Make the Wealthy Pay to Save the USA

For the past few months, we’ve been witnessing an inspiring, genuinely grass-roots rebellion of average Americans against corporate/financial profiteers savaging our collective well-being for their narrow, private gain.

It’s most powerful manifestation came in Wisconsin, where tens of thousands demonstrated outrage over atrociously arrogant, callously cruel Republican efforts to eviscerate organized labor.

As welcome as this explosion of populist protest has surely been, its amorphous spontaneity and incomplete cohesion evince a weakness that needs correction.

Much greater unity is required, stronger links between separate communities and regions are necessary, and a national people-before-profits agenda has to be drawn up, disseminated, and implemented.

In the interim -- as an effective programmatic counter to constant rape by marauding monopolists is being formulated -- it’s crucial to put forward an overriding progressive theme, expressed tersely in strong language well suited for street chants and bumper stickers, that every fair-minded citizen possessing a good heart can immediately, enthusiastically embrace.

That’s why “Make the wealthy pay to save the USA!” should figure prominently in everything we say or write about the profound systemic injustice under which increasing multitudes of our fellow citizens -- and we ourselves -- painfully suffer.

Most adult Americans are either workaday wage-earners or worked-a-lifetime retirees. They’re the folks to whom ‘government of the people, by the people, and for the people’ should properly apply.

It’s in clear furtherance of their welfare and common good that elected officials are duty-bound to constructively act, as our societal first priority. But just the opposite is happening.

Crony capitalist speculators who tanked our economy through their enormous greed and malfeasance are being shielded by conservative extremists like Scott Walker, Paul Ryan, and the Tea Party.

They would rather decimate collective bargaining, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid before eliminating unfair tax loopholes and havens for billionaires.

Constantly putting Wall Street ahead of Main Street is simply wrong. It’s also as socially unsustainable as similarly unfair practices were when ancient empires fell.

Appropriately taxing the mega rich and corporation -- together with ending ill-advised wars and curbing costly militarism -- could fix the deficit moving forward.

Our country’s been damaged long enough by those who treasonously owe primary allegiance to the Almighty Dollar.

As mass poverty and deprivation worsen, while fat cats unconscionably rake in more stolen booty, no reasonable person can fail to agree with what’s just been stated.

More importantly, no conservative can present a countering argument without clearly exposing the elitist, self-serving social irresponsibility that Republicans are afflicted with as if by a diabolical moral disease that’s completely contrary to both Golden Rule Christian teachings and key American ideals that they hypocritically profess to cherish.

We can’t lose if we gather in growing numbers in all venues of public expression to relentlessly speak (shout) these words with an insistent, unified voice:

Make the wealthy pay to save the USA!