April 16, 2007

IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


GOOD CASE FOR PROGRESSIVE TAXATION

Right-wingers moan a lot about taxes and about "big government." What irks them is any kind of social program that aids people at the bottom of the economic ladder. You're "punishing the achievers" by taxing them more. As this article points out, though, the very rich are the people who benefit most from the system. They get far more from government services than the rest of us do and they should pay accordingly. This article by George Lakoff and Bruce Budner is at www.commondreams.org:

An important point often lost in this debate is an appreciation that the common wealth, which our taxes create and sustain, empowers the wealthy in myriad ways to create their wealth. We call this compound empowerment - the compounded use of the common wealth by corporations, their investors, and other wealthy individuals.

Consider Bill Gates. He started Microsoft as a college dropout and has become the world’s richest person. Though he has undoubtedly benefited from his unusual intelligence and business acumen, he could not have created or sustained his personal wealth without the common wealth. The legal system protected Microsoft’s intellectual property and contracts. The tax-supported financial infrastructure enabled him to access capital markets and trade his stock in a market in which investors have confidence. He built his company with many employees educated in public schools and universities. Tax-funded research helped develop computer science and the internet. Trade laws negotiated and enforced by the government protect his ability to sell his products abroad. These are but a few of the ways in which Mr. Gates’ accumulation of wealth was empowered by the common wealth and by taxation.

As Warren Buffet famously observed, he likely couldn’t have achieved his financial success had he been born in Bangladesh instead of the United States, because Bangladesh had no banking system and no stock market.

Ordinary people just drive on the highways; corporations send fleets of trucks. Ordinary people may get a bank loan for their mortgage; corporations borrow money to buy whole companies. Ordinary people rarely use the courts; most of the courts are used for corporate law and contract disputes. Corporations and their investors - those who have accumulated enough money beyond basic needs so they can invest - make much more use, compound use, of the empowering infrastructure provided by everybody’s tax money.

FRUITS OF THE NRA

Our culture is embraced by violence. We've had leaders assassinated, we have a horrendous number of murders, and now we have another mass shooting at Virginia Tech. This follows eight years after the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado. Our media glamorize violence. "Make my day," was even used jokingly by Ronald Reagan a few years ago, doing his best to sound like Dirty Harry. I don't see how banning assault weapons or putting reasonable regulations on gun ownership is an encroachment on anyone's freedom. This editorial by Katrina Vanden Heuvel is at www.thenation.com:

Perhaps Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, put it best in issuing this statement today: "Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the Virginia Tech University community, and to the families of the victims of what appears to be one of the worst mass shootings in American history... Eight years ago this week, the young people in Littleton, Colorado suffered a horrible attack at Columbine High School, and almost exactly six months ago, five young people were killed at an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania. Since these killings, we've done nothing as a country to end gun violence in our schools and communities. If anything, we've made it easier to access powerful weapons... We have now seen another horrible tragedy that will never be forgotten. It is long overdue for us to take some common-sense actions to prevent tragedies like this from continuing to occur."