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DEL.ICIO.USReturn taxing authority to states
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The trouble with commissions, especially those related to transportation and taxes, is that their reports represent everybody’s wish list.
Take, for example, the final report of the National Commission on Transportation Infrastructure Financing, a 15-member panel created by Congress. Since motorists are driving less, the gas tax should be raised by 10 cents per gallon and the diesel fuel tax by 12- to-15 cents per gallon, the commission’s majority concludes. The higher tax should, too, be put on automatic pilot to increase with inflation, a majority of the group recommends.
Here’s an example, though, of why commissions are little more than covers for politicians who want to take an unpopular action — raising taxes, for instance. “In addition to putting more money into the system,” the report declares, “we also must create a system where investment is subject to benefit-cost analysis and performance-based outcomes. We need a system that insures each project is designed, approved, and completed quickly; one that provides a fully integrated mobility system that is the best in the world; one that emphasizes modal balance and mobility options; one that dramatically reduces fatalities and injuries; one that is environmentally sensitive and safe; one that minimizes use of our scarce energy resources; one that erases wasteful delays; one that supports just-in-time delivery; and one that allows economic development and output more significant than ever seen before in history.”
And then, to the disbelieving and to the confused, it adds this bromide: “The good news is that we can do it. Our people need such a system and they deserve it.”
That bad news is that the to-do list contains so many mandates that none of them instruct. They’re the gibberish of assembled interest groups shouting out slogans for a facilitator to write on a blackboard. In the end, Congress has cover — an urgent call for new infrastructure revenue because “the future of our Nation’s well-being, vitality, and global economic leadership is at stake” — and everybody goes away feeling good that the bicyclists, and the road, rail and environmental interests have found “common ground.”
I promise you: there’s always common ground to be found when the various agenda-competitors find themselves on the wish list for somebody else’s money. When the lion and the lamb are forced to reach consensus, it is that neither will go hungry and that a third party provides dinner satisfactory to both.
As with an earlier version of the commission’s report, it is the minority report that warrants attention. It was offered by Transportation Secretary Mary Peters and by two other Bush appointees, Maria Cino, the deputy secretary, and Rick Geddes, a Cornell University professor.
The surface transportation system’s greatest challenge is not connecting places or providing farm-to-market roads, but “the consistent, precipitous decline in transportation system performance and the increased politicization of transportation investment decisions,” the three write. “Throughout the recent history of our highway and mass transportation systems, engineering and political considerations have trumped economic ones.”
Their recommendation would not be to raise taxes, but to try approaches such as congestion-pricing based on time-of-day usage. That, which according to Brookings Institute economists, could yield $120 billion a year if applied in the 98 largest urban areas. Private-sector toll roads, charges based on vehicle miles traveled and real cost-benefit analysis with priorities set based on performance, are also among their suggestions.
They would, too, phase out the dominant federal role and the 18.5-cents federal gas tax except for “truly federal objectives, such as preservation and improvement of the Interstate Highway System,” interstate freight movement, safety programs, and projects of national or regional significance.
The latter argument is the most immediately compelling. Taxing authority should be returned to the states. State officials, and not Congress, should be making decisions about what projects are built where. The first money should be spent on improving major transportation corridors.
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By Ragnar Danneskjöld
January 6, 2009 8:06 AM | Link to this
Good morning all. The substance of the morning essay requires a stronger opening line: “The trouble with commissions, especially those related to transportation and taxes, is that they allow special interests to accomplish their highly individualized goals far from the disinfecting scrutiny of the public glare.” Certainly cowardly politicians facilitate such commissions, using same to distance the quid pro quo from the graft received.
Highway transportation is not a Federal issue, but rather an issue of local competence. Only by the most strained construction can one argue that this is within the realm of Congressional powers. The Constitution confers to Congress several relevant powers that offer a theoretical role for Leviathan in highway construction, from Article 1 Section 8:
Section 8. The Congress shall have power
to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;
To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;
To establish post offices and post roads;
Note the relevance of each section: Congress, only, shall have power (1) to lay and collect taxes; (2) to borrow money on the credit of the US, (3) to regulate commerce among the states, (4) to create bankruptcy laws, (5) to regulate the value of money, (6) to punish those who counterfeit securities, and (7) to establish post roads. It is well beyond the “at founding” legal capacity of Congress to create “a system that insures each project is designed, approved, and completed quickly; one that provides a fully integrated mobility system that is the best in the world; one that emphasizes modal balance and mobility options; one that dramatically reduces fatalities and injuries; one that is environmentally sensitive and safe; one that minimizes use of our scarce energy resources; one that erases wasteful delays; one that supports just-in-time delivery; and one that allows economic development and output more significant than ever seen before in history.” I sense that such a Congressional creation may well test the bankruptcy laws, affect the value of money, and lead to issuance of arguably counterfeit securities, or at least securities sold under false pretenses.
Dr. Sowell has a closely-related analysis, of the proposed “stimulus” plan, in today’s column. ](http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/01/06/theeconomicstimulus?page=full&comments=true )A brief sample:
“Take the idea that much of this money will be spent on “infrastructure.” This certainly sounds good— until you stop and think about it. So do most political notions. Does spending on infrastructure mean that the money is going to be spent filling potholes and repairing bridges? Or will it be spent creating new things? One of the key reasons why infrastructure gets neglected, in the first place, is that there is very little political pay-off to filling potholes and repairing bridges, compared to spending that same money creating community centers, bike paths and other things. These new things create opportunities for ribbon-cutting ceremonies that give politicians favorable free publicity in the media. But nobody holds ribbon-cutting ceremonies for filling in potholes or repairing bridges. The whole process is biased toward doing new things, even if the repair and maintenance of existing infrastructure would serve the public interest better.”
By Ragnar Danneskjöld
January 6, 2009 8:12 AM | Link to this
Apologies, I screwed up the link reference: Dr. Sowell has a closely-related analysis, of the proposed “stimulus” plan, in today’s column.
By Curious Observer
January 6, 2009 8:33 AM | Link to this
Ah, yes, let’s return all taxation to the state and local level so that we can have expressways to Soperton and Bowden and other obscure towns, while the real traffic congestion goes unaddressed.
I’ve had a lifetime of seeing what happens when the Georgia legislature and county commissions determine what traffic gets addressed and how tax funds are used. Ditto for taxation policy regarding other issues. This morning the AJC carried an article about a Georgia county that is asking its underpaid teachers to donate their raises in order to fill in a budget shortfall. For shame! The people who are most important to our children, next to parents themselves, are being asked to shoulder the fiscal burden so that some rednecks can walk around with extra money in their pockets. Lacking the guts to enact a badly needed tax increase, county authorities and the school board are demonstrating where their priorities really lie.
We need more, not less, federal intervention in taxation and expenditure policies. Georgia has shown itself to be incapable of setting and addressing the important budget priorities. Its politicians are too busy pandering to the base to address real needs. If Georgia on its own cannot lift itself from the cesspool of abysmal ignorance and crying needs, then federal authorities should assume the burden.
By SwedeAtlanta
January 6, 2009 8:49 AM | Link to this
I’m not going to disagree that when Congress establishes a Commission and then enacts legislation based on the Commission’s recommendations they aren’t in some part trying to deflect any responsibility for the Commission’s conclusions, especially if they result in higher taxes or user fees.
But to suggest that the solution is to turn this over to individual states is folly. The nation is highly interconnected and interdependent. That situation demands a more comprehensive approach to solving transportation and other infrastructure challenges at the national level.
The assertion that congestion based pricing is the solution once again benefits the wealthy over the not so wealthy. The wealthy can easily afford to travel to and from work, for example, at peak times or have the luxury of jobs that afford them the ability to telecommute or commute during non-peak hours.
The shift worker be it at a factory, distribution center, retailer, etc. doesn’t have that luxury. They must drive at a time that corresponds to their shift and that oftentimes will be at so-called peak hours.
Yes that proposal would generate money but on the backs of those who have few other options and can least afford it.
By ron
January 6, 2009 9:01 AM | Link to this
Good morning,Georgia currently awaits federal money hoping it will be a short term solution to it’s transportation funding problems.Among those is debt that needs to be paid.MARTA debt is on the short list.A portion of the $300 billion dollar stimulus coming to the states is going to be used to pay current debt.After that we can continue on with projects already underway but halted due to lack of funds.Then,as Dr.Sowell so aptly says,we can start new projects,sometime in 2012,after all the roadblocks are dealt with.In the meantime there will be a large pile of money lying around under the direct observation of greedy politicians.
I alluded before to the upcoming new ways to raise revenue.Odometer taxing was only one of them.With that I keep seeing the words”perhaps supplementing existing fuel taxes”.One proposal out there on how to figure the tax was to install GPS devices in every vehicle.This would simply transmit your mileage on a monthly basis to government,who would in turn bill you for said amount.They would also be able to track your whereabouts at the same time.A plus for Homeland Security.
Toll booths on interstate highways are another option being considered.All of this for a supposedly short downturn in the economy.
By mister.earl
January 6, 2009 9:03 AM | Link to this
“It’s not the easiest thing in the world right now to be a Republican,” Steele began, setting off 90 minutes of self-flagellation: “We are looked at being to some degree a party that is not friendly to minorities… . We lost our way… . Republicans should’ve had a little bit more you-know-what… . Obama caught us with our pants down… . They’ve bested us… . We can no longer afford to talk one way and behave in another.” Norquist invited the candidates to name the biggest mistake of the Bush administration, and the answers tumbled out: The economic bailout. Greater deficits. Mishandling the Iraq war. Hurricane Katrina. Social Security. Immigration.
By findog
January 6, 2009 9:15 AM | Link to this
I think it was January 2005. I was at the ASCE meeting on Georgia’s infrastructure report card and the some twenty billion needed just to keep maintenance current. The state assemblymen present all acknowledged the problems and endorsed the plan with the exact same language our Lieutenant Governor does now with transportation, they must be balanced against the laundry list of Georgia deficiencies like education, basic health care, and trauma centers. I look at the ASCE report card with veiled jadedness, as it is a professional works program for them. I wonder how much we could accomplish with just the money wasted on these studies that take common sense answers and then spin the results for their peer-preordained prerogatives?
As for the national fuel taxes, I think/feel it needs to stay and should only be used for interstate road network expansion, maintenance, or repairs. If only we were not a Christian nation then the transportation bills would not need to be an adorned Christmas tree.
By richtfan
January 6, 2009 9:24 AM | Link to this
commissions………ahhhhhhhhhh………bastions of liberal America. They have never seen a tax they didn’t like. They want us to drive less and use less fuel, so we do. Then they want to penalize us by increasing taxes even higher because they’ve now lost that revenue from people driving less.
Sounds to me like typical liberal politicians. They need to do more with less.
By SwedeAtlanta
January 6, 2009 9:36 AM | Link to this
Re richtfan@9:24 a.m.
You need to be reminded that Commissions are not exclusive to those darn liberal politicans. “W” and the Republican Congress initiated several commissions between 2001 and 2007 including among other things a commission to make recommendations on how to fix the current federal tax system.
By Maniac is accurate
January 6, 2009 9:37 AM | Link to this
Yes, their vision sounds like uptopia. If it was feasible, private enterprise would have done it already. Do we all really need to be walkiing around with a telephone/TV/computer in our pockets? Apparently so, because private enterprise did it.
By Maniac is accurate
January 6, 2009 9:38 AM | Link to this
Yes, their vision sounds like uptopia. If it was feasible, private enterprise would have done it already. Do we all really need to be walkiing around with a telephone/TV/computer in our pockets? Apparently so, because private enterprise did it. When there’s a profitable market for such a transportation system, we’ll have one.
By SwedeAtlanta
January 6, 2009 9:42 AM | Link to this
Re richtfan@9:24 a.m.
You need to be reminded that Commissions are not exclusive to those darn liberal politicans. “W” and the Republican Congress initiated several commissions between 2001 and 2007 including among other things a commission to make recommendations on how to fix the current federal tax system.
By zeke
January 6, 2009 9:46 AM | Link to this
Curious observer needs to go to China, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea or Russia and first hand be affected by MORE GOVERNMENT CONTROL AND INTERVENTION!
By Erica-Nicole
January 6, 2009 10:05 AM | Link to this
Bromide? You use that word alot, Mr. Wooten. I dont think it means what you think it does.
Of course tax gasoline heavily. Its the only way to ensure the status quo of socialist pigs impurifying all of our precious bodily fluids.
I saw “Burn After Reading”. I wont even bother mentioning that the dialogue borrowed heavily from my blogs. I want to know how the directors of “Fargo” could wander so far from funny with a dream cast like that? Malkevich was miscast. How do you miscast Malkevich? Always cast against type in comedies. The lines will sound fresher.
This movie misses by not an oscar, but by an oscar meyer weener.
Tax overacting. How about if we tax mugging on camera, Mr. Wooten, then we’ll balance the budget, and the Right will get even with all those commies in Hollywood.
I’m still trying to deal with the wildcard catastrophe under that unretracted roof in Phoenix. I’m lashing out at everyone. Poor Mr. Bookman.
Nobody has satisfactorily explained this loss to me. It had to be a Russian Mafia fix. Had to be.
What else could explain the unexplainable?
By Davo
January 6, 2009 10:08 AM | Link to this
Spot on arguement, JW. Cutting out an entire tier of the bureaucracy would be a great place to start.
By Erica-Nicole
January 6, 2009 10:28 AM | Link to this
Tax Reform. Nostradomus Quatrains. Space Aliens. A Falcon Superbowl Ring.
what is this? the sci-fi channel?
Tax Reform will never happen ever. Ever.
So why torture people with it? Why write about something that cant ever be controlled or changed or nuthin?
That’s what politics is: Painting pretty pictures with coulda, shoulda, and woulda. (I like taupe or mauve)
I know, lets make a national sales tax and abolish the IRS…..
The middle was open. The flats were open. The quickie pass to the tight end was open. THe quarterback sneak could have scored from midfield. How did we lose that game?????
By findog
January 6, 2009 10:29 AM | Link to this
Ragnar @8:06
I would argue that the commerce clause, most abused of the constitutional powers, was actually created as a requirement for the federal government to provide “a system that insures each project is designed, approved, and completed quickly…
But the founding fathers were men of principal and apparently did not realize that pay-to-play would eventually create a system of ribbon cutting ceremonies for bridges to no where.
Curious @8:33
I concur. If the separate states are left to themselves we will end up with special trade zones that will mirror fireworks and lottery outlets. In a bid for tax revenues fuel tax policy on the borders will be based on getting the traveler to purchase fuel in their state through an artificially low tax in those zones. Our states now compete for foreign owned industry with tax incentives and free improvements, like the 80-million exit ramp for Kia Motors, which our governor would probably misuse to drive us further toward third world status for transportation than we are at now.
By Sam
January 6, 2009 10:35 AM | Link to this
No Shat. Like the Feds are benevolent, all-knowing lords up-on-high while state government turnip seeds can’t get out of their own way. And dude wants to put GPS in our cars so we can be “monitored”. Put an RF chip in your head, you sheep. I’m not.
What a bunch of loyal Nationalist-Socialists.
By Erica-Nicole
January 6, 2009 11:04 AM | Link to this
Just fix the roads between Scranton and Wilkes Barre and everything will be fine.
If you want to know what the roads would be like if the state taxes transportation, then just look at Pennsylvania, where there in no incentive to finish any road project.
I travel between atlanta and New York every summer. For thirty years there is an unfinished stretch of road between Scranton and Wilkesbarre that causes a half hour delay and keeps me from the world record time. They do it just to p me off.
So Wooten doesn’t know what he’s talkin’ bout as usual, he’s just like a gumble machine, you put in a nickel, and you get gumshoe wisdom and bubble investment advice, or palooka joe insights into politics.
By Glenn
January 6, 2009 11:25 AM | Link to this
Yesterday’s column was fascinating, but this one is analytical journalism at its very best. I’m going to pull back and ponder it a bit, and get back to y’all later, but I just wanted to put in a word to indicate my admiration for this piece.
As we surfin’ Yankees used to say in the early ’70s, “Toadally gnarly, dude!”
By Southern Democrat
January 6, 2009 11:48 AM | Link to this
Congratulations to Mr. Wooten on being named one of Georgia Trend’s 100 Most Influential Georgians. While I disagree with you on most topics, sir, your service to your country in Vietnam and your informed, principled stances make you more than deserving of this honor. I also appreciate your commitment to this forum, a place I genuinely enjoy visiting and from where I have learned much.
By Erica-Nicole
January 6, 2009 11:58 AM | Link to this
Yes, in accepting the righteousness of awarding the award to Mr. Wooten, I feel that the extra-curricular topics and the viscicitudes of journalistic impregnia that Wooten has evolved into has elevated his prose to astronomical heights; if I may be so pedantic.
By AF
January 6, 2009 12:35 PM | Link to this
We are past it, people. We have a larger world that is interconnected. The great advances in transportation, rail, air, and roads, the great dams that were built, came about and are sustained by a national viewpoint. Individual states could never do it.
I know this flies in the face of those who want to protect states rights. But, the expansion of railroads in the 1800’s and the creation of the interstate highway systems were key to the expansion of the economy. The great dams built in the last century are still benefiting huge sections of the country. Those were federally driven projects.
We need to find the middle ground between our fear of federal government and the inability of states to take on infrastructure projects of national scope.
By The Way
January 6, 2009 12:51 PM | Link to this
AF is Midway. The japs are going to attack at Midway.
Admiral Halsey immediately ordered the Enterprise Attack Group into position N.E. of Midway and they waited in ambush for the whole jap navy to arrive. It wasn’t war. It was slaughter. Four Jap Carriers went down that day my friends. The war in the pacific was over.
That was the Feds, not the states what deciphered the jap code. That’s why we all speak ebonics and not Japphonics today.
Feds? Yes. States? No.
By Glenn
January 6, 2009 1:00 PM | Link to this
A point made beautifully, you minor jerk. But there are things reserved, by the federal contract, to the states. Which of these do you think now should be moved constitutionally to Washington, D.C.?
By ron
January 6, 2009 1:03 PM | Link to this
Jim is an old hand on the Influential Georgians list.Congratulastions again,sir.
David Kotz is going to get right on an investigation concerning the apparent failures of the SEC in the Bernie Madoff case.When he has time.Maybe.Don’t hold your breath.
Last year the gas tax dinged me for $147.Should an odometer tax come into effect,I can expect another $225 if I use the bandied about rate of 1/4 cent per mile.This is on 9000 miles driven.
I would really like to see the Interstate Highway System had it been built by individual states.Some of it wouldn’t even connect.
By Redneck Convert
January 6, 2009 1:07 PM | Link to this
Well, I’m awful proud of Wooten for winning that award. If this keeps up he will become almost as good a writter as I am. Except I show up every day. And Wooten writes a column you can respond to about once every three days.
Anyhow, back to the topic. I ain’t never going to get that shortcut from my trailer to GA 400 if we don’t take the federal guvmint out of the picture. Far as I’m concerned, the libruls in the cities can choke on their traffic and go hang to boot. Us Conservatives won the election fair and square, and that means we get what we want. Our good old boys in the GA legaslature will take care of us if we can keep the yankees from saying no.
And tell this The Way he’s plumb wrong about Midway. The feds messed up big time. The guy that figured out that AF meant Midway never got another promotion, while the Redmond brothers back in Washington took all the credit. Just like yankees always do.
By The Way
January 6, 2009 1:08 PM | Link to this
9000 miles, ron? It’s a shame. You could have driven five percent of the way to the moon.
Drive more and further from earth, ron. The van allen radiation belt needs a hat. Learn to accessorize your orbit, and be a star.
By Maniac is accurate
January 6, 2009 1:34 PM | Link to this
Teachers to Fayette schools: Bite us
By deegee
January 6, 2009 1:57 PM | Link to this
The excerpted paragraph from the commission report in JW’s editorial reads like a statement from a project charter. It appears that the commission has taken a somewhat visionary yet pragmatic approach to solving the country’s transportation problems. The only real difference between the opinion of the minority Bush appointees’, and the majority members’ approach is how to pay for it. If the Bush appointees think that surrendering the revenue generating and implementation decisions to brain trusts like Glenn Richardson and Chip Rogers is a good idea then that would explain why they are the minority members. I suppose that if JW had his way the commission report could be condensed to 1 page that says, “build more roads, but not in my back yard and make somebody other than me pay for them.”
By @@
January 6, 2009 2:26 PM | Link to this
Jim, I declare that the horse, or should I say…..federal government is “better, faster, and cheaper” dead in that they are, of late, in constant commission of a felony.
When the lion and the lamb are forced to reach consensus the lamb will become dinner ‘cause the lion is, by nature, a predator.
Alls I ask is that a rail system be provided on which I can transport the excessive excise(r) after having tarred and feathered them with incisors extracted.
See! I’m not one of those who asks for much, Jim.
By Peter
January 6, 2009 3:37 PM | Link to this
Well let’s see Bush walked into office with a SURPLUS, and left with a Trillion Dollar Deficit……
Sounds like NEVER again let a Republican control the purse strings of America Ever Again !
REPUBLICAN’S = Zero Spending Control !
By AllHogwash
January 6, 2009 3:42 PM | Link to this
As much sense that this recommendation makes, it will never happen. Members of Congress are too ingrained with the “earmarks” system for funding transportation projects. Giving local government agencies the power to select the kinds of, locations of, and priorities for transportation infrastructure projects in their local areas that are allowed to use Federal tax dollars takes away from the Congressional delegation of each State the ability to slip their pet project’s funding and does not let them bring home the pork!
We can’t let that happen…can we?
By The Way
January 6, 2009 4:29 PM | Link to this
How influential is Wooten? Wooten is so influenza, that his candidate lost by a landslide, and conservatism is so dead, that they tanned it’s hide when it died, clyde, and that’s it a-hangin’ on the shed.
all together now- tie me kangaroo down sport….
if you influence nothing, then you aint influenza now is ye?
By Glenn
January 6, 2009 5:59 PM | Link to this
Sorry to come in just under-the-wire again, but I reiterate that this, to my liking, is a perfect column. Jim nails the problem of blue-ribboning claptrap, and in so doing he nails me also and all that I’ve done with my adult life.
I used to write that precise kind of nonsense, taken from the white-boards of the “facilitators” I’d hired to jot it down. Some of those phrases, about transportation policy, are wise, and others are mine. It’s a long story, but this kind of rhetorical scam began with the spate of public-reporting following the Soviet launch of Sputnik. Ever since, it’s been understood that you have to begin with a certain degree of alarmism, and move on to Team Spirit (as in, We Can Do It!), and then you festoon the Christmas tree. It works every time, and if you get the formula right you go on to the next assignment: to spout horseslop anew.
I like what Jim’s dissenters are saying. The dissenters so often are right, in our curious system of things. On our Supreme Court the best stylists have been our great dissenters, justices Douglass and Black and Holmes. In their days, unless, say, Brandeis or Frankfurter was writing for the majority, the dissents were the opinions we remember. Isn’t that oddly wonderful?
As to transportation, I think that Georgia should work to obviate it; which is to say, that density, even in Gaza, is good, not bad. I hate to see Atlanta heading in the direction of meliorating its long commutes. It would be better were we to think of how to make a Jim Wooten happier to work in town. See what I mean?
My field is not transportation, but as an education planner I once worked for a transportation institute (it’s a long story, but the two are complementary), and I used to crank out rhetoric such as Mr. Wooten deconstructs here. Some of it makes sense, but most of it does not. A master stylist such as Jim can see through it in a flash.
Georgia should listen to such as he, and not to such as them, or I.
By RC Acox
January 6, 2009 7:25 PM | Link to this
With Harry Reid refusing to seat Roland Burris unless he commits not to seek reelection in 2010 - is this not just another “pay to play” event?
By Copyleft
January 7, 2009 8:20 AM | Link to this
I was wondering why the right-wing-moron media was babbling so much about states’ rights lately, and then it hit me:
They’ve lost control of the federal level. That’s the only reason they suddenly want state and local government supremacy, after eight years of proclaiming that Washington—nay, King George himself!—should have sole authority over ALL levels of civic life.
Why the change? Because state and local governments are now their only hope of still maintaining ANY level of influence whatsoever.
As usual, it’s easy to understand the actions of the fascists once you consider their intellectual bankruptcy and desperate yearning for whatever power they can (ineffectually) cling to. Once you dispense with the notion that they actually care about any principles whatsoever, their behavior makes perfect sense.
By Erica-Nicole
January 7, 2009 8:37 AM | Link to this
Sure, Glean, we followed THAT along. (camera to mouth breather pretending not to be picking his butt). Claptrap? you use that word alot, Glean. I dont think it means what you think it does.
Wooten fell victim to the same patois that he criticized in a piece that became a perfect storm syntactical stammer of a carnival house of mirrors, a chinese box in a box, and a pot calling the kettle black. I couldn’t tell if I was reading the AJC or a fortune cookie. The man cant write without cramming crummy cliches into a raffle wheel and picking them out at random, (so as to appear spontaneous).
Just Kidding, the piece put my wife to sleep and for that I’m forever grateful to the influenza icon of bad hair days, Mr. Wooten.
I had a really bad hair day yesterday. A really bad hair day. So I went to my barber. He asked me if I had a living will.
By Churchill's MOM
January 8, 2009 1:16 PM | Link to this
Jim here is the link how about writting about something that means something to real Republicans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-95wkCMeUkk&feature=channel_page