Arguably the Most Important Thing An Adult American Could Read Today

I ran across this article over the weekend. As said above, I think it is, arguably, one of the most, if not the most important thing an adult American could read today about America, about us, about who we are, what we're doing and what may well happen.

The Coming Collapse

Here is but one snippet, dealing with only one of the issues the writer, Chris Hedges, and his article, touch on.

The Trump administration did not rise, prima facie, like Venus on a half shell from the sea. Donald Trump is the result of a long process of political, cultural and social decay. He is a product of our failed democracy. The longer we perpetuate the fiction that we live in a functioning democracy, that Trump and the political mutations around him are somehow an aberrant deviation that can be vanquished in the next election, the more we will hurtle toward tyranny. The problem is not Trump. It is a political system, dominated by corporate power and the mandarins of the two major political parties, in which we don’t count. We will wrest back political control by dismantling the corporate state, and this means massive and sustained civil disobedience, like that demonstrated by teachers around the country this year. If we do not stand up we will enter a new dark age.

Go. Read.

Great questions

Is this the country we want? Is this the people we want to be?

On Dubya's chosen Iraq War then and Israel's occupation now

Chris Hedges, over at Truthdig, posts a magnificent column today on the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney wildly illegal and irresponsible Iraq War they dragged us into and on Israel's oppression of the Palestinians now and why it all matters:

The Treason of the Intellectuals

Just a bit from it:

The rewriting of history by the power elite was painfully evident as the nation marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. Some claimed they had opposed the war when they had not. Others among “Bush’s useful idiots” argued that they had merely acted in good faith on the information available; if they had known then what they know now, they assured us, they would have acted differently. This, of course, is false. The war boosters, especially the “liberal hawks”—who included Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Al Franken and John Kerry, along with academics, writers and journalists such as Bill Keller, Michael Ignatieff, Nicholas Kristof, David Remnick, Fareed Zakaria, Michael Walzer, Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman,George Packer, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Kanan Makiya and the late Christopher Hitchens—did what they always have done: engage in acts of self-preservation. To oppose the war would have been a career killer. And they knew it.

These apologists, however, acted not only as cheerleaders for war; in most cases they ridiculed and attempted to discredit anyone who questioned the call to invade Iraq. Kristof, in The New York Times, attacked the filmmaker Michael Moore as a conspiracy theorist and wrote that anti-war voices were only polarizing what he termed “the political cesspool.” Hitchens said that those who opposed the attack on Iraq “do not think that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy at all.” He called the typical anti-war protester a “blithering ex-flower child or ranting neo-Stalinist.” The halfhearted mea culpas by many of these courtiers a decade later always fail to mention the most pernicious and fundamental role they played in the buildup to the war—shutting down public debate. Those of us who spoke out against the war, faced with the onslaught of right-wing “patriots” and their liberal apologists, became pariahs. In my case it did not matter that I was an Arabic speaker. It did not matter that I had spent seven years in the Middle East, including months in Iraq, as a foreign correspondent. It did not matter that I knew the instrument of war. The critique that I and other opponents of war delivered, no matter how well grounded in fact and experience, turned us into objects of scorn by a liberal elite that cravenly wanted to demonstrate its own “patriotism” and “realism” about national security. The liberal class fueled a rabid, irrational hatred of all war critics. Many of us received death threats and lost our jobs, for me one at The New York Times. These liberal warmongers, 10 years later, remain both clueless about their moral bankruptcy and cloyingly sanctimonious. They have the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocents on their hands.

The power elite, especially the liberal elite, has always been willing to sacrifice integrity and truth for power, personal advancement, foundation grants, awards, tenured professorships, columns, book contracts, television appearances, generous lecture fees and social status. They know what they need to say. They know which ideology they have to serve. They know what lies must be told—the biggest being that they take moral stances on issues that aren’t safe and anodyne. They have been at this game a long time. And they will, should their careers require it, happily sell us out again.

We need to be better than that 2nd Iraq War and we need to make certain nothing like it happens again.

Speaking up now, against the oppression of the Palestinian people, even if it is by the Israelis, is merely the right thing to do.

The Letter--from the local Iraq Veteran to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney

The previous post pointed out that a local, Kansas City, Missouri veteran wrote a letter to now former-President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney.  Herewith, the entire letter:

A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying Veteran

To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney

From: Tomas Young

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness. 

Quote of the day

“There are no excuses left,” Chris Hedges writes in a piece reprinted from the site Truthdig, where he has a regular column. "Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil." Link: http://www.truthdig.org

On the President's speech tonight, from 2 at UMKC

There is a great article today at Truthdig.com and it's written by two of our own, from right here at UMKC. (see below). A quote: "In truth, the $300 billion the president might propose Thursday is more than enough to jump-start our economy if it is really targeted to job creation. We can estimate the total program cost at $20,000 per worker, times 15 million workers. That adds up to a $300 billion gross cost, less savings on unemployment compensation (roughly $150 billion), welfare and food stamps, as well as the social cost of depression, divorce, abuse and crime. A direct job creation program modeled on the New Deal’s WPA could create 15 million jobs for less than $300 billion net spending, while also providing the infrastructure and public services required to bring our nation into the 21st century." --Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray is a professor of economics and research director of the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. Stephanie Kelton is an Associate Professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and she is a Research Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute in New York. Link to original post: http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/with_300_billion_the_president_can_reduce_unemployment_to_zero_20110908/

Quote of the day--on the debt deal

"A deal to raise the federal debt ceiling is in the works. If it goes through, many commentators will declare that disaster was avoided. But they will be wrong. For the deal itself, given the available information, is a disaster, and not just for President Obama and his party. It will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status." --Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist, writer and columnist for The New York Times. Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/opinion/the-president-surrenders-on-debt-ceiling.html?_r=2

Quote of the day

"Washington is 67 square miles, about as high as the Washington monument, and surrounded on all sides by reality." --the late San Francisco humor writer Arthur Hoppe

3 "Age old truths"

From Joe Scarborough: "The first of these truths is that Washington always wins. Always. The federal government always gets bigger. The second time-tested truth of Washington is that policymakers skew the rules to ensure Wall Street always wins. ... Wall Street stands stronger than ever, three years after bringing America to the brink of financial collapse. The third ugly truth is that the city’s political gears are always greased for war. The most recent Republican administration showed an unnerving propensity for war, and the current Democratic White House has expanded troop levels, increased the Pentagon budget and made larger the percentage of the U.S. economy being spent on weapons systems and hot wars." Link: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/get_out_of_afghanistan_20110630/

Pres. O: trying to have it both ways?

If you've ever read anything here, chances are you know I've thought this president a vast improvement over the previous one. A BIG improvement. And I supported him and I still do, absolutely. But as I've said before, he's far from perfect, by a long shot. He needs to be far tougher and have more backbone in negotiations, especially with the Republican leaders, as one good example. But right now, it seems he's talking out of both sides of his mouth on two different issues. The first one he's having "both ways" seems to be the Afghan war. On the one hand, he's taking 33,000 troops out by next year and that's pretty strong and it's more than the military apparently want so that's one thing. Of course, there are plenty of people who would point out he wants and needs to do this because of next year's election. That has to be a factor. On the flip side, there is plenty of evidence that he's also keeping us in there for the long term, too, which pleases the military and the military-industrial corporations that want that business. So that's one. The second issue the president seems to be talking out of both sides of his mouth is on equal rights, specifically equal rights for same-sex couples. On the one hand he's quoted yesterday in New York as saying "gay couples deserve the same legal rights as every other couple in this country," but at the same time, he won't officially come out and declare that he's for these equal rights for all, as part of his official policy. Of course, equal rights for all is in our Constitution, it's just not in his official platform. I understand he can't go too far out on the Left but you have to take a stand on some issues. The fact is, the Republican opposition is badly fragmented for a candidate right now in the upcoming 2012 election and that helps him. But between the economy and looking like he's double-speaking people, he's not doing himself any favors here, by a long shot. Links: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=137359508; http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/on_gay_rights_obama_is_a_cocktease_20110623/; http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_does_the_war_go_on_20110624/; http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/bad_news_for_a_country_tired_of_war_20110623/; http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/trapped_in_afghanistan_20110623/

Quote of the day

"The country my generation is passing on to my son and his peers is a mean-spirited place of global warming, class warfare and diminishing expectations, where the top 1 percent of households own nearly 35 percent of all privately held wealth and the 'bottom' 80 percent lays claim to less than half that." --Bill Blum, from his article "Commencement Day for a Lost Generation", posted at Truthdig. Link: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/commencement_day_for_a_lost_generation_20110622/

Quote of the day---and it isn't from the Tea Party

" If it turns out in the end that we have a crypto-fascist movement and the only thing standing between us and fascism is Barack Obama, then we have to put our foot on the brake. But we’ve got to think seriously of third-party candidates, third formations, third parties. Our last hope is to generate a democratic awakening among our fellow citizens. This means raising our voices, very loud and strong, bearing witness, individually and collectively. Tavis [Smiley] and I have talked about ways of civil disobedience, beginning with ways for both of us to get arrested, to galvanize attention to the plight of those in prisons, in the hoods, in poor white communities. We must never give up. We must never allow hope to be eliminated or suffocated.”  --Dr. Cornel West, on President Obama and the next election

Link to original post:   http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/16-1 

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day out there, indeed.
This shot is dedicated to all the Moms and Mothers out there, sure, and particularly and especially to Helen Marie McCall Evans--Mom.
We lost her in 2000.
A harder working, more dedicated, sincere, compassionate and passionate person you could never want to meet.
We love and miss you, Mom.

How's that succession idea seem now, Gov. Perry?

Texas Governor Seeks U.S. Help to Fight Wildfire

Chris Hedges on hope

Hope knows that unless we physically defy government control we are complicit in the violence of the state. All who resist keep hope alive. All who succumb to fear, despair and apathy become enemies of hope. They become, in their passivity, agents of injustice. If the enemies of hope are finally victorious, the poison of violence will become not only the language of power but the language of opposition. And those who resist with nonviolence are in times like these the thin line of defense between a civil society and its disintegration.

Hope has a cost. Hope is not comfortable or easy. Hope requires personal risk. Hope does not come with the right attitude. Hope is not about peace of mind. Hope is an action. Hope is doing something. The more futile, the more useless, the more irrelevant and incomprehensible an act of rebellion is, the vaster and the more potent hope becomes. Hope never makes sense. Hope is weak, unorganized and absurd. Hope, which is always nonviolent, exposes in its powerlessness the lies, fraud and coercion employed by the state. Hope does not believe in force. Hope knows that an injustice visited on our neighbor is an injustice visited on us all. Hope posits that people are drawn to the good by the good. This is the secret of hope’s power and it is why it can never finally be defeated. Hope demands for others what we demand for ourselves. Hope does not separate us from them. Hope sees in our enemy our own face.

Hope is not for the practical and the sophisticated, the cynics and the complacent, the defeated and the fearful. Hope is what the corporate state, which saturates our airwaves with lies, seeks to obliterate. Hope is what our corporate overlords are determined to crush. Be afraid, they tell us. Surrender your liberties to us so we can make the world safe from terror. Don’t resist. Embrace the alienation of our cheerful conformity. Buy our products. Without them you are worthless. Become our brands. Do not look up from your electronic hallucinations to think. No. Above all do not think. Obey.

W.H. Auden wrote:

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are, 
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The powerful do not understand hope. Hope is not part of their vocabulary. They speak in the cold, dead words of national security, global markets, electoral strategy, staying on message, image and money. The powerful protect their own. They divide the world into the damned and the blessed, the patriots and the enemy, the rich and the poor. They insist that extinguishing lives in foreign wars or in our prison complexes is a form of human progress. They cannot see that the suffering of a child in Gaza or a child in the blighted pockets of Washington, D.C., diminishes and impoverishes us all. They are deaf, dumb and blind to hope. Those addicted to power, blinded by self-exaltation, cannot decipher the words of hope any more than most of us can decipher hieroglyphics. Hope to Wall Street bankers and politicians, to the masters of war and commerce, is not practical. It is gibberish. It means nothing.

Any act of rebellion, any physical defiance of those who make war, of those who perpetuate corporate greed and are responsible for state crimes, anything that seeks to draw the good to the good, nourishes our souls and holds out the possibility that we can touch and transform the souls of others. Hope affirms that which we must affirm. And every act that imparts hope is a victory in itself.

Also from Auden:

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Chris Hedges is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute. His newest book is“Death of the Liberal Class.” More information on the Dec. 16 protest can be found at www.stopthesewars.org.

America: forward?

 

"We have reached a point where stunted and deformed individuals, whose rapacious greed fuels the plunge of tens of millions of Americans into abject poverty and misery, determine the moral fiber of the nation. It is no more morally justifiable to kill someone for profit than it is to kill that person for religious fanaticism. And yet, from health companies to the oil and natural gas industry to private weapons contractors, individual death and the wholesale death of the ecosystem have become acceptable corporate business. The mounting human misery in the United States, which could lead to the sporadic bursts of anger we have seen on the streets of France, will be met with severe repression from the security and surveillance state, which always accompanies the rise of the corporate state. The one method left open by which we can respond—massive street protests, the destruction of corporate property and violence—will become the excuse to impose total tyranny. The intrusive pat-downs at airports may soon become a fond memory of what it was like when we still had a little freedom left."

"All reform movements, from the battle for universal health care to the struggle for alternative energy and sane environmental controls to financial regulation to an end to our permanent war economy, have run into this new, terrifying configuration of power. They have confronted an awful truth. We do not count. And they have been helpless to respond as those who are most skilled in the manipulation of hate lead a confused populace to call for their own enslavement."

--Chris Hedges, Truthout (thanks for the link, Bryce)

The entire article is very worth the read, in my opinion: http://www.truth-out.org/power-and-tiny-acts-rebellion65351

Quote of the day, Part II

"We believe, like the Spaniards in the 16th century who pillaged Latin America for gold and silver, that money, usually the product of making and trading goods, is real. The Spanish empire, once the money ran out and it no longer produced anything worth buying, went up in smoke. Today’s use in the United States of some $12 trillion in government funds to refinance our class of speculators is a similar form of self-deception. Money markets are still treated, despite the collapse of the global economy, as a legitimate source of trade and wealth creation. The destructive power of financial bubbles, as well as the danger of an unchecked elite, was discovered in ancient Athens and detailed more than a century ago in Emile Zola’s novel “Money.” But we seem determined to find out this self-destructive force for ourselves. And when the second collapse comes, as come it must, we will revisit wrenching economic and political tragedies forgotten in the mists of history."  --Chris Hedges, Columnist, Truthdig


Link to original post:  http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_recipe_for_fascism_20101108/

Quote of the day--on America, 2012

"American politics, as the midterm elections demonstrated, have descended into the irrational. On one side stands a corrupt liberal class, bereft of ideas and unable to respond coherently to the collapse of the global economy, the dismantling of our manufacturing sector and the deadly assault on the ecosystem. On the other side stands a mass of increasingly bitter people whose alienation, desperation and rage fuel emotionally driven and incoherent political agendas. It is a recipe for fascism.


The corporate state, unchallenged, continues to turn everything, including human beings and the natural world, into commodities to exploit until exhaustion or collapse.  


Commerce cannot be the sole guide of human behavior."  --Chris Hedges, Truthdig




Personally, I'm trying to maintain hope.


Link to original post:  http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_recipe_for_fascism_20101108

The FBI spied on Greenpeace?? Really?

True, according to this latest article at Truthdig just now: JUSTICE DEPT. HAND-SLAPS FBI FOR SPYING ON GREENPEACE AND FRIENDS Then guess under what Presidential administration this took place. Like me, you likely got it: A report by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine absolved the FBI of the most serious allegation against it: that agents targeted domestic groups based on their exercise of First Amendment rights. Civil liberties groups and congressional Democrats had suggested that the FBI employed such tactics during the George W. Bush administration, which triggered Fine’s review. I mean, come on--hasn't the FBI got any real work it needs to do? Not only is this stupid at virtually any time in our country's activities, look WHEN it happened: in the years between the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and 2006. You gotta' be kidding me. The Bush administration was supposedly keeping us safe from terrorists during this time but they had the FBI chasing Greenpeace? Check this out, too: the report said, the FBI extended probes “without adequate basis” and improperly kept information about activist groups in its files. Among the groups monitored were the Thomas Merton Center, a Pittsburgh peace group; People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals; and Greenpeace USA. Activists affiliated with Greenpeace were improperly put on a terrorist watch list, the report said. A Pittsburgh peace group? PETA? And look at this description of the Thomas Merton Center from their website: Organizes, educates, and takes action around issues of peace and social justice. And you're spying on them? Let me ask you this--when do you suppose the really stupid, stupid things will stop coming out about Former President George W. Bush, his Vice President Dick Cheney and their administration? 20 years from now? 50? It can't be soon enough but we surely need to learn everything--and I mean everything--these chuckleheads did while they were in power, no matter how long it takes. And no matter how mad or angry it makes us. Links: http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/justice_department_hand-slaps_fbi_for_spying_on_greenpeace_and_friends_2010/; http://www.thomasmertoncenter.org/

Rep John Boehner said it and--I can't believe this--I agree

First, I have to say that I thought John Boehner was just a gas-filled, tanned, walking, talking suit. I'll get that out of the way right now. Second, I thought he was totally, completely in just for the big corporation and what would benefit them--and, of course, himself. Finally, then, the last thing I thought he would come up with is something that's good for the country. Apparently--I can and will admit--I was wrong. To wit, Rep. Boehner is quoted as having said the following: “We need to take a long and hard look at the undergrowth of deductions, credits, and special carve-outs that our tax code has become,” Boehner said in his speech to the City Club of Cleveland. “And, yes, we need to acknowledge that what Washington sometimes calls ‘tax cuts’ are really just poorly disguised spending programs that expand the role of government in the lives of individuals and employers.” Boehner cited the “tax extenders” bill now making its way through Congress. “There’s everything in this bill: the research and development tax credit, special expensing rules for the film industry, an extension and modification of a tax credit for steel industry fuel, the mine rescue team training tax credit, and tax incentives for investment in the District of Columbia,” he said. “Are they worth it? Many are. But we just go ahead and extend all of them temporarily—and usually right at the last minute—so Washington can continue pandering to the loudest voices instead of implementing the best ideas.” Here, here, Rep. Boehner. Let's have more of this. Link to original post: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/lets_be_honest_about_taxes_20100826/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Truthdig+Truthdig:+Drilling+Beneath+the+Headlines