We have been raised in a society where we take everything our political leaders say with a grain of salt. This is a nice euphemism for saying that we think they are liars and that is true … sometimes.
One of the most shocking things for me in last week was the State of the Union address by our President and the lack of emphasis on the truth.
This is also a nice euphemism for me to call our president a liar, and it offends me because this speech, by its nature, needs to be honest. This is after all, the state of our union. As a result, I have taken the liberty of sifting through the speech and picking out the three most blatant fallacies (another euphemism for…well you know).
(This list is far from comprehensive)
Lie One: The “death tax” and taxes in general are bad. The “death tax” or more appropriately the “estate tax” is not as scary as it sounds. The tax itself is the tax on the transfer of assets at death. When someone dies, his or her assets (the person’s estate) are distributed to heirs. If the total value of the estate is large enough, an estate tax is imposed before the remaining assets are distributed. In 2003, the net value of an individual’s estate must exceed the basic exemption of $1 million. Couples can exempt $2 million. (www.ufenet.org)
If you listen to the President, he would make you think the government is taxing all dead people and that is not true. The richest .01% percent pays half of the estate tax, with the other richest 1.5% paying the rest. Bush is only catering to his core constituency: rich people. Actually, that is not true, his core constituency is very rich people.
One more figure to put this into perspective: If the estate tax is eliminated, it will reduce federal revenue by $982 billion over the next 20 years. Who knows where we will be in 20 years, but having an extra $982 billion can’t hurt.
In 2002, Bill Maher wrote a wonderful book entitled, When You Ride Alone, You Ride With Bin Laden: What the Government Should Be Telling Us About the War on Terrorism and in it he makes the correct point that taxes are not bad, wasteful government spending is.
Maher also makes the point that it is really easy for our President (and politicians in general) to come out against taxes because most people (myself included) hate giving up our hard earned money, but taxes are necessary because not only do they keep the country running, but taxes are also necessary to pay our American heroes.
Maher’s point is that if we agree that the teacher, the firefighter and the policeman are our heroes, then why do we pay them like they were cleaning toilets?
Lie Two: The Sanctity of Marriage. If Bush thinks only heterosexual marriages are appropriate, and that marriage is sacred, here are a few thoughts to ponder.
More than half of all marriages end in divorce. Is that keeping marriage sacred? Britney Spears got married in Las Vegas and got that marriage annulled all within 48 hours. Is that sacred? She and all other straight people get the privilege of being stupid in marriage because we are straight?
Bottom line: This is government-sponsored discrimination against a group of people they do not like. Intolerance is never okay and for this type of discrimination to come from the president is inexcusable.
Lie Three: Weapons of Mass Destruction Related Programs?!? Two words, “related” and “programs,” only two words, but those two words make a big difference.
Before the war: (President Bush) “no doubt the Iraqi regime continues to possess the most lethal weapons ever devised.” Vice President Dick Cheney, “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction … to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.”
Now: (During the State of the Union) “the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations. Had we failed to act, the dictatator’s weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day.”
This is the most disgraceful one of all was because the American people, along with the entire world was told that Saddam Hussein had these weapons now and that he was going to use them if we did not stop him first.
However, now we have gone from weapons to simply programs to make weapons.
George Bush is casual with the truth and I am once again calling him a liar.
I will give our President credit for one thing: he is a good liar. Such a good liar in fact, he got Americans to die for his lies.