America – land of massive inequality

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The top 1% of Americans have taken $50 trillion from the bottom 90%.  This has been done by way of unemployment, scant benefits, unfair tax laws, and lopsided investment and political give-aways of our money.

Now, the RAND Center has put a number on just how much wealth the top 1 percent has stolen from the rest of the country over the past few decades: a staggering $50 trillion. This analysis sheds light on the dark void of wealth inequality between the ultra-rich and the bottom 90% of Americans – and our desperate need for the government to do its job and reverse the robbery.  (Nick Hanauer and David M. Rolf, Patriotic Millionaires, 17 Sep 2020).

My comment:  This has happened with the full assistance and complicity of politicians.  It undermines democracy and the Constitution, and is actually physically dangerous in the longer term ( read some history!).  How can one have confidence and peace of mind under these circumstances?

 

Voter suppression

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“Between 2014 and 2016, Republicans removed almost 17 million voters off the voter rolls. In addition to the voter registrations being invalidated before the current election, Republicans are enacting a plan to disenfranchise the black vote by rejecting their mail-ballots. It doesn’t get much worse than this.

“Mail-in ballots by black voters are being rejected at the rate of 4.7%. White voters’ mail-in ballots are being rejected at the rate of 1.1%. Black voters have currently mailed-in 13,747 ballots, of the 642 have been rejected. 

”White voters have cast 60,954 mail-in ballots; of them, 681 have been rejected. Republicans will pull all the stops to keep control of the Senate to reelect Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. The Republican vote cheating strategy is systemic.”

( The Guardian, 20 Sep 2020)

My take:  It is un-Epicurean to talk politics in public. Of course, I know this, but I am also an historian  and recognize creeping coups when I see them.  There is no peace of mind when justice, fair dealing and the Constitution are undermined, all the more so with the support of ardent “christians”.  Alas, where can one find peace of mind at the moment?

Race hatred is not at all confined to the US

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Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, UK

Far-right activists have been filming themselves storming hotels that are being used by the Home Office to accommodate asylum seekers, confronting residents in their rooms, and demanding to know which countries they are from.

In a series of videos posted on social media, activists with the group Britain First can be seen banging on doors and haranguing residents at hotels in Bromsgrove, Newcastle, Birkenhead, Warrington and Essex. On Saturday, a 30-year-old man was charged with common assault after far-right activists entered a hotel in Coventry. However, an apparent attempt by the group to target asylum seekers in Camden, northwest London, failed last month, when its members turned up at a hotel that is being used to accommodate rough sleepers during the pandemic.  (The Week, 5 Sept 2020)

My comment:  At some time in the past, maybe the far distant past, most families have migrated from some other region or country. If you look at, say, one hundred family trees I bet you would find migrants and asylum seekers in most, if not all of them.  My own (Huguenot) family moved from France to escape the Catholic persecution with not a penny to their names, no doubt enduring prejudice and name-calling in London’s East End.

What we should be doing is helping to stabilize the countries whence come the migrants, and incentivize them to stay put, if that’s what these disagreeable thugs want.   The fact is that most migrants make excellent, and enthusiastic, citizens.

An unacceptable taxpayer bailout

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The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (Cares) Act, the 2 trillion dollar bill passed last March, granted forgivable loans to “qualifying businesses and non- profits”.  The Small Business Administration, which administered part of the Act, declared ( but tried to keep it quiet) that houses of worship and religious private schools qualified under the Act.  It handed out $ 7.3 billion in taxpayer money to over 88,000 religious organizations.  In late July banks started forgiving these “loans”, thus making them grants that don’t have to be repaid.  Five hundred church   representatives were involved in negotiations over this give-away, along with the White House Faith and Opportunities Initiative team, the surgeon General (for some weird reason), and the Deputy assistant to the President, Jenny Lichner.

Churches and other religious organizations are tax-exempt charities that do not have to disclose their income to the IRS.  Not only that, but this whole thing is blatantly unconstitutional (separation of church and state).  Church leaders were assured that no strings were attached and that they were still free to discriminate on the basis of race, gender or sexual orientation!

But maybe the most obnoxious aspect of this story is that the Catholic church, with 17,000 parishes, received $1.4 billion in taxpayer-backed coronavirus aid, with millions going to dioceses that have paid huge settlements (or sought bankruptcy protection) owing to clergy sexual abuse cover-ups. The Catholic church has, in short, received approval for an estimated 3,500 forgivable loans, while holding property which, in 1918 was valued at half a billion dollars (yes a hundred years ago!).

My reaction:  We, dear reader, are paying to restore the finances of a church that has been abusing choirboys and others (for centuries?), and has been universally condemned for doing so.  Which is why I support the teachings of Epicurus, despite a religious upbringing in the Anglican church.

I don’t think the word “corruption” quite captures what we are seeing, do you?

(This post is a precis of an article in The Humanist magazine, Sept/ Oct 2020)