Douglas C. Lyons – Senior Editorial Writer The Sun-Sentinel

July 30, 2011

Douglas C. Lyons – Senior Editorial Writer
The Sun-Sentinel

RE: A teachable moment? – Some comments on your column in today’s Sun-Sentinel about the beauty of the income tax and the heretofore hidden modern American Liberal tendencies of A. Lincoln and R. Reagan.

Mr. Lyons,
First, I sentence you to a major timeout in the ethnic no-no sensitivity woodshed.
120 years ago my father’s father left Ballyglass, Ireland to come to this country. His 3 bothers chose 3 other countries, one of which was Wales. That makes me an honorary Welshman. [I get chills when I hear a Welsh Choir sing “Men of Harlech”] Thus, when I read your sentence “The United States is close to welshing on its debts…” I was shocked. I was hurt and diminished. Not since August, 2008 has the Sun-Sentinel published such an insensitive term. You remember when pre-Tea Party thugs took over the front page of your paper and, acting on direct orders from the Koch Brothers and Rush Limbaugh, published the headline Michele Obama – Her Time To Shine? I do. I understand that reproductions of that headline are the walls of every NRA Confederate flag waving club in South Florida.
If you can use the word “welsh” with impunity would it not put you on the slippery slope to “sneaky Japs” of “drunken Irish”? How about “cowardly French” or “Eye-Tie Gangsters”? Would “greasy Mexicans” or “smelly Pakis” be allowed? Would “cheap Jew” or its buzz word cousin, “hook nosed diamond merchant” be acceptable? Would “African-Americans not overwhelmed by ambition” be inside the Pale?
But I digress.
You say that Lincoln imposed an income tax on America 150 years ago. You imply that we have had one since. Not so, not so. On February 3, 1913 the 16th Amendment, the one permitting an income tax, was ratified. It ended a 58 year income tax holiday.
Since you introduced Lincoln to the conversation it is only fair to mention a few other things he did.
#1 – His goal was to preserve the Union. He was perfectly willing, at the beginning of his first term, to allow slavery to continue if it kept the Union together.
#2 – He suspended the writ of habeas corpus.
#3 – He arrested a Congressman for sedition and exiled him to Canada.
#4 – The Emancipation Proclamation was a masterstroke. He freed the slaves where he couldn’t. He kept then in bondage where he could have freed them. He set the nation on a noble cause while keeping an anchor to windward. He followed one of Napoleon’s maxims to a tee. “If you’re going to take Vienna, take Vienna”
#5 – I may be having a senior moment here. I can’t remember whether it was June or July, 1864 that the Union Army had 50,000 casualties. Maybe it was both. And we thought the phrase “pay any price and bear any burden” was original when we heard it one hundred years later.
#6 - Your snarky suggestion that Republicans are stuck in a time warp fails to disclose the inconvenient fact that during the Civil War the Democratic Party and its official mouthpiece, the New York Times, favored a negotiated settlement with the South. No matter how you spin that it meant that both of them were OK with slavery. “Baboon” was one of the more interesting terms used by the Democrats in the 1864 election to call Lincoln. Do you think Congresswoman Wasserman-Schultz would place that term in her eclectically chosen “bile and vitriol” list?
#7 – He approved Grant’s decision to turn Sherman loose in the late fall of 1864. That means he allowed the implementation of America’s first “surge”. It was so successful that Pershing, Patton, and Petraeus copied it. Did you support the 2007 “surge”?
About the debt ceiling…
The last time Bush 43 proposed a raise in the debt ceiling every Democratic Senator – each and every one of them with no exceptions – voted against it. I am not sure what the difference 5 years makes but you either you cover your marker or you don’t. Is it possible to “welsh” retroactively?
The President has said that if the debt ceiling is not raised by Tuesday he won’t be able to pay any bills by Wednesday. I am shocked, shocked that 2 and ½ years into his administration no one has yet mastered the budgeting process. Do you think we could get some money back from those not quite shovel ready “shovel ready projects”? In 2009 his administration was filled either with grifters, crooks, and masters of the famous five finger discount, or it was filled with incompetents and incompetency not seen since the glory days of Jimmy Carter. Do you remember when you couldn’t find two West Wingers in a row who could find their ass using both hands? I do. The worst possible nightmare would have been if both possibilities are true. The evidence would support that interpretation.
In hindsight, 2009 will prove to be the highlight of his administration. All things considered, he has done exactly what a man who had done nothing in his adult life would do. Maybe he spent too much time with his non-Black grandmother whom he described as “an average White woman”. Maybe the combination of Saul Alinsky and Reverend Wright proved to be a Sophist too far. Maybe he thought being a community organizer was something useful, something of which to be proud. It is indeed passing strange that the community he was organizing against sent him to the Illinois legislature and then the United States Senate. I guess we’re lucky the job in the Vatican was filled.
Weren’t we told that the Social Security system was chockablock filled with assets? Why are we dependent on Wong, an increasingly hostile Mandarin Shylock, to pay current operating expenses? Where did almost 80 years of American workingmen’s dollars go? This makes Bernie Madoff look like a penny chiseler.
The President, and may I say that he is the best President we have, wants to raise the debt ceiling so it does not interfere with the November, 2012 election. You cite the great Reagan and how he is close to political canonization. As a Roman Catholic I would be opposed to that. Mt. Rushmore is a suitable alternative. You say he raised the debt ceiling 18 times. That means he had to go to Congress every 6 months. Using that formula we would revisit the question in January, 2012 and June, 2012.
Put the question to the electorate. Put it right into the election cycle. I know that this is anathema to modern American Liberals but what’s wrong with that?
If nothing else the debt debate proves that Shakespeare was right. “…borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry”.
Did you hear the one about the old Black man and the old Jew?
The police see an old Black man and an old Jew wrestling in the street….



Kevin Smith

PS – I cannot lay my finger upon the word summon anywhere in the Constitution Do you think James Madison, wherever he might be, is smiling?