ATTENTION: PRESIDENT OBAMA, SIR,
Monday, July 27, 2009
HEALTHCARE: You should know that William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, was recently asked that he felt that the republicans should do with President Obama’s health care bill, and he responded: “I think we should kill it”. This sort of inflammatory rhetoric should not be used for obvious reasons. There might be some red-necked neo-cons high on PCP etc., that could misunderstand the message and set off to do something ________________. Please see if you can get your attack dog, Joe Biden, to talk to Kristol and admonish him to be kinder and gentler with his propaganda rhetoric.
As you are a Constitutional scholar you probably already realize that is was and is within your power to ORDER THE SENATE TO STAY IN SESSION and postpone it’s Summer recess until it comes up with its version of your health care agenda. FDR and LBJ would have done so. I’m wondering why you, BHO, did not implement this option. I think that you definitely should have. And just like the Harvard arrest fiasco, you could change your position and order the senate to do its urgent work. You’re president, not Harry Reid. Don’t let him manipulate you! Be tougher! Lead stronger!
All culture is a collection of the numerous stories that define its traditions and future objectives. But the only way a super hero can become truly super is if he does battle against a supper villain. The buildup of the Joker is really what makes Batman super. One of your main problems with your healthcare presentation is that you have not yet adequately taped into the emotional potential of your real and true scapegoats: the evil, greedy health insurance CEOs like BILL MCGUIRE, past president of Health Net, the second largest such company in America. As I have mentioned before, his golden parachute of $2.7 billion, including stock options, was the largest in American corporate history. (Just Google him to verify. The feds shut him down for back dating, etc. in 2006.)
As Hitler used the jews, and as George Bush used the terrorists, you also need to use your scapegoats for emotional propagandistic advantage. It’s perhaps unfortunate, but this is the truth. Sometimes you must be Machiavellian to accomplish your goals. O.K., so you’re not the type to name names... then just talk about corrupt for-profit health insurance CEOs in a perfectly vague sense, but talk you must. Mention that of all the top 30 industrialized nations only the US does not provide universal health care. Furthermore, in all of those countries a health insurance company that is caught selling its services “for-profit” is charged with a felony and its license is revoked! Mention this! I doubt your bill will pass without this additional blast of emotional hurricane force wind. You’re press conference last week was way too weak on this point. Just to mention greedy CEOs in passing simply does not CLOSE THE EMOTIONAL DEAL. Listen to FDR rants about the “robber barons”, the “royalists” etc. He really got excited, but he didn’t get specific and mention anybody. I think he would have gotten more support if he would have. Your call.
FUNDING: If you, Pelosi and Reid can’t get enough funding by raising the taxes high enough on the millionaires, then why not simply equalize our import tariffs? When we export a car to China, Japan or S. Korea, we are charged a 20% import tariff by them. But if they want to export a car to the US, we only charge a 2% import tariff. Don’t you have the power to equalize this by presidential decree, for heaven’s sake?
What about eliminating the cap of $90,000 on Social Security? How about rolling back the Reagan/Bush Tax Cuts. How about implementing the Sherman Antitrust Act like Teddy Roosevelt did when he broke up the Union Pacific Railroad into 27 companies! Please act less like Bill Clinton, the centrist, and act more like Franklin Roosevelt, the flamboyant progressive and you will succeed at healthcare. Yes You Can!
Respectfully yours’
Art Earthmann
my website: TaxTheRichMore.org
P.O. Box 1223, Beverly Hills, CA 90213
ATTENTION: PRESIDENT OBAMA, SIR,
July 21, 2009
HEALTHCARE: To help you confront the pompous opposition of the quasi religious right to your robust health care plans, I would encourage you to Google “JESUS CHRIST MIRACLES”. Therein it states that He allegedly performed a total of 36 miracles, with 31 of them pertaining to healthcare! Healing the sick, casting out devils (mental, spiritual health), feeding the poor (preventative healthcare like our Food Stamp Program) etc. So, if Jesus Christ were walking the streets of Washington D.C. today, I am convinced that health care would be his top priority! It seems that too many conservative members of congress at acting like pharisees and sadducees and trying to sabotage your attempts to care for the sick and afflicted. As Christ implied in His Sermon on the Mount... charity was His number one platform plank.
FDR; I enthusiastically supported your candidacy for president after Mitt Romney dropped out. (I am a progressive independent Mormon). But it appears that you are acting more like Bill Clinton than my hero, Franklin Roosevelt. You need to be much more emphatic about a PUBLIC OPTION and RAISING TAXES ALOT MORE FOR THE VERY WEALTHY.
FUNDING: Granted, we need a Single-Pay Universal Comprehensive Expanded Medicare program with a pragmatic PUBLIC OPTION, but the biggest hurdle now is obviously how it is going to be funded. Here is a very simple yet intelligent solution:
PROGRESSIVE TAX RATE WITH A 45 DEGREE ANGLE: In statistics, it has been found that the most user-friendly visual graphic regarding tax rates is the ascending straight-line 45 degree angle. It suggests stability and fairness. From 1932 until 1982 the TOP TAX RATE was from 70% to 92% with a tax "margin" of $3 million... meaning, that the rich would only be taxed 90% (during the FDR/Eisenhower/Nixon administrations, for example) on that amount earned above $3 million. They would be taxed the going rate for any income below that "margin" of $3 million. These tax revenues brought us out of the Great Depression and enabled us to win World War 2. In 1932 FDR responded to the financial crisis like a 20 star economic general... and you need to do the same now with healthcare.
And so, I am proposing the following format for you to pass around in your Cabinet Meetings, etc. and see what figures your various leaders suggest: Imagine a sheet of graph paper with a horizontal "x" axis representing the nine tax rates of 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, and 90%. The vertical "y" axis would represent the nine 2" horizontal blank lines with a $ sign to the left of each line to be penciled in when negotiating. A straight line at an ascending 45 degree angle would represent the ideal monetary progressive tax rates.
Simply ask each congressperson to pencil in what amount they would find agreeable in order to raise the necessary billions to render your healthcare bill without any added cost over the next ten years. You could even have a computer software program set up wherein when one amount is changed, it would show how the other figures are affected. Tentatively agreed upon figures could be locked in place so they would not change, but the others would. This software is used all the time from Wall Street (Greed Street) to used car selling finance.
Then ask HHS Chairwoman Kathleen Sebelius and each congressperson to fill in each line "in pencil" that amount of taxes that they feel would be fair and successful at raising the necessary billions. You may want to type your proposed dollar amounts below each blank line to help provide subliminal leverage supporting your positions. Perhaps, below your figure could be typed in red ink the presently used figures.
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LIST OF 9 INCOME TAX % LEVELS: Since 1982, inflation has increase 250% and so if one multiplies the amount of the highest tax rate "margin" in 1982 of $3 million... times 2.5 would equal an $8 million "margin" in 2009. (Now, just to sweeten the pie for all of my rich millionaire and billionaire friends at the Mormon Church in Beverly Hills, where I attend church... along with Larry King and his lovely wife Shawn... I suggest initially raising the top tax rate of 90% to a "margin" of $12 million ($________), i.e. a million dollars a month “floor-plus” should be plenty to live on!) Working down my list on the sheet of my suggested tax level figures, I continue: 80%: $8 million ($________), 70%: $4 million ($________), 60%: $1 million ($________), 50%: $500,000 ($________), 40%: $250,000 ($________) (this is close to where it is now), 30%: $150,000 ($________); 20%: $50,000 ($________) (this is the present average national income); 10%: $12,000 ($________); and 1%: $ 1,000($________). (This last % is to counter the conservative claims that you are trying to enable the lowest 1/3 of the middle and lower class to not pay ANY taxes, zero, nada. Of course this is a lie, but I hear it often from Flush Limboff and Shame Hannity, et al.) The blanks are for you and others to pencil in your proposed $ amounts. After we win our wars and balance our national books then the top margin dollar amount could be raised or lowered... but the nine % fields should remain in place... like tithing! (It is best to use whole percentages in 10% increments, and whole dollar round figure levels. The present usage in federal tax law of figures like 38.6% or $186,500 seem contrived and used for the purpose of deliberate obfuscation through complexity. Simplified proposals have worked best to cause more popular public support in the 3 thousand year history of monetary and taxation propaganda.)
The OMB, etc., can provide more accurate and feasible amounts. For presentations on the floor of the House and Senate you should consider a color chart 4 feet by 4 feet or larger and a graph with vertical bars with the top of each resulting in them all ascending at a 45 degree straight-line angle. (I proposed the former single-line 45 degree angle because of the ease of creating it for the 600 copies of 8 1/2” x 11” handouts for the members of congress.)
Many “greedpublicans” favor a flat-tax which we know is very simplistic and unfair to the middle class. But implicit in its subliminal propagandistic power is an implied message of fairness by using a straight-line... implied by the term "flat". (Some even have the audacity of presenting the biblical 10% tithe as precedent and religious confirmation that God was and still is in favor of a “flat tithing tax” but, of course, that analogy is nonsense. Perhaps God or Moses et al were and are suggesting that the apparent flat 10% tithe should be interpreted as a bare minimum and that the super-rich should pay a lot higher percentage of tithing.) Now, if a flat income tax line were drawn at $200,000. and everyone who annually earns less than this amount would not pay any tax, but those who make more would pay 70%, perhaps, even I could get behind that flat tax! (I'm confident that the OMB, etc. can provide you with more accurate figures that would cause a hypothetical flat tax that would generate equivalent revenue... for the purpose of debating against it.)
In conclusion, President Obama, just remember what the ancient Greeks said: "Simplicity is beauty". Keeping your fund raising taxation proposals simple will significantly help you and Chairwoman Sebelius create persuasive arguments that will stand out in the jungle of conservative obfuscation and lies.
May the spirit of FDR lead you both to victory in this great cause, I humbly pray. WE THE PEOPLE, especially the 46 million citizens without healthcare, are counting on you.
Respectfully yours,
Art Earthmann
TaxTheRichMore.org (my website)
P.O. Box 1223, Beverly Hills, CA 90213
