The holding hostage of the START Treaty with the Russians in the Senate (and all other legislation) is exceptionally immoral, as well as unpatriotic, because it places our country in danger, and provides aid and comfort to our terrorist enemies. Just as the members of the Federal government from the South did nothing to stop the formation of the Confederacy in its attempt at secession 150 years ago were traitors, I herewith accuse the Senators who are holding up the new START Treaty in return for the continuation of these ruinous tax cuts of treason, sedition, and violation of their oaths of office. I demand their arrest and removal from office immediately.
Of course, I don't expect this to happen, but I can dream can't I.
The expediency shown by the Obama Administration, who has never met a compromise on a domestic issue that it didn't like, is just as immoral; even if it is not treasonous.
When I voted for President Obama in 2008, I was hoping for an administration that would resemble FDR's, or at least Jimmy Carter's. On domestic policy, we have an administration that most closely resembles Neville Chamberlain's premiership in Great Britain. (I wrote this on Monday, December 6th, before Keith Olbermann's Special Comment Tuesday night; great minds on parallel tracks is all I can say.)
Appeasement, appeasement, and more appeasement.
I am very seriously considering changing my affiliation to the Green Party; or maybe the Socialists.
Even though I know these parties aren't going to put anyone in the White House in the foreseeable future, they might get some county commissioners, or state legislators, or even a couple members of Congress.
My friend Professor Thomas Farrell (University of Minnesota-Duluth) recently wrote a review of Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson's new book, W inner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class (2010). In this book (which I am still waiting to read, I am number seventeen in line at the library), the authors take both major parties to task for their ongoing deregulation of various industries since 1978, which led directly to the financial debacle that almost destroyed the entire world's economy in the fall of 2008. The Federal Government has also reduced the top tax bracket by 42 percent in the last thirty years, and if the Simpson- Bowles Commission gets its way, it will be reduced by 60 percent.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/When-Will-Winner-Take-All-by-Thomas-Farrell-101123-495.html
And we wonder why we have such a huge national debt.
The idea of a progressive income tax was near and dear to the heart of our 26th President, Theodore Roosevelt (quoting from his speech in Osawatomie , Kansas, "The New Nationalism", on August 31, 1910), "No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar's worth of service rendered "not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective--"a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate."
Professor Farrell goes on to use Garry Wills's book Head and Heart: American Christianities, to point out how the Catholic Church has been especially important in seeing that a new voting block, conservative, anti-abortion Catholics, who have traditionally voted Democratic. They have joined the anti-abortion Protestant evangelicals in voting for the Re-Publicans. This sea change--together with the deregulation of our banking and financial services industries, the Supreme Court decisions that culminated in Citizens United v. the FEC, removing all real controls on campaign spending, and the essential doubling of the wealth held by the richest 1/10th of 1 percent over the last thirty years--is about to destroy our nation, leaving it a hollow mockery with the name Republic, but no more a true republic than was Florence under the Medici.
Professor Farrell echoes in his review the fears of both Jefferson and Madison, of a hereditary aristocracy of wealth in this country. He uses an entirely different source for demonstrating the need for corrective measures; the words of Jesus of Nazareth, from the Gospel According to Luke, with personal amplification to make his point: "From everyone to whom much has been given [in income], much will be required [in taxes]; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted [such as the money manager entrusted to manage other people's money], even more will be demanded [in taxes]" (Luke 12:48 NRSV).
We have reached a cusp in the history not only for our country, but for the world. The plutocrats are on the verge of establishing a new planet-wide feudal age, with themselves as the royalty and nobility, and the technocrats taking the place of the Church and court officials. The rest of us: we're the peasants and the serfs, baby! Here comes the Sheriff of Nottingham to collect the taxes. Magna Carta, habeas corpus, Bill of Rights: never heard of them, peasant.
Expediency has its time and place, but it should never be our first choice when making decisions that affect other human beings. An expedient answer will not solve our problems here in the United States, or anywhere else in the world.
My friends, when we look into the possible solutions for our problems, there is a simple rule that can help to guide us: let us seek the greatest good for all concerned; not only for today, but also for our posterity. Let us stand true to our most deeply held beliefs against all of those who would tell us that integrity is an overvalued commodity in a modern society. At the same time, we should continually question the basis for those beliefs ourselves, to ensure that those beliefs have not been based on false premises, faulty information, or, worst of all, self-delusion.
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