by Ed Klein, Peoria, IL

Why do some people insist on giving tax breaks to the wealthy? I’d like to know just who it is that benefits from this. Apart, that is, from those who take bribes from the wealthy, and those who are the beneficiaries of those tax breaks. Will any of that money be used to open businesses, start factories, finance medical research, build hospitals or sponsor organizations that will benefit the average taxpayer and create new jobs?

Will any of those riches be spent to help repair our failing infrastructure, improve education, develop alternate forms of energy, or protect the environment?

I’d really like to know how many of the things America needs will benefit from giving the rich more money while, on the other hand, taking it away from the middle class, the elderly, the poor and disabled. Ronald Reagan said that cutting taxes for the wealthy would result in more and better jobs. His trickle-down theory didn’t work then and it won’t work now. President George Bush and his cronies tried it and 500,000 jobs were lost. So let’s not listen to the lies about how giving the wealthy and the corporations more of the average American’s money will help America prosper.

What this is really about, of course, is a takeover of the government by the monied class who want to turn the country into their private plantation worked by their slaves in Congress, the Senate, and Supreme Court.

Billionaire H. L. Hunt, in his 1950 novel, “Alpaca,” puts all this into perspective. He said that in the ideal society, the wealthiest would have control of the government because they were the achievers, the most meritorious, and should get not one, but three votes. These are the people, Hunt said, who could be trusted to protect the masses from the populists. No one at that time gave his wild ideas any credence. But whada know, here we are 50 years later and his anti-democratic screed is apparently being resurrected. In fact, it is being promoted by a new generation of self-serving billionaires sanctioned by a cabal of big bankers, corporate “persons,” Republican legislators, governors and the Supreme Court. Wittingly or unwittingly, Hunt’s novel has become a blueprint for turning America into a libertarian, plutocratic utopia!