Would $2 trillion in cuts to basic government services somehow restore America to the greatness of our national myths?
Mr. Concannon said it was funded by illegal enterprises, which gave him the largess to be generous to a community that lacked basic government services and was vulnerable to influence by a larger-than-life character who shared his spoils.
But the failure, year after year, of President Hamid Karzai and his local allies to provide security or the most basic government services has led many Afghans to decide they had no choice but to welcome back the Taliban.
For much of Jordan's population, tribes provide the main source of access to basic government services and benefits through wasta, which is akin to a personal network of connections.
The question is how long that collaboration will last if the Shiite-dominated government continues to deny the Sunnis access to basic government services and jobs.
These efforts illustrate how the antiquated systems the states rely on to raise revenue are failing to generate enough to finance basic government services, a trend aggravated by growing sophistication among the wealthiest individual and corporate taxpayers in escaping state levies.
He appears to recognize that the greatest long-term threat to his parliamentary majority may be a disillusionment about basic government services that eventually reopens voters to the Conservatives' small-government, low-tax arguments.
The UN estimated in May this year that since 2012 about 168,000 Rohingya had fled Myanmar, where the group is denied citizenship and access to basic government services.
Hindu and Buddhist villagers have also reported being targeted by Rohingya insurgents but the Muslim-minority group, who are denied citizenship and access to basic government services in Myanmar, make up the vast majority of those displaced.
This is a tax cut that is so costly, so focused on the wealthiest Americans and so certain to drain vital resources for basic government services that few Americans who had a chance to scrutinize it would let Congress get away with it.
