For love and not for money

With Valentine’s Day  approaching and the near-constant debate across the airwaves and headlines over tax cuts for the wealthy or business and looming budget deficits, I thought this quote from Marianne Williamson seemed particularly appropriate:

“Should the bottom line be money, or should the bottom line be love? The way we answer that determines how we order human civilization.”

Apparently, the GOP places businesses and the wealthy on a higher order than they do the rest of us. Here’s just one example from my state of Michigan that I became aware of today from a Facebook friend. Twenty-six state senators are co-sponsoring SB 1, which would give businesses a $2.2 billion tax cut by eliminating the Michigan Business Tax. Under the proposal, 85% of Michigan’s 300,000 businesses will end up paying no taxes at all. That’s right; zip, zero, nada! Also being proposed is SB 103, which would raise taxes on working families by $340 million by eliminating the Earned Income Tax Credit.

First, these bills are inherently nasty and unfair, but on top of that they would make the state’s budget deficit even worse than it is currently. That is not only nasty and unfair, but downright dumb. Where’s the love (other than for money), senators?

For Valentine’s Day, let’s all reset love of our fellow human beings at the top of our priority list. It sure beats every other alternative out there, especially the damn almighty dollar.

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Unexpected common ground

I never thought I would ever see the day that progressives and Tea Party conservatives actually had something in common. Well, last night it happened. Members of the Tea Party did not cooperate with the GOP’s forced lemming march to the precipice of over-reaching Bush/Cheney-era totalitarianism by voting not to extend some of the most onerous portions of the Patriot Act. Hallelujah!  If there ever was legislation that needed revision or repeal, it is the “so-called ” Patriot Act.

• Since when has been patriotic to secretly spy on perfectly innocent people?
• Since when has it been patriotic to eavesdrop nearly every conversation and digital communication that takes place in this country on the pretext that something might show up on the radar?

According to Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post,

“The measure would have extended three key provisions of the Patriot Act that are set to expire on Monday, Feb. 28, unless Congress moves to reauthorize them. One of the provisions authorizes the FBI to continue using roving wiretaps on surveillance targets; the second allows the government to access “any tangible items,” such as library records, in the course of surveillance; and the third is a “lone wolf” provision of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act that allows for the surveillance of targets who are not connected to an identified terrorist group.”

These broad-brushed covert activities do not make me feel safer, they make me feel like perfectly innocent people are being swept up into the same surveillance techniques as the enemy during a continent-sized stake out.  In other words, everyone is guilty until proven innocent.

Glad to see that, at least on this vote, there is some common ground between progressives and the tea party. Whether there will be enough votes against renewal later this month remains to be seen.  Taking away the very rights and civil liberties that made the USA so special in the first place, defeats the whole purpose of a representative democracy and was a not-so-subtle capitulation to the evil doers of the world.

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