So Many Suckers, So Few Bridges (David Glenn Cox)

David Glenn Cox -- World News Trust

Sept. 10, 2010 -- I sometimes don’t know who I am anymore.

As I was walking to the library and I saw a younger man in a business suit buying gas. I thought to myself, “I used to be him.” He looked well dressed, but not prosperous, driving a company car and a little unsure of the neighborhood, and it made me smile.

Then I saw a guy in his twenties, shaggy-haired, pulling out of some apartments, and he looked as if he was trying to shake off last night’s buzz or maybe leaving his paramour’s den, and I’ve been him too. Then there was a guy across the street waiting for the bus as he eyed his wristwatch, yep, I’ve been there too. Take the early bus and show up an hour early or take the next bus and risk being late.

I saw all of these people in the space of two minutes and it made me think of all the hats we eventually wear in this life and I guess that’s what prompted the question of "Who I am now?" I am detached from it all, but at the same time somehow more connected than I’ve ever been. It has been three years since I’ve been to a movie theater and ten months since I’ve watched more than an hour of TV and it tells me that I am changed. I am no longer any of those people and don’t know that I would want to rejoin this society if I could because of the change that has overtaken me.

I don’t care what’s on tonight. I can no longer stand the obnoxious commercials and jingles. The way that working people are portrayed as lazy, mullet-headed idiots with their overweight, big-tittied, brassy wives and their snot-nosed smart-mouthed children. Now when it comes to commercials about life insurance or investments these people are portrayed as clean cut with perfect teeth playing football with bright-eyed kids in the front yard of a sumptuous house as the beautiful wife pulls into the driveway in a new Suv.

Neither image is correct and it’s all so superficial and artificial but so many follow along without understanding that even with an umbrella and raincoat you can’t walk in the rain without getting wet. You cannot expose yourself to bent electron images without a warping and breakage of your own images and self-image.

On the way home I took a short cut and walked through grass. I have no idea how long it’s been since I walked through grass. I walk through weeds and dirt but this was soft sweet lawn grass and it was really a wonderful feeling. I had stepped into a time warp two blocks off the commercial drag was an encapsulated neighborhood. A small street of vintage 1950s- and 60s-era small houses with large well-kept yards. It took me back to when I was a child as I had grown up in a neighborhood such as this.

I began looking around for Rod Serling, as this was all too surreal and too fanciful. Lush overgrown trees shaded my path and as the mail truck pulled up I walked in real grass again and I thought to myself, “I want to live here.” Then I remembered that while this neighborhood was real I was only chasing the friendly loving ghosts of my childhood, people and places that were no more and never would be again. The soft grass lightened my spirits and made me laugh and it’s hard to laugh these days sweet grass or no sweet grass.

Barack Obama proposed on Tuesday $42 billion dollars in new tax cuts for business and his spokesman Robert Gibbs declared it a stimulus. If you don’t laugh you’ll cry. After thirty years some still believe tax cuts are the answer. On Wednesday, “Obama will rule out any compromise that would extend the BUSH-era tax cuts for the wealthy beyond this year.”

The operative words here are "BUSH-era tax cuts," and "for the wealthy" is also important.

Over at the website Democratic Underground they were wetting themselves with excitement and the wine coolers flowed like, well, wine coolers!

“Good, nay, great! Sounds principled to me, and something for anyone listening who isn't a brazillionaire to celebrate!” said one poster. Another added, “At last, change we can believe in! Thank you, President Obama! n/t. And finally, “He's finally getting it: change = principles + not acceding to R idiocy.”

These so called Democrats are cheering and yahooing because one day after Obama promised $42 billion in new tax give-aways to corporate America, he promised to maintain the BUSH-era tax cuts on all but the wealthiest 300,000 Americans. He’s drawn a line in the sand and promises to stand firm and play rough with the top 2 percent of the taxpayers.

The average American earns $47,000 per year and their BUSH-era tax cut is $892, or $17.75 per week, about the price of a case of beer. If you earn $250,000, your tax cut is near $4,000, and if you earn more than a million dollars a year, your tax cut is $100,000, but Obama is playing tough and he will allow to lapse those tax cuts on America’s wealthiest 315,000. Damn he’s one tough customer! Just one day after he offered corporate America the opportunity to write off 100 percent of any capital business purchase, he raises their taxes $100,000.

So say, if you are a stock trader for Goldman Sachs named Dewy Cheatum and your annual income is $2 million, plus your $3 million bonus, Barack Obama just raised your taxes $100,000. But now you are a contractor employed by Goldman and you trade as Dewy Cheatum & Howe limited corporate partnership. You now get to write off 100 percent of that new corporate jet you just purchased, and good news, all the executives in the office get a new company car courtesy of Barack Obama.

I worked for a company like this. They won’t pay a dime of tax. They’ll spend it frivolously and consider it found money. So Obama isn’t eliminating the BUSH-era tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent, he’s merely shuffled it around. The wee folk are ecstatic that they get to keep their pin money and are overjoyed because they believe that Obama is socking it to the fat cats. Yes the middle class BUSH-era tax cuts are safe for those struggling along and trying to get by on $2.5 million dollars over the next ten years. That extra $40,000 in tax savings will help them to squeak by with last year’s Mercedes and the new Obama-BUSH-era tax cuts will only cost the treasury $2.2 trillion!

Harry Truman proposed what he called the poor man’s tax cut with a recommendation to raise the minimum wage 40 percent. Tax cuts won’t take you where you want to go. They won’t return you to middle class prosperity. If Obama had any true interest in helping working people he would eliminate all tax cuts for those earning over the median wage of $47,000 per year, but Obama’s plan is to stick to the BUSH plan and to play politics.

“People are frustrated and angry and anxious about the future,” Obama said today at Cuyahoga Community College West Campus in Parma, Ohio, outside Cleveland. “I understand that. I also understand that in a political campaign, the easiest thing for the other side to do is ride this fear and anger all the way to Election Day.”

No, the easiest thing to do is to promise to protect their beer money and to stunt the appearance of doing something for working people. Tax cuts won’t get you a raise at work; tax cuts won’t give you a higher standard of living. Tax cuts won’t spur consumption; tax cuts won’t help families with children in college. Tax cuts won’t get you a job; tax cuts won’t help the unemployed because tax cuts are where this disaster all started because this was George W. BUSH and Richard B. Cheney’s idea of how to build an economy.

So as I walked through this halcyon little neighborhood, I thought to myself about kitchens with good food cooking in them and quiet bedrooms with clean sheets. Of days before fearing the mailman or the utility truck. Of days when my bills were paid and my rest at night was unencumbered, and I wondered, “Can I ever go back?” Can we as a nation ever go back to a time when we knew the difference between political shit and Shinola? A political class that treats us as lazy, mullet-headed idiots trying to buy us off with a free whirlygig or beer money. A political class that looks out across an audience of voters and thinks "So many suckers, so few bridges!"

As for me, I’m not rich, but I’m not poor either. I have no income, but I have discovered that I don’t need much and what’s more I don’t want much. I want my country back and I want its government to work for those people in those little houses on those little streets, and maybe someday I’ll live in one too and I’ll walk around and maybe even dance in the sweet grass with my shoes off. Life is about living and not about buying, and a government that’s not dedicated to helping you is dedicated to killing you.