(Jon Tevlin, Mpls Star Tribune)
This is worth taking the time to read. The few paragraphs I can post here just don't do the column justice
http://www.startribune.com/local/128290433.htmlIn the weeks running up to this month's Iowa GOP presidential straw poll, our two local candidates, Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann, had at least one thing in common: They both claimed to want the evil government off our backs.
It's an interesting notion from two people who have spent much of their lives on the government's back. As we move forward, it would be wise to keep in mind that those who scream loudest about shrinking government are often those who have taken the most from it....
...After time for a cup of coffee in the private sector, Pawlenty pulled up a chair to the government table and began feasting -- for the next 18 years. Talk about job stability. He is now experiencing life outside the public trough for the first time in nearly two decades, but I'm betting that won't last long.
One pundit actually tried to make the case on the Sunday news shows that Bachmann's stint as a "tax attorney" gives her special skills to cut taxes. Hmm. Bachmann's job was actually to take taxes from people who didn't pay them. You know what Mark Twain said about tax collectors: "The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin." According to a story in this paper on Sunday, Bachmann's stint at the IRS was pretty unremarkable, so maybe her heart wasn't in it. In four years on the job, she litigated only two minor cases, not against corporate or white-collar tax cheats, but a low-paid American Indian man and a warehouse worker.