Who Needs Roads?
Perhaps because his parents carelessly named him after a famously dull president, or perhaps because as a
de trop libertarian in the swinging 60s, he didn’t score with loose hippie girls, Grover Norquist has always been angry at America. Born into corporate wealth, he never had to work a day in his life. Instead, driven by too many Ayn Rand novels and the unknown demons of highschool gym class, he furiously knocked on doors for Nixon as a YAFFer. After coasting through Ivy League, he hung out with the felonious Oliver North deep in the Reagan Whitehouse basement, eating pizza and sending arms to the nation’s sworn enemies. He worked with Gingrich during the serial divorcee’s early burglary years in Congress to make sure single mothers had even less swag to raise their numerous lazy children. For most of his life he has fondled guns, literally and philosophically, which play a large role in his insecure writings about how the “Taking Coalition” (code for welfare queens, code for poor nonwhites and/or latte-sipping liberals) is out to get him and his coalition of rich tennis buddies and trust fund babies.
But that’s nothing compared to Norquist’s obsession with lowering taxes on Paris Hilton and other put-upon millionaires like himself. A visionary whose vision is scary, he even compared the estate tax to the Holocaust, inducing a spit take from the usually phlegmatic Terry Gross:
Norquist: “I mean, that's the morality of the Holocaust.”
Gross: “Excuse me. Excuse me one second. Did you just . . . compare the estate tax with the Holocaust?”
Yes, he did. Like a deranged Mr. Howell in his hut, Norquist goes Godwin at the mere thought of the superwealthy paying taxes to support a society that includes “Takers,” the lazy Gilligans on hammocks. Except on Norquist’s rightwing island, the Gilligans are mostly black.
But to the point. With the Tea Party Occupation Forces ensconced in Congress, Norquist’s first order of business is to destroy America’s interstate highway system (build by that socialist President Eisenhower) by threatening any Republican who votes to increase taxes to keep the Highway Trust Fund afloat. The Fund has struggled as lower gas prices reduce gas tax revenue. The GOP has pledged fealty to Norquist though his "Taxpayer Protection Pledge,"which almost all Republican candidates sign to avoid looking like a dreaded Taker, or an Afro-American Gilligan, as the case may be.
Some Republicans have made noises about supporting a "bipartisan" increase in the tax, if it's called a fee, to avoid Norquist’s fiery apocalyptic hand. But they'll back down. They always do. His astroturf .org, Americans for Tax Reform, has denounced similar increases at the state level, and tea party types are just waiting for the papal bull to issue from Norquist.
When you live at Howell Hilton, who needs roads anyway?