Occasionally I like to read Slate. It’s not an everyday thing, but sometimes when I’m behind on a lot of my news I will check out Slate because they always do a great job of archiving daily summaries of news stories.
When I worked for the senate I would get daily clips of news roundups from all across the country/world emailed to me every morning. I would spend about an hour reading newspapers and getting caught up on the daily events. Sometimes I wouldn’t sleep at night because all I could think about was all the things I was missing while I was sleeping. I’m always worried that something is going to happen and I’ll miss it. In today’s world I think that might be impossible, but it has kept me up many a night.
Since I don’t get my clips emailed to me every morning or 7-10 newspapers laid on my desk anymore, I have become somewhat ignorant to so many things taking place. I don’t like that feeling. So now I have to search for the news myself. I have discovered Google Reader and Google Desktop and they are handy but I’m still learning how to use them. So here lately Slate has been very helpful.
I came across this nice concise article from Slate written shortly after Rove was “demoted.” The article explains why Karl Rove is allowed to do political work on taxpayer’s dime. This is something I don’t think a lot of Americans are aware of.
Like any job or business there are different staffs that do different work. You have your bookkeepers, your IT people, your administrators and so on. In politics it’s the same way. There’s the media staff, the issues development staff, the budget staff and so on. Those who do not do government work are considered political employees, however. When I worked for the senate I was director of political affairs. It simply means that I wasn’t paid by the government, but from campaign donations.
The logic behind this is that taxpayers should not have to pay for political work like fundraising, political solicitations, consulting and so on. In theory taxpayers are not political they are constituents and their money should be spent on their services.
If someone is a Democrat I’m willing to bet they don’t want their tax money that they are forced to pay going towards Republican Party political work. Vice versa for Republicans. I don’t want to pay for Karl Rove to go out and organize the Republican Party for the midterm elections, that’s why I don’t donate to the Republican Party, but my tax money (and yours) does pay Rove’s salary to prepare the Republicans for victory in November.
Most states ban political work with taxpayer money. The federal level, however, is governed by The Hatch Act (circa 1939), which allows for the president and the vice president and any cabinet member (Rove) to do political work at any time during their day-- including when tax money is being used to fund it.
Currently the Hatch Act benefits Republicans, but in the 90s it benefited Democrats. I always say that if you don’t want one Party to have a certain power then your Party shouldn’t have it either. And I always say if the Dems want to enjoy certain benefits then they should start winning elections. But this is one law that I would like to see re-written to clearly explain that if the government has the power to levy taxes it cannot also have the power to levy campaign work with those taxes.
Only about 28% of Americans consider themselves Republican, while ~37% consider themselves Democrats, meaning that 72% of American voters (taxpayers) don’t exactly affiliate with the Republican Party. Yet they are paying Rove’s salary to continue the neocon attack machine led by a president with approval ratings barely in the 30s and that has already delivered this country into its largest debt in history and the beginnings of a third Bush war. Can we really handle two more years of Republicans in power?
Tags:
Bush, Rove, The Hatch Act, taxes, Democrats, Republicans, Bush's Third War
5 comments:
Of course we can't handle two more years of this. I don't want my tax dollars, which there is admittedly little at this time, going to fund anything politically motivated unless it is divided between two parties equally. The advantages this situation give the incumbents, in and of itself, should make us take another look at these laws.
I read Slate occasionally but usually use google to scout for articles on the topics I am interested in.
I use " my yahoo" to read blogs when I am not at home.
Interesting piece about the Hatch Act. Good perspective too, Buddy. Very fair and balanced, although the part about 'handling two more years' of Republicans is somewhat disingenuous.
You and I differ when it comes to the deficit. I'm not very concerned about because of the lessons learned during the Reagan '80s.
Today, either the nation is at war or it isn't. And if we are, it is in large part because of negliegent inactivity by the previous Administration. Bush came into office with a mess on his hands, a mess that he's still cleaning up.
Check out 'Strategery' by Bill Sammon. A good read.
What I do know for certain is that the American economy is so solid the deficit (with continued smart policy) will be paid down with continued productivity.
I think we can agree that taxpayers shouldn't pay for political activities by either party.
I like Alice's suggestion about My Yahoo. It works pretty well, and you can add RSS feeds to it. You might want to try Bloglines too. It's the only way I can keep up with everything going on in the world with news and blogs. Just about every major news site has an RSS feed now.
No... we can't handle 2 more years... and should we have too? My precious dollar is going to what????? Honestly I don't want my precious pennies going towards anything politically motivated be it Democrat or Republican unless I say so. I agree with Alice as far as taking another look at these laws.
Great post, Chris...
Hey... what about letting us (the ones that don't use blogger) post under our real blog id's... :)~ :)~
Slate has some great articles that intentionally take an angle that no other media outlet is looking at. You'd think it was indy press, it's so alternative sometimes.
Today they have a great article titled, "Why Republicans are Screwed."
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