So, as a bit of a PSA of a sort, I’m offering you the opportunity to explore this definition so you can understand exactly, specifically, the kind of vile filth we’re talking about here.

Back in 2003, as you might already know, the senator from Pennsylvania drew the ire of a great part of the sensible, articulate rhetorical community (as well as gay rights activists and a lot of establishment politicians, for spewing vile, frothy filth. So, columnist Dan Savage decided, rather than just whine and complain, to actually do something about it. He mounted a campaign to coin a new word, Rick Santorum’s namesake, and in a way that would likely repulse the senator. In doing so, he enlisted the aid of a lot of bloggers, since search engine rankings are partly dependent on incoming links. (they’re also dependent on volume of searches, clicks, site visits, and the like, so as a reader, your own participation is very helpful)

Not that Mr. Savage wasn’t a good sport about it. In 2010, Mr. Savage offered to take the site down if Mr. Santorum would donate $5 million to Freedom to Marry, a group advocating marriage equality.

The campaign to redefine “santorum” has been tremendously successful. In fact, as recently as September of this year, now GOP-presidential-hopeful Rick Santorum asked Google to remove it. The Google folks responded that far from being a “prank” or a “Google Bomb,” that indeed the search term yielded a real page about the term “santorum,”, unlike, say, the well-known prank to cause Google’s search algorithm for the keyword “miserable loser” to point to George W Bush’s page, say, or the search for “French military victory” to point to a fake 404-error page that reads “did you mean ‘French military defeat?’, and that removing it would compromise the integrity of their search results. “It would be like you saying,” explained a Google spokesperson, “I don’t like the word “unicorn” and so I think you should remove it from your search results.” Generally speaking, the page “spreadingsantorum.com” has solid footing in Google’s search rankings, with over 13,000 inbound links to the senator’s own 5,000. However, since launching his presidential campaign, the Senator’s page traffic has increased greatly, and in order to keep Savage’s page on top (not that we’re privileging or disparaging particular sexual positions or anything), he’s enlisted the help of his “flying monkeys” (that would be us).

You’ll notice that throughout the next few months, there will be numerous links appearing throughout this site to help solidify the top search-engine ranking for this definition of the term “santorum” rather than the candidate by that name’s page. This is intentional, of course, and it would help matters even more if you clicked those links regularly. It’s important, I think, that organically, the top search engine result reflects this neologism, and not that piece of vile, contemptible filth, not that the Senator has the slightest chance of actually getting the Republican nomination. Of course, neither does Michele Bachmann (speaking of gay marriage– if she hates the idea so much, why is she in one, I wonder?) or Newt Gingrich. Today, of note, my favorite congressman, Bahney Fwank, said on Hardball in response to Gingrich’s allegation that he should be in jail, “When you think you’re the intellectual leader of the free world, and you find yourself struggling to pass Michele Bachmann in a poll in Iowa, it’s unsettling.”

On the other hand, what IS true and indisputable: rank-and-file congress members get paid $174,000 a year as of 2011. The ceiling on Social Security FICA contributions is 106,800 currently, so congress members contribute $4485.60 ($6621.60 without the current “holiday” that was part of President Obama’s “stimulus” in 2009), the same as if they earned only 61% of their current salaries (it works out to under 2.6% for them, much lower than the amount most workers contribute). In addition, they become “vested” in FERS after 5 years, so the claim that they can collect a pension after “one term” is, in some cases, true. Senators serve a six year term, so they’d be eligible– federal judges typically serve a lifetime term, so this isn’t really applicable to them. Nevertheless, many argue (and perhaps rightfully so) that the congress enjoys a too-generous pension arrangement.

Meanwhile, it’s ironic, I think, that military folks, who ALSO enjoy a generous pension plan, spend lots of energy lambasting public pensions for, say, school teachers, firefighters, policemen, and other government employees. When I worked for OCPS, eligibility for retirement was after 30 years of service or at age 65. The calculation for the benefit amount, of course, involved a complicated formula including final pay rate, as well as years of service, age, and several other factors. In almost every possible scenario, however, it certainly amounted to less than 75% of one’s final pay– and 50% after 20 years at age 40? Not an option at all. Given that military spending in the US is as much as the entire rest of the world combined, it would seem to me that unfunded (those pensions are only “unsustainable” because they’ve not been properly funded by the states for many years) public pensions are hardly the issue.

Of some question, I suppose, is whether the pay rate for congress members (currently $174,000 for rank-and-file members, more for leadership) is justified. Per-capita income data from the US Census Bureau is not available as far back as 1853, when the congress first started collecting an annual salary ($3,000 per year then), but in 1909 it is reported that the average hourly wage in the US was 19¢ and that the workweek comprised 60 hours’ work… that would come to about $593 a year, at a time when congressional annual salaries were set at $7,500. In 1975, the Census Bureau reports a median per-capita income of $11,800 when congressional salaries were set at $44,600. Currently, median household income in the US is $50,303, and rank-and-file members of Congress make about three-and-a-half times that. Is that too much to pay them? It’s not accelerated in recent decades; in fact, it’s MUCH lower than 100 years ago, when it appears to be more than ten times the average. (Ostensibly, in 1909, the typical education of a congressman was FAR greater than of the average US citizen; not so much any more.)

Student loan forgiveness:
Congressional staffers and their families are NOT eligible for blanket student loan forgiveness. The folks at snopes.com do a lot of heavy lifting for me, and their highly sourced, up-to-date research shows that in fact, there is a program called the Federal Student Loan Repayment Program, whereby OPM allows federal agencies (not just the congress, but ALL federal agencies) to offer repayment of up to $10,000 per year (for a total of no more than $60,000) repayment of student loans as a “perk” or “enticement” for filling hard-to-fill positions. Similarly, I suppose, to the TEACH program or other opportunities, whereby people entering certain “critical” fields are eligible for a certain amount of student loan repayment/forgiveness based on their service.

One of the possible demands being floated right now with Anonymous and the #occupywallstreet demonstrators is the blanket forgiveness of ALL student loans, so that, like new graduates of college in Europe, US young people are free to take risks and invest in burgeoning business enterprises, buy a house, or any number of other activities that are good for the long-term economy instead of being saddled with a huge debt for their education, which in many cases will be as significant as a mortgage on a starter home was in the 1950s, when the US enjoyed a much stronger middle class and much stronger labor unions. It’s arguable that since government policy is in the US, as it has been throughout more than 5000 years of history of governments, used to influence behavior, that there might be a “pecking order’ of “important” and “less important” educational tracks (that is, a teaching degree would be more “critical” than, say, a degree in some sort of esoterica. However, such a hierarchy opens the door to all sorts of corruption and subjective interpretation: who’s to say what’s “critical” or “essential”? I can easily envision a heated debate between an acquaintance of mine who is a fine artist and elementary school art teacher, and another who operates a production company for the publishing business in the sci-fi and fantasy genres. Of course, my art teacher friend is a bit of a comic book buff, so some common ground might be found there *smirk*.

Exempt from Health Care Reform
This is a tricky claim. The message claims a major affront from the congress’s action “to exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform.” I’m not even sure what this means, exactly. The Affordable Care Act places some burdens on companies and individuals to deal with the health care coverage of those who are not presently insured, and to reign in some of the more egregious abuses of the private for-profit health insurance industry; the congress already HAS coverage, and so the ACA largely does not apply to them. On a related note, however, a lot of Americans cry that the congress (and, perhaps, other federal employees?) should be enrolled in Medicare, the health insurance program congress oversees for millions of elderly and disabled Americans. A minimum acceptable amount of coverage could be provided therein, and if additional or further coverage were desired, it could be purchased in the form of a “supplement,” as is the case for America’s seniors.

It would, of course, seem to me that the road to such a reasonable solution would be to adopt what much of the REST of the developed world uses, in terms of a “single payer” system (basically, as Keith Olberman said during the initial ACA debate, “Medicare for everybody”) such as President Lyndon Johnson envisioned when Medicare was first instated in 1965. Originally, the intent was to cover more and more Americans each decade, until universal coverage was reached (at “10 years younger every ten years,” there would be fully universal coverage in the US now). Currently, private, for-profit insurers sell Medicare “supplements” to improve the coverage of enrollees; there’s no reason such supplements could not be made available to other individuals or to companies in groups as “perks.” If the congress were subject to the same Medicare coverage and premium payments as America’s seniors, perhaps they’d be a lot less likely to propose that Medicare be converted to a “voucher” program whereby the federal government pays a smaller and smaller share of Medicare enrollees’ premium, so that after a decade or so, once again it’s true, as in 1965, that “only 51% of people aged 65 and older had health care coverage, and nearly 30% lived below the federal poverty level.”

Constitutional convention
The message rightly points out that 35 governors have filed suit with the federal government on behalf of their states regarding “unfunded federal mandates” that place an undue burden on state budgets, and that only 38 states (3/4) must call for one in order for a new constitutional convention to be convened. It’s suggested by many that “throwing out the baby with the bathwater,” particularly in the present-day climate of unthinking, reactionary desire to coerce others’ behavior in a truly authoritarian fashion, might be ill-advised indeed. Nevertheless, it is unarguable that the current system is clearly corrupt and urgently needs attention.

‘Proposed’ or ‘suggested’?
Lastly, this is referred to as a “proposed 28th amendment.” It might more accurately be called a “suggested 28th amendment,” in that the word “proposed” has a very specific meaning regarding amending the US Constitution, and refers to an amendment that has passed the first round of its certification and is currently in the process of the second round. Amending the Constitution can happen two different ways: The congress, by 3/4 super majority, can “approve” a suggestion, then the amendment is sent to the states for ratification, requiring the approval of 3/4 (38) of them, or vice versa. There has never been, in the history of the US, a successful publicly initiated amendment to the Constitution. There are currently 27, including the first 10, the “bill of rights” (quite the opposite of the “tea party” folks’ claim that the Constitution’s purpose was to limit the power of government, the bill of rights was appended to the document in order to somewhat limit its powers in order to procure its ratification by wary “states’ rights” advocates). If this one were next, it would indeed be the 28th. There are, however, several other, relatively unrelated suggestions as to a 28th amendment– as things stand now, a Constitutional amendment may be required to deal with Citizens United v FEC, declaring “corporate personhood,” much like the 14th amendment was required to overturn the SCOTUS’s ill-advised Dred Scott v Sandford decision in 1857. An overwhelming majority of Americans, regardless of party affiliation, disagree with the Supreme Court opinion.

Career Politicians
It appears that the original intent the founders had for the congress was, as most US law, modeled after the British parliament: a “house of representatives” not much unlike the British House of Commons, whereby businessmen would take time away from their private lives to serve their “patriotic duty” to help govern the nation, then return to private life, and a Senate, much like the UK’s “House of Lords,” of more serious statesmen and career politicians, who would serve a term of three times as long, and would be elected in staggering biennial elections to maintain a certain continuity. The necessity of mandating staggered biennial elections of the senate for continuity suggests to this author, at least, that the founders did not intend for senators to serve MANY consecutive terms, like Strom Thurmond from SC, Jesse Helms of NC, or Robert Byrd of West Virginia. With relatively brief 2-year terms for the House of Representatives, it’s a SURE bet that there was never any foretelling of people like John Dingell (now in his 28th term) or Bill Young (now serving his 21st term).

I think the biggest thing that hurts the credibility of efforts to fight against the self-serving corruption in our government is innacurate crap like this. For all its factual errors in its particulars, the sentiment is right on target, I think… the congress needs to understand that it works FOR US; we do not worship them as overlords. Trouble is, since last year, apparently they do represent “people.” Corporate “people.”

Or this one: “Well, I just don’t think taxpayer money should go to fund someone’s drug habit.” As if people opposed to this draconian, invasive, embarrassing, and obviously unconstitutional behavior DO want tax money to fund drug habits? That’s just insulting. Of COURSE none of us want taxpayer money buying drugs. It’s just that testing welfare applicants will do nothing to prevent that, so it’s a foolish, corrupt effort.

I say “obviously unconstitutional.” In 1997, the SCOTUS found in an 8-1 ruling (Justice Rehnquist dissenting, and no longer on the court, Justices Scalia and Thomas concurring) in Chandler v Miller that a drug test was unquestionably a “search” and that in order for one to be “reasonable” a person had to be under individualized suspicion, so a law in Georgia requiring all candidates for public office to submit to drug screening was a violation of the 4th Amendment’s protections against “unreasonable search and seizure,” and such a law was therefore unconstitutional. This case is no different. It’s not even particularly controversial. It would seem that the reverence for the US Constitution espoused by these people is obviously hypocritical and the Constitutionality of their agenda is not of any reasonable consideration.

It also appears that there is a corrupt effort here to deflect taxpayer money away from government services and towards private sector profit. In Florida, Rick Scott’s new law requiring drug-screening for welfare applicants showed in its first month, back in July, that it was a “waste of taxpayer money.” Forty drug screenings were required by the law. Of those, 38 were negative, and the state was on the hook for $30 apiece cost (a total of $1140.) TWO of them were positive. The maximum cash benefit for a family of three for TANF (“welfare”) in Florida is $303 per month. Meanwhile, the requirement DID apparently have the surreptitious desired effect of discouraging folks from applying for “welfare.” Applications in July were down more than 40% from the beginning of Rick Scott’s term as governor, though by most economic indicators, the economy in Florida has DECLINED during that time. Is it in the population’s best interest to shame those who need help so that they are less likely to avail themselves of it? Further, the law requires that the applicant PAY FOR the drug screening up-front, and that in the case of a negative test, the state reimburses the cost of the test. If a person is desperate enough to ask for TANF cash assistance from the government, how likely are they to have the wherewithal to afford the drug test to begin with?

Interestingly, the Florida drug-screening law clearly only attempts to require more and more drug-testing and expense, deflecting public money to the private sector (worth noting: Rick Scott’s wife now holds stock in Solaric, a chain of “walk-in clinics” that mostly serve for drug-testing, since the governor’s conflict-of-interest in holding them was so obviously problematic, especially given the fine levied against Scott’s Columbia Health Care a few years ago in the “biggest fraud case in US history” for fraudulent Medicare billing): DCF’s website clearly states that “If you fail a drug test you may name a family member or other adult to receive the TCA for your children. This person must take and pass a drug test before they can receive the TCA for your children.” Does this at all sound like the state is trying to avoid paying TANF benefits at all? (Also worth noting: upon first taking office, Governor Scott issued an executive order requiring drug screening of ALL state employees, an act of apparent corrupt self-interest under federal investigation at present).

In Indiana, drug-testing is required for jobs-training programs; in Ohio, legislator Tim Grendall proposes drug testing for unemployment compensation applicants. In South Carolina, Governor Nikki Haley has repeated about “a million times” a bogus story about rampant drug abuse and illiteracy amont SRS nuclear facility applicants to justify drug-testing for various “assistance” programs, including unemployment benefits, job training, and TANF. She acknowledged that she cannot substantiate or justify her claim (it is pointedly contradicted by all available evidence, in fact), but she is unrelenting in her admittedly unjustified push for testing. In all, more than 30 states are either already enacting or considering drug-testing laws related to public “assistance” programs of varying sorts, including unemployment compensation, jobs training and TANF.

A report was released last week from POGO showing that it’s actually more expensive for government to use private-sector contractors than to perform many tasks in-house. It’s unreasonable to think it would cost any more or be any less efficient to perform drug screenings, if they were required, at county health department offices by state employees on a not-for-profit basis. NONE of the laws or proposed laws in this frenzy include any requirement that government perform the tests directly, not in Alabama, Kentucky, Oklahoma or Louisiana, and not in any of the above-mentioned cases. In EVERY CASE, the drug tests to be required are performed by a list of “approved” for-profit private contractors– often those who have donated heavily to the political campaigns of those in power. It does indeed appear that the REAL agenda, like with Gov. Brewer in Arizona, whose draconian immigration law was shown to be deliberately enacted to enrich private prison contractors, is to enrich drug testing companies at taxpayer expense.

UPDATE: As I expected, the court has ruled that the law in Florida is clearly unconstitutional. Surely a “rein in big government” (or is that “reign in big government”?) leader like Rick Scott (who incidentally is the only felon ever to hold a state’s governorship, to my knowledge) knows that such a law would require MASSIVE government spending, anyway.

What has this to do with Mick Mulvaney? His Rock Hill office is woefully non-compliant with ADA, and is notably inaccessible to mobility-impaired constituents (estimated at about 40,000 and more likely than average to oppose the “libertarian” policies he supports). The staff at the Rock Hill office, who were made aware of the problem nearly two weeks ago, and have not offered any evidence that it is being addressed, make it very clear that they are both well aware and unconcerned.

ADA does not, as it turns out, have jurisdiction over federal government offices, only state and local ones. Federal offices, like Mr. Mulvaney’s office in Rock Hill, are policed by the Access Board for their compliance with a different act of congress, The Architectural Barriers Act (ABA). The Access Board is woefully underfunded, and finds it difficult to even maintain the minimum necessary mechanisms for reasonable and effective enforcement. For example, their telephone switchboard is not manned at all on Wednesdays, explains an ADA Information Line’s technical assistant, because they have staff meetings. So, she continues, if a person has a concern on a Wednesday, s/he should call them on Thursday, when they can actually get through. An attempt to reach them by telephone on Thursday, though, resulted in 12 minutes of hold time, followed by a disconnect, a redial and an additional 16 minutes of hold time, without eventual access to a “technical representative.”

Mulvaney’s staff steadfastly refuses to address the accessibility problems with their Rock Hill office, defying pleas and entreaties for voluntary compliance. This is not new; in 1970, the federal government had to dispatch national guard troops to forcibly require the integration of SC schools, as many of the state’s leaders had plainly ignored requirements by the Civil Rights Act of 1965 to desegregate them. A quick review will discover the ‘founding’ of a spate of private schools (mostly religiously affiliated) in 1970 to thwart the desegregation rules.

The Access Board, incidentally, has an online tool for filing a complaint, but cautions that the system does not appear to be functioning properly, and complaints filed in that manner are likely not to be received, so other means of filing a complaint are listed and encouraged. (Is the unaddressed malfunction of that site tool also a sign of underfunding and lack of technical support?) A complaint has indeed been filed by email, though no follow-up had yet occurred at the time of this writing.

There are, then, four issues this situation highlights: First, there is the obstinate intransigence of this mindset, requiring direct enforcement action to ensure compliance; in order to facilitate this, there is the deliberate underfunding of regulatory enforcement mechanisms (as we saw writ large during the BP Gulf Oil Spill debacle last year, when people like LA Governor Bobby Jindal claimed that the problem was not that proper regulations were not in place, but that they were not enforced adequately — he did NOT mention, by the way, WHY those regulations were not adequately enforced). Then, there are also the direct and deliberate efforts to dis-empower the constituency, particularly those whose politics are unwelcome. There is a clear demonstration of unwillingness on the part of these “elected” officials to be accountable to the voters, although it is clear that their initial election support was only the result of the gullibility of the voters, falling prey to big business propaganda and the candidates’ own deliberately misleading pre-election rhetoric.

Thinking back to fall 2010, when Mick Mulvaney was campaigning to unseat budget chair John Spratt with the help of numerous powerful out-of-state forces, there were very few ‘yard signs” for Mulvaney to be seen among the many, many John Spratt signs on the front lawns of SC-5′s neighborhoods; however, the prominence of Mulvaney (and, incidentally, Nikki Haley) signs at public intersections, and their replacement immediately after their removal by miscreants, makes it very clear that the campaign to rid the House Budget Committee of John Spratt so that draconian, anti-human measures like the “Ryan Budget Proposal” could make it onto the House floor, was well-funded and well-orchestrated, albeit far from the local district in which the freshman congressman was running.

The fourth issue pretty much stands alone, and is indicative of the very evil nature of this entire movement, enriching the power of the few and the elite (most notably non-human entities like large multinational, non-tax-paying corporations) while dis-empowering the masses of the American public. Codifying additional tax relief for large corporations and the wealthy, while simultaneously destroying safety net programs and environmental protections, provide numerous specific examples of this effort. The Ryan Budget, which without the election of Mick Mulvaney would never have made it out of committee, incidentally, infamously proposed the DECREASE of the top tax rate (already MUCH lower than the previous top tier) from 35% to 25%, while simultaneously converting Medicare from a direct-paid government-run insurance program to the private sector, and providing a “voucher system” so that within a decade or so, the government-provided portion of those premiums would amount to less than a quarter of their cost.

We know, by the way, that contrary to the ridiculous claims of these “free market panacea” folks, private administration of Medicare costs MORE, not less, than direct government operation of insurance. The ACA finds the bulk of its enormous deficit-reducing power in the elimination of private-sector agreements for administration, both of “Medicare Advantage” plans, which were found to be costing roughly 14% more than direct administration, with little or no tangible benefit to recipients, and Student Loan Programs, which were previously only “guaranteed” by the federal government, but administered by private banks (so that the potential profit was there for the banks, but any potential losses were offset by taxpayers).

Thus, this entire mindset is designed to transfer wealth from the taxpaying middle-class (who, by many estimations, are indeed “taxed enough already”) to the elite upper-echelons, thus ever accelerating wealth inequality in the US, destroying the middle-class and thus the market for products and services provided by business small and large, and negatively affecting the country’s (and, by reference, the globe’s) economy. Incidentally, it is a simple matter to find the strong direct correlation between wealth inequality and joblessness, but very difficult indeed to discern any correlation at all between tax rates and unemployment. Thirty years of incontrovertible evidence, notwithstanding the death of Jude Wanninski in 2005, shows that the “two Santa Claus” approach to economics, alternatively referred to as ‘supply-side,” “Reaganomics,” or “voodoo” economics, is quite clearly an effective political strategy but by no means a viable economic theory.

The entire purpose of government is, and has been since the dawn of civilization back in Sumar some 6500 years ago, to enrich the lives of “citizens,” and to make their lot easier than “going it alone.” Historically, there have been necessary projects for the betterment of people that require a level of capitalization unrealistic for individuals (large public works projects like dams and, more recently, power plants, for example). In the US, and since the Industrial Revolution began some 300 years ago, the means for that capital has been developed by private entities (thus the term “Capitalism,” although some such projects are not profitable, but merely provide for the ease of burden of the human citizens of the society. What Ayn Rand fails to explore in Atlas Shrugged, for example, are the enormous government incentives and subsidies provided to encourage the development of rail access to large portions of the country.

By definition, “capitalism” requires two forces: a “free market” that allows for capitalization other than by government and spurs on innovation through competition to improve society’s lot, and effective government regulation of that marketplace to protect the society’s citizens from business’s most egregious abuses. The sort of thing that Mick Mulvaney’s sort call “cumbersome regulations” are exactly that: government protection of citizens. That government duty is why we have clean air and water, safe food and drugs, and the insistence on proper safety precautions to protect laborers from injury and death.

The ADA and the ABA are just two of the many very important congressional “acts” that are designed to protect consumers from abuse by business. The landmark Civil Rights Act, and lesser known, but also of crucial importance acts like the Consumer Protection Act or the Fair Credit Reporting Act, are other examples. Attempts to hamstring government and alleviate the burden of consumer protection on corporations, thus decreasing their “expenses” and therefore benefiting their “bottom line” at whatever cost to citizens, have been infamously furthered by presidential administrations that alternate between Dominionist and Libertarian policies like that of George W. Bush, slammed through Dennis Hastert’s congress, or Newt Gingrich’s, with deceptive titles like”The Clean Air Act,” which alleviated the burden of pollution control for big energy companies like Enron and Massey Energy, the “Endangered Species Act,” which removed barriers to the destruction of fragile habitats for natural resource exploitation by private business, or the “Clear Skies Act,” which allowed the reckless logging and destruction of public “protected” lands by Koch Industries and others, without regard to the importance of the US’s groundbreaking National Parks leadership.

The claim that taking any action to correct this unfair government complicity in the accelerating wealth inequality in the US (real “wealth redistribution”) is countered by obviously untrue propaganda by big-business-funded “think tanks” like The Heritage Foundation or Americans for Prosperity (there are, of course, lots of others, and they heavily fund the campaigns of legislators like Mick Mulvaney), loudly proclaiming that such action will have undesirable ‘middle-class’ effects. One example is the claim that “taxing the rich” will hurt small business. This is plainly not true, as a cursory examination of the data will readily show, but it is nevertheless very effective at duping American citizens into voting against their own interests.

The vast majority of all jobs in the US are created by small businesses, operated by your neighbors. SC governor Nikki Haley, for example, typified the use of this propaganda technique last fall in her campaign, as she pushed for a “reduction in the small business tax” in SC. Thing is, there’s no such thing as a “small business tax.” There are only individual and corporate income taxes. Proprietorships, partnerships, and “sub-S” corporations, the likely organizational structures of small business, which provide over 90% of all the jobs in South Carolina, are subject to reporting on Schedule C, with taxes being paid on personal tax returns. Thus, a reduction in the corporate tax rate would not benefit most small business owners at all. This also explains the deliberate efforts by the government to make the tax code overly complicated, and the mushrooming expansion in recent years of “tax-preparation services” by H&R Block, Jackson-Hewitt, and others (and their preferential treatment from the government): it’s important to keep taxpayers removed from their own tax calculations, because that way they have a much lower-level understanding and less vested interest in tax policy. Only big businesses, for the most part, would benefit; they, of course, have teams of tax attorneys and lobbyists to ensure that their tax liability is actually among the lowest in the developed world, contrary to claims that the US statutory tax rate for corporations is the second-highest (which is technically true, although deliberately misleading).

Additionally, significant tax concessions to “lure” big business to a particular state or locality on the pretext of “creating jobs” simply hurts the real “job creators,” small business owners. The less of the government’s tax necessity is provided by big business, the more the burden falls upon small business and individual consumers. The solution, say these “libertarian” folks, is to reduce the total amount of that tax burden by reducing the amount of money the government spends to provide needed services to its citizens, its core function.

Property taxes where I live are dramatically lower than the place where i moved from (one of the things that’s so great about living in a federation like the US is that you can make choices about where you’ll live on the basis of tax levels and government service levels– this was NOT the overriding consideration for my having moved, but it might have some bearing for some other people). Meanwhile, a private company charges more than TWICE as much as the neighboring municipality for curbside trash pickup (which is not provided as a county service), there is a “municipal” fire station (for the city in which I do NOT live, by about a block) just around the corner from my home, but I must rely on a volunteer fire department several miles away for fire protection. This increased risk of severe property damage is, of course, reflected in homeowner insurance rates, at a much higher cost than the increased tax that would be required to provide paid, professional fire protection service.

There are, of course, many similar examples. The tax one pays is not money that is “thrown down a hole;” it actually funds useful services, and does so quite efficiently at that. Folks like Mick Mulvaney claim, for example, that safety requirements like those from OSHA are “cumbersome regulations” that stifle business, and point to the increased cost of projects by government entities, where safety precautions are taken seriously, compared to private projects, where worker safety compliance is often minimally compliant or even entirely lacking. In many such instances, no serious loss is incurred, and therefore, the failure to implement those safety precautions simply saves money. However, accidents are “low-probability, high-risk” events, as anyone in the insurance industry can explain. The data is clear, though: on average, the expense of completing ten projects with a 1:10 chance of a serious accident or worker death without taking costly safety precautions, which could have avoided potential injury or death by following “cumbersome” safety regulations, is much higher: in every case. This is not a speculation– a ‘crap shoot’ if you will– it’s clear and obvious, well documented by reams upon reams of data– and patently ignored by folks like Mick Mulvaney.

I believe the “Teabaggers” are right in that the middle-class in the US, particularly small business folks, are “taxed enough already.” The solution, though, is not to punish the majority by hamstringing government and preventing its provision of its basic core functions. The solution is to indeed spread the burden of PAYING for government operation fairly among the society’s members; that is, a progressive tax system in which those who benefit the most from the society pay the most. That’s reasonable. That Warren Buffett, for example, only paid 17% of his income in taxes last year while the other people in his office paid between 33% and 41%, is clearly and patently unfair and unreasonable. That hedge fund managers get to pay taxes on their income at a rate of 15% (the “capital gains” rate) as opposed to 35% (the top marginal income tax rate) is clearly unfair and unreasonable. That CEO’s and other highly-paid executives get paid mostly in stock they sell weekly or more often, rather than cash, so that they can pay tax at a capital gains rate rather than an income tax rate, and that they only pay Social Security tax on the first $106,8000 of their income, rather than all of it, like most people, is clearly unfair and unreasonable.

To further illustrate this deception, Mr. Buffett, in his infamous editorial in the NYT, proposed that the existing tax rates be left like they are, and that additional tax brackets be created at $1 million and again at $10 million. I know a LOT of successful small business people, from doctors and lawyers to contractors to restaurateurs. i don’t know ANY that make more than $1 million a year, so NONE of them would be affected by this proposal. Very few of them, in fact, make more than $250,000 a year, and therefore would also be unaffected by a raising of the existing top tax bracket from its current 35% to its pre-Bush rate of 39.6%. It’s plainly an effort to cause people to act out of fear, and vote against their own interests in order to further the attempts to establish a plutocracy in the US.

And Mick Mulvaney is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Update (11/1/2011): In grudging acquiescence to direct enforcement action by the Access Board, Mick Mulvaney’s Rock Hill office has at long last placed signage indicating handicapped parking and accessible entry. The ramp on that building, though, is still about twice the ADA-required slope (it’s abut 1:6), and there is no evidence of any construction intent.

Let’s admit that our rulers – like the feudal lords in Robin Hood’s England – have created a terrible situation. Our system of government and our form of predatory capitalism do not work, unless you happen to be a billionaire. Unfortunately, there are far too many billionaires in the world today who hold the power. They are the modern version of Prince John – and the politicians who protect them are the Sheriffs of Nottingham.

So where is Robin Hood? Where is Maid Marian? Where are all those Merry Men and Women who defied feudal lords in those glorious days we like to relive in our fantasies?

They are right here. In front of you. Look in the mirror. You are Robin Hood. You are Maid Marian. You are a leader!

It is time to gather the Merry Men and Women – your networks and communities – and spread the word. Today we do not need real bows and arrows, we do not need swords or weapons of destruction. Modern feudal lords control us with advertisements, propaganda, and materialistic seductions. They send in their hack TV commentators and newspaper pundits, rather than sheriffs armed with cross-bows.

We must defeat them on this new field of battle. It is a field of consciousness, not blood. The bow I personally choose is the computer keyboard and the lecture podium. My arrows are words – both written and spoken.

The budget debacle is the match that the Sheriff of Nottingham touched to the thatching on our roofs. My house is burning; so I’m grabbing keyboard and words and heading for Nottingham.

Please join me. Gather your own Merry Men and Women. Write your own letters and emails. Organize consumer protests. Wave placards. Give speeches. Run for election. Take action in whatever way your deepest passions direct you. Just don’t sit still.

We MUST act! But not violently. Doing it with love, compassion, and cooperation is the way out of this chaos. Today Robin Hood looks more like Martin Luther King Jr. than Errol Flynn!

Time to stop reading Robin Hood as a fantasy and instead to live that dream. The dream of waking up, taking responsibility and actions that will create a new story. And make no mistake about it: this is a true and honest story, one of integrity, and one our grandchildren will want to tell to their grandchildren.

John Perkins is best known as the Chief Economist for a major international consulting firm, having advised The World Bank, United Nations, IMF, U.S. Treasury Department, Fortune 500 corporations, and countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. As a New York Times bestselling author, His books on economics and geo-politics have sold more than 1 million copies, spent many months on the New York Times and other bestseller lists, and are published in over 30 languages. His books include Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, The Secret History of the American Empire, and his latest, Hoodwinked. In addition, he writes regularly for his blog at http://johnperkins.org and for the nonprofit http://Dreamchange.org, of which he is founder and board member.