"sell the K-Mart stock"
A few years ago, I was the aviation department manager for a wealthy Republican. While on a trip to Palm Springs to play golf, the owner of the $2 million Falcon 10 I was flying, was told by his secretary, his personal checking account was $250,000.00 overdrawn. To the 99% that would be a real problem. For me, it would mean I would have to turn off all of the utilities to my house, withdraw my daughter from college, sell the family car and move into a tent city. However, my boss had many more assets available to him and he just told the secretary to "sell the K-Mart stock". If you folks are having trouble following me, let me draw the analogy between this little story and the US debt.
The federal government is not in the business of building a large savings account. It has certain services that the representatives of the citizens who go to Washington request of it. Over many years there are many services. Those services are for regulations that ensure that we have clean air and water, that are children are being educated properly, that our energy industry is functioning properly, that our financial industry is operating fairly and on and on.
From time to time things happen in the health of the economy that affects the balance between the income and outflow of the finances of the government. When the GOP took over the Presidency and the Congress in 2000, it had a national dept of $6 trillion. Within eight year that amount was $12 trillion. This was due to the shortfall of the taxes paid by wealthier American through a lowering of the top income rates and a move by them from "earned income" to "capital gains" as a way to generate their fortunes. At the same time, we entered into three unfunded undertakings, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and "Prescription Drug" act.
Now we find ourselves in a position to choose whether we want to act responsibly and ask the Billionaires to help the country out of this national emergency, or do we want to lay off all of the public sector employees in the country, further reduce the taxes on the Billionaires and totally destroy the greatest society in the history of the world.
If the citizens of this country set back and allow the misdirected Libertarians like Ron Paul to pull this "smoke and mirrors" campaign over their thinking, I might as well start working on my first book, "The Rise and Fall of the United States Empire".
Max Martin
Democratic Congressional Candidate, Texas 36th District
Clear Lake City
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