Monday, February 2, 2009

The Problem With Bail-Outs

It’s been nearly 30 years.  When are we going to realize that
Ronald Reagan’s misguided economic strategy, Supply-Side
Economics, a.k.a “trickle-down economics”, is a complete
failure. It’s inherently flawed and illogical, and our
country has been on the wrong path since its implementation.
The government actually takes money (in the form of taxes)
from the little people (ordinary citizens who make less than
a gazillion dollars a year) and gives it to the large
corporations and the super-rich (in the form of tax shelters
and incentives and subsidies and various other loopholes
which remain unavailable to ordinary citizens) and they claim
that some of it will trickle back down to the little people.
Those corporations and the super-rich are structured so that
all the money in our economy funnels through them at some
point, and they plan to hold on to every dime they can.

The government takes a few slices from every loaf earned by
every regular person. Then it gives those slices to a
relative handful of people who basically already own their
own bakeries. The result is that the many have
significantly smaller loaves, while the few have enough
slices piled up to feed a Super Bowl crowd. Then what?
The rich then allow some of us to work for them. We staff
or fuel or repair or whatever their yachts and private jets,
or they let us clean their mansions or wash their Ferraris
or raise their over-privileged offspring, or we work in
their companies, thereby “earning” back a few crumbs that
trickle down from the slices that were ours in the first
place. If we don't work directly for them, we buy their
products, which earns them huge profits because the
products are produced for pennies in Third-World sweatshops
rather than by properly paid American workers.

Next, they use their slices of bread to hire lobbyists who
"work with" lawmakers to ensure that their taxes stay low
and that there won’t be taxes on the inheritances they leave
their children. That way their over-privileged offspring,
who are already Ivy League legacies with guaranteed jobs
waiting in family businesses, law firms, and foundations,
will hit the ground way ahead of everyone else without
having to try. All the while, they shout in favor of making
government smaller by eliminating entitlement programs which
help the poor and feed the hungry, and proclaim that
everyone else should pull themselves up by their own
bootstraps.

How can we blame them if we keep letting them get away with
it?

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Israel as an ally

I have trouble accepting that Israel is an ally of ours and the reasons why. Many in the US adhere to the belief that the Israelites are the chosen people of god. They believe this because of their understanding of the bible. They believe that by associating ourselves with and supporting Israel, they ("real" American christians) will be included in the rapture, will be bodily lifted up into the sky, and will spend eternity in the glory of heaven. For the moment I will forget the fairytale thinking; the ethno-, theo-, and not to mention ego-centrism; and the faulty logic of that belief.

One crucial point they all seem to forget comes from their own bible: the Israelites took many opportunities throughout the bible to concoct, construct, and worship other gods besides yahweh - e.g. baal, the golden calf, etc. Every time god turned his back for a second, the Israelites were worshipping somebody else. Why are they still considered chosen?

Under the reign of King George II of America, some of us seem to have adopted the mentality that we are the good guys so whatever we decide to do must be good too. I'm afraid that's just not how it works. You become the good guys by doing good things. You stay the good guys by continuing to do good things and by not doing bad things (like wars of aggression, imprisonment without proof, and torture). Israel's status of being chosen by god makes them the good guys in the eyes of some, no matter what atrocities they commit.

Just this morning, Israel bombed a UN humanitarian aid supply building and another building that contained members of the international news media, injuring a few of them. Is it a coincidence that, at the beginning of this particular series of attacks, Israel refused to grant access to Gaza to the UN and the news media? Now they have bombed buildings housing both groups. They have called their actions a "grave mistake". The terminology is very telling. An "accident" would mean they tried to bomb something else but hit both of those two buildings due to some error. A "mistake" means they intended to hit those two buildings but now realize they probably shouldn't have. Their false contrition is very moving, but the damage has been done.

To date:

1055 dead Palestinians (670 of whom were civilians)
13 dead Israelis ( 3 of whom were civilians)