Your Independent Journal from the Heartland
As W.C.Fields one said, “It’s time to take the bull by the horns and face the situation.” Now that most of the dust has settled over the election, the pearl-clutching, bed-wetting and Monday-morning-quarterbacking closes around the conclusion that the election was lost due to 1) the price of groceries, and 2) the 40% approval rating (Meaning that 60% of the people are not likely to vote for you) of the President (and, by extension, the Vice President. In other words, Democrats didn’t do anything wrong. The campaign fell, as did the Carter campaign, to high prices, low president ratings and a problem in the Middle East that seemed intractable.
“Prices,” that is what it is about, Money, our money. Now the Republicans have taken off the velvet glove that has hidden their Iron Fist. They showed us who they were on inauguration day, the Billionaire Boys Club standing in front of everyone else on the platform. What do they want? They want more. Someone went around asking billionaires if the “had enough.” Their answers were telling. If they had $10 billion, they thought $15 billion. If they had $30 billion, they thought $45 billion would be sufficient. And so on. Fifty percent more, that’s what they want. And they have been getting more ever since Reagan dropped the highest marginal income tax rate from 70% on highest earners to 28% and stopped enforcing the antitrust laws.
Where the richest 1% used to take 12% of GDP (all of the money everybody earned) in 1980, by 2020 they were taking almost 20% of all money earned. Now they want more and they are coming after OUR money. Trump and Musk are rummaging through the government, money-grubbing to show huge savings in order to justify an enormous tax cut for the rich and powerful. They propose to do this by defunding us and putting the rest on the national debt. They are coming after Our Money. Well, it ‘s time we go after theirs.
Democrats, it’s all about the money! In this age of increasing income and wealth equality we need a program which calls for:
• A 3% wealth tax on all fortunes over … (fill in the blank)
• Raise the top marginal tax rate back to 70%
• Set a reasonable minimum wage.
• Take the cap off of Social Security.
• Restore historical inheritance tax rates
• Cap individual inheritance to one billion dollars per individual
• Repeal Citizens United so that every dollar that ends up in a politicians pocket has an individual donor’ name on it.
Add to this list and “flood the zone” with messaging such as this. They either get our money or we get them paying their fair share.
KEN ARMSTRONG, Campbell, Ga.
