By Mickey Walker - December 06, 2009
In Part I we saw the
dirt-poor Pace family with no government financial help, struggling to
survive. If your kinfolk did not
have food you were up sh-- creek without a paddle. A couple of older Pace siblings, Dave and Buck, got jobs
with the CCC and the WPA, and they sent money home every month as required by
their terms of employment with Uncle Sam. Every little bit helped. But
that was well into the Great Depression, after starvation and malnutrition had
taken its toll across the land.
One would think that
financial help for a torn nation and a destroyed economy would be welcomed by
all Americans. But FDR ruffled a
lot of conservative feathers with his New Deal which created food programs,
work programs, and welfare for the poor and starving masses during the Great
Depression. And many years later,
the sneers and jeers of the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glen Beck,
tell us even now that FDR’s seeds of socialism are the cause of all that is
wrong with our country. And the
newest thorn in the sides of Neocons everywhere is Barack Obama. He wants to pass a national healthcare
plan so that all Americans might have basic medical care.
This new plan is
objectionable to many Americans who demonstrate against such a plan at “Tea
Bag” rallies all over America. See,
the Democrats (the Tea Baggers say) want to tax the working people (and the
rich, too, so don’t forget that) to pay for what they call the riff raff, the
ne’er-do-wells on the federal welfare teat. Furthermore this less-fortunate group of Americans is
demonized along with the “Limousine Liberals” who support them. The later have been tagged as
detrimental to democracy. Among
these are movie stars, bleeding-heart congressmen and social workers who think
that all Americans deserve government help at some time. Forget it, yell the Tea Baggers. If those on welfare can’t work then why
should the rest of us pay for them?
Indeed. Why should we? The conservatives do make a good case. Why should honest working-people carry
the no accounts, those who are not interested in working for a living and
paying taxes? It’s quite a smug country
club set that can look down its uncaring nose at less fortunate Americans who
might have lost their jobs. It is
a practice seen all too frequently these days. It is based upon an assumption that all welfare is bad. It requires that one condemn his
neighbor, not help him. And it
comes from within a selfish and uncaring place.
Take the Tea Baggers. Please. This interesting little group seems to have missed the boat
during the past 8 years of Bush/Cheney rule where borrowing and spending off
budget on the Iraq War did not seem to rile the conservatives. It was okay to do that, I would guess,
because our war against Terrorists was okay, and borrowing and spending to add
another 5 TRILLION DOLLARS to our already battered excuse for a Treasury,
seemed more righteous and just. Even Dick Cheney announced at a cabinet meeting: “Ronald Reagan taught us that deficits
don’t matter.” Indeed. I guess if Halliburton or Blackwater or
Boeing got our tax dollar war bucks, borrowing and spending was A-Okay, and it
did not matter that Iraq had no Weapons of Mass Destruction pointed at the USA
as Bush had told a scared nation.
But the Tea Baggers screamed
in the streets to keep their tax dollars in their pockets. They did not want to pay for all
Americans to have a national healthcare plan. And they blamed President Obama. It doesn’t make sense. Why was it okay for America to grow deeper in debt as a nation for the 8
years under Bush and his lap dog Neocon Congress? Were those off-budget wars more important to Americans than
a national healthcare plan that would serve 44 million Americans without
healthcare who have nothing? Did
we really get more for our tax dollars spent?
Why would the Tea Baggers
erupt into serious demonstrations all over America now when they could have
protested our massive Trillion-dollar, borrow-and-spend policies of the past 8
years under Bush? Why now? Did we really benefit as a nation by buying
all those $500 hammers from Halliburton and the likes? Where were the Tea Baggers when America
was paying Blackwater mercenary soldiers to kill innocent Iraqis during our
ongoing occupation of the country? A Blackwater soldier got paid 5 times the amount as was a uniformed GI. Last year we paid Blackwater a Billion
dollars. But government dollars
for healthcare given to a street person in LA was horrendous and like stealing,
they called it, when the Tea Baggers and the clinch-fisted conservatives took
to the streets with signs.
In the 21st Century heated arguments abound on whether American taxpayers should pay for
the upkeep and care of other less-fortunate Americans. Generally, the Conservatives ridicule
social programs that help the needy as being socialistic and even
communistic. Roosevelt’s New Deal
and LBJ’s Great Society and the notion of the government helping Americans in
need has been successfully demonized here in America, a nation that boasts on
taking care of those in need. Yet
many Americans scorn the idea of helping our own. The 44 million Americans with no healthcare at this moment
in time are proof enough of the stark reality of the truth.
The parable of the Good
Samaritan is timeless. If we help
an unfortunate neighbor lying battered and wounded in a ditch, is that a bad
thing? To millions of Americans,
it would seem to be so. They would
rather keep their tax dollars in their pockets than to distribute them to pay
for a national healthcare plan or most any other type of government welfare
program. This kind of thinking
would terminate all kinds of government tax dollars going to programs that help
Americans. Social Security and
Medicare should be abandoned, they say. The US Government cannot afford to keep paying for them, we are told,
and it will be a miracle if anybody working today will receive any benefits
from those programs when they retire.
But let’s do some simple
numbers. After spending ourselves
into a corner of over 12 Trillion Dollars and counting, what would cutting off
Social Security and Medicare really accomplish? Would the excess dollars the government would suddenly not
have to pay out be put to better use? Would it allow us to ramp up our military might in the rest of the
world? Would we pay back the
Trillions of Dollars we now owe the Chinese, Japan, and the Saudis? Would the government be better able to
bail out big businesses like AIG when they fall? And would any of these possibilities better serve the
American people?
Ron Paul is the poster
child for stopping all government spending. Dr. No as he is called in the House, votes ‘NO’ on most all
bills, especially those which would require government spending. I hope someone will correct me if I
err, but Ron Paul thinks all government taxation is stealing from the people
who earned the dollars. He also
thinks we should stop sending dollars overseas (some of his ideas aren’t so
bad). He objects to waging wars
that spawn the $500 dollar hammers that Halliburton charges the government, too
(good for him on that account). But Paul is against minimum wage increases, healthcare and other forms
of government help that would benefit and take care of Americans in a
“Cradle-to-Grave” scenario, as he calls it. Fine. Only
problem is, what do you do with the people who depend on these government
programs like Social Security, Medicare, and funding for Education? Where do we send these people once we
kick them out on the street? Ron Paul doesn’t say.
If the Good Samaritan
were alive today, he would send them to the inn. He would pay for their stay, their medical bills, their
food, and he would give the innkeeper extra cash to give the poor unfortunates
once they recovered. It must be
hard, sitting in the pew on Sunday, for those good Americans who oppose
national healthcare and government tax dollars going to social programs like
Social Security. If the pastor
really gets into the parable of the Good Samaritan and how we should help thy
neighbor, freely and without hesitation, I would bet that many Neocons who call
themselves Christians get their toes stepped on. And most probably some will leave the church with torn
socks.
Many nations of the world
have national healthcare programs for all the people. It’s based upon the graduated tax system (you make more
money, you pay more in taxes). Funding
comes from taxing the “haves” in a country like Canada or Germany so that
everyone, including the poor, will be served. Such a system is not without its faults. But it seems to be the only way to
maintain order in a modern world. We must accept this. America
is not such a nation. Yet. Unlike much of the world, we do not
have a national healthcare plan. And many of the older programs like Medicare and Social Security are
suddenly under attack. But there
is still hope. I think there is
some Good Samaritan in us all. Even Rush Limbaugh. But
probably not. 