Liam Clancy’s song, “Luke” includes this line: “Rail against the tyranny of class and privilege.” We used to look askance at our cousins in Great Britain. We saw the poor devils locked into a rigid caste system, typified by the Paliament’s House of Lords and House of Commons. Increasingly, we find ourselves mired in our own levels of “class and privilege.” Starting in the 1970s (earlier for those born into grinding rural and urban poverty), the average workers’ pay hit a plateau, and wealth began shifting faster from the working poor and the middle class to the rich and very rich.
Who is calling the shots in Congress, buying elections, shredding regulations that protect the little guy, not paying taxes, railing against universal health care, and rendering our votes less and less effective? Big Oil, Big Pharma, Wall Street and the banking conglomerates. Two out of three U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005, according to a 2008 Government Accountability Office study. In 2009, General Electric generated $10.3 billion in profit worldwide but paid zero in federal U.S. taxes. I paid mine.
Twenty-three million children in our country have no access to medical care. Are their parents against Obamacare? I want them covered like mine are. Time to start railing.
Chris Langlois
Vancouver
