When Fair is Foul
Things for the 99% to think about while Occupying Wall Street (or wherever):The top 1% should pay their fair share.
When politicians try to divide the rich against the poor, rich and poor alike should refuse to take the bait. Here are some basic facts to consider: The wealthiest 1% pay an average tax rate of 30% and they account for 38% of all income taxes. The top 50% of tax payers pay practically all of the nation’s taxes (97.30%) and 40-45% of American income earners pay zero taxes. Now, I won’t deny the tax code we have in place is a bit of a convoluted mess or that it could use some serious reform, but overall it seems fair to me and we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be deluded into thinking that 1% of the people in this country are the cause and cure of 100% of our problems. And let’s face it, isn’t all this talk about fairness a little transparent? I mean, really, the truth is we are only annoyed with the 1% because we aren’t one of them! If we were rich and powerful, too, we wouldn’t be mad at ourselves, would we? So let’s be smarter than the politicians give us credit for and stop denying the love part of our love/hate relationship with the 1%. That would be fair.We can balance the budget by cutting spending.
According to the Congressional Research Service, which prepared a report for members of congress on the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global war on terror, we have spent a total of $1.283 trillion since 9/11. While we are all arguing about who should pay more taxes, what spending to cut or which investments are worth making, we might just check in with the Pentagon and ask to see their balance sheets. The Congressional Budget Office consistently complains that they cannot get a clear reckoning of where all that trillion plus has been spent. Seriously?! I think all this 1% talk is a smoke screen to keep us from looking at the budget that really needs to be reformed.Wall Street got us in this mess and they need to be held accountable.
We love to blame Wall Street for the mortgage crisis and housing downturn, but a closer look reveals our shared responsibility. We all participated in the boon years when housing prices soared and home equity loans allowed us to pay for our consumer lifestyles. As a nation we spent to excess, ran up credit card bills, and never wondered if we were going a bit overboard. Wealthy Wall Street traders and the average American homeowner became a lot alike as we all borrowed against the value of our portfolios only to see values dive, leaving us with nothing but debt. The Wall Street derivative traders believed in the value of their securities as surely as we believed in the value of our houses. Both turned out to be illusions.My point is…
Look, I’m not denying that lots of people are in deep financial doodoo or that there are things that need fixing on Wall Street and on Main Street. Sure some guilty people made out scot free and innocent people are suffering, but is it really productive to waste all that energy being angry about it? I’m afraid that the Occupying Wall Street movement, by playing the cynical game that politicians like to play of dividing us against ourselves, is going to get us nowhere. The 99% need to stop blaming the 1% for all their problems and begin to realize that we need each other, all 100% of us, to weather the storm we are in. We even need the politicians – I know, we want to jettison the whole lot, but if we stopped falling for their simplistic, self-serving cr@#, they’d have to stop dishing it out. David Brooks said it: “It’s not about declaring war on some nefarious elite. It’s about changing behavior from top to bottom. Let’s occupy ourselves.”Honor Their Memory - Be a Hero for Peace
Suzanne Ross explains the focus of the Raven Foundation project "Honor Their Memory - Be a Hero for Peace."
We should not forget 9/11, but how will we remember? Can we provide a different response to violence other than more violence? What are the nonviolent ways to respond to violence that can bring about lasting peace, security, and justice? Join the silent majority that is looking for a better way forward.
A Message from Suzanne
Everyone claims to be for peace, even suicide bombers, warring armies, and violent insurgencies. It’s a nearly universal belief across cultures that violence, properly used by the right people for the right cause, can achieve peace or justice or some other noble goal. Why is that? Because also universally believed is that the obstacles to peace are bad guys or bad nations who must be defeated for peace to be realized.
Human history, both ancient and recent, reveals the problem with this thinking – there is always one more bad guy, one more evil enemy whose defeat justifies the use of violence. Ironically, the good guys are as busy justifying their right to use violence as are the bad guys they are battling. The result is that the only difference between good guys and bad guys is what they say or the color of their uniforms, not what they do
In the ten years since 9/11/01, the United States has engaged in a campaign of aggression in the name of justice and national defense. To preserve the peace we have become an instrument of war. To truly honor the dead, to truly memorialize the heroism of the New York firefighters and passengers and crew of flight 93, to be sincerely grateful for the sacrifices of our armed forces overseas, there is only one worthy response: to abandon the flawed strategy of peace by violence and demand a new heroism from all Americans, the heroism required to build peace by peaceful means.
We invite you to “like” this page to send a message to the world that you are ready to do your part for peace. The United States and the entire world are reaching the level of maturity that peace by peaceful means requires. This 9/11, join the global effort to build a sustainable peaceful future for all the world.
Suzanne Ross
Founder
To learn about the practice and power of nonviolence, visit our inspiring partners at the Metta Center for Nonviolence Education.
At the Gate - By Michael Hardin
"At the Gate" was composed by Michael Hardin just days after 9/11/2001. The song evokes the heroism of that day, along with the pain, fear, and grief. In the 10 years since 9/11, America's military response has spread the pain, fear, and greif of that day to Afghanistan and Iraq. Please join the Raven Foundation in our project to honor the memory of 9/11 with a commitment to establishing peace by peaceful means.
Join the Raven Foundation here:http://www.ravenfoundation.org/soar
Like the Facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Raven-Foundation/208056722551942#!/pages/Ho...
At The Gate
© 2001 Michael and Lorri Hardin
At 8:48 this morning, my world crashed without warning
From nowhere came barbarians at the gate
Falling sounds of silence echoed in the violence
Entombed within a rubble heap of hate
Nameless men and women became heroes in my eyes
They bravely gave the finest sacrifice
And when all hope was gone, still they carried on
For strangers there not questioning the price
How are we supposed to pray in a time of war?
What are we supposed to say to the gods above?
How are we supposed to feel, when everything’s surreal?
When all that’s left are the ashes of those we love?
My brave new world of pain, human history’s gone insane
Etched now in a memory full of holes
And everyone was there and everyone was watching
While evil stole the laughter from our souls
How are we supposed to pray in a time of war?
What are we supposed to say to the gods above?
How are we supposed to feel, when everything’s surreal?
When all that’s left are the ashes of those we love?
But I do believe in peace and I do believe in hope
And I do believe we’ll find the strength within
And I do believe in love and I do believe in life
And I do believe that evil will not win
Thousands still lie buried and I’m left to wonder why
All I want to be is anywhere but here
Bereft and I’m left grieving with so many things unsaid
Good-byes are the one thing that I fear
Too long the dust’s been blowing; unrest is what it’s sowing
Spewed out from death’s carnivorous grin
I’ve said all I can say and I’ve felt all I can feel
And I never want to go this way again
How are we supposed to pray in a time of war?
What are we supposed to say to the gods above?
How are we supposed to feel, when everything’s surreal?
When all that’s left are the ashes of those we love?
What are we supposed to say to the gods above?
I do believe in love, and I do believe in life
And I do believe that evil will not triumph
Reflections by Michael Hardin
I was working in NYC (Queens) that day. It was a Tuesday. We had a TV set on in the office tuned to CNN so just after the first plane hit we started watching the news coverage. Needless to say there was no more work done that day. I remember at around 11 am after both towers had fallen standing outside the office looking west to the skyline as great billowing clouds of grey and black filled the horizon and my friend Frank Langone saying "This means war." I couldn't get a hold of Lorri as the cell phones all went dead and knew my daughter Arwen had planned on being in the city that day since it was her 21st birthday. I arrived home around 3 pm, Lorri around 4 or so and we still had no word from our daughter. There was only one TV station (the local PBS station) since all the networks had their broadcast towers on the World Trade Center and they no longer existed. We sat glued to the TV until midnight, when our daughter finally came home and we could breathe again.
On Wednesday September 12th it was a hot day and we had no air conditioning in our home, just an attic fan. So all the windows were open drawing air from the outside. The wind shifted and blew straight across Queens and all night long we could smell smoke, burning rubber and burning flesh. We knew that the ash particles had to contain remnants of those who perished in the fire. It was surreal. Everything was shut down, everyone was in shock; New York City and Long Island had gone quiet.
I had been writing songs for almost a decade and on Thursday the 13th September I was playing my guitar in the afternoon when "At The Gate" just poured out of me. Later that night I played it for Lorri. She thought the lyrics needed reworking, but liked the chorus. So Friday night we went to a restaurant and rewrote the verses. We contacted a local recording studio who wanted $75 an hour. We were broke back then but felt we could spend $300 and so on the 20th we went to the studio and laid down two guitar tracks, our vocals and had enough left for one hour of mixing. My friend Jeff Krantz put the song on-line on the 27th September and it immediately began getting tens of thousands of listeners. I still have scores of e-mails sent to me by fire and police who survived September 11th, from families of those who lost loved ones and many others. Lorri and I felt like the song brought some measure of healing and seemed to resonate with those who were hurting.
That's the story of "At the Gate." A careful listener will find echoes to Simon and Garfunkel and Aldous Huxley as well as a number of ironic puns. One final comment: Although I am a monotheist, the reason for the plural "gods" in the chorus reflects my sense that when we are at war we all want our god to be on our side. Thus, the "gods" are plural like one would find in a Greek or Roman pantheon. And because they are rivalrous and fight with each other, we also imitate them and so fight and maim and kill one another. The bridge, which gets repeated is our faith statement that light and love has and will prevail. "Faith is the bird that sings in the dead of night."
Michael Hardin
Executive Director, Preaching Peace
www.preachingpeace.org
Lancaster, PA