Nilknarf News

Natterings, Notions
and
Notes

Monday, 29 October, 2001 18:58

I came really close to calling in this morning, but I decided that I could stick it out. And I did, but just barely.

And I also found out that I'm not the only one with this uninteresting malady. All of the smart ones called in sick...

Anyway, I feel like my rectum has prolapsed, and I'm *still* not really sick. It's frustrating... I want to be well, or be sick and get it over with, whatever it may be.

I got a call this afternoon from my dentist... they have a 07:30 opening for a cleaning. I had to cancel the one that I had set up for 10/10/2001 'cause I was going to be in Cleveland, and I hadn't called to set up another one yet, so that's good. I just hope that I feel good enough to get up and get there...

I'm really getting fed up with the government. I'm a member of MoveOn and this is a quote from the memo I received today:
Last week, while our nation was reeling from the Anthrax threat, the House voted to repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax on corporations. This law normally requires hugely profitable companies to pay at least some tax, no matter how many loopholes they can find. Its repeal would allow many companies to pay zero U.S. income tax in perpetuity - a loss of more than $12 billion in revenue next year alone.

The repeal is retroactive, so companies would get rebates of all the Alternative Minimum Tax they've paid for the last 15 years. The numbers above are a sampling of these rebates.

The House also voted to allow corporations to store their profits overseas as a tax shelter. That's right - this "stimulus" would actually take money _out_ of the U.S. economy. It's backwards.

The right approach to stimulus is to put more money in the hands of everyday people who need it most - by expanding unemployment insurance, for example. People living marginally will spend it quickly on consumer goods, so it circulates through the economy, benefiting everyone.

Helping people would make economic sense. Giving billions in tax breaks to America's biggest corporations doesn't.

I feel that we - Americans - are being stampeded into something. What, I don't know... a theocracy, perhaps... but something quite different than we've known in my lifetime. And yes, it scares me. It scares me to think that 200-plus years of democracy could vanish with no more than a whimper. It scares me to think that my grandkids will never known the freedom that I have known... that freedom that I took for granted.

The enemy is not a foreign religion, something that is hard for us to understand. The enemy is not at our gates, clamoring to get in. The enemy has not rested just recently on American soil. The enemy... is good old American greed, coupled with good old American Christianity.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm paranoid.

That doesn't keep me from being scared.

That doesn't keep me from being right.

Those of you who pray... pray that I'm wrong.

But keep your eyes open.


Thanx for being here!

All Material © 2001 by Douglas C. Franklin

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