Steyn Outside the Box

One of the things I really like about Mark Steyn is he always has a unique perspective; in business-speak what they call "outside the box" thinking. Usually that's just another euphemism for some more corporate baloney. Companies hire consulting firms to do their thinking for them and to justify their exorbitant fees, these firms give them a bunch of gobbledygook pycho-babble that they can't understand but they sit in feigned awe and say "Wow, that's really outside the box thinking". (And please don't be offended by my comments about consulting firms. Hey, I work for one -- my income depends on those exorbitant fees which, on second thought, are really quite reasonable! :-)

Anyway, here's a recent Steyn column from National Review that's, as usual, required reading.


MARK STEYN

With a Majority Like This . . .

Last year Newt Gingrich was up in New Hampshire and my neighbor Scott went along and expressed various dissatisfactions with the GOP Congress. And Newt said, well, you must remember Republicans are still pretty new at this, we’re not used to being in the majority.

That’s it? The Iraqis are expected to pick up the ins and outs of this governing business instantly, but the Republican party can’t get the hang of it after eleven years? Don’t worry, I’m not predicting electoral disaster this November. It would be nice to think that the GOP might get to enjoy a Geena Davis–style “hiatus” while they “retune” their winning formula. But I doubt it will happen: Even losers need someone to lose to, and the Democrats have failed to fulfill even that minimal requirement for the last decade.

Christopher Hitchens said on the Hugh Hewitt show recently that he “dislikes” the Republican party but has “contempt” for the Democrats. I appreciate the distinction, though I’m not sure I could muster even that level of genial tolerance. The Democrats have been the most contemptible opportunists in the years since 9/11: If they’ve got nothing useful to contribute to the great challenge of the age they could at least have the decency not to waste our time waving around three-year-old Abu Ghraib pictures and chanting “exit strategy” every ten minutes.

But what happened to the other guys? “The Republican party,” says Arlen Specter, “is now principally moderate, if not liberal” — and he means it as a compliment. “I’ll just say this about the so-called porkbusters,” chips in Trent Lott. “I’m getting damn tired of hearing from them. They have been nothing but trouble since Katrina.”

Well, to be honest, I’m a good half-decade past getting damn tired of hearing from Trent Lott. But the difference is that, as a member of the pork-funding sector of the economy, I pay for him; he doesn’t pay for me. And, that being the reality of the situation, if he doesn’t want to hear from the taxpayers he should get out of electoral politics, and become a bigtime lobbyist or a busboy at Denny’s or whatever. Or maybe he could be an usher at the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame, which now receives federal funding. Don’t ask me why. Is it a requirement of the Patriot Act? Are there Homeland Security concerns that al-Qaeda could infiltrate the Hall of Fame posing as Martha and the Vandellas?

Do you remember that anthrax business just after September 11th? At the height of the scare, Tom Daschle came out and announced that 34 of his staffers had tested positive for anthrax. I was horrified: Tom Daschle has 34 staffers? Why? Presumably to read all that poorly drafted legislation the senators themselves never have time to look at before voting on.

I used to joke that the Senate was America’s House of Lords — certainly, my congressman and senators (Charlie Bass, Judd Gregg, John Sununu) are all hereditary beneficiaries — but that’s very unfair to Britain’s poor old backwoods viscounts. In the days when I used to swing by the Palace of Westminster, I’d find a 9th duke, a 12th marquess, and a 17th earl all sharing an office the size of a men’s-room stall, with one elderly secretary between them. They had no staff, no salaries — just travel and overnight expenses. The Senate is more like the Supreme Council of the United Arab Emirates writ large.

Can you get small government from big legislators? I doubt it. Take this foot-of-page-37 item from the Associated Press: “If barbers need a license to cut hair, there’s no reason the government cannot set requirements for tax preparation, said Senate Finance Committee chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.”

Good grief. That’s the “Republican” position? Isn’t the real question this: Why do so many citizens need professional tax preparation? These days, tiny towns without a gas station or general store nevertheless manage to support an H&R Block office. Why? Because no reasonably well-informed citizen can understand — or even read — the tax code. So a minimum-wage waitress with a part-time housecleaning business requires professional assistance to file her taxes. That’s a disgrace to a free society.

Senator Grassley is concerned because, if you take your taxes to ten different tax guys, they’ll give you ten different answers. But so what? If you take ’em to ten different IRS guys, you’ll get ten different answers. Because even the government doesn’t understand the tax code. According to Americans for Fair Taxation, the IRS fails to answer correctly half the taxpayer queries it receives. Because there is no “correct answer” in any meaningful sense. Is it likely to improve matters to add a licensing bureaucracy designating which tax preparers are competent enough to discern a final tax figure not significantly at variance with six out of ten IRS agents’ shots in the dark?

I don’t expect Republicans to shred the tax code and reform Social Security within one term. But as the decades roll on I would like them at least to pay lip service to the notional goal of so doing. And I would admire their restraint if they could desist from adding one more disastrous shortsighted pseudo-reform to reform last year’s disastrous shortsighted pseudo-reform, as they’re now doing with their campaign-finance-reform reform.

And, if that’s not possible, I would appreciate it if at the very very minimum Trent and Arlen & Co. could stop sounding like presidents-for-life of the one-party state of Incumbistan.