Wednesday, August 25, 2010

On David Horsey's latest cartoon

See the cartoon here.

The comments are typical of the right-wing fanatical insanity that we usually see from people who don't have anything better to do than repeat the FOX and right-wing talking balloons. So here's what I posted:

What did we celebrate about 10 years ago, before the recession caused by the deregulation of the Financial Sector? Oh, right. The longest period of growth since the 1960's.

I was born in 1969, so I don't have any direct memories of that decade. But I can see by reading, thanks to an education that was publicly funded, that the top marginal tax rate was lowered by President Kennedy from 91% to 77%. And he closed loopholes, resulting in an increase in tax revenue because people in his tax bracket could no longer get out of taxes. Then President Nixon lowered it even further in 1969 and '70 down to 70%.

What was it that I said in the first paragraph? Oh yeah. The fact that the 1960's was a period of great economic growth. Meaning that high tax rates on the hyper-ultra-super-rich DON'T HURT THE ECONOMY.

But never mind the facts. Conservatives live in their own reality, one created by Reagan who lowered that top marginal rate down to 25% and started the accelerating budget deficits, one continued by Bush, Clinton and Bush, and one maintained today by President Obama by not suggesting that the hyper-ultra-super-rich pay their share for the tens or hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars that they earn every year, on the backs of the working people of this country who are now out of work at a rate of between 10 and 20 percent.

We can rant and rave forever about "unequal distribution of wealth". But the truth, backed up by historical fact, is that the only way we are going to see a real recovery, see unemployment go down, see our children grow up in a world with as many if not more opportunities than we had, is if we demand that the people making millions or billions pay their share of the cost of that opportunity.

Don't like that? Vote against it. And if you have a majority of the vote, you can watch our nation continue to suffer, and fall over the cliff that we find ourselves at the edge of.