"Jacked: How 'Conservatives' Are Picking Your Pocket (Whether You Voted for Them or Not)" is a short book by Nomi Prins that makes an excellent education for those remaining Americans who still do not understand that right-wing politicians take from those who work and give to those who live in luxury off the sweat of others.
At the end of World War II, corporations paid half the cost of the federal government. They now pay 7 percent, and many of them pay 0 percent. Unless you are very wealthy, you pick up the tab, and the tab has grown. The federal government now spends more than what it spends on everything else on the military alone, and that cost keeps rising.
So does the price of oil and gas, which is great for oil corporations, and maybe even for the chance our species has of surviving on earth, but not for your wallet. Americans are going more heavily into debt than ever, which is great for the credit card companies, banks, and blowhard politicians, but the most reckless debtor of all is the federal government, which makes things even worse for us.
Pensions are vanishing along with unions and jobs. Student loans are shrinking and college costs rising. Health care costs, too, are rising, while health insurance slips out of reach. Washington is still working hard to trash (or "privatize") Social Security and Medicare.
New Orleans still lies in ruins. Home insurance companies have still not paid up. Washington has still not stepped up. And Bush has neither apologized nor ceased making jokes about people's suffering.
Bush, on one of his Katrina-damage tours, remarked:
"An old lady walked up to me... and I said, 'How are you doing?' And she looked at me and she said, 'Not worth a darn.' And I said, 'Well, I don't blame you.' She said, 'I've been paying all my life for my insurance. Every time that bill came, I paid it... And, all of a sudden the storm hit, Mr. President, and it came time to collect, and they told me, no.' And she was plenty unhappy and she was looking for anybody she could be unhappy with, and I just happened to be the target."
Prins comments:
"No, Mr. President, you actually WERE someone she thought might be able to help her, a subtle difference that may have gone above your head."
The trouble is that it may have gone above some of his listeners' heads too. There are people who take it for granted that Bush can choose to destroy entire nations, but who accept at face value his claim that he has no power whatsoever to see that the victims of a hurricane are cared for. And it goes over even more heads that the two things are intimately related. We are killing and dying for the fossil fuels that lead to the destruction of global warming, and the financial cost of the killing and dying produces massive destruction in our economy. Meanwhile, we've allowed our government to empower loan sharks and insurance agents of all varieties to defraud us and defenestrate us from our homes.
Prins' advice is to write hand-written letters to your congress member's district office. Mine is to get this book read by any non-millionaires you know who believe "conservatism" to be something other than a cover for robbing the poor to enrich the wealthy. If enough people understood what we were doing, perhaps we could go to Washington with the message: "We've come to collect, and you don't just happen to be our target, and we won't take No for an answer."
http://www.davidswanson.org
DAVID SWANSON is a co-founder of After Downing Street, a writer and activist, and the Washington Director of Democrats.com. He is a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, and serves on the Executive Council of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, TNG-CWA. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including Press Secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, Media Coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as Communications Coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson obtained a Master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia in 1997.
The Federal budget is difficult to read - I think intentionally. But if you dig a little, the devils is in the details.
You stated, "corporations paid half the cost of the federal government. They now pay 7 percent". They are no longer invested in our society. You can see that too, if you look at the total revenue pages, there are historical spreadsheets that show the sources of revenue by percentage going back 50 years. It really is stunning that we are so asleep.
The tax on the middle class has escalated. The costs of the Forture 500 externalized (meaning the tax payer picks them up) wages have stagnated.
How can it possibly continue without a major correction?
And with military spending our number one funded tax payer industry, shows where our collective values are. Destruction.
How are we ever going to get our act together and start focusing on the "We" in our society, nation and planet?
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August Adams (10 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 387 comments)
on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 8:56:04 PM
washington is out of touch, but so are you 2 party system left wingers who want to pin all of this on republicans and take no responsibility for the horrendously crooked "liberals", "progressives" or whatever else you want to call those people in Congress. You're the fools stuck in the 2 party system saying "if we can just get more blue in there than red that will solve our problems." Democrats have proved in the last year and a half how worthless they are even with a majority and a president with less than 30% approval. You should have all registered republican and voted for Ron Paul if you wanted to see actual change.
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jeremy xx (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 23 comments)
on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 10:56:52 AM
I would estimate that 1/3 to 1/2 of those voting for democrats in any election this year would rather be voting fo another party.
The figure may be the same for Republicans.
I suggest you use your energy to repeal voting laws made by demos and repubs over the last 160 years in order to allow all of us to vote for the better voices and capable others.
by
ALONE (114 articles, 1 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 251 comments)
on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 12:22:47 PM
That pack of jackels who are currently running this country can hardly be called conservative. They are so far radically right they are almost left. Here is the dictionary definition:con·ser·va·tive play_w("C0581800") (kn-sûrv-tv)adj.
1. Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change.
2. Traditional or restrained in style: a conservative dark suit.
3. Moderate; cautious: a conservative estimate.
True conservatives would never have plunged us into a national debt of:
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macdon1 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 77 comments)
on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 9:13:31 PM
n-sûr
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