Prequel: A Declaration [Rant?]
Now listen up, all you American Billionaires and CEO's:
Enough………
You have taken most of what we have.
It is enough for you. We want some of it back. We are coming for
you. [i]
You take our wages and cross too many lines.
You control the law making system and you, and only you, can fix the
country. Without you letting loose some control, our laws cannot fix our
problems today. If you choose to help us, we can fix America together. [ii]
You cannot escape your responsibility for our plight: with your great
wealth comes your greater responsibility.
You cannot avoid acting because doing nothing is making a choice to
continue as we are today.
We CAN change with your help. Without you, the end-result will be
violence against you.
You want to install a Dictator who works for Vladimir Putin. If you
succeed, then he will steal all our liberty and our property, yours and mine.
You will not escape him. [iii]
You call it ‘competitive advantage’ when you find loopholes in the laws
to steal our incomes.. [iv]
You threaten our National Security by creating disastrous extremes of income
and wealth.
About 10% to 20% of us live in hunger and fear. Some among the rest of
us have little peace or rest.
You poison our air and our water and you kill the planet we call home.
You shoot to ‘kill/death’ thousands of us every year.
'In 2021, the
most recent year for which complete data is available, 48,830 people died from
gun-related injuries in the U.S., according to the CDC’ [v]
You won. Congratulations.
Now, look around: many Americans suffer privation and desperation. They
may resort to violence against you as happened to the Russian Romanovs, Saddam
Hussein, French nobility and a long list of murdered tyrants. Our Deal can save
you.
You can choose your legacy: You can be a modern Alfred Nobel or
Rockefeller. Or, you will be an evil
tyrant like industrialist Henry Clay Frick or Germany’s Quandt family, who own
BMW.[vi]
We want to make a deal. Understand that we will come for you even if
there is no deal. We will not be happy if we must come when there is no deal.
The deal: You agree to pay higher income taxes sufficient to balance our
budget, retire the national debt over time and fix our social policies. Just
tell your Congressional minions it is OK to raise our income taxes and expand
social programs.
In return, let you live and keep your assets, just like the New Deal of
FDR from 1930. It is what we want today.
With you, we can balance the Federal budget and pay down the debt by
raising tax revenues instead of simply cutting benefit expenditures.
Eisenhower explained it this way: ‘The super
rich could avoid the high taxes by investing their money in things that make
America stronger. If they wanted to avoid high taxes, he said they could invest
in business expansions and higher employee wages. They could give a million or
two to tax-exempt non-profits that feed, house and clothe poor people of
America, among other things. They did some of that, but the Eisenhower years
generated enough taxes to launch and complete the labyrinth of interstate
highways, the largest road project America had ever seen and is needed again.'
Dave Peyton, AP news [vii]
However, instead you choose to maximize your wealth. You tell your
Senators and Representatives, or even a SCOTUS judge: 'Kill any proposed laws
or regulations which might benefit working people, then approve any laws which
reduce income and wealth taxes.'
CNBC says: 63%
of American workers are unable to pay a $500 emergency expense. [viii]
You know a storm is coming: you see MAGA violence in the political
process. Mob thugs have not come for you … yet.
You became very rich when you ordered lower income taxes. The US Treasury
borrows more money to pay our bills, instead of using income tax revenue from
you to pay. We borrow so that you do not have to pay income taxes. That steals from
my grandchildren and future, unborn generations; it must stop.
NOTES Prequel: A
Declaration [Rant?]
[i] Robert Reich
[https://robertreich.substack.com/p/billionaires-dont-have-a-right-to]
[ii] These Days, the Very Rich Are Very Selfish.
It Could Get Ugly. By Guido Alfani, NYT Nov 19, 2023; Mr. Alfani is an economic
history professor at Bocconi University in Milan.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/19/opinion/rich-billionaires-philanthropy-covid.html]
[iii]
PUTIN'S PEOPLE: HOW THE KGB TOOK BACK RUSSIA AND THEN TOOK ON THE WEST,
Catherine Belton, 2020, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York
THE SCHEME: HOW THE RIGHT WING USED DARK MONEY TO
CAPTURE THE SUPREME COURT, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Jennifer Mueller, 2022,
The New Press, New York.
[v]
Pew Research Center publishes gun deaths in the US:
[https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/]
[vi]
Rich People From
History Who Committed Shady and Evil Deeds - Khalid Elhassan - April 12, 2022,
History Collection
a. Henry Clay Frick.
In 1880, industrialist Henry Clay Frick and a group of
rich Pittsburgh magnates bought the South Fork Dam, an earthen dam that formed
an artificial Lake Conemaugh in Cambria County. ...because when the dam was
built, it had a system of relief pipes and valves to lower water levels in an
emergency. That system had been sold as scrap metal, and never replaced.
Between that and the clogged spillway, there was no way to release water in
case of an emergency. Such an emergency occurred on May 31st, 1889, and it
killed thousands in what came to be known as the Johnstown Flood, after the
chief town struck by the disaster.’
b. Quandt Family, BMW
BMW. Less known is that its major shareholders, the
seriously rich Quandt family, were close friends and admirers of Hitler and the
Nazis.
The study commissioned by the Quandt family resulted in
a 1200-page report that concluded: “[t]he Quandts were linked inseparably with
the crimes of the Nazis … The family patriarch was part of the regime“. Among
other things, the Quandts profited from the Nazis’ “Aryanization Program”,
which stripped Jews of their property and turned it over to Germans approved by
the new regime. BMW’s owners benefitted greatly from Aryanization: dozens of
businesses were seized from rich Jews and handed over to the already rich
Quandts.
[https://historycollection.com/rich-people-from-history-who-committed-shady-and-evil-deeds/]
[vii]
BY DAVE PEYTON Published 10:28 PM PST, January 30, 2019
[https://apnews.com/article/2184e9f18f6f4acca1ed007bdcdca818]
[viii] CNBC Survey shows that many working Americans
are a single expense away from homelessness.
[https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/31/63percent-of-workers-are-unable-to-pay-a-500-emergency-expense-survey.html#:~:text=To%20that%20point%2C%2063%25%20of,employers%20provide%20emergency%20savings%20benefits]
