But what is someone of my bent to do, where do I turn and to whom do I appeal?
”The revolution will not go better with Coke
The revolution will not fight germs that may cause bad breath
The revolution will put you in the driver’s seat
The revolution will not be televised”
Gil Scott-Heron
I’ve been thinking a lot about taxation of late. In a most basic sense, governments levy taxes and provide basic services like water and sewage systems, roads and bridges, libraries and parks, and other types of infrastructure that improve our lives. I don’t complain about paying local or state taxes because I can see some of the outcomes with my own eyes, a new freeway overpass, expanded lanes on the 101 freeway, a remodeled rest stop near the Gaviota Tunnel, a new wing at the high school. Some of these projects take a long time to complete, years in some cases, but they get done and the community is generally better off.
It’s much more difficult to see the result of taxes paid to the federal government, and all too often our taxes are allotted for purposes many taxpayers would object to if there was more transparency. Every year for as long as I can remember, for instance, the US has funneled billions of taxpayer dollars to Israel in the form of economic or military assistance. $3.5 billion a year is the figure noted most often, but since October 7, 2023 the figure is much higher. Through Biden and Trump, the US has funded, supplied, re-supplied and supported Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the bombardment of Lebanon. The death toll in Gaza is now north of 70,000 human beings, many of them children. The cumulative trauma suffered by Palestinians is immeasurable. But we ask no questions of Israel, even when its bloodthirsty leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, drags the US into a disastrous, foolish and failed war against Iran. No matter what Israel does or how many civilians its army kills or maims or starves or dispossesses, the money flows.
Another example. For the better part of a quarter century, I have urged my elected representatives and senators to slash Pentagon spending. As outlays for war increased every year since 9/11 and the insane, boneheaded War on Terror launched by Dick “Vader” Cheney and George “Aw, Shucks” Bush, proved a colossal failure, with the US being run out of Iraq and Afghanistan, I wrote letters, made calls, pleaded; I pointed to reports of fraud, waste, cost overruns, failed systems, and the fact that the Pentagon hasn’t passed a financial audit in years, meaning the entity doesn’t even know where its money goes. I was pissing in a hurricane wind and knew it, but I felt it was my duty as a citizen to dissent.
In his excellent and trenchant book, Washington Is Burning, Andrew Cockburn quotes an Air Force officer who said this: “People say the Pentagon does not have a strategy. They are wrong. The Pentagon does have a strategy. It is: Don’t interrupt the money flow, add to it.” And so, even when the US isn’t technically at war, Congress shovels more money at the Pentagon. We’re presently bumping up against a trillion dollars a year.
When it comes to the issues I care about most — health care, education, housing, jobs at livable wages and the climate — neither political party represents my interests and have not done so for most of my life. The services I want my taxes to go toward don’t stand a chance against the lobbying power of Billionaires, the military/industrial/surveillance complex, Big Pharma, Big Tech, and Wall Street banks. No matter how many letters I write or loudly I bellow nothing will change until there’s a political party dedicated to the needs of the working-class. Public polling consistently shows that Americans want Medicare-For-All, but are we any closer to achieving this desire? Of course not, and, in fact, the viability of the Affordable Care Act is threatened by Trump’s Big Ugly Budget bill, the ripple effects of which will impact those of us fortunate enough to have insurance.
I didn’t vote to slash taxes for billionaires, to provide subsidies to the oil & gas industry, to build overpriced weapons or to assist Israel in its genocidal project. But what is someone of my bent to do, where do I turn and to whom do I appeal? My grievance, if you will, isn’t that the federal government does too much but that it does too little of value for ordinary citizens. Millions of us pay our taxes and receive little in return. For nearly half a century, the nation’s wealth has traveled upstream into the hands of the already wealthy.
