Politics

Politically, I’m very liberal — about as far left as one can go without sliding into Libertarianism.

Dub-yuh’s at it again

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Okay, let’s see if I’ve got this straight.

Dub-yuh and his financial people take a look at the budget a few months ago and see that we’ve got an apparent surplus — $281 billion or so, $122 billion once we set aside a chunk for Social Security. He then introduces his famous tax cut/rebate program, which not only reduces the amount of money that the government will gain through collecting taxes, but sends a huge chunk of the surplus out to the American public (and I’m still convinced that this $300/person ‘rebate’ check was nothing more than a bribe to get his tax-cut package through as easily as possible — kind of a ‘spoonful of sugar’ technique, only with poison instead of medicine going down in the end).

Then, when the economy (as it is wont to do) does something other than as predicted in the most optimistic forecasts, the government suddenly realizes that it’s got a whopping $600 million surplus — instead of $122 billion — and is surprised?!?

Ah, well. At least I’m not the only one with tight finances these days. But at least I didn’t blow $121.4 billion dollars to get there.

Homophobic idiots

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Okay…I’m pissed right now. My friend Kirsten just tipped me off to an article in todays Anchorage Daily News. In case the link dies, the basic gist is that there was a display put up at the Loussac library dealing with gay pride issues on Monday evening. Before the library opened on Tuesday morning, though, Mayor Weurch had ordered the library to pull the exhibit. The reason?

“I just said ‘no,'” Wuerch said. “This is a fundamental responsibility of the mayor, to make decisions. Once in a while, you have to say no.”

Ugh…this is so aggravating. The fact that we’ve got such a backwoods, predjudiced, homophobic mayor in office is downright depressing. From the accounts in the newspaper story, the display was fairly low-key, nothing overly controversial at all, a display case that had gay-themed books and videos couldn’t be seen unless you were right at it, and the library has hosted displays dealing with controversial issues in the past. However, because this dealt with gay issues, Mayor Weurch decided to effectively pull rank — after the display had been approved by the library administration and set up, mind you — and had it taken down, before more than a very few members of the public ever got a chance to see it and make their own judgements.

Argh. I’m just going to stop there, before this post goes any further downhill.

[From the archives: 1.3.96 0257]

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[Note: This was originally written back when I was hand-coding my pages. Original entry is here.]

Okay, changed some things around again. At the request of someone who e-mailed me, I have brought my page about the new teen curfew law back online. To do so took a little bit of space, though, so I zapped some of the older documents here…the bit on why Santa can’t exist, the Net Cruisers Anonymous flyer, and the flyer I did for Gig’s (but never actually put out on the streets) a couple of weeks back. (shrug) Change is the only constant in the universe…that and the beauricratic mentality.