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4/14/2001


Original text and editing by:
A G Kaiser
email to
agkaiser1@gmail,com
"A good slave works for food alone."

Q of the week:
Q:Is the web of our common past an inescapable snare?
A:It's all in our heads. Memories are a trap, only if we allow them to be so. Who would be so foolish as to allow an imposed construction, that exists only in our imagination or as an inherited condition, to rule in the place of our own good judgement or to inhibit our survival in the present? What is a sincere conservative?



Week twelve:

Distractions:
On Monday the White House Press Secretary, in a brief respite from the China/Spy plane diversion, interjected a spin on the estate tax issue. He suggested that elimination of the estate tax was motivated by a desire to save the family farm. The irony would be laughable if it weren't so likely to succeed in fooling many people and even swinging popular opinion in favor this stupidity.

If they are really interested in saving what little farm land that's not yet in the hands of corporate giants, they can raise the current, untoucable $800k to a million or two. Even ten million may not be too much evaluation and estate tax deduction for a viable family farm or business. ["Viable family farm" may be an oxymoron in the 21st century.]


Politics:
I heard a comment: "Many people would consider Thomas Jefferson a hypocrite..." [because he wrote and spoke for freedom and equality while using slaves to earn his living and fathering children by Sally Hemming but publicly denying the relationship. Was Thomas Jefferson a hypocrite?

Jefferson was no more a hypocrite than the average politician today. I don't believe he or they have been conscious of their conflicting beliefs and actions. They have all been caught up in a widely accepted common wisdom of their times and social economic classes.

Everyone occasionally rises above the herd delusion to do something worthy of praise. Mostly we do what we must to survive. It [the delusion] was the same for Jefferson. That's not hypocricy it's merely foolish and self destructive to allow our social and cultural inventions to negatively affect our well being.


Education:
Bush's campaign promises, echoed in his inaugural address, are not to be found in his budget proposal. An oversight?


Economy:
Elimination of the estate tax will exascerbate the economic crisis the politician puppets are pretending doesn't exist. Money needs to get to the bottom before it can be pumped back to the top. Eliminating any means that is an opportunity to take money back from the rich and put it into the hands of the poor will, at the least, contribute to economic stagnation.

A real solution that will never be accepted is to set the estate tax deduction at two million with an additional ten million for bona fide family businesses that might fail if stripped of capital. The remainder, after deductions, of any estate, would be sold at puplic auction and proceeds go to building houses, creating jobs and providing medical care for our forgotten homeless and other victims of upper class greed.

We all depend on our economy for survival. It belongs to us, not to the wealthy elite who merely own it. [Their abstract inventions are the means of enthrallment.] The economic progress from 1870 to 1970 in America has been rolled back to the early 1950's level in the past 30 years. A two income household has less buying power than one income in 1970. We produce the things that they control. Why do we allow it to go on? Are we so completely fooled by their bullshit?


Law and order:
I have no problem with the theory of law or the evident spirit of most of the laws we have created. But unequal enforcement, racial and economic profiling by the police [policy enforcers], and laws written with exceptions for the wealthy elite and their corporations are that which spell justice JustUs.

John Ashcroft decided that the McVey execution should be carried to the families of victims by closed circuit TV. He said it is the "right", truth, justice, the mom and apple pie American way thing to do. Cogent as his ratiocination may be, I'm curious about the source of his authority or that of the executive branch to do this thing.

I thought such matters were in the hands of the judiciary. Have the courts been so demoralized by the corruption of the all high, which put Bush in the presidency, that they can't or won't speak out in the defense of their territory? Is the price of Bush's "victory" the destruction of the separation of powers, the checks and balances, that are the heart of the constitution? Ironicoler and ironicoler. Color me sad.


Energy:
Enjoy it while you can still afford it. If they rape the last virgin wilderness to increase the supply of energy, they will still not sell it to you any cheaper than they must. They will only use any crisis to raise the price again and again. They will never begin to look at alternative energy sources until the last dollar has been squeezed out of dead humanity. It's a jealousy thing. Their humanity died centuries ago and they want to drag us down with them.


Foreign Policy:
Winston Lord, a former ambassador to China, echoed Colin Powell and others in commenting that "we have been flying these spy missions for years and have nothing to apologize for". I've also heard it said that the Chinese would do the same if they could. I've heard nothing of Chinese allegations on these subjects. Why are we actively defending positions that have not yet, apparently, been attacked?


Religion:
Our collective consciousness is God's computer program.


Medicine:
An epidemic of skin cancer is not proof enough the atmosphere has been drastically altered by our artificial chemicals. "Good science" is that which supports commerce at any cost to life.


Editorial Column:
The latest campaign finance reform, if it passes and is signed into law, is a small step in the right (not George's "right") direction. Some prominent conservatives were boasting how easily it would be circumvented before the Senate vote was taken. Reign in unruly leaders!

Our politicians have bolted from the influence of Americans and taken the leads of corporate campaign funding. Many believe the latest spy in the FBI should get the death penalty. What is more disloyal to the American people...?

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Greg Kaiser

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