Thanksgiving Gratitude – Notwithstanding Taxes, Earmarks, Some Congressional Corruption
By Marion Edwyn Harrison (11/23/06)
Americans have so much for which to be thankful tomorrow on the official Thanksgiving Day and on all the days ahead. We also have much for which not to be thankful, some of it well intentioned, some not. Fortunately the good vastly outweighs the bad.
From time to time, and especially at election time, many Democrats and a few Republicans talk about raising taxes on the rich, not infrequently defining the “rich” as those with income sufficiently greater than one’s own that a tax increase would affect “them and not us.” The tax-increase rhetoric is somewhat suspended but its loudest champions may, and probably will, metamorphose talk into attempted legislation in the ensuring 110th Congress.
In fact, an objective view, and that of most economists, must convince the viewer that the President George W. Bush-engineered tax cuts have benefited almost all taxpayers and the economy generally. The most one reasonably could criticize might be that the percentages in the very highest brackets when equated to dollars are a bit too high and that an individual with a taxable income as low as - pick a figure, maybe - $ 20,000 should pay no Federal income tax. Here is a chart, setting averages, courtesy of the (generally reliable) Tax Policy Center:
Taxable Income: Dollars Saved: Percentage:
Less than $ 10,000 $ 5.00 2.1%
10 - 20K 183.00 20.3
20 - 30 561.00 18.2
30 - 40 747.00 12.8
40 - 50 877.00 10.3
50 - 75 1,216.00 9.5
75 - 100 2,066.00 10.5
100 - 200 3,769.00 11.1
200 - 500 7,609.00 9.4
500 - 1 million 20,695.00 10.0
1 million or more 111,567.00 10.8
Regardless of one’s opinion as to what Federal income tax rates ought to be, there is an inherent fairness: Absent tax cheating, every taxpayer in the same net taxable income bracket pays about the same. Maybe that solace isn’t sufficient to give cause for abounding thanks at Thanksgiving but compared to taxation in most of the world it is reasonably equitable.
Earmarks are another story. In 1987 President Ronald W. Reagan vetoed a bill because it contained 152 earmarks. In 2005 President George W. Bush signed one which contained 6,371 earmarks. In other words, earmarks have proliferated like crazy (and, of course, the President attempts to get along with Congress). With only an occasional exception earmarks are inherently unfair and warrant from the great mass of American taxpayers no thanks on Thanksgiving. They are unfair because they divert Federal taxpayers’ money to pet projects of the Senator or Representative engineering the earmark, often to advantage in his State or Congressional district but inherently a penalty upon all other taxpayers.
There are some courageous stalwarts in Congress who, thus far vainly, have tried to curtail or eliminate them. Senator Thomas Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) and Representative Jeff Flake (R-AZ) conspicuously come to mind but there are others. These and their fellow heroes are outnumbered but a relatively small number of Members of Congress disproportionately account for the bulk of earmarks.
To look objectively at a few earmarks is to realize that most taxpayers got “taken” and, hence, need offer no thanks. Some examples: $ 3.5 million for bus acquisition in Atlanta; $ 2 million for kitchen relocation in Fairbanks; $ 1.5 million for a demonstration project to transport naturally chilled water from Lake Ontario to Lake Onondaga in New York; $ 1 million to improve roads in Monroe County, New York, to assist in business retention; $ 1 million for an education foundation in Virginia; $500,000.00 for a soccer and ski facility in Anchorage; $ 500,000.00 for a swimming pool in Banning, California; $ 250,000.00 for a music hall in Nashville; $ 200,000.00 for pedestrian improvements in Montgomery County, Maryland; $ 100,000.00 for a swimming pool in Ottawa, Kansas (cheaper to swim in Kansas than in California?); so on.
Congressional corruption is another subject. Those voters whose Senators and Representatives, fortunately the majority, are not corrupt can give thanks.
Realism compels Americans to look beyond our borders. Our Federal corruption level in some respects is excessive and unacceptable. Yet it is far less than that of most other national governments. Of course, one does not measure thanks only in material terms. For our liberty and our freedom, from the 1621 gathering of gratitude to God, now termed Thanksgiving, to the present, we Americans have preponderant cause for thanks.
An historical, and more philosophical, commentary, reprinted from last year, follows.
Marion Edwyn Harrison is President of, and Counsel to, the Free Congress Foundation.
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Free Congress Foundation Commentary
Thanksgiving – To God, Not To Secularist Revisionists
By Marion Edwyn Harrison, Esq.
November 25, 2004
On and off through Jewish and Christian history there have been feats to honor Almighty God and to tie in a particular event (for example, the Hebrew Feast of Tabernacles) – in an agrarian world, not uncommonly a successful harvest, without which people starved. Our unique American Thanksgiving began in Autumn 1621, approximately one year after the November 21, 1620 MAYFLOWER Pilgrim – not Puritan – arrival at a point in Massachusetts we now call Plymouth Rock. Only 56 of 102 Pilgrims survived the trans-Atlantic voyage and initial “new England” (as we now term the geography) winter.
Forty-one Pilgrims, including my eight-times great-grandfather, George Soule, on November 11, 1620, had signed the Mayflower Compact, text following. Inasmuch as the 1621, more or less first anniversary, Feast was a three-day, continual if not continuous, informal affair, he undoubtedly participated in the eating and praying. Of course, many celebrations lasted, on and off, several days – e.g., a Jewish wedding in the early New Testament era.
In a letter dates December 11, 1621, Edward Winslow, also a Mayflower Compact signer, described the recently concluded event:
Our harvest being gotten in, our Governor [William Bradford, also a signer] sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a more special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labours. They four in one day killed as much fowl [but no modern turkey – sorry] as, with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest of their greatest king [sic], Massasoit with some 90 men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted.
As a Virginian, it behooves me to mention a 20th Century Virginia claim that the first American thanksgiving was held in December, 1619, on the Berkeley Hundred, Virginia. (Irrelevant tidbit: William Henry Harrison, 9th President, was born in Berkeley Plantation, 1773, subsequently built on part of the site.) As a mere student of history (B.A., University of Virginia) and probably a typical cross-examining lawyer, I do not find the documentation sufficient convincingly to support the claim of a formal event at that time and in that place (with apologies to the late distinguished historian Virginius Dabney, who viewed the possibility otherwise). However, were there one, it, too, would have been the manifestation of believing Christians honoring God while concurrently commemorating a successful harvest and the first anniversary of their landing ashore.
That’s the point. The Atlantic shores were settled in the 17th Century by believing Christians, albeit many of them in canonical, doctrinal or liturgical dispute with the Church of England. By and large short on formal schooling, they knew much of the bible and in varying measures were strong in faith.
Although Thanksgiving as an observed day apart faded for some time, until the recriminations – some, accurately, would say desecrations – of rather recent secularists, no objective observer would deny the juxtaposition of God and Thanksgiving Day, Thus, President George Washington on October 3, 1789 in the City of New York, then the new and first United States Capitol City, issued his Thanksgiving Proclamation, citing the duty to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God. The Continental Congress similarly had proclaimed in 1782. President Abraham Lincoln on October 3, 1863 formally proclaimed the establishment of Thanksgiving Day – and again with clear and unmistakable reference to “the gracious gift of the most high God…” Presidents subsequently have followed suit.
When realistic it always is preferable to close a paper upon an affirmative note. Before doing so, one cannot fail to allude to the historically unsound, philosophically negative and just plain ornery declamations, denials and proscriptions of some of the contemporary secularist – translate, anti-religious and largely anti-moral – crowd, especially in some public schools. It’s historically and pragmatically counterproductive enough to live with ascending judicial revisionism and misinterpretation of the Establishment Clause – say, from Everson v Board of Education (1947) erratically forward – but now one must cope with the secularist militants in growing numbers of public schools, as elsewhere.
The fact is, kiddos of America, our founders – and for many of us, our progenitors – were men and women of faith and courage: Anglicans, Calvinists, Hugenots, Lutherans and other Protestants of varied stripe from much of Europe and the British Isles, as well as Catholics, Jews and later Orthodox, worshipping God, fighting for freedom, building the new America.
So Thanksgiving, although not a liturgical holiday, is an occasion to acknowledge God’s providence and the material and nonmaterial blessings it brings. (If you aren’t keen on turkey as we know it, take solace in the fact the Pilgrims didn’t eat it either.)
Here’s the text of the Mayflower Compact:
IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord, King James [I], by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France [sic] and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, etc.
Having undertaken for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia [sic], do by these presents, solemnly and mutually in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute and frame such just and equal laws, ordinance, acts, constitutions and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod, the 11 November…Ano. Dom. 1620.
[Forty-one signatures.]
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