| Dark
times ahead
I hope the world and our country will be better
off if the right-wingers and tea baggers win
big in the next presidential election, but I
doubt it. The only thing they have been capable
of doing over the last several decades is ensuring
that the rich pay less in taxes. The Republicans,
the plutocrats, brought us the worst economic
disaster since the last Great Depression, partly
because they chose to deregulate the financial
markets. I don’t like their trickle-down version
of economics, probably because I don’t like
to be trickled on. I have lived through several
Republican administrations, and I don’t remember
the same fairy-tale, happily-ever-after world
that they do.
If only President Obama was a real socialist!
Wage earners would call the shots, give themselves
huge raises and erase the enormous disparity
between the rich and the middle class by demanding
an increase in taxes that the plutocrats pay
and a substantial cut in the withholding and
income taxes paid by the middle class. Obama
should have helped the economy more by increasing
taxes on the rich (particularly those who benefited
most from the causes of the stock market and
financial sector crash), and sharply lessened
or eliminated federal income taxes on the middle
class. That would have allowed the middle class
to spend and save more, stimulating the economy
and thereby creating more jobs. Surely, you
can’t object to multi-millionaires and billionaires
paying more taxes while you pay less. That’s
the kind of socialism the idle class would vote
for and the kind that the super rich fear.
Businessmen would finally be required to pay
a living wage for 40 hours worth of work and
grant their employees the same benefits they
provide to themselves and their families. There
would be a national or public health care option,
and the military would be put on a diet. We
could do much to benefit the citizenry of our
country with the $700 billion that we spend
for defense each year. What are we so afraid
of, and why doesn’t the rest of the world share
our fears? We spend more on our military than
the combined military budgets of the 30 largest
and most prosperous countries on the planet.
If the military is so important and the threats
to the rest of the world so perilous, why don’t
other countries spend as much or more than we
do?
I shudder when I think about what would have
happened to our nation, to our economy, if the
government hadn’t stepped in during this most
recent Great Recession with the various stimulus
packages. We don’t know exactly what would have
happened, but we do know this — businesses and
banks were frozen up and couldn’t or wouldn’t
act to fix the mess. If the government hadn’t
responded to the crisis created by the financial
community, the unemployment rate would be greater
than it is now and there would be more home
foreclosures, bankruptcies and business failures.
The government saved Capitalism from itself
again.
Greg Lee
Des Moines
Stop the double dipper
I would like to suggest that all IPERS members,
retired or not, send an email (governor.contact@iowa.gov)
or letter (State Capitol, 1007 E. Grand Ave.,
Des Moines, IA 50319) to Gov. Branstad asking
him to return his pension payments to IPERS.
He is collecting his full pension AND is working
at an IPERS-covered job full-time. The “rest
of us” can’t earn more than $14,000 a year.
This is called CORRUPTION! It must stop! What
makes him special? Why is he better than the
rest of us?
Gary Thelen
West Des Moines |
