Dear Sir:
Rufus. Assuming you are not a computer generated solicitor, perhaps you can forward my email to a real live regurgitator of public comment.
Who am I? I supported Barack Obama by taking on more credit card debt as I had no other way to assure for my part the end of eight years of Bush-Cheney conduct. Let Wall Street and the Finance Industry know I will do it again. What do I want in return? Well, I have a list (see below).
I want someone in the campaign to see and react to my list (not a machine but a machine politician). I do not expect my list will become the platform of the Democratic Convention in 2012. I just want the world to know that Obama supporters are united solely and principally because the Republican party has no moderate wing and is the lackey of the wealthy and powerful who have the most to lose from government regulation (i.e. Wall Street and Big Business) and federal taxation to pay as we go.
President Obama deserves my vote not because of his right of center and open mindedness to include the minority Republican legislators, but because he actually does care to make government work while the naysayers in Congress glee fully cheer each other on with the power of "NO."
So here's the list:
I want someone to really reinvent government, not just talk about it.
(1) I want the return of the U.S. Postal Service by the nationalization of the internet for use by the public at limited expense. Benjamin Franklin was not just a founding father, he was thee founding father. He would not have let the entire playing field be subverted to private ownership at the expense of the public good. The Constitution does not prohibit public takings by eminent domain, so this time let it be a public taking of the really fat cats who want to control the playing field including Google. Let these private vendors have the use of the public highway but pay the fare.
(2) I want the war debt financed by sale of bonds to Red China to be retired expressly by a surtax without exception on all the wealth of this country. Slowly and over time so as not to hobble the economy. Why? Because the effect of not raising taxes to pay for two foreign wars was to create a flat tax on everyone, but the revenue did not go to the U.S. Government, it went to privately held corporations which had the no bid contracts for war munitions and related expenses of war, including private contractors for black opps and prisons and internment camps and violence to prisoners (denominated torture). I believe that a trillion dollars appeared in our government debt during the Bush/Cheney years due to the transfer of wealth to the military/industrial complex and that the transfer had nothing to do with prosecuting the criminals that wrecked havoc on September 11, 2001. In hindsight, the money was used to alienate the Moslem world and rid this country of a government surplus that was actually money that was owed the Social Security System when past revenues of the payroll income tax were used in fighting the Cold War and the Gulf War.
(3) I want the draft reinstituted again without exception with those medically unfit having to do alternative public service. Why? Because our Gulf War Vets and our Iraq War Vets and our Afghanistan Vets and their families know that their lives nobly supplied by them provided the war mongers with the fodder for senseless wars that left this country morally and financially bankrupt. The little guy war criminals were prosecuted but the bigwigs in the Administration that wanted war and wanted the munitions industry and private contractor industry to prosper needed it to assuage those who had seen to the election of the Bush Administration. The "tax" on our noble soldiers and their families should mean a pox on the rich and powerful that made up a pretext for the Iraq War (there were no weapons of mass destruction except the gas which the U.S. government gave to Saddam Hussein to use on the Iranians during the Iraq-Iran War and which Saddam, the dastardly rogue, used on his own Kurdish citizens). The Pentagon has adapted to the all volunteer army all too well. There is no push back from Congress because the volunteer army is premised on the paycheck, not on the draft. There are no Vietnam era protest movements because there is no draft. In a democracy that is a failure of will of the governed to control their own government.
(4) I want the hobling of young people who pursue educational advancement post secondary to stop, and to stop now. The education industry like the medical industry (especially the medical insurance industry) needs to suffer a little along with the rest of us in this economy. The money is being spent by the wealthy and well fixed in this country while huge numbers of people are being left behind, but no more sadly than the generation in their 20s and early 30s educationed and then reduced to economic shambles by their government, their schools, and Wall Street. Gosh, the fig leaf was to allow these young people to stay on their parents health insurance policies certain conditions being met. The dirty little secret is that private industry still takes the best of other country's young educated with special visas to work in this country while our young educated go begging, and that includes the children of immigrants born in this country (see number 6 below). Good for innovative progress in America, yes; but impoverishing of a third world country that needs medical doctors and innovators to compete in a world economy.
(5) I want the federal government to stop the support of cookie cutter public education. Why? Not every child is a math/science end product for the war, industry, and finance industries. The Pentagon and Wall Street will always have the cream of the math/science crop because of the nature of human greed. Public education was always about educating the child, the future citizen of a democracy, who has the tools to exploit their natural gifts whatever they may be, including music and the arts.
(6) Immigrants are the future of this country and having them adapt to American democracy is the most important preparation for a truly American future. We can not preserve our way of life, our freedom, and our standard of living, without exploiting the immigrant and the chidren of immigrants. The world is at our footsteps but in no way is that metaphor more graphic than when you see the boot that is placed upon the throat of children of immigrants as if they were foreign to our system of laws and government. We want them and need them. I say that as a soon to be 62 year old who has to live for the most part on my social security income. We spend enormous resources trouncing the little immigrant for fear he may take a fellow citizen's job. Yah, right? Garbage hauling or shingling or child care. So to the rich of this country hire the citizen and make sure the payroll taxes are made by you. The hiring of illegal immigrants is the crime and the consequence should be a really harsh fine. The illegal immigrant is not a criminal. He or she is a person who like all Americans wants an economic future.
(7) I do not understand how the President and Democratic Congress can support the curtailing of payroll tax to pay for future payments for medicare and social security recipients. I get it that in providing more dollars in the pockets of little people the economy is more likely to recover sooner. The reality is that the money siphoned off from the "social security trust fund" to pay for foreign wars has to be returned by a tax on the wealthy. Why? Capitalism is most effective when government is its servant. Government speeds the pooling of capital for the rich which it has done consistently over my lifetime. I have paid for the Korean War, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Afghanistan War, and the Iraq War plus dozens of little Reaganesque adventures in foreign policy (the kid stuff). All of these wars impoverished our economy and the planet when better wiser governance would have avoided them all. It's a dirty rotten shame that the war monger's attack the patriotism of those who question their motives whom they shouted down and whom they beat up with jingoism, rant, and cant with their chanting to start a war. The little people always pay for war, while the rich get richer. The wealthy have the means to protect their income stream (i.e. ask me why I detest "Obama Care" sometime and I will tell you that the compromises were about providing a continuing stream of revenue into the medical and medical insurance industries).
(8) Tax sanity is needed. The graduated income tax is the fairest tax when it is regulated to provide the stream of income to pay as we go (and prevent deficits). The Republicans and Democrats too have undermined this tax for myriads of reasons (which is way of politicians). The hypocrisy of the Republic Party today is that it attacks this tax as if it were the cause of retardation of investment and job growth. Congress should spend more time being sure the funds are honestly, accurately, and effectively well spent then designing loop holes and curtailments of the revenues of the graduation income tax. Also, the estate tax (called the "death tax") is a separation tax on the wealth of the decedent before the heirs and assigns take the remainder (here one is not talking about surviving spouses who have their own protections in the law) and we are not talking about family businesses in which the owner did not fail to provide for a handoff to his children in his lifetime due to control issues and timely relinquishment of power. If you do not want to pay the estate tax, then divest yourself in your lifetime. Try a family trust, or for God's sake why not a charitable trust. I say to the extremely wealthy of this country whose estates are subject to this tax upon their death: "You have the means to provide a different outcome and so do it!" To those whose inheritance or bequest is reduced by the tax, I will say the solution is to have all wealth over a certain dollar amount revert to the state. Period. End of story. Too bad. You will have to go to work now, like the rest of us poor blokes!
(9) Lastly, but certainly foremost in this list, is let's watch out for the future. By this I mean our children and grandchildren who will look back and say of us gluttons of natural resources, "Why did you not do the effective thing to save the planet when there was yet time on the clock?" And now the federal government is allowing the hydralic fracturing of the oil basins putting at risk the contamination of artesian wells and polluting the aquifers of the American West. We permitted the damaging of the Gulf of Mexico and now we are going to do the same to our precious watersupply and aquatic wildlife of our rivers and streams all over again.
Richard Hilber
This list originally appeared in a slighter version in an email to
Rufus Gifford, BarackObama.com
after Mr. Gifford solicited for campaign funds.
The email I sent was dated Friday, December 30, 2011.
