Ron Paul, Reaganomics, and Statistical Candy

Some of my colleagues in the Occupy movement are trying to get us to rally around Republican underdog Ron Paul.  They say that he wants to get rid of the income tax and abolish the Federal Reserve, which would cure all our economic woes.  While getting rid of the Fed may help the economy, I don't think getting rid of the income tax will.  You can't expect the economy to improve or for us to get out of the national deficit by not taxing people, specifically the wealthiest 1%.  Taxing the rich helped the economy twice last century: once under FDR in the 1930's as part of the New Deal and once again in 1990's.  I'm going to outline the recent history of tax reform to illustrate why this works. 

In the 1980's "Reaganomics" caused an increasing gap of income between the rich and the poor because a flat tax rate was put into place.  That means that the rich paid the same percentage of their income as the poor did.  The gap widened because the rich were paying less taxes as a percentage of their income than they did before.  Not only that, but the national debt went up about 30% in the 1980's.  The problem with Reagan's trickle-down economics is the assumption that the super-rich would use these tax cuts to invest in other companies and create jobs.  To me that is a flawed assumption if I've ever heard one; why would the rich feel the need to make investments when they already make a crap-load of money?  Why risk losing it all?  It's nonsense: the psychology of greed is that you do whatever it takes to make more  without giving back.  Reaganomics only proved that they would hoard it and stagnate the economy.  The more money they made the more it got concentrated into the pyramidal apex of the capital economy.  All of the sudden we had billionaires who all competed for the famed "richest man in the world" and literally stuck a wedge in growth for small businesses.  Now, after the reinstatement of Reaganomics by Bush Jr., we have a record number of billionaires, and their money is just sitting there while millions struggle to make ends meet in the lower dungeons of the pyramid.  I'm not saying that all of the wealthy are hoarders, but a frightening portion are, and these are the ones on Wall Street who bribe politicians, advise tax-payer bailouts, and push legislation for anything they can get away with (even war in my opinion). 

In the 1990's Clinton raised the marginal tax rate from 31% to 40% on income greater than 250,000.  It relatively hurt the super-rich (oh come on... why complain when you lose $1000 for every million?), but the good thing it did was open the door for small businesses to prosper.  My own mother was able to open a business and it succeeded until the housing bubble in 2008.  The country saw a much needed, albeit short economic boom, until 2001 when Bush re-instated Reaganomics.  The debt skyrocketed again, and the economy has been struggling ever since.  Sadly, Obama hasn't taken a chapter from Clinton's book and pushed taxing the wealthy, even though a considerable number of 1-percenters like Warren Buffett would gladly pay more income tax.  In the Clinton era the debt did increase, but the percentage went down (see link above), so to me this only means that the marginal tax rate wasn't high enough.  Lessons learned: taxing the rich helps the economy by making it easier for local business to grow and  decreasing the federal debt. 

Don't be disillusioned when people tell you that because the rich have higher income they pay more taxes.  It is statistical manipulation to look at the numbers as concrete and not based on relativity.  That's the crucial difference between the flat tax rate and the marginal tax rate; I'm ashamed to tell you how many conservatives I've met that think the rich pay way too much in taxes simply because their income is higher.  For example, right now the 1% pay 30% of all federal taxes yet their assets and incomes make up 80% of the GDP.  Don't you think those numbers should be more consistent? Look at this chart.  It says the bottom 60% of income earners pay only 15% of all taxes, but that's not what the rich are concerned about.  The bottom 60% are the "uneducated consumers" and I bet the rate is only low so they can afford to buy corporate products.  Now do the math; who pays the other 55%?  That great chunk of our taxes come from the middle class, and that's what big business wants.  The middle class is a threat to them because those are the only entrepreneurs that are capable of dethroning their run.  As you can see, the system clearly favors the 1%.  And to the people who argue that they deserve this imbalance because of all the hard work they put in to get there; that's the same disillusionment inherent from being a goon to statistical manipulation.  Much of the wealth on Wall Street and big business is inherited from businesses that rose to the top of the corporate ladder prior to 1980; they earned it no more than the average joe earns a $400 paycheck busting his ass at the local UPS hub. 

To bring it back to Ron Paul, getting rid of the income tax won't magically balance out these capital pyrotechnics.  The system can only be fixed by regulating itself.  Like many other Occupiers I'm not trying to criticize capitalism I just want to see it regulated a bit more.  A well-functioning country is balanced by both ingredients of capitalism and socialism (and let's admit it, every country is a little of both).  Here we have an overwhelming portion of the former, untamed and raging out of control like a forest fire.  Would I pick Ron Paul over any other candidate?  Certainly amongst Republicans I would, simply because he wants to end the Fed.  I still wouldn't pick him over Obama because he's not big on health care or the environment.  Speaking of Obama, if he's so environmentally friendly where's that Green Revolution he was talking about in 2008?  Clearly it was all for show.  His election was campaigned by Wall Street and they don't want an economic revolution, so that's probably why he hasn't pushed legislation for that.  No thanks, I'll be voting for an alternative candidate: in 2008 I voted for Ralph Nader and I'll probably vote for him again. 

Fire Sea, Margaret Weis

    Magma, necromancy, magic, giant dragons, massive subterranean caverns, armies of the dead... this book is pure awesome. I picked it up not knowing it was the third in a series, but it didn't matter because the concept is easy to gather. Humans, on evolving after desecrating planet Earth, split into factions of species with supernatural powers, and inhabited various planets distinguished by the four elements. Each book in the series is set on a different planet (Fire Sea is set on a planet representing the Earth element).  If the other planets are as interesting as this one then this is going to be one of my favorite series ever! 

Eva Luna, Isabel Allende

    Isabel is one the most talented writers we've ever seen. I adore her style; it's poetic, flowery, and delicate, with tinges of darkness appropriate where overdoses of sentimentalism intoxicate the reader. Her novel Eva Luna is a political, erotic, and artistic first-person account of a dreamy woman who finds herself in many bizarre situations and likes to create stories about the interesting people she meets. Apparently, there's a companion book called The Stories of Eva Luna. I'll be checking that out, along with most of her other work. 

Shenandoah Colors

It was a cloudy autumn day in Virginia during the Civil War.  As Stonewall Jackson made his second sinew up the Shenandoah Valley, a Confederate spy from his ranks spotted a strange object in the sky.  The man’s curiosity piqued, so he stealthily strolled away into the woods to get a closer view.  When he came to a clearing there was a meadow and behind it arose a hill in the forefront of an Appalachian range.  There above the hill he identified the object’s location and came to realize that it was only a kite.  But upon careful observation he noticed that it was not just any kite; it had the insignia of the Union Army on it. 

Suspicious of the kite's flyer, he diligently crept through the meadow of tall grass and surmounted the hill.  A delicate breeze was blowing when he reached the top.  Careful to remain unnoticed, he came closer to the spectacle by sprinting from the trees he was hiding behind, then looking out from behind them.  They were ancient trees that could see far away to the east, to a landscape that served as a causeway for courageous armies. 

Then he saw the kite’s owner, and what seemed like a coincidence from providence opened up the skies, flooding the land with glorious sunlight as he looked upon the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.  The wicked streams of her hair  waved precariously in the wind as she dexterously worked with the line of the kite.  The kite itself seemed to undulate through the atmosphere as if it were trying to conquer the colorful mountains behind it.  Leaves of red, orange, yellow, and the occasional green danced around her in the lament of October’s waning days.  The incredulous image of the enemy woman was made even more distressing by the fact that her skin contained the same pigment that had sent armies across America to defend ideologies; skin that enchanted him with magic at every hem of her tight beige dress; skin that, unlike his own, resonated with the shadows cast by the very same clouds billowing eastward that afternoon. 

A weakness overcame him- not one that he was accustomed to.  He felt enslaved by the woman’s serpentine motion, swaying as she did on the hill brushed by wind gusts from the south.  She ran over the grass with the carefree grace of a child, and even though his status as a pro-slavery Confederate told him not to think it, his heart possessed his mind with the urge to run out there with her despite the color of her skin. 

Instead, he listened to reason and broke from the trees with a stern countenance, upholding his rifle with an uncertain strength.  His legs may have looked rigid and muscular, but they were weakened by the prospect of firing on such a magnificent specimen of nature.  At no time in the last two years had he even come close to feeling the lightening sensation offered by woman, for he had served under his regiment and been involved with long and bloody battles during all that time, making all his memories of the war disappear when he saw her.  It was like amnesia for the dispossessed. 

He came to a stop and surprised the woman by demanding that she detain her kite, for this land was in Confederate control and she should not be glorifying the enemy in it.  She turned around and saw the rifle pointed in her direction, so she cowered and released the kite in order that she may hold up her arms.  The spy’s eyes did not follow the kite as it flew away, but instead looked upon her and perceived that she was older than he’d imagined, probably even older than himself.  But this didn’t detract from her beauty; she was like an olive that, despite being older than other vegetables, still shone as robustly, and perhaps even more so, than all the other edible ornaments in a Mediterranean garden.   

He asked her what she was doing and she responded that she was flying a kite.  Not just any kite.  It was given to me by my daughter- she made it herself.  Why are you flying it here?  We’re taking over this land.  Are you sure?   Yes ma’am, movin’ up through Maryland... As they spoke, they unconsciously moved closer together; two people from a broken nation commencing to stitch a gushing wound that had left the Confederate man fighting for something he didn’t really stand for.  Upon compliments, smiles, and more discussion, their chemistry made any opposition between them vanish.  The woman suggested they’d get a better view of the valley if they walked further up the hill, to a spot where a golden oak tree stood.  Underneath the swaying branches they found a comfortable little niche, where they lay their bodies and coiled up together like the opposing forces of a yin-yang.  The man felt her warmness sizzling in the cocoon of his uniform.  An intoxicating glance at the cleavage above her blouse did little to dampen the storm churning in his stomach.  The breeze blew open the nest of her bosom and subsided in it regularly, just like the wild ribbons of obsidian hair revealing the contours of her oily face.  A feeling of overwhelming desire catapulted him into a state of unfamiliar longing; the type of feeling that no rationalization could describe, only the ambiguity of madness. 

Together with him, under the oak tree on the hill, she felt a sensation of detachment from the ground, the type of sensation that, like a drug, casts oneself into metaphysical heights, where the sense of gravity is lost and the chandelier of memory shatters on the ground the way a mirror would.  His archaic face, a face weathered by years of labor in the cotton fields of Alabama, moistened by the sweat of old-fashioned Southern labor, warmed her thighs and wet her lips for the clenching of his hands.  Her longing drank him up like eyes channeling color, coiling inside his protective embrace, the red leaves swooning around them now, reminding him of all the blood he'd shed.  One of them settled on his knee when she reached for his belt. 

At once his mouth fell upon hers and the floodgates burst open and cascading waterfalls of passion drenched them in symphonies of bliss which evaporated from the sky the few remaining clouds that had blotted out the sun, so that the angels of God or the pantheons of the natives could celebrate the harvest of the leaves of sex under the oak tree, which stood as a shrine of emancipation golden and almost Corinthian on that hilltop above the valley under the Appalachians, the mountains beating drums for a chorus on high while the strings of the wind blew arias of sexual release.  That two people so apparently different could share such love during a war caused by the very differences that had separated them persuaded the mountains and the trees and the decaying leaves of autumn and the birds watching from the branches so that they all joined in the momentum of the tantric chant, so that nature’s rhythm sent seismic waves of love upon the surrounding lands of fear and death.  With the grass blowing and their chests heaving and the leaves falling, the aching crevasse of Virginia’s navel cracked ‘neath the mounting strain of the divide that separated two forces of morphology, one an elevator of progression and the other a chute of conservation, and the ground wept for the remembrance of times past, when humans could make love to each other despite the color of their skin, the orientation of their sexuality, or the heritage of their bloodline. 

He touched her neck and she took off his belt and he slid his hand over her breast and she moaned while he unbuttoned her blouse and threw it into the air so the breeze caught it and the birds flew and eventually the blouse and his trousers and her bracelet and his butternut shell jacket and her undergarments and even the kite she’d flown lay splattered about them randomly like an abstract painting.  Shadows of Elysium fell across the meadows as he caressed her supple body, a body that spasmed under the penetrating seduction of his movement, so that grasshoppers and beetles and even the crows and the trees started hearing the unusual music that nature hadn’t orchestrated enough of, the music of two humans making love in its own backyard, not inside some impenetrable house built to conceal its omniscience, but in the garden of a true setting, a natural palace of beauty and wonder; their bed on the ground of a transparent room instead of a wooden one- a seraphic nest under the oak tree.  And when she grabbed his muscular arms and slid underneath his member she sank into that transformation, not caring how dirty she was or if any creatures were watching, for she knew that they’d seen it already, that sex outdoors was the only place that could possibly make it seem like it actually mattered, that it wasn’t meant to be censored, that humans seemed to mistakenly be ashamed of their naked appearance despite the fact that every other species didn’t give a damn.  Deep inside her his thickness sent waves of excitement up her spine and somewhere off in the distance a gun went off, not like the ones of the war ravaging the land, but the guns of a psychological derailment that blistered the physicality of their 19th century holocaust.  Together they sizzled and rattled the foundation of nationalism so that it regurgitated from its rigid frame the illusions of detachment and integrated all that was around them- the music of the Earth, inviting not their ears but their genitalia into a river of imperial love.  When he kissed her nipples and she told him to go faster a single star might have twinkled above the red white and blue firmament where rockets glared after ignitions in the bowels of war had illuminated the sky and the two segregated governments for at least once in those four years of agony, fear, and death remedied the cause by offering a glimpse of the future; the future of an ambitious, progressive country that wanted to be perfect but never really succeeded because nature’s only perfection couldn’t be molded by the arms of a nation, only by the black and white unconditional arms of love. 

The grass was blowing and he held her legs up higher so he could move deeper inside her and she moaned, might have even cried with delight and he told her how soft she was and how good her wetness felt around him so she found the rhythm herself and moved underneath him to accommodate his advances and together they felt whole, complete, as dipoles of consecration grazing the frontier of Shenandoah Valley with the leaves falling and his chest heaving while her breasts wobbled and sent a fury of excitement up his spine that had erupted from the source of life.  And the golden leaves fell and they matched her hair now disheveled all about the ground and her bliss was secure as his abdomen protected her and his rugged face dipped to consume her mouth once more and now she cried and he groaned and something from the deep rang out and flooded the evening, whitened out the darkness of the abyss, an upsurge like the crescendo of a symphony spurning the crows to fly out of the trees and follow the wind blowing the grass and the leaves in cacophony and everything was beautiful everything was Good the white man the negro even divided America fighting and coming closer to Union with leaves of red brown orange yellow so it was like even Color itself had been smashed to smithereens during their coming as her chest heaved and he came and his chest heaved and she drowned him inside her and their eyes met while the leaves fell and he collapsed on her golden breasts with the bombs bursting in air and the grass blowing, his chest heaving, the leaves falling, her voice panting, the golden leaves falling...