Congratulations! You’ve managed to elect more Republicans! Because they have a plan for the economy. This is true! They plan to jigger around the laws and taxes to make themselves and their friends as rich as possible. Won’t that be fun!

Thanks,
The rest of us

PS. Did you really think they liked you? Sorry, but their friends (you know, the ones they’ll make rich) do not actually include the likes of you. They were just using you for your pool car hot sister beer votes

To bring myself to an actual point, it took me a long time to realize how very weird NH politics are as compared even to the rest of New England, let alone the rest of the country. Illustration one: the local paper just published a guide to the election. Not a guide to the candidates, but a guide explaining what the hell some of the positions actually are. Because no one knows. I certainly didn’t, though I wondered.

For people in the rest of the country, New England may seem strange. To me, a county is something you have to remember so you can fill it on on forms. The county provides few to no services and is completely invisible otherwise. Towns border each other and there is no unincorporated land anywhere. (Note: there is some up north, and maybe more in Maine, but in southern New England nada.) In NH, the state government is “weak”; most services people are familiar with are tied to your town, because the state has no income or sales tax with which to provide for large state-wide programs. The first time I saw a county road was when I went to visit my in-laws in Wisconsin — I was surprised, because I’d never heard of such a thing. My view of government was Town->State->Federal.

The New England tradition is for the majority of monetary business to be conducted at Town Meeting. This is just what it sounds like: a big meeting where all the voting age persons in town get together and vote on stuff, like the budget and warrant articles and new rules. As the population grew, especially in some of the southern towns, this became really impossible to continue, so NH instituted a variation. Towns that vote to become “SB2″ towns have a meeting where the ballot is decided and all the warrant articles set up. Everyone can come to this meeting and have their say on things, and modifications can be made to submitted items. (Which means if you have something you’re interested in, you better go — or you may suddenly find that your request was slashed and all the money diverted to a new fire truck) Once the ballot is set, the town votes, not at a meeting, but just like normal voting with polls that are open all day.

The state government has its own weirdness. Our governor is elected every two years. Because you can’t trust a politician for longer than that. We have a 5 person Governor’s Council, which has some power over budgetary stuff and is elected, but you almost never hear about them. They are a shadowy group. We have a senate consisting of 24 senators, who get paid a whopping $100/year. No, I did not forget a 0 or a k at the end of that.

Where things get weird and awesome is the House of Representatives. We have 400 members of the House, which is like 1 for every 3000 residents. Most adults who are at all active in the community will almost certainly know one (or more) representatives personally, if not well. It means that thinking you might like to take a spin someday as a legislator is not a completely unreasonable plan. They are also paid the big bucks, pulling down $100/year just like the senators. The lack of pay and the vast number of people in the state legislature means that people can’t really make a career out of it the way they can in other states. Interestingly, the state seems to accomplish as much by way of legislating as other states do with their full-time members. (Could it be that legislating really doesn’t need to take up all that time and money? Hmmm.)

Now, living where we are, it’s extremely common for us to get ads for other states — the station I was listening to covers VT, ME, NH, MA. Of course, the commercial didn’t say where the douchebag they were talking about was running for Congress, but as it turns out it’s NH. The commercial also never mentioned the word “Republican”, though that was telegraphed clearly enough. Why? Because the entire commercial was him going on and on about how awesome the new anti-Mexican Arizona law is and how he’ll protect us (lily white NH) from the invading hordes of Mexicans planning to race up from “the border” and, I dunno, rape and pillage or something.

I love how he called it “the border” and it was clear he meant the one down south, never once commenting on the fact that NH does actually have an international border of its own. But, you know, Canadians. No one cares about them.

It was one of the more offensive political ads I’ve heard recently. I’m sad that he’s not running in my district so I can vote against him! Jackass. Instead I probably get to vote against Charles Bass, a pro-choice Republican more liberal than half of the Democrats in Congress. Gah.

I think they’re wrong in tracing it back to the 60s, however. It goes further back than that. There’s always been a deep suspicion in this country of intellectuals, that they’re secretly making fun or putting themselves above others. You are supposed to become rich and successful due to your hard work or your charming personality or your innate talent rather than your intellectual gifts. What do you need all that book learnin for? There’s a large segment of American society that is deeply deeply suspicious and resentful of anyone who dares think for themselves, or questions ‘facts’ that are presented with no proof or rationality.

True Story: When the H1N1 vaccine came out, there was some debate as to whether or not people should get it. There are some legitimate reasons to decide not to (egg allergy, bad reaction to previous flu shot, compromised immune system), but there were also a lot of absolutely ludicrous statements floating around. In the course of a discussion, someone actually said in all sincerity that the vaccine caused death in 1% of people who got it. The lack of critical thinking skills evidenced by this statement is astonishing. I don’t disbelieve that propaganda of that sort was out there — I just can’t believe that people believed it! But then, people see numbers and their brains shut off. 1%, they think, that’s a pretty low number, maybe it’s true. Except, of course, 1% of even just 1,000,000 (and by that point about 20,000,000 doses had shipped) is 10,000. Even the American media could not fail to notice 10,000 randomly dead people.

It all sounded very nice, but I honestly no longer have any confidence that our completely dysfunctional government has the ability to implement anything at all. There was a brief period last year when it seemed like the Democrats might have grown some balls, when they finally realized that people were angry and they had momentum. But as usual, they squandered it all with their usual spineless jackassery. The Republicans, on the other hand, were they to come to power are perfectly capable of passing most of their agenda — except their agenda is ruinous for the average American.

So it seems we’ve gotten to the point where it’s impossible to expect improvement; the best we can hope for is that the Democrats retain power so things aren’t made worse.

And that is really depressing.

Someone said to me earlier that they agreed change needed to occur but that they didn’t think the government was the answer. Fine. Then what is?

Businesses in the US behave as if their employees should grovel and simper that they’ve deigned to employ them at all, let alone grant them a reasonable salary, civilized working hours or any kind of benefits. Change will not come from there: they have no incentive.

Individuals in the US have no power of negotiation; there are so many people equally qualified for jobs, not to mention the fact that their health care is probably tied to their job, that they cannot make any demands without risking personal disaster. Change will not come from there: they have no possibility of success.

Labor unions, which wrought much change in the middle of the last century, have been gutted and their power is low. Change will not come from there: people have been on their own for so long they no longer imagine it could be different.

So I can only assume that the people who think government isn’t the answer are operating on the underpants gnome theory of improvement. Step 1: Imagine a better situation. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Fixed!!

This kind of pie in the sky crap has even less chance of working than trusting the government.

Please?

Aside from the health insurance implosion I’m sure is on its way, this one may well turn out to be the biggest disaster they wrought.

Ha ha ha.

The whole thing reads like a cautionary tale for the U.S. which unfortunately occurred too late for anyone here to draw any lessons from it. Aside from the fact that the dollar can’t (because of its greater importance to world markets) be let collapse quite as far as the krona, I’m afraid we’re on a course to follow Iceland down the path to economic disaster. 15% inflation here we come.

Sarah Palin Quote Generator.