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> Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform For those who don't know, Grover Norquist is a highly influential, batshit crazy right-wing ideologue who believes

> Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform For those who don't know, Grover Norquist is a highly influential, batshit crazy right-wing ideologue who believes the estate tax is morally equivalent to the holocaust. Almost every Republican lawmaker on the national level signs a pledge he has written, swearing they will not raise taxes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24037730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24037730

red-iron-pine 3y ago
Grover is the figurehead, but he's got backing from plenty of other billionaires and other large tax-is-bad action group. also directly sprung from Bush Sr. saying "read my lips: no new taxes" and then immediately going the other way. that ruffled a few feathers and took the "tax bad" lobby into the Tea Party / Norquist insanity we've seen.
- justin66 3y ago
  It's funny. I would not ever want to paint Norquist as an ultra-powerful shot-caller. I just assume those are the guys who donate the money and the guys decide who gets the donations. When you think about it in those terms, he's perhaps more of a cultural artifact. But wow, what an artifact! There has not been, to my knowledge, an instance of a newly elected US Senator publicly saying "signing this absurd thing is beneath the dignity of my office and of course I'm going to try to keep taxes low, the voters of xxx elected me because they know I'm a dedicated conservative, but it is impossible to guarantee that it will not be necessary to levy a new tax of some kind, so I am not going to promise that." Or something along those lines. He doesn't get to decide who gets the donations, but he does get to administer the Kool-Aid, and it's powerful stuff. (edit: it occurred to me that given the rules involving political donations, and PACs, and so on, he might be administering all kinds of money and the public wouldn't necessarily know about it, so... yeah...)

red-iron-pine 3y ago

Grover is the figurehead, but he's got backing from plenty of other billionaires and other large tax-is-bad action group. also directly sprung from Bush Sr. saying "read my lips: no new taxes" and then immediately going the other way. that ruffled a few feathers and took the "tax bad" lobby into the Tea Party / Norquist insanity we've seen.

justin66 3y ago
It's funny. I would not ever want to paint Norquist as an ultra-powerful shot-caller. I just assume those are the guys who donate the money and the guys decide who gets the donations. When you think about it in those terms, he's perhaps more of a cultural artifact. But wow, what an artifact! There has not been, to my knowledge, an instance of a newly elected US Senator publicly saying "signing this absurd thing is beneath the dignity of my office and of course I'm going to try to keep taxes low, the voters of xxx elected me because they know I'm a dedicated conservative, but it is impossible to guarantee that it will not be necessary to levy a new tax of some kind, so I am not going to promise that." Or something along those lines. He doesn't get to decide who gets the donations, but he does get to administer the Kool-Aid, and it's powerful stuff. (edit: it occurred to me that given the rules involving political donations, and PACs, and so on, he might be administering all kinds of money and the public wouldn't necessarily know about it, so... yeah...)