Another Letter to Congressmen

The Mitt Romney discussion has made me very unhappy with the US tax code and Congress in general. Why should millionaire Mitt Romney pay a 15% tax rate, while poorer working people pay a significantely higher percentage? Paul O'Neill, former Secretary of Treasury, was just on Bloomberg Surveillance Midday, and said that the tax code is "unworthy" of the US.

Why do rich people hate America so much that they refuse to support it? And why does Congress accede to their wishes? Money! It just shows how corrupt the Congress is. Laws are up for sale to the highest bidder.

It's sad that all those graves in Arlington Cemetery were for nothing. America has become unjust and undemocratic. We are becoming the old Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, or something else equally bad. We have a department called "Homeland" Security, which sounds like it is straight out of Nazi Germany. Since when is "homeland" a good American word? The first thing Wikipedia says about "heimat" is that it is a German concept that has no simple English translation, although it is often expressed as "homeland." Wikipedia says, "Heimat is a German concept." I doubt that George Washington or Thomas Jefferson ever used the word "homeland," although I haven't researched it. (Searching the Washington papers in the Library of Congress, it appears to be used once, in a footnote by the editor about a Dutchman whom Washington knew.)

At the moment, I am inclined to support no candidate from a major party, Democratic or Republican, because I believe both parties are corrupt. One of the few politicians I support at the moment is Elizabeth Warren. Obama and the Democrats lost my vote when he threw her under the bus after she had worked tirelessly for the consumer protection bureau. Jamie Dimon, his fellow bank CEOs, their lawyers, their lobbyists, and their money, blocked her appointment.

This is a sad state of affairs, and you are part of it.

I hope that I won't go to jail under PIPA or SOPA for quoting from Wikipedia. Although maybe today is like the day back in 1846 when Henry Thoreau went to jail for refusing to pay his poll tax, leading to his seminal work on "Civil Disobedience." It's better to be in jail than to support a corrupt government.

Note: I am a Vietnam veteran (Army artillery) and a retired Foreign Service officer. My grandfather, a veteran of World War I, is buried in Arlington Cemetery. My father was a veteran of World War II and the Korean War. 

We need a country that is more concerned about honor than money.