Tax the Rich? It will never happen now that they control us all

When Eisenhower warned about the takeover of our government by the military/industrial complex, we had our heads in the sand.  Reagan's over-the-top support of the richest in our country went unnoticed (just look how popular Reagan is among the know-nothings in our population), and now that the wealthiest people in the country have absolute control of the government (the right wing Supreme Court recently said corporations can give as much as they want to the politicians, just like an individual and the lobbyists are ecstatic), we the common people have no say whatsoever, no matter how we cast our votes.  We are done for. The middle class will soon be nothing but a distant memory, and this once-great country will be like a banana republic, with only two classes: the rich and the poor. 

Do you think the rich corporate powers (many of whom pay NO taxes at all now) will allow a return to higher taxes for the wealthy?  Fuggedaboudit.  Thank you, Reagan, Thank you, Poppy and Junior Bush, Thank you, right wing SCOTUS justices.  You have succeeded in driving this country and the middle class that used to support it right into the ground.  Thank you, Obama, for not doing a damn thing about it and for keeping men like Tim Geithner and other Wall Streeters as your closest pals.  We the people have no champions in government any longer.

Robert Parry sees this clearly -- and so do many others of us out here in falling-apart land.  But, as Parry says in the following article, the answer to the problem will not be allowed.  Read the full article at: http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/63-63/5084-budget-crisis-duh-tax-the-rich

Budget Crisis? Duh, Tax the Rich!

By Robert Parry
February 24, 2011

EXCERPTS:  A great tragedy of the United States is that the answer to many of the country’s domestic problems is obvious, even simple, but can’t be done because of a dominating political/media dynamic that rules that solution out.

The solution to these many problems – from the budget deficit to crumbling infrastructure, from mass joblessness to income inequality, from environmental degradation to educational shortfalls -- is to raise taxes on the rich and to use that money to get the United States back on track and advancing toward the future.

And there are clear justifications for doing so, from practicality to fairness. Though many multi-millionaires fancy themselves self-made men (and women), the truth is that they all have profited from investments that American taxpayers have made over the decades, and even centuries.

But today’s U.S. political/media dynamic makes any discussion of higher taxes on the rich a non-starter. Instead, the debate is all about handing out more tax breaks to the rich, slashing government spending, canceling transportation projects, abandoning environmental goals, and busting unions that represent teachers and other public workers.

The test of political courage, according to the mainstream U.S. news media, is whether you’re ready to go even further and cut Social Security and Medicare. But the real “third rail” of American politics is whether you’ll consider higher taxes on the rich.

How hard that is was made apparent earlier this month as the nation wallowed in a sentimental remembrance of the late Ronald Reagan, the father of what his own Vice President George H.W. Bush once called “voodoo economics,” the notion that reducing taxes would increase revenues.

Reagan also elevated the worship of private wealth and stoked the demonization of the public sector with his famous line: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

Yet, as misguided as Reagan's policies have proved to be, a new Gallup poll shows that Americans rate him the greatest president ever, ahead of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.  (There ain't no cure for stupid.)

As the rich increasingly dominate the political process through unlimited campaign spending and the financing of sophisticated propaganda – like Fox News and right-wing talk radio – the policy battles will continue to be fought on ground favorable to the Right: more cuts in public spending, more reductions in retirement and health programs, more union-busting.

No democratic republic can long survive such a distorted political-economic-media system.

As Justice Louis D. Brandeis noted more than 60 years ago, "we can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."