When I was a kid, I was plagued by nightmares. One scary TV show, and boom, I'd wake up paralyzed with terror after a night in which animal-headed people tried to kill me all night, or Nazis pursued me through the streets of New York. After awhile, my little brothers knew to protectively chase me away from the television if something even faintly Hitchcockian came on; while they'd watch, I'd hunker down in my bedroom with Anne of Green Gables or, later, Tolstoy. My basic aversion to, or caution about, horror movies and scary books lasted well into my adulthood, until I learned how to tune down the fear and sleep through the night. But horror is a taste that I've never fully developed.
All of which is to say that I haven't ever been a Stephen King reader or viewer-until yesterday, when he jumped on the Warren Buffett bandwagon with his Daily Beast blast, "Tax Me, For F@%&'s Sake!" Here's the gist:
At a rally in Florida (to support collective bargaining and to express the socialist view that firing teachers with experience was sort of a bad idea), I pointed out that I was paying taxes of roughly 28 percent on my income. My question was, "How come I'm not paying 50?"...
Cut a check and shut up, they said....
Tough shit for you guys, because I'm not tired of talking about it. I've known rich people, and why not, since I'm one of them? The majority would rather douse their dicks with lighter fluid, strike a match, and dance around singing "Disco Inferno" than pay one more cent in taxes to Uncle Sugar. It's true that some rich folks put at least some of their tax savings into charitable contributions. My wife and I give away roughly $4 million a year to libraries, local fire departments that need updated lifesaving equipment (Jaws of Life tools are always a popular request), schools, and a scattering of organizations that underwrite the arts. Warren Buffett does the same; so does Bill Gates; so does Steven Spielberg; so do the Koch brothers; so did the late Steve Jobs. All fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough.
What charitable 1 percenters can't do is assume responsibility-America's national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts. Charity from the rich can't fix global warming or lower the price of gasoline by one single red penny....
The Koch brothers are right-wing creepazoids, but they're giving right-wing creepazoids. Here's an example: 68 million fine American dollars to Deerfield Academy. Which is great for Deerfield Academy. But it won't do squat for cleaning up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, where food fish are now showing up with black lesions. It won't pay for stronger regulations to keep BP (or some other bunch of dipshit oil drillers) from doing it again. It won't repair the levees surrounding New Orleans. It won't improve education in Mississippi or Alabama. But what the hell-them li'l crackers ain't never going to go to Deerfield Academy anyway. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.
For years, Stephen King has been beloved in Maine for the way he gives his millions back to the community. My wife, who grew up relatively near his house in Bangor, regularly points out how spectacular he's been to the community. She writes, "He built a $1.2 million dollar youth baseball complex in 1991. In the early nineties, his donation to the University of Maine Swim Team saved the program from elimination from the school's athletics department. He has donated to local YMCA and YWCA programs have allowed renovations and improvements. He annually sponsors a number of scholarships for high school and college students. He donated money to bring Air National Guard members home for Christmas a few years ago before they were shipped to Afghanistan. Recently he gave a $70,000 donation for fuel assistance to low income people in Maine." That last one was because the federal government cut fuel assistance, and he stepped in. But as he puts it, why should the overwhelmingly poor and working-class folks in the non-Kennebunkport regions of Maine be dependent on the kindness of one dude who actually got rich there? What about the freezing people in northern New Hampshire: who's their rich savior? Here's King responding to Mitt Romney's attitude about his own wealth:
What some of us want-those who aren't blinded by a lot of bullshit persiflage thrown up to mask the idea that rich folks want to keep their damn money-is for you to acknowledge that you couldn't have made it in America without America. That you were fortunate enough to be born in a country where upward mobility is possible (a subject upon which Barack Obama can speak with the authority of experience), but where the channels making such upward mobility possible are being increasingly clogged. That it's not fair to ask the middle class to assume a disproportionate amount of the tax burden. Not fair? It's un-fucking-American is what it is. I don't want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share.
There's more. Go read it (Then come back and donate to The Prospect, where you can get more in-depth analysis on all the issues above.).
