Congratulations to the Voters in France and Greece!
By Howard M. Greenebaum
Your votes against ruthless cuts in public programs should be a lesson to all politicians who have been catering to the rich and ignoring the 99%.
I wish that we Americans had such a choice in our November election. America has been an example of what happens to the people when their so called representatives cater only to rich individuals and rich corporations. Both of our major political parties have sold us out to corporations.
They have chosen to cut funding for education of our children, so they do not have to raise taxes to their wealthy donors. And believe me, the US rich do not pay much taxes now! Most US corporations pay less than 10%, even though the published rates are supposed to be 35%. These corporations have bribed governmental officials to insert all types of tax loopholes into our fragmented tax scheme so that many of our largest corporations pay no taxes for several years.
US corporations not only are able to escape taxes, but they are rewarded by other tax dodges to outsource our jobs and factories. Our taxes are used to persuade our employers to fire us and send our jobs across our borders to exploit poor people around the world.
Rich individuals are also treated differently than the 99%. They pay 15% or less while the rest of us pay twice that percentage on our incomes.
The great inequality of wealth in America exceeds the inequalities in many poor nations. Our middle class is rapidly descending into poverty because of the Austerity programs that are increasing in their zeal to demolish all public programs.
Public education has been one of the targets of the agenda of the rich. You see, the rich do not want to pay any taxes. They do not believe that they have any obligation to the 99% who depend on public programs to educate our children.
Austerity programs favor the rich over the 99%. The cuts in public education in America have resulted in the firing of over 300,000 teachers! Classrooms are overcrowded because of the losses of good teachers. Children are being deprived of quality educations because of the selfishness of the rich in America.
When my wife graduated with a Doctorate in Educational Leadership, she faced a wall that had frozen the budgets of all school districts in America. Good teachers were being fired, not hired. Good administrators were being fired, not hired. Crooked politicians were pushing national tests down the throats of struggling teachers. Charter schools were being pushed by an agenda to destroy the public school system.
That is why my wife, who won an award as the “Outstanding Graduate of the University of Colorado’s School of Education” had to move from America to New Zealand to find a fulltime job!
Austerity programs favor the rich and ignore the needs of the 99%. It is that simple. The unemployment rate of over 8% in America is a phony rate. When Ronald Reagan became President, they changed the way we count the unemployed. The current scheme is fuzzy math. They use phony surveys. They do not separate persons who work part time from those who work full time. They do not separate those who lost high paying jobs and then took jobs paying just a fraction of what they formerly made. They do not count people who have stopped looking for jobs. The best way to determine US unemployment is by doubling the publicized rate from 8% to 16 %. Today’s wages are not only stagnated in America, but they are rapidly declining.
Corporations are using all types of schemes to reduce wages of their employees. Unions are denied a fair method to organize workers. Some governors are trying to smash unions by denying them access to collective bargaining.
The simplest solution is to demand that all elections be funded by taxes. And all contributions be banned. Because political contributions are not donations, they are bribes. Bribery is the cancer of good government. Allowing outside funding of elections opens the doors for rich corporations to buy governments with bribery. That is exactly what happened in America. US politicians do not represent the people. They sell their votes in Congress to the corporations who fund their electoral campaigns.
That is why the American government uses austerity schemes to cut funding for public programs and refuses to raise taxes on rich individuals and on rich corporations. Our priorities are upside down. They are immoral.
In 2008, I was a delegate for Barack Obama in the Colorado county and state conventions. I believed in what Barack said. Unfortunately, Obama did not believe in what he said. In Obama’s 2013 US budget, he has offered to make the George W. Bush multi trillion dollar tax cuts to the rich permanent, and not open to expiration.
At the same time, Obama has placed the most important public safety programs, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security open to severe cuts of hundreds of billions of dollars! Medicare is the only health insurance for people over age 65 and for people of all ages who are severely disabled! Medicaid is the only health insurance for the very poor! Social Security is the only pension plan for millions of Americans! Needless to say, I no longer trust Obama to protect the interests of the 99%. Democrats and Republicans cannot be trusted.
Howard Greenebaum is a former congressional candidate, longtime activist, environmentalist and author of the new book, Don’t Do It Like They Did It – In Washington!, available exclusively on Amazon.com. He is 82 years young, and has addressed this book to an international audience to help them avoid the terrible mistakes made in Washington.