My Final Plea For Your Help

Intro

"Die with your boots on. Gonna try? Well stick around. Gonna cry? Just move along. The truth of all predictions is always in your hands."
-Iron Maiden

I just need to convey a point here. And I try not to be known for vulnerability, but I am openly scared for the future. Not just of this country, or our generation, or our society, but for our posterity and our planet and for all living things. I am frightened, and I'm asking for your help. Why?

Because all logic points to the conclusion that we are accelerating quickly down a path that is becoming rockier and steepier and narrower. Unless we find a way to stop and find a better, safer way to travel, I fear the human species will tumble right off the side. This fall will be gradual at first, but it will nonetheless become cataclysmic, and will remain irreversible for generations. And we will doom this planet's life along with us. This could all happen within a 5 to 10 year window at our current pace.

I'm just going to list some recent happenings in the news, then a few facts afterward. There are many more than what has been listed here, but these are just the few that come off the top of my head from paying attention to the news for the past few weeks or so. Then I will lead you to the extremely logical and simple conclusion I've come to, and hopefully you'll have come to the same conclusion by the time you've finished reading this.

Major Environmental Disasters in America Since 4/20/2010

Ice age coming
Ice age coming
Let me hear both sides
Let me hear both sides
Let me hear both
Ice age coming
Ice age coming
Throw them in the fire
Throw them in the fire
Throw them in the

We're not scare mongering
This is really happening
Happening
We're not scare mongering
This is really happening
Happening
Mobiles quirking
Mobiles chirping
Take the money and run
Take the money and run
Take the money
-Radiohead, Idioteque

Mind you, this is simply MAJOR disasters. Since April 20th. In America. I define "major" as one where human beings are killed or injured or otherwise directly affected. I will not be including things like the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska just two decades ago. Or the massive oil spill in the Persian Gulf during the Iraqi/Saudi conflicts back in Saddam Hussein's heyday. Nor will I discuss the Venezuelan oil rig that sank in the Caribbean this past May. Or any of the ten world's worst oil spills, none of which have happened in the USA. Just major happenings, here in the states, in the past 60 or so days.

April 20, 2010
BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded deep in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 people. Estimates by the oil company started at 5,000 barrels a day (around 200,000 gallons of oil per day) and then independent and government scientists analyzed the drilling depth, the amount of oil in the well, and the consequences of a major blowout, and placed that figure around 10,000 to 20,000 barrels a day. Now that figure is between 70,000 and 80,000 barrels a day. It could be higher. But it's already gushed more than four Exxon Valdez-sized spills into the Gulf of Mexico. And that's a very, very conservative estimate.

This will effect undersea plant, fish, bird, turtle and whale species, local economies, tourism, and the country's domestic seafood supply very likely for the rest of our lives. And if, God forbid, a major hurricane hits the Gulf of Mexico, which scientists say is very likely this year, then imagine miles and miles of concrete ribbons of expressway closed down indefinitely because they're covered in oil. Lost homes. Lost cultures. Lost ways of life. For at least a generation. Maybe more.

June 6 2010
A natural gas well leaked toxic gases into water supplies for 16 hours in Pennsylvania, due to a failure in the well's blowout preventer. A plume of polluted water and gas shot 75 feet into the air at the time of the incident, and crews were evacuated until the next day.

June 7, 2010
A natural gas line in Cleburn, Texas ruptured, ending one worker's life and sending seven to the hspital. Nobody could walk through the area for several hours, and the worker's charred remains were found later in the day, a good distance from the site.

Also on this day, in Moundsville, West Virginia, a natural gas line drilling project ran into a pocket of methane, injuring 7 people. A 70-foot pillar of flame shot from the gas line, and the flames were still 40 feet high several hours later.

June 8, 2010
Two men digging clay out of a pit in the Texas panhandle were killed when a natural gas line suddenly exploded. Three other workers bulldozing near the blast were hospitalized.

June 13, 2010
Creeks and nearby water supplies were polluted after a Chevron oil well dumped 33,000 gallons of crude oil near Salt Lake City, Utah. Chevron takes responsibility for this one, and reports are surfacing of oil-soaked wildlife emerging from surrounding waterways.

June 15, 2010
A natural gas pipeline exploded in the Dallas area, taking a man's life and injuring 8 others. Authorities are still trying to figure out what caused the fatal blast.

Rapid Climate Change

"Can you read signs? Can you read stars?
Can you make peace? Can you fight war?
Can you milk cows, even though you drive cars?
Can you survive, against all odds?"
-Damien Marley, "Patience"

At the Bonnaroo music festival this year, in a treeless field an hour South of Nashville, Tennessee, one attendee actually died from the heat. I remember heat indices reaching past 100 on Friday, and climbing steadily on Saturday and Sunday. The brief rain we got Saturday just compounded Sunday's wet, sticky humidity, not to mention exacerbating the prevalent stink of 80,000 unwashed bodies of myself and other hormone-ridden hipsters, rastas, peaceniks and other such scalawags in Manchester.

But that's something we're just going to have to get used to, just like these environmental disasters that keep sticking their ugly heads up in the news each day. Because this year is on track to be the hottest year on record. The facts are bearing out all over the place.

-Did you know that global surface temperature records have been shattered every week since the second week this past January, when compared to the year before?

-Did you know that ocean temperatures are currently at their second-hottest of all-time, other than 1998? And that record temperature anomalies are now being reported on all of the world's majorly-populated continents?

-Did you know that arctic sea ice volume has drastically declined over the last two months, far beyond what would be considered normal in the planet's climate cycles? That temperatures in the arctic are ten degrees fahrenheit warmer today than the norm? And that this past brutal winter and what is predicted to be an historically destructive hurricane season are being directly linked to this arctic meltdown?

-Most importantly, did you know that scientists are estimating that half of the WORLD will suddenly find themselves in a severe water shortage 20 years from now?

This cycle compounds and becomes worse, exacerbated by an overabundance of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere, which lingers above, absorbing sunlight and focusing it on the arctic areas. Before the industrial revolution's onset, the Earth naturally equalized atmospheric CO2. Now, the Earth has far more CO2 than it knows what to deal with. When arctic ice melts, seas grow warmer and ice becomes more isolated. Warmer, saltier water then flows into the arctic from the North Atlantic, which causes more ice to melt. Lather, rinse, repeat.

These greenhouse gases, largely put in the air by humanity's industrialization, consist of carbon dioxide and methane. Both of which humans excrete just by sitting still, which the Earth can normally equalize if kept at manageable levels. But with so much rapid melting of sea ice, methane pockets in the Siberian shelf are starting to seep into the atmosphere. Methane stays in the air for much longer and channels much more heat than regular CO2, and climate scientists warn that this is steadily increasing global temperatures incrementally over the years, to where we are literally starting to see catastrophic effects of climate change take place worldwide before our own eyes.

-Like the Aral Sea drying up to a fraction of what it was just twenty years ago.

-Like glaciers collapsing in Argentina, killing three tourists and their guide.

-Like water supplies in one of the world's most populous countries suddenly drying up because of rapid glacial melt.

-Like how we're already seeing conflicts in the hottest parts of the world not over religious, ethnic of political differences, but because there's not enough food and water to go around.

Like the recent environmental disasters, the effects of climate change are numerous in the media, and I could devote pages to just sharing links and figures and data. But that isn't what I came here to do tonight. I came to ask for your help.

My Final Plea For Your Help

"Come mothers and fathers, throughout the land.
And don't criticize what you can't understand.
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command.
Your old road is rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one,
If you can't lend your hand,
For the times, they are a-changin'."
-Bob Dylan, "The Times, They Are A-Changin'"

This is usually the part where I ask you to call your congressmen and senators and urge them to push for strong climate legislation for the sake of our planet. But I'm going to just start small here, and hope you, the readers, will take it upon yourselves to make a collective call to action in government and society. My plea?

Climate change is NOT to be up for debate any longer.

Evolution used to be an issue up for debate. As did the Earth being the center of the universe. Or the Earth's shape. Or the origin of the universe. But eventually, a scientific consensus concluded that the facts were overwhelmingly on their side, and they moved on.

This is the part where the deniers come out of the woodwork and link me to studies put out by the Heritage Insitute, or the Heartland Institute, or some other think tank funded with oil company money scoffing at proven climate science. Or to a petition from the religious right-wing's Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, where 30,000 scientists who DON'T study the climate deny that climate change is man-made, or that it's even happening.

Or maybe the deniers reading this are fuming under their breath, preparing a lengthy response chastising me about ignoring the economic implications of a strong climate bill. Please don't waste your time. Any economic implications of a carbon tax or ban on oil drilling are outweighed by far by the economic implications of 3 billion starving people in Africa and Central/Eastern Asia. Or by every major coastal American city underwater by the midpoint of the 21st century.

It could be that the climate change deniers are about to post links to the "climategate scandal" at the University of East Anglia, where tens of thousands of private emails between climate scientists were illegally hacked and taken out of context by those working in the interests of Big Oil. Where, in reality, the actual conclusions about drastic climate change came to by a consensus of climatologists were never thrown into question, despite so much manufactured outrage and nonsense.

Or maybe it's just the sad cry of the FOX news watchers and Glenn Beck-ites and Rush Limbaugh dittoheads of "B-b-but...AAAAALLLLL GOOOOOOORRRRREEEE!"

I've wasted far too much time repeatedly debunking those petitions, those studies, those faux scandals and those organizations and I'm tired of debate, for once. I'm thirsty not for debate, but for action, and our planet needs us. And I'm moving on. We all must move on.

We must plead for our media to stop pitting scientists vs. non-scientists against one another and framing it as a legitimate debate. The debate is over. Like evolution, climate change is no longer up for debate. It is happening. It is real. Our actions are directly influencing the climate's rapid change. And incidents like the ones above are all indicative that we are very quickly hurtling down an unsustainable path, and that the only thing that can come of it will be a very swift, sharp, painful end for all of us.

Conclusion

"What's the use of a fine house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?"
-Henry David Thoreau

Our generation will either be remembered as the ones who finally swallowed our pride, wised up and organized a collective effort to reverse our planet's inevitable decay before it was too late, or the ones who got lazy, who consumed with reckless abandon, who spat in the faces of the more knowledgeable among us. And if a fraction of humanity does survive the pending crises that will already await us in the not-too-distant future, they will look back on us with scorn, and tell their progeny of how our laziness and apathy caused species to die off en masse, for soil to only become fertile again once our decomposed corpses were taken back into the Earth.

I'm asking for your help. What will you do for the planet? For yourselves? For your grandchildren?

How will you be remembered?

New Age Charlatans and the Overton Window

(Disclaimer: There are far too many sources to individually link to, and I frankly don't have the time for the tedious task of hyperlinking every claim made in this note. However, should anything I say here make you scoff, feel free to point me to where you'd like to see sources backing me up, and Id be more than happy to provide you with links.)

The Power of the Media

“The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”
-Malcolm X

Here's how dictionary.com defines the word "charlatan."

–noun
a person who pretends or claims to have more knowledge or skill than he or she possesses; quack.

Pretty harmless, right? That word can describe thousands of people. I imagine some of my more critical readers would probably love to associate that word with me. But I'd like to use this space to focus that word on the cable news demagogues that plague our public discourse with blatant and outright lies and misinformation, and a general poisoning of the public discourse.

Sure, there are the minor-league pundits like Keith Olbermann, Joe Scarborough, Lou Dobbs in his heyday, and the like. But they don't even hold a candle to the voices on right-wing morning talk radio like Michael Savage, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, and of course our friends on FOX news like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. The FOXers don't even make an effort to hide their bias. Right-wingers could argue that MSNBC is the liberal equivalent of FOX, but as John Stewart put it in a baseball analogy, MSNBC is like the Toledo Mud Hens to FOX news' New York Yankees. There really is no equivalence between the two.

Maybe a lot of you are sighing or slapping your foreheads, and wondering why I'm dedicating a piece to blasting cable news demagogues instead of researching and tackling more presing issues. But this IS a pressing issue, because our political discourse, since the inauguration of President Barack Obama, has become posionous to a most extreme level. I fully place blame on Glenn Beck/Sean Hannity/Rush Limabugh's hate speech and misinformation campaigns, and how they've skillfully shifted the Overton Window to the far right.

I've always said that the media is the fifth branch of American government (the Federal Reserve has earned the title of the fourth branch after the bailouts, their autonomy and lack of transparency and accountability) and in many ways, has more influence over the public than the other four. We in the media decide what the public talks about. We are in charge of creating the public discourse. What you discuss at parties, in coffee shops with the cute girl sitting at the table next to you, with your parents over the phone, with your friends at the bar after work, all comes largely from what the media puts on the airwaves and in print. We are a force to be reckoned with, although many of us are unaware, as we all complain of being overworked and underpaid. And of course, media folks are in one of the most hated professions in America; we're right there at the bottom with congressmen, seedy car mechanics and lawyers. But our power is prevalent and far-reaching.

Which brings me to this point- when you are a pundit with your own cable TV show watched by millions, and you knowingly mislead the public and propagate extremism, you create an environment where millions suddenly find such hate speech and posionous dialogue as acceptable discourse. Particularly when these pundits parade themselves as legitimate journalists who are "just asking the hard questions."

Look at Glenn Beck, for instance. Here is a man with a primetime cable show on the most-watched cable news network, who-

-has attacked the president's deceased mother and grandmother, calling them "Marxists,"
-has openly endorsed an anti-semitic author,
-has once used his radio talk show to harass a woman who had a miscarriage,
-has called a caller on his show (along with Sec. of State Hillary Clinton) a "bitch,"
-has called Katrina victims "scumbags,"
-has said he openly hates 9/11 victims' families,
-has asserted that the United States is not a Democracy, but that progressives are trying to make it one, and that that's a bad thing. (Which leads to the assertion that we're a Republic, not a Democracy, leading to the unspoken assertion that Republicans are the only true Americans, and that Democrats are un-American and un-patriotic, among other such nonsense)
-has called for his audience to leave their churches if they advocate social justice or economic justice,
-has called the president a "racist" who has a "deep-seated hatred for White people" and the "White culture,"

He does this through contrived tears, choking up out of a fear that our country's very principles are under attack by an evil, oppressive, liberal agenda by those who want to take your guns, jobs, bibles, and babies. While chastising liberals for poking fun at Bristol Palin's pregnancy despite her mother being an advocate for abstinence-only sex education, he has used airtime on his program to blast Melea and Sasha Obama, the president's two teenage daughters. In spite of so much hatred and hypocrisy, his TV show and radio program garner millions of listeners and viewers every day.

Anyone with an ounce of sanity knows Glenn Beck is a clown. Many of you have scoffed at my calling Beck's hate speech a threat to Democracy, because clearly, there can't be that many people who take him seriously. But the thing is, there are. And they are being woefully lied to and misled every day, being fed a steady diet of hatred and fear and ignorance. It is poisoning our dialogue, and it is shifting the Overton Window to the extreme right. Beck, in and of himself, is harmless. But he is succeeding in a larger goal of manipulating the shift of the Overton Window, which is indeed a very dangerous thing.

The Overton Window

"The most effective propaganda is simple- stick to a few certain points, and repeat them over and over again until they are accepted as fact.
-Joseph Goebbels

So what is the Overton Window? Political gurus describe it as the realm of acceptable public discourse in society. The more extremism, hate speech, and outlandish claims get broadcast to millions upon millions of listeners across the country each day, the less extreme those claims sound. thus, the Overton Window moves steadily to the right. We've heard these guys call liberals, the president, his administration, and his policies Nazi/Communist/Fascist/Anti-American for so long that they don't sound extreme anymore.

Beck, Hannity and Limbaugh have been at the forefront of extreme discourse since the Democrats took control of Congress and the White House. Since the onset of the Obama presidency, we've seen the onset of the corporate-supported Astroturf (fake grassroots) effort, the Tea Party. the Tea Party has managed to get the majority of poor, uneducated, underserved white Americans to vehmently rail against their own self-interests, citing Democratic social welfare policies like Health Care Reform, Wall Street Reform, Immigration Reform and Campaign Finance Reform as "socialism," "communism," "nazism," and the like. The Tea Party, despite being exposed a front group established by the mainstream GOP, despite being funded by Big Oil, Big Coal and Big Insurance, has managed to get away with touting a populist label, and has had its principles extolled 24/7 as virtuous by the FOX news pundit regime.

Now, approximately just 17 months into Obama's presidency, where he has historically accomplished far more than any other president has at that point in their tenure, where he has made good on nearly all of his campaign promises to this point, where taxes are at their lowest since the Truman administration, a paranoid, knee-jerk, reactionary 24-hour news cycle on FOX has managed to convince their viewing public of the exact opposite. Their pundits have insinuated that the president is a secret Muslim who wants to place the United States under Sharia law, that taxes on the poor and middle class are rising far higher and quicker than at any other point and time in history, that he has accomplished nothing since holding office, and that his agenda is succeeding in converting us from a Republic to a Socialist haven.

Such extreme dialogue, when forced down the throats of millions every day, is now not so extreme. The Overton Window has shifted. And the far right has succeeded in their dominance of this country's political discourse once again.

Consequences of a Rightward Overton Window Shift

"Those who control the access to the minds of children will set the agenda for the future of the nation and the future of the western world."
-Rev. James Dobson

We've seen bricks thrown through congressmen and congresswomen's campaign office windows, gas lines cut at the home of a Congressman Tom Perriello (D-VA) brother, tea partiers collectively mocking and throwing money at a man with Parkinson's who advocated for universal health care, cheering when being referred to as "Tim McVeigh wannabes," a plane flown into an IRS building in Texas, and a gathering in Washington, DC of tea partiers, all heavily armed, threatening to stage a violent revolt if their right-wing agenda was not adhered to in Washington.

Simultaneously, Democratic successes in passing Health Care Reform and moving on other items in their legislative agenda has invited an onslaught of racial slurs, death threats, threats of armed insurrection, sedition, secession, and other hateful acts by the Tea Party activists. These acts have been encouraged and spurred on by right-wing talk radio and FOX news pundits. For example, Ann Coulter said the man who crashed his plane into the IRS building should have flown it into the New York Times building instead. This is the same woman who has openly called for liberals to be shot in the streets. A former pastor and armed serviceman has talked about grabbing his guns and "doing what has to be done" if Washington continues to move forward with a progressive agenda.

With a right-wing media and blogosphere cheering on such extremism, and with a mainstream Republican establishment in Congress and the Senate who has refused to denounce hateful extremist acts, America has fostered a climate where violent extremism is encouraged. And until something is done to regulate such hate speech, it will only get worse from here.

What Can Be Done to Fight Extremism

"For the first time ever, everything is in place for the Battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ."
-Ronald Reagan

Currently, it is not against the law to lie to the public in the news media. This was the ruling of the Florida appellate court, when two investigative reporters sued their former employer, a FOX affiliate, for manipulating a scathing report they had done about BGH in milk products to make it more corporate-friendly. Journalists have a responsibility to uphold the truth, and to tell the story as accurately as possible. However, so many are parading as journalists while simultaneously lying to and deceiving millions of Americans on a daily basis. They use their influence on the networks to spread misinformation and obstruct necessary progress and reforms in Washington. They are waging a war on both the truth and on our Democracy, but nothing is currently stopping them from from spreading lies, fear and hate and masking it as journalism.

Our president and speaker of the house are too timid to support a reinstatement of the "Fairness Doctrine," which would require broadcasting outlets to equally air differing points of view on their stations. Thanks to the right-wing talk radio monopoly, millions of people are privy to hate radio for several hours each morning, with nothing on the other side to balance it out. As controversial as it is for me to say, I believe the Fariness Doctrine is a necessary first step to combat the charlatans' manipulation of the Overton Window and extreme right-wing dominance of our political discourse. And of course, nobody will pay attention to it unless you, the reader, take the time right now to take two minutes and call the Washington switchboard (202-224-3121), ask for your congressmen and senators, and urge them to sign on their support of the Fairness Doctrine. It's a long shot, but a crucial first step in restoring our political discourse back to an acceptable level.

What about you? Do you care enough about American discourse to help save it from the far right?

War Profiteering: The Biggest Threat to Democracy

Opening Statement
(Disclaimer: I have nothing but respect for our troops and our veterans. I did want to write this piece on Memorial Day, to give everyone else something to think about while we're honoring the memory of our fallen heroes. This is a discussion that should be renewed not just on Memorial Day, but every day that we're entrenched in two pointless wars. I hope that what you read here will shock you, and will cause you to scoff. Feel free to read any of the links posted here to learn more. I'm just scratching the surface.)

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
-Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower

The beloved Dwight D. Eisenhower, WWII general and two-term Republican president, made a chilling, cryptic prediction in his 1961 farewell speech. One can imagine that Eisenhower put much importance in conveying this message, as he chose these words to be the last he would ever say as leader of the free world, to a free people.

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizen can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense, with our peaceful methods and goals. So that security and liberty can prosper together.

Eisenhower was a five-star general, or General of the Army. It is the second-highest rank in the Army, next to the honor bestowed upon George Washington and General John Pershing, General of the Armies. If anyone knew the inner complexities of the defense sector and the grave implications of a power-grab by the arms manufacturing industry, it was Eisenhower. And his warning to us was grave. We did not listen, and we grew complacent. And now, nearly 50 years after the speech, the military industrial complex is alive and well, and has taken hold of our government, and indeed, the global economy as well. In this piece, I'll be delving into exactly how much power the military industrial complex wields in Washington, and what we can do as citizens to restore democracy.

A Brief History of War and Money

"...As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
-Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21st, 1864

As Commander of the Allied Forces during World War II, Eisenhower was likely privy to the onset of corporate war profiteering through John Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Company. More specifically, Standard Oil's sister company, IG Farben.

At the time, IG Farben was the fourth-largest company in the world behind General Motors, U.S. Steel, and Standard Oil. IG Farben had a facility near Auschwitz, and manufactured Zyklon B, which was the gas that murdered millions of Jews in concentration camps during the holocaust. Meanwhile, Standard Oil provided the fuel for both American military strikes on German arms factories, and for the Luftwaffe as they bombed Britain. Rockefeller profited from all of this, as IG Farben was the next largest stockholder in Standard Oil behind the Rockefeller family. Essentially, John Rockefeller was making big bucks off of World War II from both the Allied and Axis forces. From the above link-

"...The planes that made up the Luftwaffe needed tetraethyl lead gasoline in order to fly. At the time, only Standard Oil, Du Pont, and General Motors had the ability to produce this vital substance. In 1938, Walter C. Teagle, then president of Standard Oil, helped Hermann Schmitz of I.G. Farben to acquire 500 tons of tetraethyl lead from Ethyl, a British Standard subsidiary. A year later, Schmitz returned to London and obtained an additional 15 million dollars worth of tetraethyl lead which was to be turned into aviation gasoline back in Germany."

Rockefeller's war profiteering was the first most egregious example of a wealthy corporate entity lining its pockets with money made from the blood of thousands. This is perhaps what led Eisenhower to urge the citizenry to become aware and take action against such corruption and greed.

The Influence of Today's Military Industrial Complex

"You know it's funny when it rains it pours
They got money for wars, but can't feed the poor
Say there ain't no hope for the youth and the truth is
it ain't no hope for the future."
-Tupac Shakur, Oct. 28, 1993

While teachers are losing their jobs, children are being pushed into larger classrooms, states are cutting budgets, closing facilities and terminating public sector jobs all across the nation, when America is still in dire need after bankers ran off with billions of our tax dollars, Congress has just approved $600 billion in war funding for Afghanistan and Iraq. These two wars that have lasted almost ten years, and arguably very little progress has been made. Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, is still suffering from bad PR after he was embroiled in a scandal where he essentially rigged the election in his favor. We are withdrawing troops in Iraq, and are on target for the Iraqi government's demand that we vacate their borders by 2011. However, withdrawing troops and equipment still takes time and money, and Iraq still manages to eat into the budget, even with a new administration and different objectives.

Here are a few examples of astonishingly corrupt war profiteering, just in Iraq.

(Gruesome and disturbing content ahead)

1. At the Abu Ghraib prison, private intelligence contractors CACI and Titan, paid with US tax dollars, were caught torturing, beating and sexually abusing prisoners.

"We believe that CACI and Titan engaged in a conspiracy to torture and abuse detainees, and did so to make more money," says Susan Burke, an attorney hired by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), whose lawsuit against the companies is proceeding into discovery before the Federal Court for the District of Columbia.

2. Bechtel, contracted to build Iraqi infrastructure, was awarded a $2.4 billion contract by the Bush administration, but went wildly over their budget while far exceeding time constraints to complete those projects.

Additionally, Bechtel neglected to train Iraqi operators in maintenance of these facilities, and many of them have since fallen into disrepair. However, Bechtel still ran off with billions of profits made from American tax dollars for not doing their job.

3. Because there's no draft, private contracting of security and military forces has led to 48,000 such mercenaries in Iraq, doing jobs normally done by US Armed Forces, all paid for by US tax dollars. It's estimated that these mercenary contractors will be a $200 billion industry by the end of this year.

Most of us know about the notorious Blackwater (now known as Xe) firm, where mercs massacred Iraqi civilians in a city street, and whose founder, Erik Prince, has personally spoken about Blackwater being used as a religious crusade against Muslims. But one contractor not mentioned much is Aegis Defense Services.

Aegis, a U.K. based firm, was awarded a $293 million contract (taxpayer money) to supply forces in Iraq, despite lower offers from American competitors. With public money going toward the private sector, and with a private company not operating within the states, it could be argued that Aegis was chosen specifically to avoid accountability for any Blackwater-like incidents.

However, as one can see in this video, these mercenaries are clearly firing on civilian cars in Iraq. From the link above-

"...Moreover, An audit of Aegis activities conducted in April 2005 had reported that several of Aegis recruits had not received appropriate training in the use of weapons. In fact, 11 out of 20 surveyed were considered to be inadequately trained with regard to the handling of an AK 47.

...In addition to criticizing Aegis Defence Services Ltd., the audit took aim t the Army's contracting office in Iraq for poor oversight. It reported that the official who was supposed to keep watch over Aegis's contract had not been trained in either monitoring contracts or security. The office was also severely short-staffed: At the time of the audit, 41 officials were administering 6,500 contracts and task orders.

...A random survey of 20 Aegis employees who had been issued weapons -- including AK-47 and M4 assault rifles -- showed that the company did not have the needed weapons training documentation for 14 of them. As a result, auditors could not say whether "all contractor personnel are qualified on the weapons that they had been issued."

Despite these shortcomings, Aegis was found to be in compliance with its contract.

Additionally, Aegis and the Pentagon have yet to apologize to families of the civlians killed in that video. Aegis has defended its actions, saying they were operating under the rules of engagement. Untrained mercenaries, killing civilians, being paid with US tax dollars. And we're seeing more of this, not less.

There are numerous other examples of corporate malfeasance and criminal activity overseas. But let's take a look at how those guys operate in Washington.

Corporate Lobbying For More War
At the time President Obama announced the Afghan troop surge, top defense contractors had reported spending $27 million pushing for more war. In fact, their spending had gone up by $7 million in the 4th quarter of 2009, according to lobbying records. This, coincidentally, is around the time the president announced the deployment of 30,000 more young men and women to Afghanistan.

One of those contractors, Northrop Grumman, has even recently announced that it's moving its corporate HQ to Washington DC, in order to be closer to legislative action. As congress approved a $635 billion war appropriations bill in December, lobbyists for defense firms cited "appropriations" as their chief objective in public records.

As of January, the number of private contractors in Afghanistan have doubled in just a four-month span. Mercenaries purchased with tax dollars now account for 30% of all forces in Afghanistan. The military industrial complex is paying top-dollar for control of defense policy. And they're getting what they've paid for.

Conclusion

"I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our
moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our
government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of
our country."
-Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816.

Eisenhower's prediction has come true. The military industrial complex has usurped the democratic process, and private companies can legally make absurd profits directly from the murdering of young men and women. With war now seen as a business opportunity instead of a country's last line of defense of freedom from agressors, the military inudstrial complex can bypass international law and make money. To them, war is not the wanton destruction of lives, homes, and natural resources, but simply as another way to get rich.

As citizens, we have the power to stop this. We must do as Eisenhower asked us, and get informed about the complexities and dangers of the military industrial complex's erosion of freedom and democracy. Hopefully, reading this piece and the links within have helped you reach that step.

And as I implored all of you to do in my last piece, I urge all of you once again to find your Congressman and Senators, put their office numbers in your cellphones, and call them every day to end these wars. Ask your lawmakers to write and sponsor legislation that forbids the outsourcing of war. Vote for politicians who promise to make war a last resort, instead of succumb to the influence of war profiteers. Organize call-in days to Washington in your community. Bombard congressional offices with calls from constituents, and demand that your voice be heard and understood.

As we remember and honor our veterans today, let's take a stand as taxpaying Americans, as defenders of liberty, and demand our elected leaders put a stop to the corporate cheerleading of war.

The Death of the Gulf Coast, and What Must Come

The End of All Gulf Life
Unlike my last piece on the oil volcano in the gulf, this article doesn't offer a small glimmer of hope. It's great that Bobby Jindal wants to build sand dunes to protect beaches, and that hair salons are donating used hair for more booms, and while that all may prevent the billionth gallon from leaking ashore, the damage has already been done. The Gulf Coast isn't dead yet, but by the time this leak is finally stopped, the damage will be irreversible. I would be highly surprised if even a fraction of the life that was in the Gulf of Mexico will be able to live in the toxic bile created by millions of gallons of oil and harmful chemical dispersants. This oil slick could very possibly kill every living thing that doesn't escape its perimeter. By the way, the slick is now estimated to be 45,728 square miles. To put that into scale, that's 728 square miles more than the Gadsden Purchase, which is basically the Southwesternmost corner of Arizona all the way to about halfway through New Mexico. The entire state of Mississippi is 48,430 square miles.

Oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill has Louisiana's marshes, the prime breeding ground and hatchery for the country's fishing industry. We're confronted now with pictures of oil-covered birds in the news media. A toxic mixture of dispersants and oil could now be even more threatening to the already fragile ecosystems of the Gulf Coast. In fact, even if just three of the Gulf Coast's 1400-1600 sperm whales are killed by oil, that could endanger the Gulf's entire sperm whale species. That's an entire species, at risk of being wiped out because of an oil rig exploding 30 miles from the shore, and with no clear end to the leak in sight.

A lot has developed from the spill since I last wrote about it; the 5,000 barrel a day estimate is likely merely a tenth of what is actually being belched into the ocean each day. And that's a generous estimate. This spill could be gushing an Exxon Valdez-sized figure each week. BP and the government had been saying 5,000 barrels per day (42 gallons of oil in each barrel) and the media had been repeating that figure ad nauseam until a video emerged showing a natural gas and oil gusher. Through particle analysis, comparing scale of distance between the camera and the strength of the gusher, to be much, much more than the 5,000 barrel figure. It could actually be between 50,000 and 100,000 barrels. That's up to 4.2 MILLION gallons of oil leaked every day. At the time of this writing, May 25, oil has been gushing from the Deepwater Horizon well for 35 days. Which means so far, the oil volcano a mile undersea could have regurgitated up to 147,000,000 gallons into the Gulf Coast ecosystem. That's about 12 Exxon Valdez-sized spills. And counting.

And there is MUCH more natural gas leaking than there is oil, and you can see the natural gas via the video of the spill released by BP after pressure from the Coast Guard and the Obama administration. Natural gas sucks oxygen out of the ocean, which is a problem for all of us because the ocean and trees produce the world's oxygen. Along with sea life dying by the truckload, the ocean's natural functions are also in danger due to the Deepwater Horizon gusher. (If you've notice, I refuse to call it a "leak." This is far worse than a "leak" or a "spill." Can we phase those words out now when referring to this disaster?)

This oil volcano will affect marine species in the gulf for literally the rest of our lives. It may very likely wipe out all marine life in a 50,000 mile radius. And you can imagine the residual effects this will have on people who make their living through fishing, renting out charter boats, or through tourism. The damage is already done. And it is literally incomprehensible.

What We Can Do, Post-Oilpocalypse
A few months ago, in a 5-4 decision in the Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission ruling, the Supreme Court decided that because corporations are legally people, they can donate as much money as they want to a political campaign. My question is this- if corporations are people, then can we give them the equivalent of a death sentence if they commit acts that warrant such punishment?

Now, first of all, I sincerely hope that the "topkill" method of shooting mud and concrete into the pipe will work, and cap the flow of oil still gushing into the ocean. BP says there's only a 60-70 percent chance that it will work, because it's never been tried at a mile below sea level before, where up to 15,000 psi of pressure will have to be quelled. If this doesn't work, BP will likely follow through with their plan to drill an alternate well from another rig and siphon the oil that way, which means the oil gusher will continue for possibly several more months before it's finally stopped.

But frankly, the president has surprised me in how he let BP control the oil cleanup efforts, given that they frequently overlooked several red flags that showed the well they were drilling wasn't safe. And the fact that they grossly misunderestimated the severity of their mistake at 1,000 barrels a day being leaked daily. Of course, Mineral Management Services (MMS), the federal agency that was supposed to inspect the Deepwater Horizon rig at least once a month failed miserably at their job, as well, and allowed BP to get away with a vast array of safety violations.

But what's most surprising is that the strongest action that the federal government CAN take, legally, under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, has yet to be taken. That is, completely kick BP off the site and take over cleanup efforts. By allowing BP to clean up the site, and by failing to not deploy the national guard, or to divert extra military and civil resources to booming, barricading, and doing all they can to protect the marshes and the shores, damage has been caused that might not have had to happen. EPA Director Lisa Jackson can also push to debar BP from any further federal contracts, which would cost them about $12 billion per year.

Bush's historical legacy will likely be dominated by both his decision to invade Iraq in spite of international outrage, and by his administration's gross mishandling of Hurricane Katrina relief. Obama's legacy, while he's already accomplished far more in his first 16 months than any president in recent memory, has his legacy in jeopardy because of his lackadaisical, play-it-safe attitude towards BP and this oil spill. Even when I talk to die-hard Southern Republicans, they all talk about how they wish the government would do more about BP and the oil slick. The American people, conservatives included, all want the president to take a liberal, forthright, tough stance on the oil giants who all share responsibility for this catastrophe. Politically, there is everything to gain and everything to lose for this president when it comes to this crisis. I don't know what Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod are telling the president to do, but I have a feeling he needs to stop listening to them and act like the progressive he was when he was campaigning, instead of being a play-it-safe centrist to BP and Big Oil.

Speaking of shared responsibility, I want to close with this.

Point the Finger at the Mirror
BP is guilty. Transocean is guilty. Halliburton is guilty. But this is not their fault, at least not directly. (Here's the part where a lot of you will stop agreeing with what I say and type something angry in the comment box.)

This incomprehensible disaster which will literally ruin the Gulf Coast's life for decades to come, is all our fault.

Maybe not you and I individually, but our lifestyle and extravangant petroleum-based culture, and our collective outrage whenever gas prices go up a dime, is what caused this mess. If you drive a car, fly in an airplane, or drink from plastic bottles, this is your fault.

If you live in America, this is your fault, because while we are 5% of the world's population, we use 24% of the world's energy.

If you live in a rural area, this is your fault, as city dwellers use less energy per capita than those who live in the hinterlands but still depend on city-provided utilities and electricity and drive cars.

And if you have children, this is also your fault, because your kids are also born and bred into a culture that encourages excessive consumption of resources, and will grow up consuming like we do unless our generation collectively decides to drastically change our lifestyle.

We can point fingers at BP and the government all we want, but there's still sludge dripping from our outstretched fingers. As long as our carbon footprint is what it is, then companies like BP, Exxon, Texaco, Citgo, Chevron, Shell and others will continue to drill deeper and deeper out into the ocean in order to satisfy consumer demand. As long as we demand cheap gas to fuel our excessive lifestyles, these companies will continue to engage in environmentally unconscionable acts so their stock prices will stay up. So we can keep living unsustainably.

To put this all in perspective, let me offer three key points-

-Exxon Valdez spilled 11,000,000 gallons of oil into the Prince William Sound.
-So far, the Deepwater Horizon gusher is spewing up to 2,000,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico per day.

And here's the kicker-

-The United States consumes 350,000,000 gallons of oil per day.

So, as bad as the BP oil gusher is, it's still only about half a percent of our DAILY consumption.

Do you see a problem here yet?

Conclusion
This is our fault. And if something good is to come from the death of the Gulf of Mexico, it must be comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation. We must fight for it like the progressives fought for health care and financial reform. And unlike those two pieces of legislation, it cannot be seen as a child's vitamin (hard to swallow without being immensely watered down) but as vital to our survival and progression as a culture, as a society and as a species. We must become stewards of our planet.

This could mean sharply increasing the gas tax and using that money to put bike lanes on all highways. It could mean a tax on carbon emissions, forcing us to depend on energy sources that don't emit CO2. It could mean electing leaders who promise to uphold the environment for our future generations, instead of look out for the profits of Big Oil. It should definitely mean NOT electing candidates who say it's "un-American" for the government to criticize an oil company over their mistakes. Candidates and political parties who support unregulated, privatized, "free market" ideologies that showcase such an astounding disconnect with reality shouldn't be getting votes from any seriously concerned citizens. Period-point-blank.

Whatever the solution is, we must actively work towards it and not become lazy, cynical, apathetic, depressed, or discouraged. The 24-hour reactionary news cycle will, of course, put this story on the backburner after awhile when some new crisis arises, when an innocent is affected by tragedy, when some celebrity has a lusty affair. We'll be tempted to mindlessly drool in front of our TV screens, shrug our shoulders, say "well howabout that" and go on about working and shopping and playing.

Not taking action means that this environmental genocide will have meant nothing. And that history will likely repeat itself down the road. So vote. Keep the DC offices of your congressmen and senators in your cellphone, and call them every day and tell them to fight for clean energy legislation. Make phone calls for concerned candidates. Knock on doors. Sign petitions. Spread awareness.

We must not grow complacent.

We must fight.

We must change.

The American Chernobyl: Causes and Consequences of the BP Oil Spill

Intro
21 years ago, when Exxon's Valdez tanker spilled 10 million gallons of oil into the Alaskan shore, it was referred to as the worst man-made ecological disaster in history. That was 10,000,000 gallons, which made the ocean look like this. But it's looking right now like BP's Deepwater Horizon spill is going to be exponentially worse before the leak is finally contained.

So yes, there are undoubtedly going to be severe, long-lasting environmental problems that will take decades of recovery for the Gulf Coast. But as you dig deeper into the gritty truth of this massive catastrophe, one can't help but be paralyzed by the loathsome greed that was ultimately behind this particular disaster.

Comprehending the Magnitude of the Deepwater Horizon Catastrophe
The BP oil spill has been leaking at a rate of about 5,000 barrels per day since the rig blew up about a week and a half ago. There's a small wellhead on the pipes that stops oil from leaking anything more than that, although 200,000 gallons of oil per day is still extremely hazardous. But if that wellhead breaks from the erosion of the pipes, then that 5,000 barrel figure could instead mean 50,000 barrels per day. That's an Exxon Valdez-sized spill each week into the Gulf of Mexico, and it could still be months before the spill is contained. In the link above, the phrase "order of magnitude" basically means a multiplier of ten. That means as bad as it is now, if this wellhead breaks, this spill will literally become exponentially worse.

Nobody really knows how much oil is going to spill into the Gulf, because of how deep the drilling had gone. However, even more alarming comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), whose leaked report fears a worst-case scenario of 2.1 million gallons of oil per day being leaked into the Gulf. Gov. Bob Riley (R-AL) says he is fearing even 150,000 barrels of oil leaked per day, or 6 million gallons. Again, it could be almost a quarter of a year before the oil stops leaking.

Choosing Between Bad and Worse
No matter how you look at the containment efforts currently underway, we can only choose between a bad scenario or a worse scenario. There could be a 4-story, 70-ton dome that would be placed underwater to contain the oil leak, where the oil would be pumped out from above the surface. However, positioning the dome is going to be tricky, seeing as going that deep underwater would mean that dome has to be incredibly resistant to pressure. And by the time it gets there, the damage could already be too great for the dome to have any effect.

Gov. Barbour (R-MS) told me about "dispersing" the oil. But as others have pointed out, dispersing is a term that basically means breaking up the oil slick into particles that will settle on the ocean floor. the oil doesn't actually go away, but instead just settles on the bottom of the ocean. Much of the Gulf Coast's economy revolves around the shrimping industry, and shrimp, along with much of the oceanic food chain, relies on bottom-feeding. There's no telling what kind of disasters, both for species and for the economy, could come from miles of oil on the ocean floor.

There's talk of drilling an alternate well that would funnel the oil out from the source through another pump. However, the source is 22,000 feet deep, and drilling down that far would take 3 to 4 months, even at the quickest possible pace. By that time, there's no telling how much oil will have leaked, and it could very well be a too little-too late endeavor.

No matter how you cut the cake, it's gonna be real hard to swallow for folks in Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, or Texas. And given the pattern of the winds and Gulf currents, other states along the Eastern seaboard could be put in danger if the oil leaks around the Florida peninsula.

The Unconscionable Greed of Big Oil
No disaster like this has ever occurred in any other part of the world where oil drilling is done, because every country has a certain regulation that keeps something like this from happening. Every country except the United States, anyway.

That regulation is a $500,000 device called an "acoustic shutoff switch," which shuts off the flow of oil at the source in case of an emergency. Oil companies who drill in the United States have Dick Cheney to thank for the removal of that regulation. Dick Cheney, Bush's Vice President, used to be an executive of the Halliburton energy company. And you can bet Halliburton's stock went several points above the competition when the acoustic shutoff switch regulation was removed.

Let's also consider that the estimated cleanup figure for BP in this oil spill is $12.5 billion, which they have grudgingly said they would pay for out of their own pocket. To put that in perspective, BP's annual profit was $25.6 billion in 2009. I'm not the best at math, but let me try to break this down.

$25,600,000,000-$12,500,000,000=$13,100,000,000

So, to set the record straight, BP, whose CEO was quoted as saying, "What the hell did we do to deserve this?" is going to have to forgo just under half of their 2009 profits to clean up the worst man-made ecological disaster in the history of Planet Earth. A disaster that will take decades to clean up and recover. That will ruin fishing and tourism industries in the South, and potentially along the East Coast. That thousands of species and ecosystems will possibly never fully recover from. Just under half of one year's PROFITS. Which means after all the operational and personnel costs have been paid out from their total revenues, they'll still cash an 11-digit check at the end of the year.

As mentioned earlier, the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded was drilling at a depth of 22,000 feet. Their federal permit only allowed them to drill at a maximum depth of 20,000 feet. So not only was BP allowed to bypass a law that had to be followed by every other oil-producing country in the world, but they were breaking oil-drilling laws in the country with the most lackadaisical regulations on the planet. So they could make $25,600,000,000,000 a year.

And by the way, I wouldn't have needed to write this if Dick Cheney didn't feel that $500,000 was too much of a burden for BP to bear before it started drilling offshore.

Conclusion
I don't have a positive or hopeful way to end this post. I could say that no matter how much the spill's cleanup will cost, or no matter the damage already done, the 11 families of those who died on the oil rig will never get back what they lost.

I could choose to mention how the oil spill will kill or taint the food eaten by species like shrimp or red snapper, which humans buy and eat themselves, which means we'll be eating tainted seafood.

I could mention that an Exxon Valdez-sized spill per week for 12-16 weeks will ruin beaches in the South and maybe the East, and will hurt the tourism/hotel/restaurant industries in coastal states. But we've all already heard the gloom and doom from the media, and repeating it won't make anyone feel any better, or reverse the damage that's already been done.

However, I can at least offer a glimmer of hope; maybe this will shake America out of its addiction to fossil fuels, and finally illustrate that a fierce dependence on finite resources can only lead in destruction such as this.

Maybe this will make Americans realize that the mild convenience of our petroleum-driven culture is of little importance when it comes to preserving the planet for our posterity. Maybe this disaster will finally scare our policymakers into incentivizing growth of green energy jobs in solar, wind, biofuels, geothermal, hydroelectric, or even nuclear power.

Maybe American voters will overcome their apathy towards our political system and work to elect leaders who put the environment first, and corporate greed second.

And maybe those tax breaks can grow our economy into a green one that not only provides jobs and powers our homes here in the USA, but spurs other oil-dependent nations to do the same.

After all of this, I can still say I'm hopeful.

Are you?

Republicans Sure Do Love them Some Big Government

Opening Statement

(If you don't feel like reading, watch Rachel Maddow dismantle the GOP's stimulus hypocrisy here. You can also see the complete list of hypocritical Republicans on the stimulus here.)

Anti-government Republicans love big government. Yep. It's true.

I was surprised too, when I found out.

See, I had just assumed that when someone is elected to a national office to vote on national policy, they'd do it, for, you know, the good of the country. Or at the very least, the good of their district. I reckon that still holds true for most elected officials, unless you happen to be a Republican. Particularly if the policy in question is the $787 billion stimulus package. Or national health care reform.

February 2009
About a year ago, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Re-Investment Act of 2009, which was comprised of hundreds of billions of dollars in public works projects, aimed at getting people back to work in the midst of a recession. And, in doing so, bettering our infrastructure at the same time. And we all remember how Eric Cantor (R-VA) and John Boehner (R-OH) led the charge against the stimulus bill, even clapping for themselves when the vote had come through. Not one Republican voted for the stimulus. All of them who spoke on it spoke against it. They called it wasteful, pork-barrel, big government spending that wasn't going to do any good for jobs, or infrastructure, or the economy. Just more big nasty government.

Cue right-wing talk radio pundits and FOX news anchors decrying this bill as a Stalinist, Fascist, Marxist, Communist, elitist policy that hurts America and helps the terrorists. Cue the national dialogue reaching a fever pitch about how these mean nasty Democrats are shoving government down our throats and gosh gee golly willikers let's throw some tea bags to show how mad we are.

Well, that's what they said.

Here's what they actually did.

Unabashed Republican Hypocrisy
Now, when that money goes to their home districts, the story about the stimulus is a lot different. All of these Republicans voted against the stimulus after repeatedly trashing it as wasteful pork-barrel spending. These Republicans applauded themselves in the House chamber when the vote tally showed that zero Republicans voted for it. But all 23 of these Republicans loooooove them some big government spending. Keep in mind, I'm only using these as examples. There are plenty more where this came from. About 91, to be exact. One of the stimulus' biggest opponents?

That'd be Republican Governor Haley Barbour (R-MS), who had been unwilling to take $2.6B in stimulus funds for health care, education, and public works. He has an impressive resume as a chief GOP strategist.

-Barbour is one of the national GOP's big boys, and was the national RNC chairman when the Republicans took over congress for the first time ever, back in 1994.
-He was the most profitable lobbyist on K Street before running for Governor.
-He's even been found to be the engineer behind the GOP's total obstruction of anything progressive in Washington, encouraging Republicans to not unveil any policy of their own, but to instead just bash democratic policy and completely abandon bipartisanship. This is all a devious political effort to win votes in 2010, to frustrate voters with democrats being unable to get anything done, even though Republicans are doing all of the obstruction.

All of this gives the impression that if anyone is against a big spending program from big government, it'd be Governor Barbour. Well, if you click on Haley Barbour's name a few paragraphs above, you'll be taken to a NYT article on the Mississippi STEPS program, which uses stimulus funds for the private sector to hire employees. Barbour is in full support of this program, which wouldn't be possible without federal stimulus dollars.

"It’s welfare to work...The real economy that generates jobs generates private-sector jobs, from whence come taxes and quality of life for people."
Gov. Haley Barbour

Even though he goes on to bash the federal money coming to the state, Barbour grudgingly admits that Mississippi needs the help. From the article-

Now the problem facing Mississippi and other states is the calendar: The welfare money in the stimulus bill must be in the process of being spent by the end of September. Mr. Barbour said he hoped the program would be extended so more jobs could be created.

But Barbour isn't alone. There are plenty of Republicans who see the value of big government when it helps their constituents.

GOP Hypocrisy on the American Recovery and Re-Investment Act of 2009

-Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) called this "worse than wasteful" and a "boondoggle." That was before he handed out a $625,000 check to the Cedartown City Commission, made up of funds that he voted against giving out.

-Rep. John Mica (R-FL) is glad that some of the $787 billion will go to his district, to fund a beleaguered commuter rail project.

"The timing couldn't be better.
-Rep. John Mica

-Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) was mad that Gov. Tim Kaine was slow on spending stimulus finds that had been allocated to his district.

We could use that money desperately...there are a lot of things up here that money could be used for.
-Rep. Frank Wolf

-Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) brought some stimulus funds to his cash-strapped district back home, praising the bill for giving jobs to several dozen new workers in a sewage treatment plant.

-Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and the rest of the Texas delegation pushed for $3 billion in stimulus dollars for NASA, to help retain thousands of aerospace jobs.

"...This funding will spur growth in Texas communities."
-Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison

-Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) was a big opponent of the stimulus, until money went to his state.

"[ARRA is] a great thing for this county. we're not accustomed to federal dollars of that magnitude finding its way to North Carolina."
-Sen. Richard Burr

-Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) said a lot of things about the stimulus. Like this little tidbit

"“Hold on to your wallets folks because with the passage of this trillion-dollar baby the Democrats will be poised to spend as much as $3 trillion in your tax dollars,” Bond said. “Unfortunately, this bill stimulates the debt, it stimulates the growth of government, but it doesn’t stimulate jobs,” Bond insisted.

Well, that was before Bond decided to tour his state and talk about how great all that $2B of stimulus money was for low-income housing for the elderly and impoverished. Getting federal government money is great, but only for Missouri, apparently. Bond said the stimulus would "create jobs and ultimately spur economic opportunities."

-Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) is also a big fan of big government. Now before you shout "YOU LIE!" at me, take a look at Wilson, wanting federal stimulus money for his district from the Department of Agriculture.

"We know their endeavor will provide jobs and investment in one of the poorer sections of the Congressional District," Wilson wrote to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in an August 2009 letter excerpted by the Times.

-Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) is the state's junior senator who vehemently opposed the American Recovery and Re-Investment Act.

"The only thing this bill will stimulate is the national debt."
-Sen. Bob Bennett

But he had requested $50 billion in stimulus money for his state from the EPA and the USDA before voting NO to it. Which Bob Bennett do the Utes like? The chest-beating no-to-big-government blowhard, or the senator who is looking out for his state, which is suffering from recession?

""I recognize the extensive demands being placed on these funds and, therefore, greatly appreciate any funding considerations you give to the projects of Utah...The addition of federal funds would maximize the stimulative effect on the local economy."
-Sen. Bob Bennett

-Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-OH) was a big stimulus opponent who also noted that federal stimulus dollars for broadband internet expansion would help his district's economy.

"The project could support numerous jobs in Ohio."
-Rep. Pat Tiberi

-Mary Bono Mack (R-CA) was also one of the 111 House Republicans who voted NO on the stimulus package, and then toured her district talking about how great the stimulus was after she had requested $4.2 million to fight homelessness.

"This funding will provide much-needed assistance."
-Rep. Mary Bono Mack

-Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) decried the $787 billion spending package as wasteful, but still requested $3M for harbor improvements in his district.

"Safe and navigable harbors are economic engines that drive the communities that surround them."
-Rep. Peter Hoekstra

-Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE), the former Governor of Nebraska, and Secretary of Agriculture under George W. Bush, was one of the senate's loudest critics of Obama and the stimulus package. Which Mike Johanns did Nebraskans vote for? Was it this guy-

Mr. President, I rise today to say that rarely has a crystal ball proved so regrettably accurate. Many warned, as did I, that the stimulus would amount to a mountain of wasted money. It produced record deficits and thus far, little else."

"The money would simply never reach the economy."

"It would be hard for me to imagine that we are going to be creating many jobs here."
-Sen. Mike Johanns

...Or was it this guy, who requested stimulus money for Nebraska from the USDA?

"The proposed project would create 38 new jobs and bring broadband to eight hospitals, five colleges, 16 libraries and 161 K-12 schools."
-Sen. Mike Johanns

-Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) joined in the anti-stimulus chorus in Washington, before requesting stimulus money to go back home.

"This is spending, not stimulus."
-Sen. Lamar Alexander

...Although a letter he sent to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack tells it a little differently.

"It is anticipated that the project will create over 200 jobs in the first year and at least another 40 new jobs in the following years."
-Sen. Lamar Alexander

-Rep. John Linder (R-GA) requested dirty, dirty stimulus money from that wasteful, pork-laden bill go to his district. After he voted against the bill. In early 2009, Linder, ranked by the ACU as one of the most conservative in the House, crticized the stimulus.

"(new unemployment numbers) only reinforce the fact that the $787 billion 'stimulus' signed into law eight months ago has done nothing for job growth in this country."
-Rep. John Linder

But Linder might have a bone to pick with Linder, who later said-

"The employment opportunities created by this program would be quickly utilized."
-Rep. John Linder

-Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) went around handing out fat checks in his district, which were made possible through $5.2M in federal stimulus dollars from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, to fight homelessness.

"It is imperative we provide those programs serving Delaware’s most disadvantaged families and individuals with the resources necessary to house, feed, and protect those in desperate need."
-Rep. Mike Castle

-Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) once called the stimulus bill a "giant welfare package." But that didn't stop him from requesting $25M in stimulus money from the EPA for the Tar Creek cleanup in his state.

"This funding not only completes the relocation phase being conducted by the Lead Impacted Communities Relocation Assistance Trust but provides the necessary funds to clean up this area."
-Sen. James Inhofe

-Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) joins the rest of the Georgia delegation as a congressman who voted against the stimulus package saying it was "wasteful," before requesting some of that wasteful money for their own district because it creates jobs/repairs public infrastructure. Here's what he had to say about it last February.

"(The ARRA is) fundamentally flawed and doesn’t represent the change we deserve or the stimulus we need."
-Rep. Jack Kingston

But ol' Jackie boy requested money from the stimulus go to Alma and Jesup Counties, so those police departments could hire more entry-level officers to fight crime on the streets. And he has the gall to take credit for that stimulus money by not once mentioning the word "stimulus" in statements to his district. And manages to even bash the federal government after he requested federal money.

“We’ve seen from experience that local initiatives go a lot further toward solving local problems than policies set in Washington...This funding will provide tax relief by saving local tax dollars.”
-Rep. Jack Kingston

Mind-boggling as it is, Kingston's office says that he remains opposed to the stimulus package.

-Rep. John Carter (R-TX) distributed press releases talking about how bad the stimulus package was, how we should repeal it and give the money back to the taxpayers. Thing is, Carter is completely aware that the stimulus is giving money back to the taxpayers in his district. Specifically through $3B for NASA, requested by the entirety of the Texas delegation. Carter himself also requested $621 million in hospital projects in his district.

"(ARRA is) a victory for the economy in Central Texas."
-Rep. John Carter

-Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA) made no bones about his opposition to the stimulus, along with the rest of his colleagues. But that didn't stop him from recognizing that there are hurting people in his district who could use some jobs and some federal investment in local public works projects. Here's a sample from the article I linked to above, that talks about the 7,500 jobs to be created or saved in Pennsylvania's 5th district.

Congressman Glenn "GT" Thompson, R-Howard, who represents the 5th District at a national level, said he hoped the residents within the county would benefit from the plan's massive spending and tax cuts.

Like Pennsylvania's 5th district, there are places all over the United States that are benefiting from the recovery packages. And we can track all of the spending for the next year or so, courtesy of the internet. Looks like that big bad stimulus may not be so bad after all, according to these Republicans who voted against it.

Well, maybe that's just the wishy-washy, on the fence Republicans not extreme enough for the most extreme Tea Party extremists on the fringe of the far right? Let's look at some House GOP leadership!

-House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) has been, without a doubt, the biggest critic in Congress on the stimulus package. He even threw the bill on the floor during a debate. Here's what he had to say about it just recently, on the anniversary of the bill's signing into law.

"The trillion-dollar stimulus was put together so quickly and so secretively that no member of Congress had a chance to read it before it passed, and it shows. Yet, as poorly conceived and badly executed as the trillion-dollar stimulus was, President Obama and Democrats in Congress still think that Washington is the answer to everything."

“When it comes to slow-moving government spending programs, it’s clear that it doesn’t create the jobs.”
-Rep. John Boehner

You tell 'em, John! That big bad federal government can't do anything right! Right?

"With Ohio’s unemployment rate the highest it’s been in 25 years, I’m pleased that federal officials stepped in to order Ohio to use all of its construction dollars for shovel-ready projects that will create much-needed jobs.”
-Rep. John Boehner

Oh. Well, nevermind. Maybe the House Minority Whip can do a better job standing up for his principles?

-Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) is the House's #2 Republican, and even organized the effort for all House Republicans to vote against the ARRA.

Well, that was until he was caught hosting a job fair where half of the employers there had been given money from the stimulus to give jobs to the unemployed. And at this same job fair where 30 organizations who directly benefited from the bill were putting his district to work, he called the stimulus an "utter failure." All of this coming from a guy who repeatedly attacks the president for not doing enough about job creation.

Closing Statement

Like it or not, these Republicans cannot deny that the American economy has been on life support, and the stimulus package is the plug that keeps it running until the economy recovers from the recession. Here are some raw facts that cannot be ignored, no matter how hard these history revisionists and hypocrites may try.

-Over 2 million jobs have been saved or created since the bill was signed into law, with only a quarter of the money spent so far.
-President Obama's claim that 3.5 million jobs will be saved or created by the end of this year is still on track.
-Even though the economy is in a tailspin, economists readily agree that without the stimulus, things would be much, much worse.

And let's remember when Ronald Reagan, savior of modern-day Republicans, faced 10.8 percent unemployment and a 35 percent approval rating because of a bad economy back in 1983. This had came a full year after he had cut taxes for the richest 1 percent, which had increased the deficit even more. Republicans had lost 28 seats in the House in the midterm elections because of voter frustration over jobs. Here are the unemployment numbers from the onset of Reagan's swearing in.

01/1981 - Unemployment rate 7.5% .... Reagan sworn in.
02/1981 - 7.4%
03/1981 - 7.4%
04/1981 - 7.2%
05/1981 - 7.5%
06/1981 - 7.5%
07/1981 - 7.2%
08/1981 - 7.4% *Reagan cuts taxes for top 1% & says unemployment will DROP to 6.9%.
09/1981 - 7.6%
10/1981 - 7.9%
11/1981 - 8.3%
12/1981 - 8.5%
01/1982 - 8.6%
02/1982 - 8.9%
03/1982 - 9.0%
04/1982 - 9.3%
05/1982 - 9.4%
06/1982 - 9.6%
07/1982 - 9.8%
08/1982 - 9.8%
09/1982 - 10.1%
10/1982 - 10.4%
11/1982 - 10.8%

President Obama, on the other hand, has seen unemployment drop from 10.2 percent to 9.7 percent at the beginning of his second year. Gross National Product has gone up 3.5 percent as of the last quarter's reports. This year, the stimulus is expected to grow the economy by anywhere from 1.4 to 4 percent. It could bring down unemployment anywhere from 0.7 percent to 1.8 percent. Obama's approval rating remains around 50 percent, whereas Reagan's had dropped to about 40 percent by that period of his administration.

The stimulus is a great idea. It's keeping this economy afloat, and even Republicans who voted against it are openly praising the good things it's doing for local economies and public works projects. Barack Obama is handling this recession to the very best of his abilities, and is doing a good job so far.

I'll bet Reagan would have been ridden out of office at this point if there was a reactionary, paranoid 24-hour national news cycle back in the eighties.

The Case for Financial Reform, and How to Do It

Disclaimer
If you read anything I write about the economy or the current recession, please read this. A lot of what I say is going to shock you, and will undoubtedly cause you to furrow your brow and scoff, so I've taken the liberty of painstaking including links and information to back up what I say. Read on and discuss!

Robin Hood Reversed

"The war against working people should be understood to be a real war.... Specifically in the U.S., which happens to have a highly class-conscious business class.... And they have long seen themselves as fighting a bitter class war, except they don’t want anybody else to know about it."
— Noam Chomsky

I think most Americans would agree that a prominent middle class is necessary in every true democracy. The extreme polarization of wealth, with a very few having everything while a great majority are impoverished, is reminiscent of oppressive societies in years past, in other parts of the globe. America, the land of opportunity, should be seen as a place where people who make median incomes can thrive comfortably, raise families, work good jobs, and be healthy. But don't take my word on that. Just ask Aristotle. Or Seymour Lipset, a known scholar on democracy.

But this middle class is being endangered by what I wouldn't hesitate to call a class war between the super-rich and everyone else. The bank bailouts, endless federal reserve money, zero percent interest rates, and tax dollars going toward extravagant Wall Street bonuses for the bankers who caused this mess is all Robin Hood in reverse. Take from the poor, give to the rich. I'm going to list some facts and figures that will shock you. These numbers come from the United States of America, the land of opportunity, and not a third world country.

-50 million Americans live in poverty.
-Half of all American children will depend on food stamps to eat at some point in their childhood.
-Hunger is at an all-time high in the USA.
-Of the 1.4 million Americans who filed for bankruptcy in 2009, 60% of them did so because of medical bills.
-Before the recession ends, 13 million more Americans are going to lose their homes.
-We throw more people in jail than any other country in the world.
-We open a new jail in this country every single week.

And in my own state of Mississippi, child poverty is rampant. It is oppressive. It is disgusting. And it is worsening. 6 out of 10 children in Holmes County are living in poverty. 56% of children in Issaquena County are impoverished. 54% in Coahoma and Sharkey Counties. 53% in Bolivar County. Even half of Leflore County's children are living in poverty. Washington, Yazoo, Sunflower, Jefferson Davis, Quitman, Tallahatchie, Noxubee, Pike, Wilkinson and Jefferson Counties are all also in the top 100 worst counties in America when it comes to child poverty. And these numbers aren't looking to improve anytime soon. If anything, they're going to get worse.

The class war against the working class has been going on a lot longer since the 2008 recession. If we go back to 1972, almost 40 years ago, and check the consumer price index, you'd see that the average worker made $738.48 per week. That figure in 2008 was %598.18.

And if you want to know the true depths of how deep the damage is to the middle class, just look at job creation in the last decade, where we had ZERO net job growth. Middle class families made less in 2008 than they did in 1999. It hasn't been this bad in 70 years.

But that's how the middle class is faring in this economy. Surely Wall Street is feeling the pain, too?

The Rise of the Oligarchs
It's REAL good to be rich right now. There hasn't been a better time to be in the rich 1% of this country since the Gilded Age, pre-1929.

While the poor and the middle class have been languishing since the 1970s, we've seen after-tax income TRIPLE for the top 1% since 1980. Likewise, the bottom 90% has seen their after-tax income go down by 20% in that same time period. Since 2002, this trend has rapidly increased.

Also, did you know that the richest 1% owns 70% of all financial assets? And that this is an all-time high throughout history?

Did you know that 40 years ago, the average CEO made 25 times as much as the average worker? And now, CEOs make 500 times as much as we do?

Here's one more for you. If you can stomach it.

400 people in this country have more wealth than 155,000,000 people COMBINED. And that gap is increasing as I write this sentence.

Obviously, one can see our tax structure, both in-state and nationally, is skewed against the poor and toward the richest 1%. It's easy to see how progressive taxation would create income equality, lower child poverty rates, and spur the rebirth of the middle class. However, being that taxing the rich is such a touchy topic for politicians who get their money from the rich people who would be taxed, nobody wants to talk about that. But if you don't raise taxes, budgets have to be cut. And budget cuts are devastating local governments.

Wall Street's Plunder of Main Street

"For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance."
— George Orwell

There's a little town in Alabama called Samson. It's a small town where, last March, a disgruntled worker at a chicken plant killed 11 people. While tragic, there was another happening in Samson that didn't reach the attention of the news media; the national guard was called in to keep order, and patrolled the streets. While this directly defies the Posse Comitatus Act, there was no other choice. Cuts made to the Sheriff's department were so deep that the local law enforcement had been rendered completely unable to do their jobs.

This same chicken plant got hundreds of billions from former Wall Street giants Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch to buy out a rival manufacturer. This deal was put together by a banker hired by J.P. Morgan & Chase. And J.P. Morgan came up with the derivatives that bankrupted Jefferson County, Alabama over a sewer project. In that instance, the sharp increase in sewer rates caused people to have to choose between having water or having heat.

In order to make this purchase and hand out subsequent executive bonuses, workers' wages at the chicken plant were cut. However, the debt the company incurred forced it to declare bankruptcy. Thus, the greed of predatory capitalism caused massive layoffs at the plant, completely dismantling the local tax base of Samson. Meanwhile, Wall Street gets richer, fattening their own pockets on the backs of unemployed, disadvantaged middle class workers. And this continues today. Sounds eerily similar to what the corporatocracy (World Bank, IMF, USAID) has done to Latin America for the past 40 years, no?

But this isn't just in America; British officials are saying that their bankers are fueling a "doom loop," and that massive reforms will be necessary to end the plundering that has been victimizing the middle class.

As we continue to coddle the rich 1% and cut public sector budgets that the majority of Americans depend on for jobs and services, we risk putting ourselves in situations like Samson, or in Colorado Springs, CO, the home of Ted Haggard and the Tea Party movement.

From the article:

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that. Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

No land-use planning, building inspection, zoning, transportation, parks & recreation, community centers and public pools. Because of drastic budget cuts. States across the union can expect similar situations if progressive taxation continues to be ignored in favor of budget cuts.

The Myth of the Free Market
(It gets a little complicated here, so bear with me.)

The last duty of a central banker is to tell the public the truth."
-Alan Blinder, former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman

Banks started pulling the same stunts here in 2008 that they've been pulling for 40 years in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. After the $700 billion bailout and interest rates being slashed to zero by the Fed with money being printed in abundance, banks like Goldman Sachs used that free cash from taxpayers to buy all of our foreclosed property for pennies on the dollar. They then took advantage of the poor real estate market (hampered by the bubble which they caused through predatory lending and excessive subprime loans) and made thousands of percent of profit selling those properties back to us. This is all because the Fed literally has our economy in a stranglehold. Societe Generale Chief Strategist Albert Edwards is openly accusing the Federal Reserve and England's central bank of robbing the poor and middle classes of the USA and the UK.

But we can't completely blame the Fed for the financial meltdown; when Goldman Sachs said they needed $700 billion of our money to stay afloat and loan capital to small businesses, they refused to lend any of it out. The Fed was then forced to slash interest rates and print even more money for the banks. This causes speculation, which leads to more reckless trading and lending, which leads to bubbles that inevitably burst to create another recession. Bubbles exist to move wealth from the working class to the richest .01% through risky investments and toxic asset trading.

Big investment banks also operated as commercial banks, which allows them to get even more money from the federal government. While Goldman got $10 billion in TARP (bailout) money, that's a drop in the bucket when compared to how much federal aid they qualified for as a commercial lending bank. JP Morgan, Citigroup and Bank of America were among some of the other financiers who lined up at the federal trough to stuff our tax dollars into their wallets to continue doing the same things that caused the global meltdown in the first place. In fact, without the Fed, all of these banks would have been rendered insolvent.

However, a deregulatory policy called the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program allowed nearly-insolvent banks to shed their disastrous credit histories and borrow on a clean slate, on top of all of the TARP money and Fed money. They were also allowed to gain interest on reserve accounts they are required to keep with the Fed. Basically, our government gave banks more money to reward the banks for existing.

These banks, in turn loaned money back to the Fed through the purchase of treasury bills, paying a 3 to 4 percent interest rate. Sort of like attaching an ATM to the federal reserve, to be used exclusively by Wall Street bankers. Collectively, these big banks borrowed trillions of dollars, sat on it, and refused to loan it out to small businesses and entrepreneurs once the money was given out. In fact, they demanded even MORE money. Essentially, money is going from the government back to the government, but the banks step in every once in awhile and fill their hands with our money.

While this has all been going on, the Fed and the Treasury have been frequently consulting with private advisory boards comprised mainly of Wall Street fat cats. Take, for example, the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, where a J.P. Morgan executive and a Goldman-Sachs executive sit as chairman and vice chairman, respectively. the board advising the Fed includes major players from Bank of New York Mellon and from Capital One. Basically, these big bankers know when they'll be getting truckloads of free money so they can put themselves in position to make the most profitable investments. Kind of like a rigged poker game where the dealer and other players are all in on the scheme, and don't stop until they've taken all of your money.

The Fed has even become brazen in their openness about tight associations with Wall Street bankers. In the above articles, the Fed has been exposed in covering up their role in the AIG bailouts, and about their involvement in the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy debacle.

Now, the nation's six largest banks have set aside a collective $140 billion in bonuses while 14.8 million Americans stand in the unemployment line, and while one fifth of this country is out of work or looking for more work that can actually pay for things like rent, food and bills. We need to care about this, because underemployed people spend 36% less than gainfully employed Americans. This quickly takes a toll on local economies and small businesses, affecting even more jobs and cash flow.

So really, there is no "free" market. Not when our economy is in the hands of a few greedy bankers who have free access to our tax dollars, who can hold businesses that need credit hostage, and who can claim to be "too big to fail" when their unscrupulous practices catch up to them.

Solutions

"A corporation cannot be ethical; its only responsibility is to turn a profit!"
—Milton Friedman, Economic Adviser to Ronald Reagan

Through the rape of the free market with the help of big banks, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, and Treasury Secretaries Hank Paulson (TARP guy, former Goldman-Sachs executive) and Tim Geithner, we have essentially privatized government in and of itself. Our economy is no longer under popular control, and our businesses and jobs are completely at the mercy of the Wall Street fat cats who hold all the cards. But there are things that we can do.

Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act.
This legislation from the 1930s drew a clear line between commercial banks and investment banks. When Clinton repealed it in 1999, that gave the big Wall Street banks the green light to do what I've just described. Obama putting this back in place would reign in how much federal support big banks are allowed to get. And hopefully keep them honest so they won't rely on the Treasury to fill their pockets.

Institute a Robin Hood Tax
This would be a .05% tax on all bank transactions that don't include members of the public, i.e. bonds, currencies, speculation, derivatives. This would generate hundreds of billions of dollars each year to be used for shoring up the public sector. Essentially, by keeping the banks honest, and taxing them for engaging in risky behavior, it'd be like a new stimulus package every year, directly from Wall Street to Main Street.

Reform our Tax Structure to include a "Fat Cat/Rich Brat" Tax Bracket
When 50 to 60 percent of Americans can't keep up with rising inflation, health care costs, energy costs and grocery costs, it's time to turn the tables against those earning $5,000,000 per year, rich brats thriving off of trust funds, and other wealth that gets passed down through generations that builds simply because it is there.

Did you know that up until Reagan was president, our top income tax rate was never lower than 70%? Or that 2007 (pre-recession) tax returns never showed more than 46,000 earning $5,000,000 or more per year? This tax would effect about half of one percent of this country, and would generate over $100 billion per year in revenue. The total taxable income on all of those tax returns was $670 billion, and about $150 billion of that was income tax, at a 23% rate.

23%. That's the most glaring reason why we need a Fat Cat/Rich Brat tax. If you have taxable income exceeding $10 million, you paid at a lower tax rate than anyone with taxable income between $200,000 and $9,999,999. We could also tax all non-wage income. Why should people who work hard be taxed higher than those who are sitting on their butt, getting money off of accumulated wealth that most people don't have the luxury to have?

The Fat Cat/rich Brat tax could also be a makeup of the estate tax, and we could even exempt family businesses and family homes, as well as farms. The catch would be that the home has to have been lived in 5-10 years before death, lower the threshold and make it a tax on inherited and untaxed wealth. And if the rich brats and fat cats don't like the name of the Rich Brat/Fat Cat tax, we can call it the Trust Fund Baby tax, or the Leech on Society Tax, or the Lazy Brat tax. This would only effect the wealthiest of the wealthiest of the wealthiest, as there were under 14,000 taxable returns filed in 2008. It would be 1/6th of 1% of all income earners. And it would generate billions. Besides, stock, cash, and cash-type assets make up the bulk of all taxable income, so exempting businesses, homes and farms would even further single out trust fund babies.

And what's more, this tax would only apply to 5,000 to 10,000 families in the entire United States. It would force lazy trust fund brats to do something with their lives while allowing homes and businesses to be passed down without worry. Fat cats and rich brats should have to step up and pay their fair share, at least while the rest of us are working two or three jobs so we can pay rent and have food in our fridge.