More tax cuts would be gluttony in a time of starvation. That is not America. That is a nation about to be plundered, and a people laid to waste.
— Charles M. Blow, The New York Times, April 16, 2011
By Joel Thurtell
No, no, Mr. Blow. Your otherwise excellent column ends on a false note. You proclaim that the Republican plan to further reduce taxes on the rich is “piracy,” which is absolutely correct. But then you soften your argument by claiming “that is not America.”
This state of piracy, this plunder-and-loot mentality, is precisely what America IS all about.
Why could this nation not achieve a single-payer health insurance system like that of other industrialized nations?
Because there is a mindset in this country that says business has a right to exploit a plan that should only work to further the public good. This is a country where business thinks it has a natural, divinely-created right to make profits off anything, even if the gluttony distorts the purpose and inflates the cost.
Why is it okay for business to pump unlimited amounts of money into political campaigns? That is just another way of spelling out legal bribery. But without the bribes, business might actually have to play a level field. That would not be right in America.
Why is it so easy for Americans to go to a gun store or buy a weapon through the mail?
Because Americans are indoctrinated in schools, in churches, on television, radio, now the Internet with the notion that the individual should be able to do whatever he or she wants. True, we are not free to go out and commit homicide, not at least person-to-person. But businesses can do it now, and as the last semblance of environmental regulation is discarded, it will be easier and easier to contaminate the earth and poison humanity.
Why, Republicans think it’s bad business to protect and make safe our drinking water supplies! In New Jersey, the Tea Party governor, Christ Christie, thinks a law to preserve and protect the state’s drinking water reservoirs is a threat to property rights.
But this is America. Republicans believe that we should be free, as individuals and as corporations, to plunder the earth by mining and drilling and dumping whatever byproducts we don’t want back to the earth, we are free to establish nuclear power plants that produce harmful waste for which we have no realistic plan for disposal, and we are in the process now, thanks to geniuses in the Tea Party, of dismantling what fragile environmental protections we once upon a time had.
I might as well get this out of my system: The Times had another excellent piece today, “Push in States To Deregulate Environment,” that was marred only by the inference that the headline and story contained news. There is nothing new in Republicans and, for that matter, Democrats, eviscerating environmental protections. I was appalled to read how Tea Party governors in Maine and Florida are working hard and fast to cripple environmental enforcement and dismantle environmental protections in those states.
But we’ve already seen how a Republican governor in Michigan, John Engler, killed off Michigan’s onetime environmental watchdog agencies. The Michigan Water Resources Commission, the Michigan Environmental Review Board and the Michigan Toxic Substance Control Commission are now extinct species.
Business did not like the WRC, MERB and the TSCC. That’s because these agencies, independent of the useless Michigan Natural Resources Commission, did their own research, held hearings and urged legislators and the attorney general to take action against industrial polluters.
That was bad for business when business was based on piracy. But it was a boon for the rest of us.
But money talks. Money corrupts. We have a government that does not protect us against predators who see low tax rates for the rich and a world without environmental regulation as part of a social compact that coddles the rich and screws everyone else.
This is what Republicans were about long before anybody dreamed up a gimmick like the Tea Party.
“It’s all about me” is the foundation stone of Republican ideology.
Charles M. Blow writes that “more tax cuts would be gluttony in a time of starvation. That is not America.”
No, Mr. Blow, tax cuts, so long as they benefit the filthy rich, are EXACTLY what this country is about.
the rich, the rich, the rich…yes, let’s stick to those bastards, oh, wait, that’s me. oh, snap.
let’s see, how does this rich person spend his time? how do sixty hour work weeks sound to you? today is my day off, but I’m working twelve hours anyway. that’s fine, nobody else wants to work, but what’s that, you want more from me?
sorry to hear that you’re underemployed, Joel, but when did that become my problem?
as for the rest of the poor, I know them well. I work with them. they’re wearing leather, they can’t get off their cell phones long enough to take a breath, and they’re covered head to toe with fresh tattoos. when the tats get infected Medicaid pick up the tab with no co-pay. oh, it’s awful to be poor in this country.
and a rich guy like me can’t even afford caps.