such as by creating more bureaucratic jobs in a state with declining population and funneling tens of millions of dollars to dubious projects.

Of course, this nonsense proceeds from their liberal viewpoint but also has a more immediate precipitant: like spoiled brats, they put themselves first before anybody else because this spending also serves the goal of trying to get themselves elected or reelected and puts their political opponents in a future bind – and to top it off they’re doing it using somebody else’s resources. Only immature children would try to justify this by ignorantly calling it the opposite, or thinking they can twist words trying to fool grownups with this explanation.

Naturally, we see very clearly how the Blanco lexicon equates “tax cuts” with “spending” and “spending” with “investment,” and how this reflects the exact antithesis of the real world. We realize this because we are the parents, and long ago we told the childish perpetrator of this ridiculous attitude and philosophy “no” when it came to her reelection.