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Let them all drown?

Editor, Index-Tribune:

 

Grover Norquist, director of Americans for Tax Reform, believes that bankrupting the federal government through massive debt is a good thing. "I don't want to strangle the federal government," he famously said, "I just want to weaken it to the point where I can drown it in a bathtub."

He has applied the same principle to the State of California.

All our elected Republican Assemblymen and state Senators have taken the Grover Norquist pledge to never raise taxes under any circumstances, not even to close loopholes or extend temporary taxes (or to allow the people to vote on such taxes in a referendum).

This pledge is absolute. And since the State of California is required by law to balance the budget, it means that we must immediately enact an "all cuts" budget, even if the majority of us don't want it.

So it is that the face that is drowning in Grover Norquist's figurative bathtub here in California is looking less like a bureaucrat and more like a baby - or a preschooler, a college student, a poor, sick, disabled, or elderly person, a librarian, a park ranger, a teacher, a fireman or a law enforcement officer.

Other than just letting them all drown, I wonder if there is anything we can do about this.

 Randall Cook

Sonoma