And Now, A Few Words About Taxes

Living in Phoenix, as I do, my daily newspaper is the, sigh, Arizona Republic, which, honestly, we subscribe to mostly for the obituaries. Morbid, I know.

I also, being somewhat masochistic, I guess, read the letters to the editor.

Mostly these are word for word rehashes of whatever garbage the writer heard most recently on Fox News. You can almost hear the spittle flying. It is sad. But it is true.

The other day, though, the Republic printed one from a fellow from Sun City, one of the myriad of bland, beige, boring, retirement camps--uh--I mean adult communities--which ring Phoenix like some breed of suffocating albino snake.

This guy was upset that the crazy socialists would tax away all the rich people. They would be forced to flee America if we tried to raise their taxes. And then where would we be without our rich people? He really meant it, too! He wasn't specific about where all those rich people would go. Couldn't be western Europe. Their taxes are higher than ours. Hmmm. Somalia? Venezuela? Russia?

Being a Sun City-ite, this guy must be of a certain age. Surely he remembers, fondly I'd guess, the 1950's. You know, that Trumpian paradise where blacks, browns, gays, women and students kept their mouths shut. Yeah. That place. The place that conservatives hunger to go back to with a passion that makes one blush. Blush, and then vomit.

Anyway, the top marginal tax rate, the rate the richest Americans theoretically pay,  in the 1950's, the Eisenhower years, was 91 or 92%. That's right.

How about the Kennedy years? Same rate.

LBJ? Took a deep plunge to 75%.

Under I Am Not A Crook it was still at 70%. Yeah, that raving socialist Richard M. Nixon was president of a country with a 70% top marginal rate!

The top marginal rate for 2019 is 37%. You could double it, and still be below LBJ's rate, let alone JFK and Eisenhower's.

If things were so much better back then...maybe we should go back to those rates, just for nostalgia's sake. Just to make some people happy again...

If You Have To Talk To A Republican...

I mean if it's absolutely, positively, unavoidable, like if you're related to them or something, ask them the following questions:

What would Lincoln think about voter suppression? Or political campaigns based entirely on hatred and fear?

What would Teddy Roosevelt think about "corporate personhood" and "corporate religious beliefs"? Or "too big to fail"?

What would Eisenhower think about starting a war based on lies? And then cutting taxes in war time?

What would Nixon think about getting rid of the EPA? Or basing your economic policies on the writings of a quack philosopher/novelist?

What would any of them think about putting the Second Amendment above and before all the others?

Ask them these questions and then brace yourself for an avalanche of dissembling bullshit...

A Seaside Meditation

Sitting with a mug of something warm and tasty, watching the Pacific, half listening to the squads of Marines as they run along the sand shouting the cadences of whatever the current version of "this is my rifle, this is my gun" is, and wondering where they'll all be in a year's time. It's anyone's guess, because the possibilities are almost endless...

The US has over 1000 overseas military bases in more than 40 countries. (I'd be willing to bet that many of our fellow citizens can't name 40 countries, but that will have to be a topic for a future post.) And those are just the bases the Defense Department officially acknowledges. Who knows how many "off the books" operations there are?

More than 50 years after Eisenhower warned us of the dangers of the Military-Industrial Complex here we are, playing at being the Roman Empire, going broke while trying to enforce a Pax Americana on the world. (By the way, wasn't it nice of Ike to alert us as he was leaving office, after spending 8 years aiding and abetting the creation of the complex? Kind of like Cheney saying "Oh, by the way, it's probably not a good idea to let the oil companies dictate your energy policy. Bye bye now!")

So we can't possibly afford universal health care, or to rebuild our infrastructure, or provide good schools for every child and affordable colleges for those who desire them, or to change over to sustainable energy, or to keep our air, water and food clean and safe, or any of a thousand other valuable things, but we can afford to continue to arm ourselves to the teeth and deploy wherever and whenever. Right?

Do the American people really face such constant and pervasive threats, or is there something else going on?

Here's a quote from many years ago. It came from a highly decorated Marine general. Sadly, it still rings true today:

"I spent 33 years and 4 months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class thug for Big Business, Wall Street, and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico...safe for American oil interests. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the...bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of...Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."