Some time ago, policymakers decided that the way to increase investment was to cut taxes for wealthy investors, then to cut taxes again, and again, and ... well you know the story. It actually began before the Reagan years, but accelerated in the 1980s and continued to the present.

The idea is that investors create jobs, while workers just use them up. So we tax investors at a maximum rate of 15%. Top wage earners, those earning the very tip-top brackets, can get taxed up to 35%. President Obama wants to increase the very top to 39%, a little less than it was under President Reagan. This makes him a socialist, or a Muslim, or something. Christians know Jesus would never do that to rich folk.

But investors will remain at the head of the line when it comes to tax breaks. Some of us may disagree with the policy, but it does have a rationale. We want more jobs, so we'll try to encourage investment with tax breaks.

Which brings us to the long time dirty little Democratic secret. It concerns hedge funds, the exotic slice-and-dice-recombinant-mix-master-financial-gamble-from-college-calculus-Hell products that pretty much brought the economy to a grinding halt, threw millions of working people into unemployment lines, and came pretty close to putting all of us on the street selling apples to each other.

You see, there is a tax loophole that applies to hedge fund managers who remix other people's money. Extremely successful stockbrokers pay income tax, up to 35%. Extremely successful CEOs pay income tax on their salaries, up to 35%. Extremely successful sales people pay income tax on their commissions, up to 35%. Extremely successful lawyers pay income tax, up to 35%. The President pays income tax of 35%. All God's children pay up to 35% if they make a ton of money, except 15% rated investors.

And hedge fund managers.

Yup. Hedge fund managers have the same tax break for pushing around other people's money, taking risks with other people's money, losing other people's money, as the investors who gamble with them. They pay 15%. That's it. A hedge fund manager can make a gazillion dollars and still pay a lower rate in taxes than the secretary who works extra hours, then risks getting fired for refusing to serve coffee at business meetings.

Democrats have let this go on because hedge fund managers have donated a lot to Democratic campaigns. At least up to recently. You see, candidate Obama ran, like all good Democrats, on reforming the system. Everyone snickered because, of course, he didn't really mean it. Except he did.

The President insists hedge fund managers pay the same as everyone else. One hedge fund manager compares this new persecution to the Nazi invasion of Poland. Republicans grin at the sputtering rage and promise to keep treating hedge fund managers as a protected class.

So now hedge fund managers donate heavily to Republican candidates. Politicians come and go. Corruption is eternal.

That one person's religion is another person's belly laugh is a thought variously ascribed to:

• science fiction writer and perpetual crank, Robert Heinlein
• science fiction writer and perpetual genius, Isaac Asimov
• perpetual crank and perpetual genius, H.L. Mencken

Internet friend JMyste enjoys a good laugh at my expense, usually regarding spiritual beliefs. He has a keen wit and I enjoy laughing along (pretty much).

I especially enjoy living in a society in which such differences are more often a punchline than a threat. More often, but not always.

Among theocrats, religious disagreements can be deadly serious. Their joyless regard of theological differences is, in a way, understandable. To those who believe that America is, or at least should be, a Christian nation, religious beliefs are not merely expressions of opinion. A different view of the spiritual universe that might provide insights to a thoughtful person takes on a sinister tone for one who sees religion as part of government. Enforcing biblical ritual under the force of law is not a practice to be taken lightly.

Thus, one activist group warns against Glenn Beck. Beck would impose many things that sound pretty good, but the religion he would force on us is not real Christianity. "Our country was founded on Judeo-Christian values. Mormonism is not a Christian denomination but a cult of Christianity... The country needs to get back to the simplicity of the Bible."

Beck, in turn, apologizes (sort of) for suggesting that the President hates white people. He now realizes the problem is that Barack Obama is not a real Christian. "I don't know what that is, other than it's not Muslim, it's not Christian. It's a perversion of the gospel of Jesus Christ as most Christians know it." The President refuses to impose real Christian law on the nation.

Muslim Imam Abdul Rauf defines the issue of the Islamic Center in Manhattan accurately enough. But his words apply as well to the broader struggle for freedom as "not between Muslims and non-Muslims, but between moderates of all the faith traditions and the radicals of all the faith traditions."

Those who condemn Islam, with its varying factions, are not concerned with evidence and nuance. The idea that a group of believers want nothing more than to worship in peace is contrary to all they know. That Muslims want to impose Islamic law is obvious. The only evidence bigots need is found in their own hearts. They know what they would do if they could take control.

Theocrats in this country are not against sharia law.
It just has to be the right sort of Christian sharia law.

On September 25, 2005, Michael Brown, "Brownie" as he was by then known, was asked the most obvious question in the known universe. Why in the world did the Bush/Cheney administration sit by and watch while area after coastal area of Louisiana went below the waters and people died.

The question took the form of a technical inquiry. Why were three coastal parishes ignored in the emergency proclamation President Bush had issued in response to hurricane Katrina? Actually, the administration had not included ANY coastal parishes, the ones in ... you know ... the most danger. The answer might have gone unnoticed had it not been directly contradicted by available documentation. Michael Brown, Brownie, responded in congressional testimony by passing the buck to the Governor of Louisiana. It was shocking, he said. That's the word he used. Shocking. The Governor had not included those areas in her request for aid.

Except she had. The office of the Governor produced the written request (pdf). And there it was. The request included "all the southeastern parishes including the New Orleans Metropolitan area and the mid state Interstate I-49 corridor and northern parishes along the I-20 corridor." The administration had not noticed that as help went out, excluding only those at death's door.

The testimony was, in all probability, not a lie. It was one more bit of evidence that an incompetent administration put little value on performance. Nobody knows if Nero really fiddled while Rome burned. Marie Antoinette probably never giggled her famous "Let them eat cake" when talking about starving masses in France. But America had actual photos. President Bush eating cake with Senator John McCain. The President looking out in mild curiosity from his aircraft as it circled New Orleans, his I-can-see-my-house moment. And his horrible heck-of-a-job-Brownie speech.

And there was Brownie himself, later revealed in the emails he sent to cronies, desperately begging for advice as thousands died. What shirts should he wear for television interviews? Should he roll up his sleeves? What restaurants would serve a cuisine suitable for his high rank? It was a natural consequence of an administration exclusively concerned with public relations and electoral response. Karl Rove, in a policy discussion, explained that deficits don't matter because his polling showed voters were unconcerned.

Last week Michael Brown had an epiphany. He had figured out what he called a fatal mistake concerning Katrina. While he and others appeared in television interviews, presumably wearing presentable cuff links, boasting about all that was being done, they forgot to include in their talking points all the obstacles they were facing. Without those excuses, the public turned against them. "One of the fatal mistakes I made was not making it clear."

In Michael Brown's wonderful world of interviews and proper shirts, even five years later, getting life-saving help to those at the edge of death remains a minor issue. The fatal mistake was one of incomplete public relations.

Dick Armey is a very smart man. He always has been. He and Newt Gingrich crafted the strategy that brought Republicans to power in the House in 1994, although he let Newt have the credit. He became House Majority Leader under Gingrich and stayed there during the second Clinton term and the first couple of years of the Bush Presidency. When the Bush administration made it clear military bases would have to close as a cost cutting measure, he figured out a way for Republicans to steer clear of the firestorm of angry residents. He created an independent nonpolitical commission to identify which military bases to target.

He also worked on a lot of projects that never quite fell into place. He worked out plans to replace the progressive tax with a flat tax that would shift taxes to poor and middle class people and away from the wealthy. He worked out how to end farm programs. Like most Republicans who want to privatize Social Security, he hated the program. He could not understand why Americans supported it. But, unlike his colleagues, he worked out specific ways to abolish it. He just couldn't generate popular support.

He has been out of office for 8 years. But now he is planning how to take control of the Republican Party. He is backed by Richard Mellon Scaife, the extreme right wing gazillionaire who previously financed the "vast rightwing conspiracy" behind some of the accusations against President Clinton. His organization is called FreedomWorks and it finances a part of the Tea Party section of the Republican Party.

He is quite open about taking over the GOP. He co-wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal about the strength of the movement. It is the inchoate rage, the directionless nature of a movement without clear agenda that presents the opportunity.

The tea party movement is not seeking a junior partnership with the Republican Party, but a hostile takeover of it.

The problem with his plan is the nature of the movement he wants to use. It is not a creature of strategy. Rather it is a sociological movement within a shrinking political party. As the GOP becomes more extreme, moderates leave. This moves it to more extremism, so conservatives who are not rightwing enough are pushed away, and so it goes. Each cycle to the right loses more Republicans, which pushes the party more to the right.

The takeover, if Armey is right, will place him at the center of the maelstrom, a vortex where big money meets indiginous rage. It is the place of his dreams, if he can mount, and stay atop, the tiger.

After 9/11, President Bush wisely defined the struggle as aimed only at terrorists. We were not at war with Islam, regardless of the propaganda of bin Laden. There were hundreds of initiatives, not all of them well thought out.

The government enlisted America's children to make friends with Muslim children in the Middle East. Kids around the nation sent homemade friendship cards to new penpals overseas. Of course they would write back. At a time of deadly Antrax scares, nobody thought about the effect on the United States Postal Service of hundreds of thousands of oddly shaped envelopes from Arab countries with crude, childlike lettering.

The administration used phrases that immigrant cab drivers could have guided us away from. We described the campaign against al Qaeda as a crusade, belatedly recognizing the somewhat negative connotations that an unfortunate history of religious warfare put on those words. When military strategists labeled our invasion of Afghanistan "Operation Eternal Justice" it was without cultural insight. "Eternal" could apply only to the Creator of all life. We quickly renamed the effort "Enduring Freedom."

We needed expert help. As US efforts became less ham-handed, more targeted, and more effective, the FBI recruited Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of New York to help put together counter-terrorism programs. He quickly became a valued asset. He was respected, and he hated al Qaeda for its perversion of faith. The Republican administration expanded his role, sending him abroad, putting a face on the respect and freedom Muslims enjoy in the United States. The message remained the same and Rauf embodied that message: the United States is not, and never will be, at war with Islam.

The proposed New York Islamic center is sponsored by the anti-terrorism fighter Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, and it is at the center of a new outbreak of prejudice. But other, even more extreme movements against Muslims manifest themselves around the country. MSNBC's resident conservative Republican Joe Scarborough decries the outbreak of bigotry, but offers mitigation. Muslims here, he points out, enjoy more freedom than they would in their own countries. He forgets that most Muslims here are already in their own country, being ... you know ... Americans.

Answering the same transparently wrong charges is an unending task. Newt Gingrich compares Muslims to Nazis. They aren't. Politicians accuse Rauf of sympathizing with the terrorists he works to crush. Opposition to Islam is viewed as anti-terrorism. Support of Muslim freedom to worship puts a thumb in the eye of terrorists. In the short term, well reasoned arguments don't work against bigotry, because bigotry is not based on reason.

The central fact about the uproar over efforts to suppress religious freedom is that it is very, very ugly. The central fact about support for our Muslim brothers and sisters is that it is simply the right thing to do.

In the 75 years that Social Security has been around, it has become the most successful, most popular government program in existence. It is also the largest program. Estimates vary on how long the program can be self-sustaining. Even the harshest critics seem to think the program will be fine until 2037, when it may deplete its reserves, which are now considerable, and have to revert to a pay-as-you-go basis. But the need for revamping seems to fade when we consider the simple step of requiring wealthy participants to fully participate like everyone else.

Republican plans to privatize Social Security face two great obstacles in public opinion.

First, it looks risky. The most common variation of Republican privatization involves diverting some or all of Social Security funds into the stock market. That looked like a shaky scheme in 2005. At the moment, it strikes most people as a crazy sort of gamble.

Second, advocates of privatization include a disproportionate number of Republicans who simply hate Social Security and have called for it to end. It is wrong to say that everyone who seeks to revamp the program is plotting to destroy it. But it is undeniable that, generally, the most enthusiastic proponents of privatization are those Republicans most opposed to the very concept of Social Security.

"We need to phase Medicare and Social Security out," said Sharron Angle, Senate candidate from Nevada. She has adopted, as a model, the privatization program of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in the 1980's. The biggest drawback of her proposal is that the experiment on which it was modeled could not cover everyone. In fact, Chile eventually had to go to public funding. The program she hopes to use as a privatization model has been abandoned.

Other Republicans are skeptical about any guarantees of retirement for seniors. Ken Buck, running for the Senate from Colorado calls Social Security "a horrible policy." He says it is "fundamentally against what I believe." Ron Johnson of Wisconsin calls it "a giant Ponzi scheme." The Ponzi scheme accusation is echoed by Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Roy Blunt, Senate candidate here in Missouri is not completely opposed to some sort of sponsored retirement. He wants to replace Social Security with personal accounts made up of mutual funds, stocks, and bonds. He is joined by Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. Toomey has faith that if accounts are diversified enough, the risk of working people having their retirement wiped out will be minimized.

Minimizing stock market gambles does seem more prudent than simply abolishing Social Security. The question Republicans need to answer is this: Why minimize when we can simply reject such risks?