Maybe pigs are jumping really high?

by David Safier
Scarpinato has a piece in this morning's Political Notebook about the Goldwater Institute's Byron Schlomach agreeing with Dem legislators about lowering and broadening the state sales tax.

Scarpinato comments, "No, pigs haven't learned to fly," and qualifies the agreement by saying that's about the only thing GI likes about the Dem's budget proposal.

Yesterday I read an op ed by GI's Darcy Olsen in the Wall Street Journal objecting to local governments subsidizing businesses with huge tax breaks to lure them into their communities. I'll admit I'm not well versed on the subject, but whenever I see businesses blackmailing cities into cutting lucrative tax deals, I always imagine the corporate execs laughing hysterically. "Look at what those suckers gave us this time!" they say between guffaws. Which means, I agree in priniciple with Olsen. I think the giveaways are a bad idea.

Those pigs must have found themselves a trampoline or something. If they're not flying, they're jumping pretty darn high.

I wonder. When partisanship shoots into hyperspace as it's done recently — I can't remember when Ds and Rs have been more divided — is it possible the acceleration can make the whole thing crash through some kind of space-time continuum and turn into post partisanship? I know about politics and strange bedfellows. But when Cheney advocates for gay marriage (for personal reasons, but still), then Ted Olson and David Boies, the two lawyers who fought each other in the 2000 post election free-for-all in Florida, have joined forces in the same cause, you've got to wonder. It's either left and right ideologies which normally move further and further apart bending around and meeting each other at the ends, or it's the creation of a sensible middle that looks at issues on a case by case basis rather than sticking to straight party lines. I would say Obama's budding education policy might be an example of a sensible middle looking for ideas that work instead of using a partisan litmus test. We may be seeing a trend here. Dare I say a promising trend?