8) Changes to the current tax structure incrementally by increasing the marginal rate each year for nine years at 1% for those with income of 500K and more; and ½ % for income of 200K and ¾ % for 300- 499K.

Elaborate 8:

For twenty years the wealthy in the nation have experienced the most sustained windfall of huge tax give-away and “trickle down” nonsense not seen since the end of the Hoover era. It is time for these people to begin to pay back the billions pocketed to forge unheard of dynasties. They have built up an enormous callousness to the needy, tantamount to the court of Louis XV and Marie Antoinette. Their psyche bleeds into the weak working class with their Horatio Alger tear-jerkers that if they made it by hard work, the common people, too, can join the class of cut-throat money changers and build an immunity to those they leave behind.

Opportunity is one thing but the return to deregulation and laissez-faire is incompatible with a nation before Reagan for a half century developing respect for the working class and enabling them to reach the middle class. This proposal does not even “rollback” all at once the Bush tax cuts for those least in need of it, but allows them to ease back into a more normal mode befitting a nation once more to extend dignity to the working class, however difficult that will be considering the economy has been stripped in the past twenty years of an enviable industrial base.

9) Each state will be urged to pass a constitutional amendment or to protect the traditional status of marriage and to extend total equal “marriage rights” in a provision for civil unions and divorce of gays but not common law relationships.

Elaborate 9:

Wishfully this should not be an issue in a national election. Unfortunately the Massachusetts decision played right into the praying hands of the religious right. That in this day and age such an issue can get out of hand is a disgrace to a once proud and temperate nation. Both sides have acted like spoiled children: one side hysterically and defiantly equating it with civil rights, and the other screaming that this thing called marriage is an affront to God, Adam, Eve and the vociferous evangelists. The only way out of this is to outlaw once and for all homosexuality, which will never materialize, or in the spirit of tolerance and a free country acknowledge their rights and extend to them the same rights others in love expect but without approval of the God of the Right. It is simple as that.

10)In lieu of privatizing part of social security, taxpayers have the option to participate in social security plus, in which the government will contribute to a special individual account one dollar for every four invested by the individual.

Elaborate 10:

The idea that the majority is sophisticated enough to make choices in the stock market and clever enough to escape the hordes of money managers promising them the moon is ludicrous. Moreover, with such a plan there is the inevitable ups and downs of the market and one retiring undergoes the anxiety of determining the right timing. Better to have a “lock box” — remember that? — in order that the social security funds can grow without tampering. Additional contribution by the government to a plus plan would ease the strain upon the major source.  

11)Details of how the transition of health insurance will be implemented toward the federal employees insurance.

Elaborate 11:

This is not a radical move by any means. What it does is to even the playing field for all those already insured by giving all companies big and small to insure at competitive rates along with the stipulation — crucial in these unstable times — that the same coverage remains when changing jobs and reasonable rates when laid-off. It is not clear, however, how the uninsured and individuals will be able to buy into it, other than, I suspect, there would be a separate pool with the same rates and coverage. And, of course, some government incentive or assistance would be needed to motivate them into taking out insurance.

 Copyright © 2004 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: March 2, 2004.