The Cody News Special Edition: The Death of the Two Party Political System is Nigh!

Timber Becomes Tool in Effort to Cut Estate Tax

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Published June 21, 2006

WASHINGTON, June 20 — In a new attempt to permanently reduce the estate tax on inherited wealth, House Republican leaders moved on Tuesday to win over crucial Democrats with a tax sweetener for timber companies.


Let me try count the ways that this upsets me:

1. Why are we subsidizing timber companies at all?

2. And are they serious about paying each other off like this in public -- vote for this bill, and we'll hook you up with a bunch of money for your croni, er biggest donors?

2. Why is the Democratic party, which pretends that they aren't as sold out to corporate America every bit as badly as the Republican party is, willing to be so upfront about this crony-ized horror?

3. Shouldn't the folks like, uh, Democrat big head, John Kerry who try to create alarms about things 40 years in the future to redistribute our wealth to their corporate cronies who benefit from that alarm be all over the timber companies for supposedly screwing up our environment instead of throwing nearly a billion frickin' dollars at them?

4. Why do I feel like I'm the only person who freaks out about how utterly criminalized the Dems and the Repubs -- each and every one who's willing to run under one of those parties -- appear when I read this stuff? Self-introspectively-speaking here for a moment, I always feel so isolated and confused around election time. Why do you vote for Republicans if you hate this type of stuff too? Why do you vote for Democrats if you hate this type of stuff too?

I know what you're going to say. Something about how it's always been this way and that you're voting for the lesser of two evils. But doesn't that mean that you're voting for evil? I don't want to vote for evil. I want to fight evil, don't you? So shouldn't we be fighting these evil-doing politicians in the Republican and Democratic parties instead of embracing them in any way shape or form?

Isn't the best way to do that to stop voting for them, and if you're an honest politician (naively or not, I do believe they exist, at least until they sell out to one of these parties) shouldn't you get out of these parties?

Does the Internet and the fact that I can write this and you can read this and then we can discuss this freely and, most importantly in regards to the change, EASILY in the comments change everything? I do believe it does! The death of the two-party political system is nigh!

Ah, long live democracy. Finally.