Federal "shift and shaft"

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

WASHINGTON — Official Washington is getting ready to throw America's states and cities a dangerous hardball in President Bush's second term.

Across a broad array of issues — homeland security, health care, the environment, education, taxes — the president and Congress appear quite willing to override state choice and preference.

Firmly in control of the federal government, the Republican Party that once made a big cause of state and local autonomy, arguing government closest to the people is always best, promising to control unfunded federal mandates in its famed 1994 "Contract with America," appears ready to champion and assert federal power at almost every turn.

Few of his fellow U.S. senators, laments Lamar Alexander, a former Tennessee governor and presidential contender, "respect the prerogatives of governors and mayors to make their own decisions." Today's conservatives, Alexander told Governing magazine's Alan Greenblatt, "are just as bad as liberals at passing new programs and expecting someone else to pay for it."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002165390_peirce31.html

[ixion]

1. exactly... seems their tune has changed

and yet progressives somehow still get tagged with that moniker, while tax and spend, big government republicans are given a pass.

Gee, it almost makes you think that the playing field is biased, o r something. :grr: :eyes: