Budget deficits

These days I am more of a reader than writer. I spend my time trying to figure out whether this means I have nothing to say or whether it means nothing I say makes a damn. That said, I have something to say.

Dear General Assembly:

For all the happy horseshit we hear regarding the dangers of growing budget deficits, the silence from responsible adults about how to tackle our budget challenges has been deafening. As a result, we find ourselves confronting unthinkably stupid choices, like laying off 300,000 public school teachers nationally. It's time to raise our freakin' taxes, people, starting with a big increase in the rate for top brackets. The fact that this isn't even on the table for discussion in Raleigh should be an embarrassment to every Democratic legislator in our state.

When Dr. Jack Block, who died this week, reported his remarkable findings about personality and politics in 2006, Republicans were aghast. Block discovered that modern adult conservatives grow from inhibited, rigid and thin-skinned three year olds.

That nursery-school mentality in today's GOP came into sharp focus last week when Burr voted with every Republican in the Senate against backing the full faith and credit of the US Treasury.