Hope Doesn't Spring Eternal

THE BOGUS ECONOMIST August 13, 2008


I've had it.

Eery four years, I arouse myself and try to imagine we're going to have an intelligent debate about the leadership of the free world and every four years I get shot down. This time, I was actually beginning to believe Barack Obama would be different - really different - and at last we would have someone with enough guts to tell us that not only is the holiday over, but we're going to have re-thinking who we are. Mr. O is still holding back. I'm seeing expediency sliding into the campaign driver's seat and bold initiatives moving to the back of the bus.

Sure, telling the truth might not be the way to get elected, but we've seen what happens when a candidate chooses the opposite. The last eight years should have taught us a lot.

Look, everybody, we're not the epitome of civilization, nor are we the only hope of the world. Our way is not the only way, nor is it even the best way for some people. We're citizens of a country that used to be based on something besides the almighty power of "business," and that's what made us great. Under the wreckage of 9/11, some of us discovered gold. Under perhaps the most benighted leadership we've ever had, we seem to have forgotten almost every moral and ethical principle we owned and abandoned the lot to the likes of Halliburton and Blackwater. The number of people who have suffered due to the weakening of governmental regulation are astronomical, including the folks who've lost their houses because of the tentacles of the banking "business," the people who have been screwed by the phamaceutical "business" and the possible extinction of human life through the manipulation of the energy "business."

Now we find out by courtesy of the General Accounting Office (GAO) that two-thirds of large corporations with sales revenues of more than two trillion dollars didn't pay income taxes every year and some didn't pay them at all. Here's what the GAO said:

"In 2005, after collectively making $2.5 trillion in sales, corporations gave a variety of reasons on their tax returns to account for the absence of taxable revenue. The most frequently listed included the cost of producing their goods, salary expenses and interest payments on their debt, the report said. The GAO did not analyze whether the firms had profits that should have been taxed."

The report went on that probably none of this was illegal. That burns me up more than the theft. The reason it's legal is that our legislators put "good business" ahead of the welfare of the United States ppopulation.

Reminder: If the corporations don't pay taxes, guess who does? Or is borrowing better?

Mr. Obama is now experiencing what most Republican candidates knew very well: you can talk about being a voice of the people, but it's the big boys who call the shots. Contributions to the Obama campaign, most of which used to come in dribs and drabs from Charlie and Mike, are now coming in large globs from Mr.Jones or Dr. Smith. More and more names have "CEO" after them.

If "the chief business of the United States is business," as president Calvin Coolidge once said, then it seems the sacrifices we're making are really a waste of human life. The people who identify the American Dream in terms of the size of their flat screen have bought into this and shame on them.

Reading about the billions of profits being made out of American lives doesn't do much for the phrase, "Business as usual." Dammit, it's business as usual that got us into the war to begin with. Putting profits ahead of principle runs against everything this nation is supposed to be.

Mr. Obama started off as a candidate who seemed to understand this. Now I'm starting to wonder.
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