Posted by Addison dePitt

By Alyssa Battistoni, AlterNet
Posted on April 29, 2011

When even the New York Times, the supposed bleeding heart of the liberal media, is asking whether it’s more “perilous politically” to accept tax increases for 3 percent of households or benefit cuts for everyone, you’d assume that even Americans who aren’t rich are opposed to raising taxes on those who are. But you’d be wrong: nearly three-quarters of Americans support raising taxes on the wealthy. So why is raising taxes on the wealthy so hard—or why do we think it is?

STEVEN JONAS, MD, MPH
Crosspost with: http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12646  | 04/28/2011

For many Southerners, the "Lost Cause" was a noble cause. The Old South may have technically lost the war but its values have very much survived and proliferated in modern America.

NOT SO LONG AGO in a land not at all far away part of it was ruled by a tiny oligarchy of very wealthy large landowners.  They made their wealth in part off the backs of unpaid farm laborers for whom they provided nothing more than minimal food and shelter, in part by trading in those laborers as property, and in part off the backs of another group of (much smaller) landowners/small farmers, who were generally poor, although definitely better off than the aforementioned unpaid laborers.  Actually, the latter two groups had much in common.  They worked hard, got nothing (in the case of the first) and precious little (in the case of the second) for their labors.  They were both dominated and exploited by the oligarchy.  One would have thought, in fact, that the two groups of laborers might actually join forces and struggle to improve their respective states in life.