The death knell of the middle class

"The next shoe to drop will be the report of the Bush Advisory Commission on Tax Reform. The commission is scheduled to deliver its recommendations on November 1. We may have gotten a sneak peek in the past few days, as commission members have floated a few trial balloons. The chief option put forward is to eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), which would be a tax cut for relatively wealthy, and to replace the cut revenue by reducing or eliminating deductions for health insurance, home mortgage interest and state and local income tax." full article

This is the continuation of the Republican party's genocide of the middle class. Bush adds to it by saying he will quarantine cities for avian flu (although IMHO wouldn't it be better to plan for Tamiflu stockpiles, and medical treatment?). Well, you figure it....46% of us have no health insurance, so no access to medical care anyway, then you quarantine the rest of us, with no access to medical care, and poof! you can kill off a bunch of the middle class and poor with the flu. If that isn't enough, add to it the cold weather and a 50% increase in the cost of heating oil and natural gas, and plenty of poor and middle class and the elderly will freeze to death, thus eliminating more of those pesky folks. Oh, don't forget taxing the few of those who still have medical insurance, on their insurance, and it will make it too costly for them to carry insurance, and businesses will have an excuse to drop coverage for their employees. And don't forget that new bankruptcy bill....if you get sick, with perhaps the avian flu, and require expensive medical care, well you can't declare bankruptcy if your expenses are too much to bear. Therefore you will be stuck paying back every creditor, while being unable to afford food, housing or further medical care. Then there is also that dirty little secret...if you need surgery or a procedure of any kind, you have to put money down on the procedure BEFORE they will perform it. So, if you can't afford it, too bad for you.

Now, does this sound like the country you grew up in? Does this sound like America? Hardly. It sounds more like a third world country where only the rich can afford anything, where there is no middle class and the poor are treated with contempt.

Don't forget history has a lesson for us: In Bonn, Gottingen, Heidelberg, Munich, and other cities throughout Germany, Nazi youth performed similar ceremonies, mostly aimed at "cleansing" public, church, and other types of community lending libraries of books and journals thought to be "un-German." By the end of July 1933, Hitler was in complete control of the government, and the Nazis were the only legal political party in Germany. They had created the first concentration camps, restricted the freedoms of speech and of the press, enforced boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses, and had begun a sterilization campaign of citizens the new government considered genetically undesirable. Read more at this website, When Books Burn

Suggested reading: 1984 by George Orwell; The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood.