Many thanks to singer/songwriter Donovan’s Season of the Witch for inspiration. As New Year 2018 is before us, we are truly in a ‘ Season of the RICH’. One need not be an accountant or financial whiz to know that this so called ‘ Tax Reform Bill ‘ is a super rich man’s gift to the super rich.

Alas, all you suckers out there are , like this writer, a few paychecks away from financial uncertainty. The less than one thousand dollars extra per year that this bill will throw you is nothing compared to the mega millions the super rich and the large corporations will see added to their spreadsheets. Some of you still hold steady to the hogwash that the Trump team and the mainstream whore media are selling: The more the super rich save in taxes the more that will be reinvested in our economy. Remember the two phony Wall Street bailouts, one under stooge # 1 Junior Bush, and the second under stooge # 2 Obama? All it did was allow these predators to give each other bonuses and more stock buybacks.

We are living in an age here in an Amerika that not only rivals the infamous Gilded Age ( 1870-1890) but surpasses it! The CEOs of major Fortune 500 companies earn in excess of 300 times that of their average worker. Matter of fact , between 1978 and 2014 CEO pay increased by over 1000% while that of their average worker increased by 11%. That was three years ago… now it is worse! Yet, as with the phony Wall Street bailouts, many Amerikans still believe that the super rich deserve it. After all, my friend Dante informs me: ” The rich pay most of the taxes.” Oh really. Well, go to the gas pump and see how much in tax money is collected each time you fill up. Multiply that by the 99+ % of us, compared to the fraction of 1% who gas up. Who pays more of that tax? Oh, and check out the sales tax collected on a toaster or toaster oven. Every home usually has one right? Well, once again do the multiplying and see how many toasters we 99+ % have compared to our super rich fellow citizens. Get my drift? Bottom line: WE working stiffs and the poor are taxed the most!

You remember the words of the late Governor George Wallace on January of 1963: ” Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever” Well, the time has come for we working stiffs to join in with our own mantra: Socialism Now, Socialism Tomorrow, Socialism Forever! To those out there who think that this is a call for Communism, sorry. No, to this writer true socialism means that the major interests of the public , like banking, energy, transportation, health care and medicine, rental housing, education, elections, infrastructure repair, to name but a few, should be non profit. What this would do , among other things, is allow small business to prosper and flourish. Let the entrepreneurs succeed in small business. Imagine if all privately owned small businesses had real and viable profit sharing for all employees. Imagine how productivity would increase if each working stiff at such a place had a stake in it.

It is time for we 99+ % to start thinking bigger, and not continuing to behave like serfs. The great statesman Frederick Douglass, put it succinctly: Power concedes nothing without demand. It never has. It never will! One demand that all we working stiffs should focus on is this: A 50% Surtax on ALL income over one million dollars.. with NO deductions! That alone would bring in enough revenue to our treasury to underwrite Medicare AND Dental Care for all! Sure would save this writer a few teeth.

PA Farruggio

December 2017

Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn , NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 300 of his work posted on sites like Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Global Research ,Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust., whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘ It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected] )