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Steve Keen: Your Tax-And-Spend Independent
By Greg L | 27 March 2007 | Prince William County | 2 Comments
Steve Keen doesn’t want to raise your taxes. Steve Keen wants to dramatically increase government spending. You’d think that someone making such contradictory statements might get questioned a little more closely by a reporter when trying to pull something so inane, but this is the Manassas Journal-Messenger after all. Why they bother having reporters when their articles on local politics amount to little more than press release sock-puppetry continues to be a mystery, particularly when MediaGeneral is having such a hard time being profitable.
Today’s Manassas Journal-Messenger article on independent candidate for Woodbridge Supervisor Steve Keen is just chock full of opportunities to observe what is pretty clearly a case of political schizophrenia of the highest order, and the typical behavior of the Manassas Journal messenger to uncritically swallow wholesale whatever ridiculous thing anyone might say. Between candidates that say ridiculous things, and a local newspaper that can’t seem to do anything beyond the barest drive-by journalism on local stories, whatever rationale remains for anyone to bother reading that paper is rapidly vanishing. “The Manassas Journal-Messenger: we make voters terminally stupid”.
You’d think that if someone proposes more parks, more funding for the schools, higher spending on social services, more money for the Park Authority, and then to turn over to the schools any budget surpluses which might somehow materialize while hurtling down the path of this tremendous spending spree, and then turns around and says “he would stall tax increases by demanding a budget that did not exceed growth plus inflation”, you’d ask a few questions to see how this would supposedly work after you managed to overcome your uncontrolled laughter at the sheer inanity of it all. Maybe this sort of thing flew when Kathleen Seefeldt was actively working to destroy the character of the county and brain-dead statements were in vogue somewhat, but unless the Manassas Journal-Messenger has completely lobotomized the electorate this sheer idiocy cannot possibly stand.
Steve Keen’s statement of “If we can’t find other things to cut, then we need to look at our tax rate” just cries out for the most basic analysis in this context. If we’re going to increase spending on parks, social services, and education, exactly what is left to cut? Public safety? I doubt he would find anything defensible within the public safety budget to pony up for a cut, so this gibberish about limiting budget growth cannot possibly be taken at face value. This guy has no other option to deliver on his grandiose spending plans than to agitate for massive tax hikes. But the MJM completely gives this guy a pass.
While Steve Keen doesn’t appear to be as hopelessly unprepared for a campaign as Robert Rice appears to be, he certainly is unprepared for the changes that have occurred in the political landscape since he last served in elected office. The olden days of fiscal profligacy are clearly behind us, yet Keen soldiers on, abetted by local media that can’t figure out that adding new spending to the budget invariably requires the county to dig ever deeper into the taxpayer’s pockets.
Chris Royse must be stacking political ammunition up to the rafters with inane articles about his opponents such as this one. I hope so. Keen and the MJM desperately deserve to be called out on this.
Note: This article has been revised to show that Steve Keen served on the School Board, and not on the Board of County Supervisors.
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I wasn’t aware that Keen was ever on the Board of County Supervisors. I believe he was on the School Board though, and Lucy cleaned his clock in the run for School Board Chairman. In fact, he did not even carry his own precinct. That being said he is the typical ROO, (Republican Of Opportunity). It hasn’t been too many years since he dropped off the Republican Committee to support Hilda Barg. After that election he re-joined the Republican Committee. I am not sure if he ever did anything of substance.
Don’t ya just love these “sometimes Republican, sometimes Democrat” candidates? No concept or understanding of philosophical differences — it’s just how can I get elected and stay there forever. Sad!