GREED

While billionaires buy their own islands at $15 million a clip to park their yachts, the top 10 hedge fund managers only pay 15% tax on their $12 billion(compared to 70% in the past) while you pay 20% if you are lucky to make $40,000, or you may have lost your home in the mortgage debacle or from your health care bankruptcy. Citigroup with $6.4 B and J.P. Morgan with $17.2 B in 2013 paid NO taxes. The MAKERS are all on Wall Street along with the banks like HSBC who laundered money to dodge taxes while George Will’s TAKERS wait in the food line for over an hour. What George does not tell you(Press Jan 22) about his policy wonk Nicholas Eberstadt is that he is funded by the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing, pro-business think tank. Even though George and Eberstadt state the growth in their ‘welfare state’ occurred to those who were ‘means- tested’ (which means they qualified by the Puritanical hoop they jumped), they blame it on a lack of personal character. And where do the CEOs of the media empires who spread the greed message take responsibility? The wealthy do not like it that the paupers picked up their cocaine habits and want one of their tvs. Even though 80% of the middle class has awoken to the lack of jobs sent overseas and that the bill was sent to them, these economists will not take the responsibility for these policies and the income inequality, instead they cry foul. The lower-skilled workers have known this for 25 years as the manufacturing jobs vanished. Instead they should tell the capitalists to make more jobs. The gall of dumping people on charity and then blaming them. The playing field is not fair nor level. “Privilege is not knowing that you’re hurting others and not listening when they tell you.”—Dashanne Stokes So how does the trickle down of greed play out locally? Foremost it began with shallow giveaways to millionaire developers that pay no taxes and then leave town while local four-unit landlords had a 30% tax increase. Then came raising the bus rates. The lack of a seat and your claustrophobia does not matter. More rural Tioga lost bus service. Further proof we are eliminating human services was the closure of the County mental health clinic. Some private providers already closed the intake door, other mentally ill are jammed up waiting months for treatment. Even though you do not know them, someone who cannot afford their medication lurkes in the health care shadows. The proposed TPP will extend monopoly drug patents for pharmaceutical giants maintaining high prices. And will the poor elderly be easily visited by their family and protected by local accountability in the County nursing home or tossed aside like the mentally ill? Heed the words of John Adams: “Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men..”