For once the PCUSA has got it right
Richard Fallis, March 29, 2012
For once the PCUSA has got it right in rejecting the Paul Ryan/Ayn Rand inspired budget.
The Ryan budget is intended to end all collective action to help our neighbors through appropriate and needed government programs to meet the changing demographic requirements of these United States.
“United States.” States United. A people with a common mission, and goal who are all in the same boat together.
The Ryan budget would transform Americans into a collective of floating corks on the ocean without a voice open to the clenches of any capricious hungry corporate shark swimming by.
Your article quotes Mark Tooley, from the Institute on Religion and Democracy who frets about an “unredeemable debt, crippling taxes, bankrupting entitlement programs, an enervating Welfare State, and crippling regulations.”
Wait a minute. First let’s talk about our debt issue. It is a problem in part because the Republicans got us into two wars on a credit card with the Chinese, and lowered taxes. Countries at war increase taxes and float bonds. At least responsible countries do that. Where was Tooley and his group when the Republican VP Cheney, declared “deficits aren’t a bad thing?”
The selective amnesia of Tooley continues on the issue of taxes. As a percentage of GDP, taxes are at their lowest point in 50 years! The government is starved for revenue with tax breaks to the so-called “job creators” (who create lots a jobs in India and China) rampant. Sure, our corporate taxes are the highest on the planet, but truth is nobody pays them. GE for example, had $14 billion in profit this past year, didn’t pay a dime, and even got over $2 billion back from the government in credits. Now GE, Apple, Google among others want to pay only 5 percent tax on repatriating off-shore profits.
The waitress in Milwaukee, who pays 25 percent of her income in tax would like that kind of deal too, but she doesn’t have lobbyists in Washington. She is just a cork after-all floating on the ocean.
Bankrupting “entitlement programs.” There’s another great label used to suggest things like say, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, food stamps and other modest social programs when compared to every other responsible industrialized country are just too expensive. There ain’t no money honey, but there is no end in sight to corporate welfare, or a military industrial complex that supports 11 Nimitz carrier groups, another 20 smaller carriers, and has over 8 thousand nukes to hurl at anybody who bugs us. And besides, with a prison incarceration rate higher than even the Soviet Union during Stalin’s day can take care of all those malcontents.
“An enervating welfare state” …. enervating to whom? What Tooley and his gang of think-alikes need to do is get a passport and see the world. Maybe start with Germany, which is the world’s largest exporter. It’s one of them “European Socialist” countries where wages are higher, with hi-tech, high-value goods and services along with splendid health-care for all that doesn’t burden employers directly, and a tax code without a gazillion loop-holes, and oh yes …. riddled with them stinkin’ unions too.
And finally, or almost finally, let’s talk about “crippling regulations.” There’s a cry in the dark alright. So which regulations are crippling? Maybe the ones that say Wall Street can’t suck and blow at the same time when selling products to customers the banksters know are toxic? Or maybe, we should get rid of food inspection, and the next time an outbreak of poisoning occurs, we’ll just watch the bodies pile-up as industry regulates itself. Or perhaps we should put Tooley on airplanes that are never inspected for safety?
Really, Tooley’s simple-minded blanket statements are perverse.
The Ryan budget is evil. It is based on Ayn Rand’s doctrine of “take,” which Tooley and so many mis-guided pseudo-Christians who haven’t read the book of James or certainly understood it embrace in ignorance.
If you want to see what Ayn Rand, is all about, go to YouTube, and watch an interview she did with a young Mike Wallace, where she attacks faith of any kind, decries mercy and caring saying her doctrine is the “new morality” that replaces Christian actions and thoughts that have resonated in public policy.
Folks, Tooley and those of his ilk have to make a choice. They have to choose to spend eternity with Jesus or Ayn Rand. But they can’t do both.