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Since 1913 a progressive federal income tax system has been in place, with tax rates increasing as income rises. The top marginal tax rates resulting from the costs incurred by World War I were at, or about, 70%. From 1925-1931, the years leading up to and including part of the Great Depression, the top rate was 25%. Where was our booming economy when top rates were that low? That ought to tell us something!

During World War II, tax rates for the wealthiest of Americans soared, reaching 94 % in 1944 and 1945. Similarly, the top tax rates during and following the Vietnam war were at 91% over a period of many years.

As a result of President George W. Bush's tax cuts, the current top tax rate is among the lowest ever at 35%. Taxes on unearned income (investments, stocks, bonds, etc.) also are at historically low levels.

Let's cut the actuarial doublespeak: Bush comes not to save Social Security, but to bury it.

Ever since Franklin Roosevelt installed the most successful social program in US history, far right fanatics of the Bush ilk have been trying to destroy it. They may be on the brink of succeeding.

Fundamentalist conservatives despise any social welfare program that works. Their stark ideological crusade demands the dismantling of any program through which society can exert control over the economy or our common heritage, such as the natural environment.

Their demand is precisely the opposite when it comes to personal and cultural behavior. The fundamentalist right WANTS the government (if they control it) to legislate "morality" when it comes to sexual choice (gay marriage), recreational preferences (marijuana), women's rights (freedom to choose), free speech (the Patriot Act), free press (censorship), sexual expression (the FCC), religion (official prayer), education (evolution), human rights (Guantanamo), the sanctity of life (the death penalty) and much more.

The Ohio Senate is considering a bill that would censor Ohio colleges and universities. The so-called "Academic Bill of Rights" is truly a misnomer, as it is really an "academic bill of restrictions." The ACLU of Ohio opposes passage of this bill because it could be used to curtail academic freedom and to encourage thought policing in our institutes of higher education. The bill would have a chilling effect on freedom of inquiry on Ohio’s campuses. For example:

·The bill forces the board of trustees, of both public and private schools, to adopt policies about what can and cannot be taught.

·Under the bill, faculty would be discouraged from teaching anything "controversial" - a vaguely defined term that could pertain to any number of topics including evolution, history, or religion.

·If they do raise controversial issues, teachers would have to present alternative views regardless of the merits of those views or their own beliefs about them.

·Senate Bill 24 would shift the responsibility for course content and student evaluation from highly trained faculty to the state government or the courts.

What you can do:

February is the month in which Black History is discussed more openly and freely than any other month in the year. However, as a Black Activist for social change and justice, we need to dialogue everyday about the contributions of the black race.

One usually obtains their information from the media and unfortunately tends to believe as truth what they see on the nightly news, hear on the radio or read in the newspapers. How sad it is that our vision of history is so narrow and clearly lacking in accurate information. We are controlled in this nation by a few, who have led us down the path of bigotry and hated, by false imagery, based on fear and lies and blatant discrimination. The black community is lacking in black media, which clearly would enable us to educate and distribute the truth of who the black person really is. You will not hear this on CNN or FOX news, not even on 610 radio (Columbus, Ohio).

To the Editor:

I'm dismayed by the Petro-Blackwell campaign to punish the four lawyers who challenged the Ohio election result.

Ohio law does not authorize sanctions against attorneys in this type of case. And judging from the wheelbarrows-full of evidence suggesting election fraud, the lawsuit was anything but frivolous.

Moreover, Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Moyers must remove himself from making any decision in the case. Ohio Revised Code Section 3515.08 says that the hearing on a contested election is to be heard by the Chief Justice "except that in a contest for the office of chief justice of the supreme court, such contest shall be heard by a justice of such court designated by the governor."

So Chief Justice Moyers' dismissal of the original lawsuit, which challenged both his own election and that of President Bush, was not his decision to make. And any decision he makes to punish the lawyers who brought the challenge to his election will be legally unacceptable.

CHICAGO -  When will our troops return home from Iraq? What is the President’s plan to prevent factory jobs from going abroad? What is his plan for providing healthcare for the estimated 45 million Americans who have no insurance coverage? And how much money will he commit to address the AIDS epidemic spreading rapidly in black communities in the U.S. and around the world?

The President’s 2005 State of the Union address failed to answer the questions that people care about. And for Americans who expected President Bush’s speech to bring a divided America closer together, the speech was a major disappointment, Rev. Jesse L. Jackson said.

“The President’s State of the Union address looks at the world and our nation from a top down philosophy,” said Rev. Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. “From his plan to privatize social security, curtailing class-action lawsuits that hold corporations accountable, to his proposals granting tax breaks to corporations who take their businesses and jobs offshore, his state of the union offers windfall hand-outs to the haves and possibilities for the have-nots.”

Stiff legal sanctions sought by Ohio's Republican Attorney General James Petro against four attorneys who have questioned the results of the 2004 presidential balloting here has produced an unintended consequence -- a massive counter-filing that has put on the official record a mountain of contentions by those who argue that election was stolen.

In filings that include well over 1,000 pages of critical documentation, attorneys Robert Fitrakis, Susan Truitt, Peter Peckarsky and Cliff Arnebeck have counter-attacked. Their defense motions include renewed assertions that widespread irregularities threw the true outcome of the November vote count into serious doubt. That assertion has now been lent important backing by a major academic study on the exit polls that showed John Kerry winning the November vote count.

AUSTIN, Texas -- I don't get it. The divide between the rhetoric and the reality in this administration is larger than I can span. The dissonance between the noble ideals expressed and the nasty actions is too raw for me.

For example, Bush announces: "Our founders dedicated this country to the cause of human dignity, the rights of every person and the possibilities of every life. This conviction leads us into the world to help the afflicted, and defend the peace, and confound the designs of evil men." (I got that nugget from the 2003 State of the Union via an article by Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully.) So how come we give less to the afflicted than any other advanced nation?

And how come we're torturing people? How come we're putting people into high office -- attorney general, Department of Homeland Security -- who unleashed the whole torture scandal? The International Red Cross says torture is still going on today at Guantanamo. Torture has blackened our name around the world and made the president's words about bringing freedom and democracy sound hollow and hypocritical.

Curiosity may occasionally kill a cat. But lack of curiosity is apt to terminate journalism with extreme prejudice.

“We will not set an artificial timetable for leaving Iraq, because that would embolden the terrorists and make them believe they can wait us out,” President Bush said in his State of the Union address. “We are in Iraq to achieve a result: A country that is democratic, representative of all its people, at peace with its neighbors and able to defend itself.”

President Johnson said the same thing about the escalating war in Vietnam. His rhetoric was typical on Jan. 12, 1966: “We fight for the principle of self-determination -- that the people of South Vietnam should be able to choose their own course, choose it in free elections without violence, without terror, and without fear.”

Anyone who keeps an eye on mainstream news is up to speed on the latest presidential spin. But the reporters who tell us what the president wants us to hear should go beyond stenography to note historic echoes and point out basic contradictions.

When it comes to left and right, meaning the respective voices of sanity and dementia, we're meant to keep two sets of books.

Start with sanity, in the form of Ward Churchill, a tenured professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and, until a few minutes ago of this writing, chairman of the department of ethnic studies. Churchill is known nationally as an eloquent radical writer on Native American issues.

Back in 2001, after 9/11, Churchill wrote an essay called "Some Push Back," making the simple point, in his words, that "if U.S. foreign policy results in widespread death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned."