This Memorial Day, let us reflect on the sober reality of the U.S. post-9/11

bill moyers and michael winship...

Facing the truth is hard to do, especially the truth about ourselves. So Americans have been sorely pressed to come to terms with the fact that after 9/11 our government began to torture people, and did so in defiance of domestic and international law. Most of us haven’t come to terms with what that meant, or means today, but we must reckon with torture, the torture done in our name, allegedly for our safety.

 
In this photo of a sketch by courtroom artist Janet Hamlin and reviewed 
by the U.S. Department of Defense, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed reads a 
document during his military hearing at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval 
Base in Cuba, Saturday, May 5, 2012. (AP Photo/Janet Hamlin)

It’s no secret such cruelty occurred; it’s just the truth we’d rather not think about. But Memorial Day is a good time to make the effort. Because if we really want to honor the Americans in uniform who gave their lives fighting for their country, we’ll redouble our efforts to make sure we’re worthy of their sacrifice; we’ll renew our commitment to the rule of law, for the rule of law is essential to any civilization worth dying for.

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So here we are, into our eleventh year after 9/11, still at war in Afghanistan, still at war with terrorists, still at war with our collective conscience as we grapple with how to protect our country from attack without violating the basic values of civilization — the rule of law, striving to achieve our aims without corrupting them, and restraint in the use of power over others, especially when exercised in secret.

In future days and years, how will we come to cope with the reality of what we have done in the name of security?

it is also good on this upcoming memorial day weekend to remember other parts of our history, or, i should say more accurately, MY history... i have made it a personal tradition each memorial day to post my vietnam experiences, partly to honor those who served and died there but also to honor a short but intense period in my own history, but i'll wait until monday to put that up...

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The rich live in a foreign country at the top of the world at heights so rarified they can't imagine life down below

bill moyers and michael winship expound on the old saw, "the rich are different from you and me"...

from truthout...

Top hedge fund managers collectively earned $14.4 billion last year." No wonder some of them are fighting to kill a provision in the recent Dodd-Frank reform law that would require disclosing the ratio of CEO pay to the median pay of their employees. One never wishes to upset the help, you know. It can lead to unrest.

That's Wall Street - the metaphorical bestiary of the financial universe. But there's nothing metaphorical about the earnings of hedge fund tigers, private equity lions and the top dogs at those big banks that were bailed out by tax dollars after they helped chase our economy off a cliff.

So, what do these big moneyed nabobs have to complain about? Why are they whining about reform? And why are they funneling cash to super PACs aimed at bringing down Barack Obama, who many of them supported four years ago?

Because, writes Alec MacGillis in The New Republic - the president wants to raise their taxes. That's right - while ordinary Americans are taxed at a top rate of 35 percent on their income, Congress allows hedge fund and private equity tycoons to pay only 15 percent of their compensation. The president wants them to pay more; still at a rate below what you might pay, and for that he's being accused of - hold onto your combat helmets - "class warfare."

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To add insult to injury, average taxpayers even help subsidize the private jet travel of the rich. On the Times' DealBook blog, mergers and acquisitions expert Steven Davidoff writes, "If an outside security consultant determines that executives need a private jet and other services for their safety, the Internal Revenue Service cuts corporate chieftains a break. In such cases, the chief executive will pay a reduced tax bill or sometimes no tax at all."

Are the CEOs really in danger? No, says Davidoff, "It's a common corporate tax trick."

Talk about your friendly skies. No wonder the people with money and influence don't feel connected to the rest of the population. It's as if they live in a foreign country at the top of the world, like their own private Switzerland, at heights so rarified they can't imagine life down below.

even in my asset-free and spartan, bare-bones lifestyle, i'm well aware that i lead a relatively privileged existence compared to many in the u.s. and certainly to the vast majority of those i encounter in my travels to other countries... but, even at that, the gap between how i live and how our super-rich elites live is so vast that i can barely comprehend it... while one of these stratospheric fliers might have pieds-à-terre in the south of france, in manhattan, in pebble beach and somewhere in the caribbean, mine consist of a room in my son's house, an ever-available guest room with a friend and colleague in central america, and my "mobile apartment," a 5th wheel rv - all very low overhead... HA...!

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