Well folks, Maybe it's just the heat but there seems to be so many morons out there issuing cretinous, mephitic piles of illogic one hardly knows where to begin. I had the unfortunate experience of being stuck in a waiting room and forced to watch two episodes of the hit new game show "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?" The show was interrupted by a commercial for our "New Air National Guard" in which a Blue clad soldier peers at a group of (probably) Apache or Comanchero Indians as the voiceover says "Defending Americans is nothing new" whereby the scene fades to a group of barefoot, robe wearing "terrorists" with black bags over their heads being guarded by a couple of M16 bearing camo-clad soldiers and narrator says "Just the way we do it... Join the NEW Air National Guard!" Now, mind you I can tell who the "Americans" are but who's the guy in Blue? I think it worth mentioning Faux News's Rick Brainfart's comment that " Most of these illegal workers aren't Mexicans anyway, they are JUST INDIANS"(emphasis mine) He has hit on something I have tried to point out, unsuccessfully, for years: Most of the migrant farm workers are indeed indians, many members of Indian Nations whose members have lived on both sides of our Johnny-Come-Lately border for at least the last 11.000 years. Like the chickenhawk's assumed Taliban strategy most of them are content simply waiting us out. They know full well that in spite of all the noise as the Republican't party makes there will soon be some sort of amnesty. The presence of these millions of workers helps hold down the cost of labor and are of great help destroying the Unions. Were anybody serious about stopping "illegal immigration" they would make hiring an undocumented worker an expensive, jail time mandatory offense and then enforce the law. Within one year illegal aliens would be as rare as a Republican't with a conscience. BUT I DIGRESS.....
As I was saying about being "smarter than a fifth grader"; It's obvious that most of us don't happen to be smarter, on the contrary, this program is the best illustration yet that, as P.T. Barnum said, "Nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American people." It IS educational to see the difference in the way the Republican'ts react to this situation contrasted with the Democratic approach. For Democrats this is another example of why we need to increase the amount of education available to EVERYBODY by way of PELL grants, assistance to local schools, encouraging more people to become teachers, rewarding schools that do well and finding out what's gone wrong in schools that don't do well and spending whatever we need to correct these problems. The Republican't response-STUPIDIZE THE TEXTBOOKS .
That's right, if your kids are smarter than you, you should show them young whippersnappers whats what by destroying the educational system that made them that way, before your grandkids REALLY show you up. Well, my kid is smarter than I am and I think that is a GOOD thing. (education is hereditary...My daughter swears I get smarter every time she gives birth!) I think most Americans want their children's lives to be better than their's was.
Now, while we are on that issue: The Tea Party crowd, bless their confused lil' hearts, keep saying they want to take America back to better times and it's easy to understand why. I remember back in the 50s and 60s: Dad went off to work, Mom stayed home and "kept house", Junior was in Little League and Sis was on the Pep Squad and took 2nd in the Young Miss Optimist competition. Dad was a Teamster, he came home tired and dirty but 40 hours/week earned enough to pay the mortgage, water and power and property taxes(always too Gol Durned High!), phone bill and such sundries. Weekends the whole family went up to the vacation cabin at the Lake and did some waterskiing with Dad's new boat that he paid for by working overtime every chance he got last winter. Bought a NEW car every 2.7 years, gave the kids an allowance to supplement Junior's paper route and Sis's babysitting, Man I'm telling you life was good. Now, I won't get into Civil Rights or women's issues or environmental issues, we had some things to fix, but life was good. If only we had payed more attention to Ike's famous words of warning. His boogeyman was The Military Industrial Complex. And it has us by the throat.
Tea Party members are fond of calling for a "return" to constitutional government. Let me draw your attention to the first 15 words of that esteemed document-"We the People, in order to form a more perfect UNION". That's right folks, a UNION. That is what GOVERNMENT is; a union of people who band together to do what they are unable to do individually. The purpose of that UNION that we established was not to protect itself from itself, it was to protect US from the ARISTOCRATS and CORPORATIONS who would seek to take advantage of US. At that time the King was not a big problem to free citizens, had not been since the signing of The Magna Carta. The biggest threat to colonist's well being was The British East India Company and other powerful CORPORATE interests. Let's correct some "common wisdom" right from the git go; Washington, Adams, Franklin, Hancock, Jefferson, Paine, every one of these and many other of our Founding Fathers were wary of Aristocracy and Imperial rule and in their many communications and published works called for a 100% inheritance Tax. The amassing of wealth and power into the hands of the few would create a new tyranny that the Constitution was written to protect US from. True, the Constitution as written set rich white men as the dominant class, but they put the mechanisms in place for us, the poor, women, persons of color and social misfits of every stripe to modify that grand instrument so as to wrest our future from their control. Up until now the Constitution and the Courts have only been used to protect the rights of the people. The Republican't Court has decided BP is people too. Exxon/Mobile is his second cousin, I guess. If you really want to understand these issues Hartman's Screwed is a wonderfully informative explanation of our Founding Fathers' motivations and desires when founding our great Democratic Republic.(for you Republicant's-not too many big words!) What our Founding Fathers really worried about was the accumulation of vast inter-generational wealth that spawned a new crop of Aristocrats and Corporate Oligarchs. This is why for the first half of our country's history a Corporation could not outlive it's founder. You can give your children as much as you want while you are alive so it is only fair when you die the society that enabled you to build your own little empire should get it's tribute. By adopting this policy more money ends up being circulated rather than simply used to fatten a bank account. OK, now it's time to talk about taxes and debt and deficits. Remember those prosperous 50s and 60s when so many of our parents moved out of the depression and into a THRIVING middle class? The top income tax rate was 91%. Most working Dads bitched and moaned about how high taxes were but all things considered everybody thought things were pretty fair. There was a substantial estate tax and capital gains were taxed over 30%. In spite of or because of this horrible government robbery rich people re-invested their money in the business or established charitable foundations rather than give it to Uncle Sam.
Remember that "Union" part of that pre-amble to our Constitution? Well, part of belonging to a Union is paying dues. Dues are what enable a Union to do all the things it does to make the situations of working men and women better.Taxes are what enables Government to do all the things it does to make all our lives better. Provide for the general welfare of the Nation. And like dues, taxes are pro-rated according to how much you earn. The rich get and stay rich because of all the things we the people do AS A GOVERNMENT to establish and protect a fair marketplace. When we don't have enough tax revenue to cover our bills we sell Treasury Notes to International Bankers(I know, this is a really dumbed down version of how this works but I think we went into the reason above, didn't we?) These are just in essence IOUs and the TOTAL of all of them out there is our National Debt. The amount of our cost of government and interest on our Debt under Republicant rule is always more than our Revenue and the difference is called our Deficit. After Democrats run things more than 4 years the reverse becomes the norm, revenue exceeds the cost of government and interest on the Debt and the resulting Surplus is then used to retire our National Debt. We all know what happens when you pay off your credit card; they raise your limit, lower your interest and even give you a free trip to Disneyland to entice you to use it more. When we pay off our National Debt it attracts investment and development all over the globe and EVERYBODY does better... Republicants on the other hand want to exempt EVERYBODY from the "Death Tax" and make the Bush tax cuts permanent. So, say Bill Gates and George Soros and William Buffet die next month-they will not pay a dime, every penny goes to their already spoiled rotten heirs. And those tax cuts, the "Trickle Down" economics theory, well it's 5 years down the road and how many jobs did they create? You say we lost 8 million! What happened? As Thom Hartmen says, the only thing that you get from "Trickle Down" economics is a bunch of Peons!
I know a bunch of you are going to start going on about redistributing wealth so let's dispense with that. Yes I advocate redistribution from top to bottom but let's not fool ourselves, redistribution has BEEN taking place on a grand scale, from the middle to the top until there is NO middle left. 17 trillion dollars has moved from the little "Treasuries" that are your 401k's, Roth IRAs, home equity, hell, even your wage to the richest 5,000 people in America. Real wages have not gone up since Reagan was elected. We all work more hours for less money and if the Republicants have their way they will continue to rob the Social Security Trust Fund and make sure you keep it up till you are 75.
Even then they want to pay you less because they simply CAN"T afford to pay SS taxes on anything over a hundred thousand! I mean after all that .000005% of their net worth would just CRIPPLE their retirement plans.
Now, here we sit at a crossroads and I am so glad Republicant leaders have been so cooperative and exposed their loyalties and plans for the working class families in America. Denny said it clearly at a town hall just the other day:It's "Us" vs Them. He was speaking at a Chamber of Commerce meeting. One after another the Republicants have jumped to BP's defense. Poor BP. We sure don't want them to pay too much tax. Remember what I said earlier about paying close attention as things are poppin' all over and sometimes it's hard to put the parts together. Well, it's just coming out how BP arranged the release of the Libyan terrorist bomber who is still dying from cancer 18 months later at his seaside resort. Yeah, poor BP. See, if you make more than 1/2 million a year then by all means vote Republicant. But if you don't, and if you ever hope that your children might, then it is more important than at any time in the last 75 years that you not only vote for Democratic candidates but that, even if you have never given to a politician in your life, give what you can, $2, $5, $500, or even just some of your time. Talk to your neighbors and friends, take some classes, educate yourself and others, if we do not go that extra mile in this election it may be too late for our Democracy to survive. Through bait & switch tactics Republicants have handed control of our courts to activist judges who will have no qualms about having every aspect of the "Patriot Act" enforced in full and our great nation reverting to a Facist Oilagharchy where we are all minimum wage slaves living in fenced compounds and work camps. It was not Dems who enacted all this BS and MOST of them will never repeal it but if we don't start electing a new breed of leaders now it will only get worse. So remember: Vote Democratic, Vote Early and Vote Often, twice if you get a chance! When those corporate lackeys come asking you to give them a chance to screw us up and over, again, tell them "NO YOU CAN'T"
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