Letter of the Day: Aristocratic rule

Aristocratic rule

EDITOR: Republicans, the House majority, accepted a proposal to sequester funds. Article I of the Constitution gives the majority power to ignore the president's proposals. Acceptance is an affirmative act by which responsibility for consequences is assumed.

The calamity we feared in July 2011 is here, albeit with the speed of an oil tanker threading the rocks of a sound. Like Europe in 1914, we are walking into calamity after too many warnings of disaster. By summer we will be in full panic.

Republicans resist more revenue from the 0.01 percent of the net-worth rank, effectively a hereditary aristocracy separate from the commons.

The American dream, however defined by whoever dreamed it, does not include an aristocracy bleeding the nation of its means to a decent life. The feudalistic "fee tail" form of title, the linchpin of power when wealth was held as land and slaves, was abolished by our Founders. Hereditary primacy is prohibited by the constitutional ban on patents of nobility.

In the spirit of the Founders, we must reform the concentration of wealth that lowers the taxes of our hereditary aristocracy creating a stranglehold on wealth at the expense of the nation.

TOM KLINE

Healdsburg