Letter to the Editor

Before the November elections, someone needs to set the record straight. It has been said that the health care reform bill is illegal because it requires every American to buy health care. There has also been some controversy about whether it is legal for the government to require everyone to buy health care. It certainly must be. We are all required to carry auto insurance and we don't object to that because we realize that if we are involved in an auto accident, we want to be sure both parties have insurance. The problem with the health insurance law is that there is no public option included. We Republicans and a few Democrats insisted on omiting that part of the president's plan. Having no public option allows the insurance companies to raise their rates to astronomical heights and rake in more billions of dollars in profits.

And as for raising taxes: The plan to not renew the Bush tax cuts is only going to affect the top 2% of taxpayers. None of the middle class or the poor will even be affected. Only twice before in American history has so much been held by so few, and the gap between them and the great majority been such a chasm -- the late 1920s, and the era of the robber barons in the 1880s. And yet the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which conferred almost all their benefits on the rich, continue. Unfortunately, Democrats have decided to delay voting on whether to extend them for the top 2 percent of Americans or for the bottom 98 percent until after the mid-term elections. In my opinion, that is a serious mistake.

Consider this: income in America is now more concentrated in fewer hands than it’s been in 80 years. Almost a quarter of total income generated in the United States is going to the top 1 percent of Americans. The top one-tenth of one percent of Americans now earn as much as the bottom 120 million of us. Much of the income of the highest earners is treated as capital gains, anyway — subject to a 15 percent tax. The typical hedge-fund and private-equity manager paid only 17 percent last year. Their earnings were not exactly modest. The top 15 hedge-fund managers earned an average of $1 billion. So, do we want the very rich to pay their fair share? Certainly!

And do we really want another Republican governor in Kansas who helped confer these very benefits on these very rich or another Republican in the Senate or House to bottleneck all legislation? This is the scariest time in American history.

I think not!