When I got an email this week from Moveon that began “Democratic leaders want to offer free health care to millions of uninsured children. Who could be against that? But President Bush is afraid insuring kids is a slippery slope—opening the door to affordable health care for everyone. How terrible,” I wanted to scream. Partly because the marketing baloney is so transparent in everybody's fund raising these days—and partly because it really is true that Bush is a #!@%! and this is just one more example of why.

When I'm that ramped up I just want to make the pain stop. And I know the pain will never stop until we get the policies we need to to protect us from that sucking sound coming from capitol hill —billions of tax dollars getting vacuumed from potential and existing social programs-- by those I like to otherwise call the Bush 5%.

You know who they are. The 5% of America's wealthiest sleezoids that own 95% of our wealth. The 5% Bush calls his "base"! And among the top ten of the 5%, four (or five depending which list one reads) are Walmart Waltons at 15 billion per Walton! Put a few of them together and they're worth more than Bill Gates at 53 billion. Let the 18 families that fund the Paris Hilton “Death” tax repeal –which should it pass would suck 71 billion from Americas program coffers-- and you can see that just a few of them all “clumped up together” (a stolen phrase from Kathy Malloy) can do quite a lot of damage to the other 95% of us!

So I say they should pay what they owe—their share of the taxes required to build solid social programs-- and when their corporations skirt anti-trust laws (as did Messr Gates not too long ago) they get hit with billion dollar penalties!  After all, it is amassing their preposterous wealth that creates so much misery for people world-wide!

Oh sure, you say. Like that's going to happen Cynthia. Get real girl. Well, I am getting real and wondering just when the hell you will too!

Listen. Why do you think a tiny force of families owns 95% of America's wealth, writes legislation to protect the processes for continuing such amalgamation, and then continues to suck the lifeblood out of vast American resource pools?  Because we let them.  What do you think mega-corporations pay for the right to “own” and pollute the common airwaves? Nothing! And just how far off do you think, with more consolidation being considered every day, is the privatization of something you take for granted like water? What will you do then?  Every resource and every civil right that has been sucked away since Bush's appointment  was at one time something nobody believed could be lost, starting with the very idea of the invasion of a sovereign country like Iraq!

You say you can't win any arguments on social programs because the talk show “hawks” have seeded people's minds with lies about liberals—and made us out to be Big Bad Socialists? I have news for you. You're the ones who take the bait when the argument about socialism comes your way! You can't win an argument proving a negative! So, the argument becomes a tail-chasing exercise about socialism instead of a head-butting win-a-thon about making the Bush 5% pay for your health care and a whole lot more!

And if you simply must address the socialism argument here are a few tips:

The socialism “bogey-man” was brought to you by collusion with the religious right and the 1950's-era corporate Military Industrial Complex (remember Republican President Dwight Eisenhower's warning). In America theories and programs for keeping the pathologically greedy and messianic under control by decimating their fortunes is as wholesome as apple pie. We call it populism: the political doctrine that supports the rights and powers of the common people in their struggle with the privileged elite. POPULISM! Learn the term, use it at least three times everyday and shove it firmly down the throat of the next weenie winger you meet sniveling “socialist” at you!

Second, and the other “white meat” wingers love to regurgitate, is the somehow loosely associated-with-the-Constitution-argument that people get to keep the money they earn, people owe government (or each other) nothing except for defense and those who aren't rich are lazy losers. That's Neil Boortz, the human putz, favorite excuse for his greed.

So just where in fact does that nearly anti-New Testament Christian “the poor (homeless, unmarried, gay, disabled and otherwise people- who-scare-us-to- death) deserve their wretched fate” argument come from anyway?

Dutch Calvinists, neo-Calvinists (and at worst, Christian charlatans --think televangelicals)!  No, really!  You can read the background yourself but what it amounts to (and this is in fact Bush's chosen faith) is, that God decides who is rich and poor before birth, that after birth interference in helping the rich get richer is good (because it furthers God's design) while helping the poor at all is a sin (since God wanted them poor to begin with) and if you aid the poor in any way other than giving them an opportunity to work (so if God thinks they've been redeemed He rewards them with success) and anything other is a sin! Oh and by the way, God should have dominion over all the institutions of man—including of course—government. Sound familiar? And as an aside -- presuming one is a believer-- how selfish is it to hurt others in the here and now in order to save you own cowardly ass from  “hell” (whatever), after you die?

So, is it true America was built by men of religious faith? No. This country was a battle ground of enlightenment ideas wrestling with religious cultists who could not agree among themselves on how to organize morally. The Constitution has been under attack by Calvinists (Evangelicals and Baptists) from the day it was instituted, and that attack goes on today. Liberals, the descendants of Puritans and the Enlightenment founders enshrined the philosophy of democracy and the promise—not the dream—of a way to organize society in a way that for once, in the misery-laced history of Western civilization, humans could raise themselves above the petty superstitions of religion and the tyranny of kings.

So for me, who should pay for the social programs we will have is simple.  I call it The 5% Solution. How to get that money from the Bush 5%'s imperial claws is the only question left to answer and just by looking around I'd say, first, JUST CLAIM IT!!!