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

November 19, 2011
Douglas C. Lyons – Senior Editorial Writer
The Sun-Sentinel

RE: “The world Turned Upside Down” - It’s a catchy tune, particularly at Yorktown, but not compared to your marvelous column in today’s Sun-Sentinel.

Mr. Lyons,

It’s been more than a few years since I wandered in the Groves of Academe but surely I should have remembered the class that said the way to make the poor rich was to make the rich poor.

Incidentally, it is reported by Granma, Cuba’s answer to both Tass and Pravda, that sugar production in now at the level reached in 1905. Keep it to yourself but the goons running the country have decided to fire ½ the people employed in that industry. Please keep this info from the Occupy Wall street crowd. Whatever else Cuba is it is no place to test the limits of free speech. The reaction of los jefes to a collective trou drop followed by projectile ca-caing in the calle would rival anything Mel Brooks could put on the screen.

I thought your oh so achingly familiar modern American Liberal polemic against wealth would at least have made passing reference to the estate of Senator Fatso Kennedy. One of the listed assets was a trust created in 1936 by his father, Corsair Joe. In addition to being a secret admirer of Hitler and a not so secret anti-Semite he knew he would have to provide for Teddy. Just imagine how many sessions of Midnight Basketball the emptying of that bag of pelf could have provided. The mind boggles!

Surely George Soros, a man who has so much money that if the Koch Brothers, the demonically infamous Right-Wing malefactors of middle mega wealth, should decide to commit suicide, they would jump off his wallet, can be counted on to drop an extra fiver in the collection plate for the undeserving poor. He does, doesn’t he?

Speaking of subsidies for the rich…

Why is the interest on municipal bonds exempt from Federal income tax? Why should renters, already burdened by the hellacious Bush deficits and a sluggish economy that is caused by the Reagan tax cuts, subsidize their rapacious landlords?

If you wish to “means test” the recipients of every government program – Don’t worry about the equal protection foo-fah in the Constitution. There is no sense in being a modern American Liberal unless you are a fire breathing, card carrying one – how about lowering the price for certain items that the poor must have? We can start with ½ price stamps. Not food stamps; postage stamps. Alas, a photo ID will be required to get the Federal tax on gasoline dropped. It makes no sense to charge the poor tolls on the Turnpike, does it? Isn’t it time for the Sun-Sentinel to give their paper to the poor for free?

Modern American Liberals are always discovering new rights. Isn’t it time to add Comcast or DIRECT-TV to the list? The self-esteem of the children of the poor would be greatly strengthened if the premium package became the new norm for them.

Why not make Senator Kohl give the poor a 50% discount card for when they shop in his stores? The poor are entitled to a bountiful Christmas, aren’t they?

How about making Senator Rockefeller go back to West Virginia this Christmas? Logan, where I mined coal, is as good a place as any. Have him light the yule log using his money as tinder. Think how warm and cuddly that will make the country feel.

It is an inconvenient truth but college costs rise in direct proportion to the amount of “free money” available to potential students. The people who run these monuments to mediocrity may be stupid but they are not dumb. No other segment of American life – not the military/industrial complex, not the idle trust fund layabouts, not the evil speculators, not the notorious “middlemen” – has enjoyed such an explosion in revenues.

Logic would dictate that as the pool of dough expands someone will build a department of Lithuanian trans-gendered lesbian poets and what role Nixon had in ignoring them. Fairness would say that preference for admission to the graduate programs of this emerging discipline should be given to Lithuanian trans-gendered lesbian poets. Don’t worry about the pool of potential students. As soon as the federal money trough is opened you’ll be shocked, shocked to know how many Lithuanian trans-gendered lesbian poets we have.

You say that “2,362 millionaires collected roughly 20.8 million dollars in unemployment insurance”. As a nation we can’t let this stand. If we can require people to buy health insurance we can require them to buy unemployment insurance. Then, when a claim is put in, it is denied because of their successful capital accumulation. Whether it comes from being a member of the lucky sperm club or from being a big time grifter like Jon Corzine is irrelevant. Perhaps it is time to change the Scarlet Letter from A to M. It will make it easier when Madame DeFarge starts collecting overtime

Maybe we could use some of it to pay for tutorials for modern American Liberal ohmadahns – ink stained wretch division – on the futility of hoping for a change in the laws governing gravity. It ain’t going to happen

KS


PS – You may wish to examine the novel schemes to raise revenue in Zimbabwe. Some of them may work here. .