LITTLE ROCK — Good grief, Charlie Brown! What in the world is our political mess turning into? Are we at a low point in this political campaign or is it possible for the two main political parties to sink even lower into the abyss? It appears that money is not only the “root of all evil,” it is also the cause for some prominent political names to embarrass their own Democratic party. Never before in a campaign have I heard so much about income tax returns being a real, honest-to-goodness, campaign issue. Birth certificates, voting history and all kinds of personal items have been fair game, but how much a candidate paid in taxes has been an issue only when failure to file or fraudulent returns were questioned. Now we have the democratic party, led by Senator Harry Reid, stooping to a new low and trying to embarrass former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney by asking to see his income tax returns for the last 10 years.
With over 40 percent of Americans who file tax returns not paying any tax, how can one senator demand that any candidate for any office go back 10 years and report to the American voters how much or what percent of their income they paid in Federal Income Taxes?
Why doesn’t Sen. Reid and the rest of the members of both Congressional bodies not make their tax returns available? Probably because it is NONE of the public’s business and if it weren’tfor the political value of trying to keep the heat off of a very embarrassed and failed administration, it would be of no consequence. The same body of elected officials that write the rules of what is an exemption in the tax code would not dare reveal the details of how they avoid paying the maximum tax rate for their income level.
Why can’t we get down to an explanation of what the two presidential candidates are going to do for our nation if they are elected and forget the petty childish rhetoric? All it produces is confusion and is a smoke screen that is accomplishing little to inform voters about the differences between the two parties’ programs.
No one seems to realize that almost all wealthy individuals have accountants, lawyers and financial planners handling their assets and those individuals are paid to minimize the overall taxes of the client - just like the wealthy politicians at every level of government. If Mitt Romney paid 13 percent of $10 million, he still paid a lot more in taxes than we can even comprehend.
Politics just gets worse by the week and it is no wonder people are being turned off by what is going on in the presidential campaign. Now that WisconsinRepresentative Paul Ryan has joined the Romney team, we can expect the verbal heat to increase.
And, maybe we should find other sources of entertainment to preserve our sanity.
At this writing we have been blessed to have our attention diverted from the political scene to the Little League World Series being televised by ESPN sports network. It appears that we need to take a lesson in international relationships from the young athletes and the coaches who work with them. At the ages of 11 to 13, they are displaying a degree of sportsmanship and character missing in the realm of world politics and our own presidential election. When the pitcher from Panama hit a batter from Uganda on the arm, he went over to first base to make sure the Ugandan player was not seriously injured and then shook his hand. Our politicians can’t even be civil to each other and blame it on “just politics.” The announcers said that equipment is so scarce in Uganda that baseball gloves are left on the diamond so everyone can use them and apparently no one steals them for their own use. That is a tremendous improvement over the reports of graft and theft reported in so many governments everywhere.
Our household has been watching the Little League World Series as far back as I can remember. My sons were competing in baseball as youngsters and watching became a part of our familyroutine each year. However, never before has the benefit of the game to young men been more evident to me. Winning is still important, but the extra curricular activities are where the values of meeting new people and sharing a common goal are displayed.
With our attempts to bring our view of peace and politics to the rest of the world, I couldn’t help wondering if we need to turn that responsibility over to the youngest generation and use the world of sporting events as a substitute for war and the United Nations - who seem never to agree on anything and get so little accomplished on the international level. Maybe we have too many Harvard - and Oxford - educated world leaders when we really need more leaders trained on the sports fields by coaches who contribute out of love and not for million dollar bonuses. Over 100 countries participate in Little League programs according to their website, www.littleleague.org, and over 2.3 million youngsters play baseball and another 360,000 play softball. That sounds a lot more meaningful for bringing peace to the world than all of our foreign aid efforts.
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Editor’s note: Leo Lynch is an award-winning columnist. He is a native of Benton County has deep roots in northwest Arkansas. He is a retired industrial engineer and former Justice of the Peace. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Opinion, Pages 4 on 08/22/2012