Not these days. Not when they're paying for Bush-era priorities. I've been watching since Nixon as elites, corporate welfare queens and their acolytes in the executive and legislatives branches alter the tax code to reward the rich simply for being rich and penalize the rest of us for being poor or middle class.
But never, even during the shameful reign of Raygun, have I witnessed federal taxes being used to commit so many atrocities -- here and abroad -- screw up more peoples' lives so thoroughly, and blatantly stuff the pockets of the rich elites and corporate ruling classes right out in the open, and dare anybody to object.
I'm pissed off at the fact that an estimated 54 percent of federal taxes today goes directly or indirectly to the pentagon, along with various "supplemental appropriations" congress rewards Bush with from time to time just because he's so downright charming.
Untold billions more disappear each year into the black budgets of 16 -- count 'em: 16 -- separate spook agencies, many of which used to work exclusively outside US borders but, over the past seven years, have seen their missions change and are now spying on you and me -- and using our money to do it.
Almost as bad,
20.5 percent -- that's the percentage applied to pay just the interest on the massive debt load various republican administrations have inflicted on us as a result of their obsession with plundering the country and transferring the loot to the rich.
Or, as the
Concord Coalition puts it:
Spending for interest on the debt in fiscal year 2007 ($238 billion) equaled 20.5% of all individual income tax revenue and more than the net outlays for international affairs ($28.5 billion), general science, space and technology ($21.0 billion), agriculture ($19.6 billion), transportation ($73.0 billion), and education, training, employment and social services ($89.7 billion) combined.
Thanks, assholes. A little money for that other stuff would have been nice.
Every single federal program I support has either had its budget slashed to the point where it can barely function, has already been starved out of existence or, like single-payer health care, was never even born in the first place. But the missile defense shield is very much in business -- even though it's an unworkable and incredibly expensive faux defense program that exists exclusively to funnel yours and my tax money into the pockets of the usual swineherds who run or invest in DoD contractors.
Infrastructure, public education, public health, the social safety net -- dead or dying, in large part because the rich have opted out of their responsibilities as taxpaying citizens, stopped any pretense of creating US jobs in favor of stuffing their numbered accounts and buying massive properties all over the world, took the jobs they used to create and sent them off to low-wage countries with educated populations, never to return.
And nothing useful has replaced any of this. Instead of pointing fingers at the real problem, the elites propose that we all direct our hostility toward and place the blame on some target group for which they happily supply the bulls-eye -- "illegal" immigrants being the whipping boys du jour -- which absolves them of any blame for the situation.
And because most of us these days seem to be quasi-literate, undereducated, infinitely malleable, simplistic idiots who are easily conned into doing the elites' PR work for them, they've been incredibly successful at avoiding the Place Concorde, guillotine, Madame DeFarge and her knitting needles.
So the upward transfer of societal wealth from the pockets of "the people" to the offshore accounts of the ruling class continues apace. And drastically dropping the marginal rates to favor the rich has, in fact, gone a long way toward solidifying an already fairly rigid American caste system. Because that revenue is irreplaceable -- particularly under the current borrow, spend and print, war and conquest regime -- the infrastructure is also coming apart at the seams. It's gotten so bad that traveling around the US now recreates the experience of Third World living, without even having to leave the country.
The marginal tax rate has dropped from 91 percent, when Kennedy took office in 1961, to the current 35 percent for the top bracket. At least those people allegedly work for their money. Capital gains tax rates are truly disgusting and demonstrate to all America's national priorities.
Capital gains -- which is to say, return on investments made while performing "hurd wurk" like a few dips in the pool, browsing the Intertubes for free porn videos, topping off that cold Margarita, and making a few calls to a broker-slave, a few clicks on eTrade and leaving that one really important message for the outcall masseuse service... taxes on this exhausting, difficult, physically demanding "wurk" are taxed at rates that cap at 15 percent.
So, according to that model, who's more important in America: teachers and janitors and truckers and low-level civil servants? Or a bunch of lard-assed parasites who live off profits generated by the non-rich, pay a bare minimum for the governmental services they suck up and the publicly financed infrastructure they use every hour of every day, and wouldn't know an honest day's work if it dressed up like a giant poodle and humped their leg in broad daylight at an outdoor table for one.
I say they can all take the proverbial flying fuck at the moon. If we can't round them up and ship them all to Gitmo, at least raise the goddamn marginal earned income rates and double the capital gains top rate.
And while we're at it, instant execution for any rich bastard caught whining about "the death tax." The fewer silver-spoon, insulated, filthy rich little preppy brats flush with their own innate wonderfulness and secure in their sense of entitlement running around screwing up the landscape, the better.
I'll feel good about federal taxes the very minute they start paying for policies and programs that help the poor, as well as people of average means. It seems that one way to fund that stuff is by removing huge wads of cash from the pockets of the freeloading bastards who've managed to acquire nearly all the country's wealth without doing a damn thing to deserve it. And they still want more because, for the obscenely rich, there's no such thing as enough.
But that's just my opinion, and I've been fighting the class war in various ways for more than 40 years. My forehead's getting a little dinged up from bashing it against the wall for decades. But those Neanderthal brow ridges do help absorb the shock.
wp
Edited to correct formatting screwups
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