WHO OWNS THE OWNERSHIP SOCIETY?

Allan Sloan in Newsweek’s September 13, 2004 issue points out what so many of Bush’s happy plans for everyone owning a piece of the pie fails to account for: it takes money to make money.

In a time of declining wages, most of us use just about all we have to make ends meet. What blue collar man of the future will be able to save money for the purchase of that snappy travel home like his father owned to go on the road with when he retires after he sends his kids to college so that they can get ahead in ways he never could and pays off his too expensive, roomy house and pays off that last SUV he shouldn’t have purchased (if he doesn’t buy that SUV, how many good paying jobs will Detroit lose).

All Bush’s plans for “retirement savings accounts” and “lifetime savings accounts” are for those in the upper end of middle class America (I call them the rich). As Sloan says, “all this would be great for people who already have plenty to invest, but not helpful for people who don’t already own plenty of capital. It’s all part of a long-term plan to turn the income tax into a wage tax, make inheritances and income from investments tax-free and fill the budget gap with a national sales tax or value-added tax.” (p. 33)

In the long run, Bush’s plan sounds really American pie, but the poor will still be with us, and if the economic slide continues, there’ll be more of them for those of us who pay wage taxes (that’s you and me, Mr. Blue Collar) to support while the rich buy their yachts, move their businesses offshore, sail the seven seas and almost completely escape their part of the cost of keeping America safe and stable so that they can pursue ever more money which will increase exponentially under Republican control.


HYPOCRISY

There’s always enough hypocrisy to go around. I recall this from the 60s, don’t you? How many of these Republican hawks also want to stop abortion? There’s nothing like saving a zygote on the starting side of life so that you can send a young man off to die in the anti-abortionist’s war later. I think it’s pretty sadistic to want newbees to hang around long enough to build lots of friendships, families of their own and love relationships so that the suffering can be multiplied. Don’t give this “respect for life” society Mr. Bush pays lip service to too much credit yet.


REV. SUN MYUNG MOON (MOONIES) OWNS A LOT

This guy who calls “homosexuals ‘dirty dung-eating dogs’ and American women ‘a line of prostitutes’” is growing ever more powerful in American political circles according to a report in The Humanist magazine (September/October 2004, p. 14)

Moon’s front groups include the “Interreligious Federation for World Peace” and “the Women’s Federation for World Peace, the American Family Coalition, the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, a New Jersey after-school celibacy program for teens, the Washington Times Foundation, and United Press International.”

You know, as I helplessly watch men like Moon and Murdock buy up news organizations, I think it behooves us to firmly grasp public broadcasting in hand, fund it well so they can find news on their own, and also make sure that they have independence from law makers to do a thorough job of reporting the news.


JUDGES SHOULD BE ABOVE POLITICS

As an aside, I’ve been thinking about American judges and the way they’re being tossed around like political footballs. I think all judges who want to move up in life to higher positions of trust ought to have to test for the position with serious testing. Then everyone’s name who wants to move up and who achieves a certain level of tested competency should have their name put in the hat and drawn out to fill open positions. No favoritism, no owing any special philosophical position loyalty or any politician, either.
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"I think we must save America from the missionary idea that you must get the whole world on to the American way of life. This is really a big world danger." —Gunnar Myrdal (Myrdal, Nobel laureate in Economics, was born in Gustaf's parish, Sweden, on December 6, 1898 and died in 1987. )