One of the underlying characteristics that binds us as Americans is our willingness to take risks.
Can one think of any greater risks than those assumed by the signers of the Declaration of Independence, whose courage we mark on the July 4th holiday?
The 56 signers of the Declaration shoved all their chips onto the table:
And for the support of this Declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
The signers stepped boldly forward—think of John Hancock’s unmistakable signature, large and clear and forceful enough to be read at a distance. They faced what many considered to be insurmountable odds against the greatest military forces on earth. They were turning away from their British identity, sundering personal and business relationships built over generations. Many of them, including Benjamin Franklin, would see their families divide. As the large number of colonial “loyalists” suggested, there were many reasons why “reasonable” people would not take this extraordinary step that was at least as likely to lead to ruin as to a glorious new day.
Some later observers, from the gulf of several centuries, have attempted to diminish the luster of the signers’ courage in various ways. Yet when one takes the perspective of the signers at the time they acted, one cannot credibly overlook the immense uncertainty they knowingly embraced.
The signers chose action because they were committed to the emergence of a distinct American way of life that required a distinct American way of self-rule. Americans would not be subjects, we would be citizens. As the signers well understood, if the Americans succeeded in breaking the grip of the British Empire, they would then undertake an unprecedented experiment in creating a large-scale democratic republic.
Our celebration of the July 4th holiday tends not to focus on the original events. Perhaps it should. It’s challenging to ask oneself, to what ends would we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor?
Gratefully, we don’t face challenges of the magnitude of the Revolutionary generation. Yet we do face significant challenges. And it’s the failure of the political class to meet those challenges that has impelled many of us to join Unity08.
Having been active in politics for many years, I’ve been fascinated by the reaction of numerous politically involved people to Unity08. The vast majority of people I encounter react positively, comprehending its need and possibilities at once. Yet, a good number then say that while they’re glad it’s happening, and they support the idea, they don’t want to put their own political positions or relationships at risk.
That may sound reasonable, until one thinks about it just a bit more…We don’t have to look back to the signers of the Declaration of Independence or the founders of the Republic to encounter Americans who are putting everything on the line for our nation. At this moment, thousands of America’s best men and women are risking everything in a horrific war zone.
That willingness to risk what is necessary when the stakes are high represents a distinctive part of “the American Way.” In the new movie, Superman, the hero no longer fights for “Truth, Justice and the American Way,” but for Hollywood’s new locution: “truth, justice and all that stuff.”
Maybe all that “American Way” stuff sounds a little archaic and embarrassing to some people who see themselves as sophisticated or highly educated. Maybe it’s just a small gesture to minimize our generations’ debts of honor to those who have made our current national life possible.
This writer, at least, will continue to think of the American Way--the American Way of risking everything for the good of the nation. The risks anyone faces in challenging today’s failed political system are pretty insignificant in comparison with those of our ancestors or our soldiers in the field today—and a small price to pay to try to pass along our generations’ advantages to the next.
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WEALTH IS POWER
POWER IS CONTROL
CONTROL IS THE OPPOSITE OF FREEDOM
TAX WEALTH NOT WORK
NET WORTH TAX NOT INCOME TAX
INORDINATE WEALTH REQUIRES INORDINATE RESPONSIBLILTY
we're missing 98% of the potential power of growing unity08 by not proving members with correct tools for follow-up of invitation status
unity-now.wikispaces.com
is a brand new attempt to talk of WHAT'S AT STAKE and WHO'S AT RISK.
John Gelles
http://unity-now.wikispaces.com
http://www.tiea.us
Human rights and how to pay for them are key to a livable world.
Thank you James, for a piece of patriotism that is meant to bring people together, instead of tear people apart.
Dear James Strock,
I like your honest and direct spirit. However, I believe you have minimized a maximum situation:
You wrote: "Gratefully, we don’t face challenges of the magnitude of the Revolutionary generation."
From the day Russia exploded its first hydrogen bomb we have faced more perilous times and choices than history before that day ever knew.
We in this movement must appeal for an alliance with Russia equal or tighter than NATO. Our President once saw the soul of a leader that spoke of a soul of his nation we must treat virtually the same as we treat our own.
Our President recognized a path to the future as dangerous as the one ahead in 1776 -- but one that looked like we were going to walk it together with an ally as strong as any nation can be which had changed from a police state to a great power with whom we had reason to be a very close friend.
In recent months we have allowed our friendship with Russia to be less than it was. As President Bush the father of our current president once said (in a different context), "This will not stand."
He referred to an invasion he soon turned back, that his son knew later left an unfinished war behind it. Our nation is now doing what our founders did -- protecting the God-given right to life and liberty from unreasoned tyranny that threatened the peace of the world and the freedom of mankind.
Unity08 and my supporting site, unity-now, ask us to face "what's at stake and who's at risk" with the optimistic determination of our founders: Liberty is at stake. We are at risk. But the science and technology loved by Benjamin Frankin, and the world of industry he also helped found and loved, offer unprecedented reward if we can follow the golden rule and bring rational full employment and full financing to finish a war and begin a peace of which every nation and person on earth can be proud.
Yes it's the American Way that all the world applauds when its peoples fully appreciate the best of our past and the whole of our future -- if, in that future, we all are united to do the right thing.
John Gelles
http://unity-now.wikispaces.com
http://www.tiea.us
Human rights and how to pay for them are key to a livable world.
under "divine providence?" that means that all who sign your petition must be God fearing Christians? Right there you have lost me. Gods start wars when they are brought into the governments of our nations.
Trying to force Americans to accept America as a Christian nation will kill it! I believe Bush has started this movement to weaken American values.
We are not all Christians and many are declared Atheists. We deserve our freedoms too. I may be the most patriotic person on this blog but I do not believe America was ever based on the Bible.
To the Atheists who want to impose their religion on the rest of us by expunging "divine Providence" from the Declaration of Independence, I'm afraid you're about 230 years too late.
If you were to actually read the petition, you would notice that it does not mention divine providence. Therefore, as an atheist, you can sign without reservation.
Mr. Strock, I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment. As a member of the military I am incensed when I read about our elected officials who manipulate the lives of our nation's finest in a game of political chess with no regard for the families of, or the members themselves who honorably do our nation's bidding in foreign lands. To hear that some politicians or activists are unwilling to "risk" their political affiliations to end the polorization of our government is unacceptable.
Indeed, toward what ends did our forebears pledge their lives, fortunes and sacred honor? They risked all they had and all they were to free themselves from the arbitrary power of rule by "divine right" over their earthly affairs.
In so doing, they created the longest lasting, most stable form of representative democracy the world has yet known.
Aside from this itself, what were their ends? Was it to insure that all people enjoyed the same "inalienable" rights? No, because not every person was made free and not every person could vote.
What concept kept some people enslaved and denied others, even citizens, the right to vote?
We have made progress since those times and all people have been made free and all citizens now have the right to vote.
But in so doing, we had to move beyond the concept of private property rights that held us back at the outset. We had to recognize that some people had pushed their concept of private property rights too far and the public interest demanded reforms. Those reforms led to a balance between the rights of capital and the rights of labor, to a balance between the necessary freedom of the marketplace and the necessary degree of oversight by the appropriate level of government to regulate the excesses of the marketplace.
We have to recognize that the direction in which we have turned over the last almost 3 decades now needs to be changed. We've gone too far in trying to curb the excesses of government social engineering. We've also failed to make good on providing a good alternative to failed efforts at government entitlement programs intended, if not designed and executed, to provide citizens adequate health care and other, essential services.
Instead, we have returned to a 19th century model of laissez faire economics -- how many conservative economists does it take to change a light bulb? None, since if you ensure government doesn't regulate the matter, the invisible hand will make it change on its own.
I have heard it said we've already done all that which TR's progressive Bullmoose agenda called for -- and to an extent, that's right. Only, since the early 1980s, since Reagan, in fact, we've been steadily UNDOING all that.
As a result, we have allowed the corporate control of government and the media to blind us to the looting of our country by special interests, primarily through the Defense budget.
Wake up America and learn how to count your own money once again.
No, I say the former balance we did strike between capital and labor, between laissez faire economics and the public interest -- all that has been overturned by laissez faire corporatists from Reagan to Bush and we are going back to a 19th century model, pre -TR.
This is no mere negative criticism and certainly no criticism of Unity08, merely a call for reform to put back into play a better balance, such as we had in the post war era up to the Reagan "revolution." That was a far better model of balance than what we have now.
What we have now is Warren G. Harding redux - with interested parties working within Congress and the Executive Branch, and the judiciary, to distribute what belongs to all of us to just a privileged, highly wealthy few.
And the reason this is happening is not merely the fault of Republicans -- though they happen to be the ones happily looting and benefiting the most right now -- no, it is quite simply a fact that both parties are captives of special interests - our Federal government is now designed to operate and almost our whole budget is devoted, all our tax dollars are collected and spent, primarily to benefit private special interests while our troops go without body or vehicle armor, helmets or even $20 tourniquets with which to go into combat.
We spend more on "national defense" than the entire world combined - but virtually all of the bloated Defense budget is pork to feed the special interest pigs that are eating our lunch. We are building bridges to nowhere everywhere.
I'm not calling for the specifics of the past. Of course, we should not adopt the specifics of TR's progressive agenda from 1912.
TR's ideas led to social security, medicare, workmen's compensation, child labor laws, and anti-trust enforcement. He wanted complete regulation of our banking system, of corporate finance and corporate behavior.
Of all those things, strong, aggressive enforcement of anti-trust laws to rein in anti-competitive behavior -- such as that engaged in by Wal-Mart -- should once more become a top priority of government.
Had he won in 1912 I feel confident TR may well have avoided the Great Depression, for Teddy anticipated it quite clearly in his speech called The New Nationalism and perhaps would have forced enactment of just the sort of system that only came into being afterwards to prevent what Teddy said was the unacceptable cycle of American financial panics and depressions caused by laissez faire economics regarding monetary policy.
The specific line items in TR's program are not the point here; do not let the trees blind us and obscure the forest. For example, TR wanted to build a battleship a year, which made sense back then. While it was battleship power that won the Spanish American war, that turned the German Kaiser away from invading Venezuela in 1902, battleships reached the apex of their power at the Battle of Jutland in WW I.
Of course we don't want to build even one battleship -- they were obsolete after air power arose to make them too vulnerable, well before their nadir at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 -- which, together with the stunning American victory at Midway, certainly proved the point.
Yes, the specifics of TR's National Progressive Party's platform were indeed written for a very different world, but the principles that made it progressive are just as applicable today.
I wait to commit to Unity08 until I see it stand for what needs to be done to save our country from the scoundrels -- and worse -- who run it now:
Special interests are not entitled to a single seat in congress, nor a seat on the bench, nor to sit in the White House in secret meetings and dictate to us the price of gasoline.
Corporations are to serve the public interest or their veils should be pierced much more easily and the individuals responsible for their actions must be held personally and financially accountable.
I, for one, am tired of this clever legal device called the Corporation, designed for private, individual profit without individual responsibility.
Government must be effective, not bloated by phony programs designed to feed private contractors and drain the budget solely for private gain.
There must be effective enforcement of all our laws - and independent regulatory agencies of government must not lack for the resources to do an adequate job of it.
Look at the principles, not the line item specifics of the New Nationallism -- what was TR trying to accomplish?
Read The New Nationalism - a speech where all these principles are laid out clear as day.
Here is where to find the text of TR's New Nationalism:
http://usinfo.state.gov/...
Then let's talk about what our line items would be, what this movement might stand for, given those principles.
Some points from that speech and what I think it says to us today, starting with the basic one, property rights:
"We are face to face with new conceptions of the relations of property to human welfare, chiefly because certain advocates of the rights of property as against the rights of men have been pushing their claims too far. The man who wrongly holds that every human right is secondary to his profit must now give way to the advocate of human welfare, who rightly maintains that every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it."
------- We need to throw the Abramoff-owned Congressmen out and overturn the system that allows people like that to operate.
"In every wise struggle for human betterment one of the main objects, and often the only object, has been to achieve in large measure equality of opportunity. In the struggle for this great end, nations rise from barbarism to civilization, and through it people press forward from one stage of enlightenment to the next. One of the chief factors in progress is the destruction of special privilege. The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows. "
-------- What about the increasingly concentrated corporate ownership of the broadcast and print media? Is that in the public interest?
Why do we permit cable companies to charge subscribers money they pay to stations like Fox News, whether subscribers watch those channels or not, whether subscribers want those channels in their "packages" or not? Is this in the public interest?
"At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of free men to gain and hold the right of self government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will. At every stage, and under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth."
------ Do we not have enough examples of corrupt corporate greed sucking up federal budget dollars at the expense of the public interest? Why should we allow private contractors to perform inherently governmental duties? We can't afford entitlement programs but we can afford corporate welfare?
"this means that our government, national and state, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics. That is one of our tasks today. Every special interest is entitled to justice full, fair, and complete,... For every special interest is entitled to justice, but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation in any public office. The Constitution guarantees protection to property, and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation."
------- Much follows from this.. do we know what? Think on that.
----- Do we not agree that something like ENRON, which cost California alone billions of dollars in unnecessary energy costs, should never have happened?
---- It isn't enough to send Kenny Boy Lay to jail -- that doesn't feed the bulldog.
***** Let's get back what they stole.
Teddy thought we eventually will pay a terrible price for our failure to strike a good balance between have and have nots. The terrorism in the world today is an example, even while it is I believe more unreasonable than not to say it is our own fault. Yet the lack of that balance in many parts of the world where our influence rightly or wrongly is seen as the main cause has led to instability, revolutionary zeal, and attacks. What do we expect when we consume so much of the world's resources while so many do without; when we support so many foreign tyrants?
TR said something far sighted that also made me think about those places and those conditions in the world that breed these incomprehensibly fanatical suicide bombers and so-called "insurgents" -- both because it speaks to how perhaps our behavior has helped bring those people forth to an extent and also to how careful we need to be in choosing people here at home to fix what's broken.
We must be careful, for to continue as we are, we could be planting the seeds of yet another era like that in which I grew up where American cities had what we then called Ghettos and our cities erupted in riots, flames and violence every summer:
"If the reactionary man, who thinks of nothing but the rights of property, could have his way, he would bring about a revolution; and one of my chief fears in connection with progress comes because I do not want to see our people, for lack of proper leadership, compelled to follow men whose intentions are excellent, but whose eyes are a little too wild to make it really safe to trust them. "
Look at what Yeats said, for if things truly fly apart and the center cannot hold, "Who knows what rough beast" will "slouch toward Bethlehem to be born?" What kind of messianic leader or leaders will come from abroad or our own country to lead waves of unrest, violence and terror as the only response to the crushing burden of disenfranchisement, poverty and ignorance that conservative, laissez faire, corrupt corporatism will bring us? What kind of proto-fascist, repressive state totalitarianism will be forced on us to deal with such an actual or even illusory eventuality?
It starts with education, of course, and we're failing.
Here's what TR said about education in that speech:
"we need in our common schools not merely education in book learning, but also practical training for daily life and work"
But instead, today we let credit card companies send solicitations to kids in school who have no income.
We let banks teach our kids how to get into so much consumer debt they can never get out from under.
We do not teach kids how to save for their own retirement rather than borrow money to buy cheap consumer electronics made in China.
We teach everything except what you need to know about being a good citizen, working to make strong communities, staying out of debt, owning a car, a home, insurance, running a household, how to be a good parent, a responsible adult citizen.
And then we pay the price for all this and have to clean up the mess made by folks who act like they can't find their rear end with either hand.
No child left behind? They are all being left behind.
Wake up America, please, before it is too late.
Show me, Unity08, that you have ideas to fix what's wrong -- that you even see the forest for the trees.
.
I am not being contrary for its own sake. Seneca's too long advice kills any chance of it's being practical -- even of being understood.
We need a fulcrum placed where we can move the world. The place is spending by government -- tax-free to the citizen -- that will (a) solve problems one by one with details to be developed at the time and place of the solution and (b) employ every person looking for work (and at a fair wage).
See my site
See my unity-now invitation to you to collaborate on Seneca's idea of discussion to do what needs to be done
John Gelles
Human rights and how to pay for them are key to a livable world.
too long? fair enough. Here are the Cliff notes:
------ Do we not have enough examples of corrupt corporate greed sucking up federal budget dollars at the expense of the public interest?
------- We need to throw the Abramoff-owned Congressmen out and overturn the system that allows people like that to operate.
------- What about the increasingly concentrated corporate ownership of the broadcast and print media? Is that in the public interest?
----- Do we not agree that something like ENRON, which cost California alone billions of dollars in unnecessary energy costs, should never have happened?
---- It isn't enough to send Kenny Boy Lay to jail -- that doesn't feed the bulldog.
***** Let's get back what he and others like him have stolen.
Help drive a stake through the heart of the corporate vampires at our throats.
.
Seneca you old dog,
You say corporate governance is out of whack? Sure it is.
You say the answer is? What?
Corporate charters are issued by states and the federal gov't. Forget anything so complicated. Think practically.
Corporations must obey the law. The BIG law that gets 'em is the TAX law.
Reform taxes to throw ALL taxes out -- so that corporations won't buy the Congress to buy the tax law!!
Not practical? OK. Leave in and create ONLY INFLATION- PREVENTION TAXES.
These can be identified by experts: there would be not taxes on anything but PURCHASE or SALE of necessities in short supply to discourage same and prevent windfall profits from trying to guage the public.
Meanwhile we would subsidize production of things missing that can cause us grief: schools like the Gates foundation is subsidizing; non-polluting fuel and energy; health care for all children too young to work (like under 21); heavy industry that's gone off-shore and alone can sustain our future defense; a job or grubstake loan for anyone looking for work (democracy begins with an income or a loan to be in business -- not just words); perfection of the internet (or its successor) to reach every person for free with no spam or viruses and with training courses to encourage self-instruction and voluntary apprenticeship in every calling needed for protection of the nation and prosperity for the individual; reform of political economy to put our best minds on problem solving for our worst conditions.
In other words we need a strategy for victory over our obvious enemies and over our own neglect of our nation and ourselves.
It's WWII time again -- in spades -- and we are fiddling while Rome burns.
John Gelles
http://unity-now.wikispaces.com
http://www.tiea.us
Human rights and how to pay for them are key to a livable world.
LIFTING PEOPLE UP/ SHARING THE WEALTH
By Kirk Polizzi
Since the policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Democrats have lifted Americans up the economic ladder. These policies by different Democratic administrations, some liberal, and others moderate to centrist, all created the middle class that the United States has had now for the last seventy years. Never before in America’s history has the middle class and the poor been under such siege by a one sided, narrow minded Republican administration.
Even during the Reagan years, with that first round of “trickle down”, their policies were not as clear-cut as this crowd in the White House. The Republicans in the White House, and their conservative wealthy leaning allies in the Congress, have shifted more wealth, more rapidly, in the wrong direction, then any other period in American history. Unlike the economic expansion of the 1960’s, or the one that followed during the 1990’s, these policies, shifted the wealth of the country from the bottom up, and spread the economic wealth more evenly and more fairly.
I hear it said often that the Democrats play the “class warfare” card. Not true. The conservative Republicans by their own policies that they have put into motion have created this class warfare. All of this can and must be reversed. Just recently, the president signed into law a $70 billion tax cut extension. Once again, it was obvious whom this benefited: the wealthiest people in America. The question arises again; what about the rest of us?
It is just policies like that these last five years that has caused this huge gap between those who have and those who have not. Today, the American families median income is just above $40,000 a year. That last tax cut that Bush and the Republicans just extended put $42,000 in the pockets of people making $1 million a year. There’s fairness for you. This Republican conservative economic policy has been going on now for five years, and heading into its sixth year. Worse then all these numbers is the fact that Bush and his people are proud of what they have done. It’s amazing, and it’s despicable that they are getting away with it. The gap between the wealthiest in our society and those who have little or nothing, the poor, will continue to widen as long as Bush sits in the White House, and his Republican cronies run the Congress. Independents, Democrats with a centrist philosophy, will put forward a new economic program, one that is fair and spreads our nation’s wealth from the bottom, up, the right way.
Earlier I proposed doing away with the minimum wage and replacing it with a living wage. If this is done, poverty will fall. For people who are poor just want to move up the economic ladder like the economy is supposed to function. Welfare should always be a last resort, and no aid programs should ever give people more, then any job would give them. These people cannot move up the economic ladder as long as the conservative Republican philosophy is running the nation’s economy.
Another criteria to really see if the economy in the United States is moving in a positive direction is to see how many elderly Americans are still working, because they have to work, not because they want to, just to be doing something. They are still working because they find it more difficult to make ends meet. Unfortunately today, there are millions of seniors ages 65-75 still working. That is not a sign of a good economy.
Another way to take the pulse of the U.S. economy is not by how many jobs have been created, period, but rather what those jobs are paying the American worker. Unfortunately, here too, the news is not good. The jobs being created in this so-called economic expansion are not good paying jobs. Many Americans are settling for much less, just to have a job at all. Those once $18 and $16 an hour jobs have been lost overseas, or replaced with a $9 and $8 an hour job. That is the best they can do in this Republican job market.
America can do better for all of our job seekers and all of our seniors. We once made a promise to our senior citizens that they would live in “golden years”, retired, happy and content. Instead, we are breaking that promise, as many live on the edge of poverty itself; working for $6 an hour, just to stay afloat. That is not a good sign for our economy.
There is still in the richest nation on Earth, poverty in America, and homelessness as well. Nothing can be more undignified then poverty or homelessness, but it is out there. No American who has any pride at all, or is honest, would wish to be homeless or poor. The conservative Republicans try to portray that very falsehood; that somehow people who are homeless want to be, that they are drug addicts, alcoholics, or just plain lazy, and that they choose that path, that way of life. Some do, but are they the majority? I don’t think so. Can the conservative Republicans actually claim that some in America would rather be struggling and poor, then to be making money and making ends meet? The facts are that all people, working people, all they want is a living wage when they work, that is all. We Independents, and Democrats need to lead the way and offer them just that.
Kirk Polizzi
Chillicothe, IL
Kirk,
You use limited figures and are certainly not very centrist bi-partisan.
How about the massive expansion of home ownership, BUSINESS ownership, college degrees, stock ownership amongh previously discriminated groups or whatever the correct nomenclature is. Much more progress has been made than since the first days of affirmative action.
Note the strong support in the Congressional Black Caucus FOR the permanent repeal of the Death Tax. This is because we are moving up the ladder and its not from the war on poverty.
Damn, if the war on poverty was so great New Orleans would have been one uppper class city having been run as a welfare state both city and state for so long.
THE SINGLE BEST ONE to ensure the potential for upward mobility for those willing to work for it is not guaranteeing them 'a living wage' for the least skilled jobs but opening up educational opportunites, community colleges, GED programs, GI Bill, 4-year colleges.
Response to:LIFTING PEOPLE UP/ SHARING THE WEALTH
Kirk Polizzi on July 16, 2024 - 8:34am
Let's examine these democratic and republican administrations.
FDR began his administration in a recession and after 13 years we ended in a recession - enveloping a depression for 9 years.
LBJ took a surplus social security trust and put it on budget .. and here we are now. His guns and butter programs set us on a debt trail of $5 trillion dollars and an accelerated decline in social values that we are still trying to thread out of.
JEC (Carter). Where do i begin? Stagflagation, 21% prime interest rates? Iran? I sufices to say that he was defeated by the largest margin in election history. The people were disgusted with his incompency and his economics.
Reagan initiated policies that sent the economy on a 14 year continuous incline of economic prosperity. The largest and longest in the last century.
Bush 43 inherited the dot.com bust, a corrupt corporate structure, a terrorist attack. His policies starting in 2024 restored health to the markets and to the american people. The lowest interest rates in 60 years, the lowest unemployment in 40 years, the most homes built and owned by ordinary low wage americans ever. Bush can be critcizied for many faults, but economics is not one of them.
You say "Just recently, the president signed into law a $70 billion tax cut extension. Once again, it was obvious whom this benefited: the wealthiest people in America.
Perhaps i'm a bit slow, but its not obvious to me. Would you explain who it benefited?
Well actually everyone benefitted but "Anon" would argue we 'gave' the rich something by taking less from them.
However the tax cuts were a boon to the economy and actually INCREASED net taxes from the rich increased by a LOT.
Heck we've expanded the income limits of those who don't pay anything or get a credit ( a dangerous practice in a democracy when you can vote for expanded benefits but it doesn't appear to cost you anything).
Take a guess what percentage of federal income tax the top 25% of earners pay? I have to go to the irs.gov site to look it up but think about it for a while.
The tax cuts helped us all!
Heck think of this too when the left talks about taxes being regressive when you take 1% from everyone because the 1% hurts the little guy more shouldn't it work the other way too? No they like having the cake and eating it too. HYPOCRITES!
This message is to all my economic friends on every side, left, center and right. First and foremost, never did I say that all Democrats regined over great economic times, never did I say that. I did say that their over all economic philosophy is to lift people up the economic ladder, not to try and expand the economy from the top down.
I have also in my economic writings here been very consistent, that numbers that come from Washington are just that.... numbers.
The real economy is the one that the American people are living day after day. It means paying high gas prices, high costs at the grocery store,(at a time when wages are standing still or falling) these are real people, they are not numbers.
I said it once, and I will say it again and again, Wall Street is doing fine, Main Street is not.
This Republican economic philosophy is not a fair one, never has been. The liberal economic theories are terrible too. They do not advocate any responsibility from the people, just more government hand outs. Nothing in my economic theories advocates any liberal left wing failed economic or social policies, in fact, all I am advocating is for the working class in America to make a living wage.
Everything is higher, costs continue to climb, and just to follow the governments statistics each month on the whole is not digging to see the real economic picture.
Go to Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, or places here in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, or all places everywhere, and ask the American people, the people who go to the small coffee places, the home town cafe's, or to the local pubs, where working men and women stop off for a beer... ask them if they are doing better today, then they did in the 90's, I can tell you they are not.
Every American has a duty to see that every person who lives in the United States of America has a chance, a fair chance, for the American dream. They have a stake to see people who are willing to work, play by the rules, and pay taxes, climb the economic ladder and have the same opportunity as all the rest. All of those people who are struggling also have a duty to show personal responsibility, and do their own part. Government should not support any American, but government should not ignore any American who is not on this economic train. For what good is any economic policy unless all of us benefit?
Kirk Polizzi
Chillicothe, IL
Kirk,
I am from a corn and soybean country in Illinois and we're doing just fine on mainstreet. You must drink the same cool aid as John Edwards.
There's plenty of good jobs, most of my brothers and sisters have at least bachelors degrees (first generation in our family to have any degree). I got my first home, good mortgage rate and have EARNED promotions at my work during this time.
Sure I know about the poor I volunteer at a shelter, but folks were there in the 90's too.
leftist talk the game of raising people up. Classic Republicanism produces opportunity to earn it! Sure I like some progressive stuff my grandparents generation was helped by some of the the temporary most progressive stuff (like WPA) so I REALLY want the government to provide some social programs as we can afford it but TO DO IT SMART , enterprise zones public-private partnerships, heck if faith based initiatives (sure helped during Katrina). But these are things we choose to do as a wealthy nation, not some RIGHT.
TALK HIGH GAS PRICES, sure leftist eco nuts blocked refinery capacity about as much to blame for high prices than the crude oil. Also blocking much safer nuke power that ties in, blocking intelligent development of ethonal for whacko green politics.
Classic Republican philosophy is about fairness and always has been which is why it is popular in middle america and with average folks. Just some leftist think fair means equal outcomes or using the coercive power of the state to redistribute other folks stuff. FAIR is opportunity, work you got a chance not a guarantee of better. In my extended family some are doing well others really not some bad luck some just not being too ambitous but even then they have their pride and are doing ok for what they want.
Kirk get with it!
I was actually interested in your views until I got to this point:
"TALK HIGH GAS PRICES, sure leftist eco nuts blocked refinery capacity about as much to blame for high prices than the crude oil. Also blocking much safer nuke power that ties in, blocking intelligent development of ethonal for whacko green politics."
"eco nuts" and "whacko green politics"
There is a bigger picture than your pocketbook. You said something about "do it smart" and I agree. I'm glad that we have someone watching out for the environment, even if it costs me more and lessons my immediate gratification.
Stop using terms like "whacko" and "nuts" when talking about Americans who care so deeply about the environment - the whole environment not just the dirt under your feet.
These who call themselves Republicans, who live a life of luxury off of the blood and tears of international slavery of starving women and children abroad... you may not stand with me....
My dearest Seneca... your dream (my dream) (our dream) is now withing grasp and has been for some time but our leaders wish to not share it with the people because it will eliminate all of the fraud and abuse so much of the American people depend on for income... for it is the police and lawyer that feeds off of crime, the politician who profits from gridlock, and the middleman and those that hold such stocks that own millions of international slaves... yes we are ourselves are both the problem and the solution ... thanks to this technology that has been kept from man for profit to stop criminals, eliminate jury trials, stop the police state, saving trillions and protection our nation from terrorism... all ingored by profit, for take a look at yourself as ask what part of the beast do I feed off of.... www.appyp.com/fix_main.html
OK Anon, will ask your indulgence. A bit pissed off before my morning coffee. Greens are Ok but there are some on the extrem and we could do it smart build refinery capacity etc and still preserve envronment.
Anyhow your points are good.
Earn, did your surgery in Texas involve a lot of nuero-surgery?
What the heck are you doing in a movement that has a goal of electing a Republican as part of the ticket if you think they are 'slave owners'. Go read some history on which party swayed the balance on slavery and then again on the Civil Rights Act!
I've worked farm labor at farm minimum wage which ain't much but I don't work for you !