There is a cancer growing on our nation...a cancer that threatens our very existence as a civil society. It is not poverty, illegal immigration, and inadequate healthcare, failing public education or even terrorism. All these can be conquered if we can work together and pool our resources, but that is precisely where our cancer grows. Part and parcel of the so-called conservative revolution is the pernicious concept that taxing impoverishes us ("taking money out of the economy") and that civil servants are second-class citizens. Millions of dollars of propaganda has led the people to believe that paying taxes is stupid at best and and unpatriotic at worse and that only morons work for the government. It is as though the Preamble to the Constitution began with, "We, the Corporations, in order to..."
Implied in this concept is the subversive idea that an employee of a for-profit corporation is somehow imbued with greater intelligence, honesty and ability than if that same person worked for a governmental agency. No clearer place is that seen than in the rampant privatization of elements of our national mission in Iraq. We have seen fit to penny-pinch the military budget in salaries, equipment for our fighters and healthcare for our vets but have $1,000 a day to pay a company to employ ex-military personnel to do exactly what they were when they were in uniform. And we borrow money to pay the interest on our debt while CEOs live like oriental potentates and New Orleans continues to lay in ruin!
Somewhere along the line we have to recover the concept that public service is a noble profession that there is no higher service than working for "the People." We much recapture the common sense understanding that taxes are the life-blood of a free people, the way we pay for the services we expect from each other at the best price. Sooner or later we are going to have to understand that we cannot take $100 in taxes and give it to a corporation and expect $100 in services. Corporations do not work for free...investors expect their dividends...that whatever they make is a reduction in services delivered or wages cut. There are no efficiencies in adding another level of bureaucracy to what is there already!
Worshiping at the feet of corporate America is to disrespect civil servants at every level of our society: from the Policeman, Fire fighters, Soldier, Sailors, Airmen and Marines who daily put their lives at risk on our behalf to the Judges, Prosecutors, Administrators, Clerks and Legislators who bring the rule of law to our society. The most noble level of citizenship is not scrambling for one's "piece of the rock" but in serving the common good.
When we are mugged on the street, our child disappears or our house in on fire we do not call General Motors or Bill Gates. We dial 911! There would be no 911 to dial if the anti-tax idiocy is allowed to further erode our fiscal integrity and there would be no one to answer the call if those who believe that working for the pubic is a disgrace and sign of failure. The bottom line is that the cancer growing on this country is ultimately and at root the concept that democracy doesn't work without an investor class skimming its 10% off the top of everything like the old days of protection money paid to the Mafia...that only members of corporate board rooms care about America...that the "We" in the Preamble is referring to CEOs.
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