IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO ACT HONESTLY AND WITH TRANSPARENCY?
I have owned two businesses in my lifetime; the first one failed when hurricane Andrew wiped out three of my most important customers. The second I had to close my doors after a chain opened a store less than a mile from my location and they were selling their products for the same amount I was buying them wholesale.
In both cases, the employees I had received severance pay and their vacation pay as well when I closed my doors. In one case, I even had to go out and borrow money to pay them this, forsaking my own interests and the wellbeing of my own family. But I always took care of my employees…I never forgot where I came from.
In one instance, when I owned the advertising agency, I must have had inspectors, tax collectors, permits, and all kinds of local, state and Federal people visiting me on almost a daily basis trying to collect money from me; even when the business was still not profitable. The small businessman in America has it very tough while the big corporations get away with murder. We see all kinds of breaks for them in terms of tax exemptions, tax reductions, subsidies, sweet deal contracts for which they did not even have to bid…they cheat the government and send inflated invoices, cheating and lying.
I am very concerned with how the Reagan philosophy works. Corporations were encouraged to close their doors in America and move their headquarters elsewhere to avoid paying taxes. Manufacturing was almost decimated because the Republicans kept giving these corporations incentives to close their plants and open them in foreign soil where they would find no unions and ridiculous low wages, no benefits and no regulations.
I get upset when I try to build a lousy fence in my house. I have to jump through hoops, get permits, pay fees and go through endless inspections in which the implication is that I should be paying a bribe to the inspectors is more than obvious. I refuse to do so, so they give me an even harder time. Yet, I find that the oil companies are able to secure permits they write up themselves, take no effort to obtain and are filled with lies and assumptions that have caused one of the greatest ecological disasters in our nation’s history. My fence, even if it falls during a hurricane will not cause half of the hemisphere to be polluted for the next decades to come.
When I had my business, the IRS came down very hard on me, I had to justify even the fucking toilet tissue in my bathroom with receipts…yet the very rich are not even touched…they are getting tax reductions and loopholes that cause our nation to have a huge national debt. The corporations keep getting subsidies and sweet deals, contracts they do not deserve and had no competition in bidding for them (does Halliburton ring a bell?)
Why is it that the rich think they are entitled? Why do they resent all our safety nets and any kind of legislation that helps the poor and the middle class and don’t hesitate to call it SOCIALISM?
I am a firm believer in the free enterprise system but I also realize that it has to have regulations or greed will prevail and cause damage to the already decimated middle class and a lot of misery to the poor. Why do we begrudge a mother of 4 some assistance, why do we deny an extension of unemployment benefits to those who lost their jobs as a result of the greed and the incompetency of Republicans? Yet they don’t even blink when giving the very rich these huge tax breaks that keep us from having a balanced budget and pile on trillions of dollars to our debt…I call it the law of the funnel…narrow for me and wide for you.