[Peace-discuss] Today's letter to News-Gazette

[David Green]

Regarding “Road to Ruin” (1/21), the editors—as always—relyon the Koch Brothers’ (American Legislative Exchange Council, Illinois PolicyInstitute) analysis of yearly Illinois population loss of ¼ of 1% to argue forlower taxes, decreased environmental and workplace regulation, and governmentalausterity in all areas that actually help people (which excludes militaryspending).

This is part of a national libertarian-neoliberal agenda to convincestate legislatures to participate in a race to the bottom characterized by decreasedtaxes on the wealthy, increased concentration of wealth, income stagnation forat least the bottom 50%, destruction of remaining unions (especially publicemployees), privatization of public education, and opposition to private insurance-basedObamacare, which for the Koch Brothers isn’t privatized enough.

Such state-level policies, when implementedin a critical mass of states, insure a continuation of the above trends in allstates, whether they gain or lose population—a trivial artifact of the brutalclass warfare promoted by the Koch Brothers and the editors of theNews-Gazette.

The federal context ofstate-level policy is vital: a privatized healthcare system that wastes atrillion dollars or two; a military-industrial complex that spends anothertrillion in an effort to rule the global economy; Wall Street’s successful legislativeeffort to accumulate ½ of national wealth in the hands of the 1%.

Illinois is indeed burdened by aregressive state/local tax system that is easy prey for austerity-mongers.Moreover, both the Koch Brothers-Rauner Republican Party and the Goldman Sachs-Madigan-EmanuelDemocratic Party are in on the fix.

Road to ruin


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Road to ruin

Population shifts within the United States — who moves where and why — speaks volumes about how well the 50 stat...
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