I’ve always been a fan of E.D. Kain.  I discovered him over at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen and he now writes for my favoritest blog eva, Balloon Juice.  He’s one of the few remaining lights of sanity in the otherwise inky blackness of conservative thought these days.

Just to illustrate for you how neat I think he is, consider the fact that today he exposed me to a new idea that I had never come across .  That so rarely happens!  Check it out – very thought-provoking:

Essentially Krugman is arguing for a larger stimulus. The one we got, he argues, wasn’t big enough. All it did was patch some holes in state and local budgets rather than go the next step and actually stimulate the economy. This is true as far as I can tell. I would gladly support more stimulus spending especially. I think we’re in essentially a balance-sheet recession. More spending makes sense especially at the interest rates Krugman is talking about. During a recession high levels of government spending can help turn around the economy; I think that keeping taxes as low as possible during a recession makes sense for similar reasons.

What worries me is that there really are structural problems that may get swept under the proverbial rug when stimulus dollars come in to bail out state and local governments.

Take Arizona, for example. Like Colorado Springs, Arizona has been under the sway of a bunch of anti-tax zealots. (They’re zealots for other reasons, too, but we’ll talk about that some other time.) In any case, low taxes are much more important to the legislators in Arizona than actually governing. So we get laws allowing concealed weapons to be carried without permits, but we can’t manage our budget even well enough to remain in possession of our own Capitol building. Our legislature refuses to raise taxes even though it means we have to let a bunch of state parks go to gravel – despite the fact that state parks are a major part of the tourist industry in Arizona. And while some states face real problems with overly powerful and entrenched teachers’ unions, Arizona is not one of them and yet still plans to cut millions from public education.

The anti-tax ideology is so deeply ingrained here that Jan Brewer, of all people, had to lead an effort to get a measly 1-cent sales tax passed by voter ballot – which it did, by a reasonably wide margin. There is some disconnect, I suspect, between the voters and the legislators here. I’m not sure it’s enough to throw the bums out, but I hope it is.

So I take Krugman’s point on the anti-government rhetoric being a driving force behind some of the structural problems facing the country. What I worry about in these instances is that all these stubborn, ideological lawmakers who refuse to raise taxes will end up taking a bunch of stimulus money and not having to own up to their own politics. They get bailed out. They get to slash spending on basic services, keep taxes low, and still get the money they need. Then what? They get reelected and do it all over again. 

What an interesting point.   I can definitely see where he’s coming from, although it kind of strikes me as a case of punishing a girl after she gets pregnant.  Done deal, right?  My first inclination would be to deal with the pressing problem at hand and then worry about the long-term ramifications afterward.  I must ponder on it some more.

More responsible conservatives calling for tax increases please!