EAT THE RICH: BURN THE BUSH TAX CUTS
Thu, 09 Sep 2010 23:47:16
I was performing with Phil Proctor in Madison, Wisconsin in the mid 70's sharing the bill with Patti Smith.
Driving into the venue's parking garage I was treated to a large graffiti that read EAT THE RICH. I thought it was apt then, and I think it's a whole lot more apt now.
The economic cancer that's eating away at our society is the unbelievable and ultimately unbearable income disparity between the rich and everyone else.
In 1915 when we were displacing Britain as the richest nation on the planet, our wealthiest 1% accounted for 18% of the nation's income. Today, that figure is an outrageous 24%. The widening of this chasm wasn't spread out over the century; it erupted in the last two decades.
And now, here we are, going broke state by state, business by business, household by household, individual by individual while a small, tight knit cabal of multi-millionaires and multi-multi millionaire take control of the political process.
The most politically conservative Supreme Court since the New Deal decided that money, regardless of how much is gathered at one point to do the damage is "free speech," unleashing the ultra-rich Super PAC's, with the jovial, ever-jowly Karl Rove running with the big dogs again.
Thank DARPA or Dharma (your choice) for the Internet, an Excaliber pulled out of the lake just in time to do battle with this tax-free propaganda juggernaut and Fox's stable of hydra-deaded hooligans and alter boy bullies.
At some level of their consciousness, the super rich, along with everyone else knows that the whole thing is coming apart. The response since the Bush Coup Lite in 2004 has been a pell mell rush to fascism. Not the black leather and strut fascism of Benito Mussolini. America is developing its own brand, with it's own icons and its own enemies.
But it's fascism nonetheless--the conflation of government, finance , military and the conclave of Christian Ayatollahs appearing in mega churches and mall fronts everywhere.
Right now, Brand New American Fascism is doing just fine, because the bulk of the people who can and will eventually do something about it are still in shock. No surprise. It all happened pretty fast, and at the end of an equity bubble that was a soft ride for anybody with any real estate on them at the time. Boom Dot Burst! All gone. No beuno.
Now, we have to pull ourselves together, and solve this on our own. We can't wait for big government, Wall Street, the DOD/CIA and the Inerrant to play house with us. Their tools and toys are so big and expensive that they choose to play only with each other, but with our money.
There's nothing immoral, unethical or unnatural about a 95% tax rate for super wealth, a lifting of the corporate veil (aren't we in AfPak to life veils?), a moratorium on all domestic drilling and a decommissioning of all nuclear weapons.
We're not alone. There is a ready contingent of hackers, home boys, Hecates and heroes waiting in the wings to help get the New New Deal off the ground.