...."Who's Paying for all this Freedom?"
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Thank you Darryl for your very insightful article today. It is indeed "the beginning of the end" of America if those of us who enjoy all of the benefits, comforts and security at home fail to make sacrifices which are at least equal in value to the young people who must go to do the fighting, risk their jobs, put the welfare of their families and their own lives on the line.
The evidence overwhelmingly shows that George Bush has shifted the cost of this war onto middle and lower class Americans. They are the ones who are making financial and economic sacrifices both in the present and far out into the future. Jobs lost overseas, wages and benefits being cut, unions and organized labor being busted, services being cut, Social Security being turned over for plunder, the list goes on and on and on.
As for upper class and the wealthiest in America, Bush provided a $1.5 trillion tax cut which represented an immediate windfall to the wealthiest Americans. He dressed up his tax cuts as benefiting the new ownership society. However, these are the same old American upper class being given more and more to own!
Bush took America to war under false claims and outright lies. This war now provides untold corporate profits and preferential treatment to huge corporations which benefit from the war waste and no-bid contracts.
The Social Security surplus has been all but spent on these extravagant tax cuts for the wealthy and huge federal deficit spending. The Federal Government has simply placed IOUs into the Social Security trust fund to the tune of $2.5 trillion and this number grows daily. Under any other accounting practice, including traditional public accounting this type of bookkeeping is totally illegal. But, the congress of the United States has gotten away with this deception and it seems will never be open to criminal prosecution, because they right their own regulatory laws. The federal treasury should only to able to use such financial instruments as IOUs to itself to pay down the tremendous federal debt which has exploded under the first Bush term and is now approaching $8 trillion. Instead this administration has used up the Social Security surplus to cover current federal deficit spending on wars and tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
The cost to our country in national treasure, human sacrifice and world prestige of this American imperialistic expansionist corporate war is far too great for Americans to just stand idly by and say or do nothing. The raiding and outright theft of the social welfare programs paid for by American’s working class throughout their working lives whether as part of America’s working force or by its small business owners must not be allowed to continue. We must act now! I would support any effort brought forth to impeach this president, his staff advisors, the republicans in congress and fanatical religious right who work in secret to transform our democracy into a pseudo-Christian Taliban, impeach all of them for egregious acts of treason. Then the American people could select responsible leaders to restore constitutional democratic government in America.
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http://www.darrylcramer.com/12312004.html