Rethinking the Economy

Stumbling towards a new model for creating growth, opportunity, and justice

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Pulling a Brady

September 30th, 2009 · No Comments

I’ve been looking for a phrase to capture a particularly bizarre piece of behavior — when people who want to cut the government complain about the government not doing enough. I think I’m going to call it Pulling a Brady, in honor of representative Kevin Brady of Texas. From the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago:

Protesters who attended Saturday’s Tea Party rally in Washington found a new reason to be upset: Apparently they are unhappy with the level of service provided by the subway system.

Rep. Kevin Brady asked for an explanation of why the government-run subway system didn’t, in his view, adequately prepare for this past weekend’s rally to protest government spending and government services.

Seriously.

The Texas Republican on Wednesday released a letter he sent to Washington’s Metro system complaining that the taxpayer-funded subway system was unable to properly transport protesters to the rally to protest government spending and expansion.

As Sing City Chronicles points out, this complaint took a pretty high degree of chutzpah given Brady’s voting record:

Back in July HR3288, a Transportation and HUD appropriations bill, came up for a vote. It included $150 million for emergency maintenance funding for the DC Metro.

Brady voted against it.

You know that the History Gods are shining down on you when the weasel du jour has a name like Brady. “Here’s the story of a lovely…”

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