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Is it time to update the Pledge of Allegiance?

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To the editor:

Perhaps the time has come for a new pledge of allegiance that reflects reality. My suggestion is that It would go something like this:

I pledge allegiance to the pursuit of wealth and to the people who have accumulated the most wealth, not to the United States of America or its people as a whole and, ignoring the teachings of Christ, will do my best to have a nation divided into rich and poor. I have mine let the poor get theirs.

This new reality was highlighted by the Supreme Courts decision that corporations and big money interests can spend unlimited amounts of money to buy elections, by having the public airwaves largely become mechanisms to brainwash the public into believing that it is in their best interest to create a feudal society ruled by financial barons and by the tea party movement bent on shredding safety nets for the general population while granting tax breaks to the already obscenely wealthy but a recent poll indicating that Donald Trump is the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination throws a spotlight it.

Does pledging allegiance to flags, almost all of which are made in China, make sense when millions of American workers are unemployed?

Does repetition of the lie about being a nation undivided make sense in a country in which the flames of division are fanned by political parties and big money interests for their own benefit?

Does claiming that this is a nation "Under God" make sense in a country that has largely abandoned the teachings of the son of said God?

We live in a nation that is more divided than at any time since the Civil War and the divisions have become so deep that there is open talk of various states once more seceding from the union.

We live in a nation in which the infrastructure that the economy depends on is crumbling because the people who can afford to maintain it are paying the lowest proportion of their incomes in taxes since the lead up to the Great Depression.

We live in a country in which, across the country, voters are rejecting investing in the education of future generations that are expected to pay for the excesses of the current generation.

We live in a country in which the top 1% of the population owns over 40% of the wealth, the bottom 80% owns only 15% of the wealth and 43% of the population lives in poverty.

We live in a country in which 46.5 million people have no health insurance, in large part because of incomes being insufficient to pay for health insurance. Average annual employee pay at the nations largest employer (WalMart), in a country where average cost of a family health insurance is $13,375 a year, is $13,861 a year. That means that if both husband and wife were working a WalMart they would have about $1000 a month to pay for the necessities of life of their families after paying for health insurance. That doesn't go very far in a country in which the average rent for a two bedroom apartment is over $700 a month and the cost of food for a family of four is at least the same. By my calculations they would be coming out about $400 short.

We live is a country in which about the only segment of the population that has escaped having their jobs exported is government employees whose collective bargaining rights are now being eliminated by Republican controlled legislatures in many states which is effect like taking life vests away from people who are lucky enough to have them when a ship sinks.

We live in a country thats spending on defense has doubled in the last decade, to fight an enemy that is hiding in a cave somewhere, while prevailing paranoia prevents our addressing the unaffordable cost.

We live in a country in which the average college graduate faces a world in which there are few job prospects owning over $20,000 in student loans and most high school graduates can look forward to either flipping hamburgers or patrolling the streets in some country the United States is has no reason being in other than its unquenchable thirst for oil created by failure to seek alternatives since Ronald Reagan ripped the solar collector off the White House.

Back when I graduated from high school in 1957, I got a job at the Fisher Body plant in Norwood making bodies for American owned and made Chevrolets and earned enough money to pay for my first year at the University of Cincinnati. Once at UC I was in a co-op program that earned me enough to pay for further education but if I chose to continue working  for Fisher Body I could have afforded to get married, buy a home and have my wife stay home to raise our children. It was a time when there was opportunity for most people willing to work. It was a time when an infrastructure was being built instead of being allowed to crumble. It was a time when we were not bleeding national treasure in unfunded wars that benefitted only what then President Eisenhower would later brand the military industrial complex. 1957 was the peak of what has been called "happy days" with the general population reportedly happier than at any time in the countries history, but it wasn't Camelot for everyone because racism was largely accepted.

A major difference between that 1957, when the infrastructure and middle class were being built and now when both are wasting away, was that there was a far more progressive tax rate. It was a time when the highest tax rate was 91%. Thats right. The highest tax rate when the country was happiest and not facing economic collapse was nearly three times what it is now.  

Although they no doubt would have preferred paying lower taxes, I don't recall the richest Americans funding movements in 1957 to lower their tax rate from 91% or threatening to move their wealth offshore or to export jobs. Perhaps that was because they couldn't combined with the simple fact that the American people would not stand for them doing so then. It was a time when the lessons learned from the great depression were still fresh enough to prevent the elimination of safeguards put in place to prevent another economic collapse. Perhaps it's time for the American people to learn from actual history and to demand a return to a framework that created happy days, instead of continuing to buy a fairy tale version in which wealth lavished on the very rich will somehow magically trickle down to everyone. Perhaps it's time for the majority of Americans to speak out against the disenfranchisement of the less privileged instead of nodding their heads and letting it go unchallenged.

Sincerely,
Charles Leach
Lynchburg
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