MAX SAWICKY calls me a racial name, then gets the TennCare issue all wrong. This guy claims to know something about health care, or economics? It doesn’t show here. In truth, TennCare is riddled with corruption, and inept at providing care. There are tens of thousands of dead people on the rolls, providers don’t get paid while big corporate “provider organizations” that Max would otherwise savage (if, that is, they weren’t sucking off the public tit) disappear with the cash. Fraud isn’t prosecuted, because the state government doesn’t want the bad publicity. His solution: raise taxes to fund it.

The income tax was wildly unpopular in Tennessee, which is why it didn’t pass. Now the insiders who tried to sneak it past — but who lacked the guts to make a political case for it in an actual election — are complaining that they were defeated by “mob rule,” a claim that Max uncritically endorses. He also seems to think he’s scoring points by noting that Tennessee’s pro-tax governor is a Republican. Well, duh. (I’m not one, you know.) A pathetic effort, Max..

And yes, I know, you shouldn’t respond to trolling like this. But Sawicky unaccountably enjoys a reputation among lefty bloggers as a thinker. Read the post, and draw your own conclusions about that.

UPDATE: Reader Stephen Hill suggests a double standard here:

Political protest at the capital (be it [Nashville] or Washington D.C.) is acceptable, and a hallmark of free speech – as long as you are protesting for liberal ideas. But if you protest for Libertarian or Conservative ideas, especially successfully (Gasp!), then you are exercising mob rule and inciting a riot.

Yes. It’s unAmerican to protest about taxes, after all. What would the founding fathers say?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Yeah, I knew he was trolling. Enjoy the traffic Max. You’d get more of it if you had something interesting to say.