We need more of this. A Leviathan Ankle-Biter Award goes to the voters of Tamil Nadu in India, who threw out the ruling party. But the good part is the way they took the freebies that were intended to buy their votes, and then voted out the politicians who used public money to give them the freebies:
The party previously assuaged voter concerns by offering the public a share of the spoils—at one point doling out free color televisions—and promised to offer similar freebies again. But the TVs were perhaps a mistake: Voters took them, promptly saw news reports of what their rulers were up to and threw them out of power. Now the All India Anna-DMK (a splinter party founded in the 1970s) will rule.
This is from an article by Ruchir Sharma in the Tuesday issue of the Wall Street Journal. Headline: “Greater Expectations in India.” Pull-out quote: “The powerful national parties do badly in local elections. Good.”
In our country we need more people who will take the tax credits for new energy-saving appliances, and vote out the politicians who voted for those credits. (Energy-saving appliances are good, but tax credits for them are not.) We need people who take the corporate welfare and vote out the politicians who enacted it.
Leviathan hates that. Note how it treated Clarence Thomas. They thought that when he accepted the benefits from affirmative-action programs, that he should have become subservient to the programs. He didn’t. Leviathan is still upset about it.