March 2, 2008

Where "Trickle-Down" Works

I've seen no credible evidence that trickle-down tax policies ever benefitted anyone other than the rich. After all, it's human nature that those who have will tend to try to keep.

But "trickle-down" may in fact work, though in a whole 'nother context -- that of moral behavior.

Per the Inter Press Service, "U.S. veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are planning to descend on Washington from Mar. 13-16 [2008] to testify about war crimes they committed or personally witnessed in those countries.

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"Iraq Veterans Against the War argues that well-publicized incidents of U.S. brutality like the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the massacre of an entire family of Iraqis in the town of Haditha are not the isolated incidents perpetrated by 'a few bad apples,' as many politicians and military leaders have claimed. They are part of a pattern, the group says, of 'an increasingly bloody occupation.'

"'The problem . . . is that policymakers in leadership have set a precedent of lawlessness where we don't abide by the rule of law, we don't respect international treaties, so when that atmosphere exists it lends itself to criminal activity,' argues former U.S. Army Sergeant Logan Laituri, who served a tour in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 . . . "

After all, it's human nature that if our bosses behave like criminals, we should infer that maybe that's how we need to behave.

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