Dear Senators Hatch and Bennett, and Congressman Bishop:
Like the majority of Americans, I filed my income tax return this week. With the exception of voting, paying taxes is the most direct interface most of us have with the federal government. It is a fundamental obligation of citizenship, as without revenue there can be no government, and without the government nothing else is secure. Life in the United States is pretty good, and payment of taxes is the price of admission.
But that doesn’t mean that I’m a happy American. I’m solidly in the 80 percent who think the country is on the wrong track. The problems facing this nation are big and serious and demand attention. Instead, Congress spends time holding hearings on matters as trivial as steroids in baseball. Nero played his violin while Rome burned. Congress investigated the needle marks on Roger Clemens’ butt.
The last eight years have seen a malicious, deliberate, and criminal destruction of the federal government. The Republican mantra that all regulation is bad has undercut confidence in everything from the food we eat to the planes we fly on to the financial machinery that keeps everything else running. The Bush administration, with willing Senate confirmation, has filled top positions with incompetents, lightweights, and industry insiders. Regulations that haven’t been weakened are simply not enforced. Incompetence at the top sends the signal down the line that the work of the regulatory agencies isn’t valued, so it doesn’t get done. The result is poison meat from California, lead-laced toys from China, miners getting killed in unsafe coal mines, an increase in pollution, a third world debacle with the hurricane victims, and uninspected airplanes. The risks from FAA’s failure to enforce safety regulations are a lot greater than the risks from a fellow passenger carrying too much toothpaste on board.
I’m all for personal responsibility. But I personally am not competent to inspect an airliner for stress cracks in the frame, and would prefer that my flight not be delayed while all 200 passengers make their own pre-flight inspections. I don’t want to inspect meat-packing houses and don’t know how to test the toys I give my family for lead. There are things we cannot do as individuals, and cannot trust industry to do (especially an industry that is in financial trouble like the airlines).
Maybe I’m naïve, but when I pay my taxes, I believe I am buying services. I’m buying enforcement of the Clean Air Act. I’m buying safety regulation of the airlines so the plane I’m on won’t fall out of the sky. I’m buying inspection of the food chain so that I can assume that what I buy is safe to eat. I’m paying for those services, but apparently not getting what I paid for.
The federal government has taken extraordinary measures to bail out the Wall Street investment banks and hedge funds. The theory is that Bear-Stearns was “too big to fail.” Well, if it is too big to fail, it’s too big to be left unregulated. If its failure poses a threat to the whole economy, you should be taking action to protect us from that threat. Bear-Stearns had billions leveraged 37:1. That makes the typical six-figure sub-prime home loan look pretty solid by comparison.
We have no meaningful energy policy. I paid $4.20 for a gallon of diesel fuel, and $2.95 for a loaf of bread this week. The great ethanol hoax has raised the price of food without bring down the cost of fuel. The recent energy legislation requires average fuel economy for vehicles to be 35 mpg. But not until 2020. There’s a real profile in courage. A 1980 Toyota did that, and the car I’m driving now gets 50 mpg. Delaying meaningful conservation for 12 years was literally the least you could do. There is still no broad policy recognition that our oil dependence is a national security issue. Changing the way we use energy ought to be the moral equivalent of war. You treat it as the moral equivalent of badminton.
The list goes on and on. We are spending more that we take in and continue to run up huge debts to other governments. The spending isn’t on infrastructure or things that will make the country stronger. We’re borrowing money and spending it to cover the light bill-and the war. Someday, those debts will need to be paid. But it will really hit the fan if, one of these days, our foreign benefactors decide the USA is the ultimate sub-prime borrower and cut off the credit. We’re essentially bankrupt and, as a result, we really no longer control our destiny. Stand up to China over Tibet? Not if we need to borrow a billion a day from them.
I’m so angry about the war in Iraq that I can hardly discuss it without profanity. Nobody knows why we’re there, nobody can define “victory” or even what the goal of the week is. Four thousand dead, and probably ten times that many maimed or psychologically wounded. Why? What for? How many more before we have achieved whatever the hell it is we are trying to achieve this week. End it. Stop it. Get the troops home before Bush expands this madness into Iran. And whatever happened to Osama bin Laden?
On any issue you choose, the record is one of inaction, dithering, and payoffs to corporate interests. Nothing material has been done about health care other than the unfunded prescription drug plan for Medicare – which expressly prohibits using the leverage of Medicare’s sheer size to negotiate lower prices. Brilliant.
As you can tell, I’m mad as hell about the way things are going. We are well on our way to becoming some kind of banana republic where nothing works and the money is worthless. I put most of the blame on Bush, but he didn’t do this alone. You have been there helping him out at every opportunity.
I’ve done my job. It’s about time for you to do yours.
Tom Clyde served as Park City attorney in the 1980s and is the author of “More Dogs On Main Street.” He has been a columnist at The Park Record for nearly 20 years.