A View from Left Field- Raise My Taxes Please, I Want to Help

What’s so pornographic about paying your fair share of taxes to the respective federal, state and local governments, especially since they give you something back in return?  Would you prefer to build your own roads or have the government do it?  Are you sorry you sent you kids to public school, or do you wish you had home schooled them instead?  How about the uplift and support that Social
Security and Medi-care gives our seniors?  Or should we just follow the mean spirited ways of rugged individualism and have everyone fend for him or her self?

Look backward because that’s the direction the Republicans and their recently excreted after birth, The Tea Party, are trying to take us.  Taxes have and continue to provide a greater life for the greatest number.  That’s why they are so resented.  The financial power brokers want more dollars funneled to them and less to working America.  The extreme wealthy don’t need the government programs that act as safety nets, but many of us do.  Nothing is perfect.  If there’s waste and fraud, let’s clean it up, but don’t destroy the government and its meaningful social programs in the process.

One of the answers to our economic dilemma is to reinstate a more equitable progressive tax base.  The government is hemorrhaging red because Republicans would rather dole out the dollars to their wealthy friends and corporate donors for investments in lofty schemes and derivatives, than to the government to fund programs that help the masses.   The boy king even fought two wars while instituting massive tax cuts.  Hello, is anyone home?  And you wonder why the government is running out of money?  Also, the world’s policeman need not be the United States, but the United Nations.  Each country should shoulder its share of the financial responsibility to support the “cops on the beat” to maintain international tranquility.

If we’re looking for a place to cut spending, let’s start by reducing the gravy train that America’s defense industry is riding.  Fighting terrorism demands much more brain power than fire power.  In the end, co-operation of the security forces between nations will drive the final stake in the hearts of those who seek to do us harm; not the costly missiles and armaments. We should shift some our military resources to improve education, better manage the world around us, and stimulate our work force to be the  most inventive, creative and technologically savvy our planet has to offer.

In these lean economic times does Exxon-Mobile need oil depletion allowances and tax breaks on top of 10-14 billion dollar quarterly profits.  Is too much ever enough?  This, while kids in this country go to school hungry and families work two and three jobs, if they can find them, to make ends meet.

While both major political parties should be held more accountable than they are, remember one thing.  The Republicans generally favor profit over people and the Democrats people over profit.  Case in point- the Republican dominated Supreme Court in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, declared that corporations are people.  Carry that one to its logical conclusion and see where money will trump all access to power, and put a greater divide between the ” haves and have nots”.

We need to get America moving again.  In 1982, what did Ronald Reagan, the most exalted conservative, do when he was fighting a recession and unemployment was approaching 10.5%?  He reluctantly raised taxes in 1982, 1983 and 1984 to generate dollars in order to propel the economy forward.  In this case, I guess government was the solution, not the problem, huh Ronnie?

A needless confrontation just ended between our divided houses of Congress and the President while our sluggish economic situation remains.  No matter how you slice it, money is needed to get the ball rolling.  As the dollars circulate less, the country spirals downward.  The poor spend it while the rich tend to hoard it.  Start by keeping jobs at home instead of exporting them abroad for greater profit.  Let the Bush II tax cuts finally expire for all income levels and let the government along with private industry join forces to put America back to work again.  I think the line is….one nation, indivisible.