The 100 Percent Red-Hot Issue

Over the years, members of my extended family have been the subject of news stories because they happened to be in the right place at the right time.

One time, two of my sisters and one brother made the paper because they got married on the same day — but in two states. Another sister spent most of her working life in the U.S. Navy, at times acting as a military spokesperson.

This week, Kevin Eder, who happens to be my son-in-law and whose parents live in Canton, was featured in a CNN Money report for a campaign he devised in response to the Occupy Wall Street (and other places) protests.

Occupy activists say they are members of the "99 percent," a reference to being among the majority of people who are not wealthy; Occupiers are mad at the CEOs of the world (particularly bailed out and bonused bankers) for hogging all the money.

Kevin works in Washington D.C. Part of his job is using what he learned while earning dual degrees, in economics and political science, to send political messages on a bustling Twitter account (he currently has more than 11,000 followers and 100,000 Tweets).

A 53-47 split

Shortly after the Occupy demonstrations launched, he launched #iamthe53, which was picked up by a conservative website, www.redstate.org. The campaign is going viral and it caught the attention of the CNN Money folks.

If you guessed #iamthe53 is short for being among the estimated 53 percent of Americans who pay taxes and have jobs, you'd be right. (The figure is according to the non-partisan Washington think tank known as the Tax Policy Center.)

Kevin has suggested that those in the 53 percent pretty much wouldn't go anywhere near an Occupy demonstration. I don't necessarily agree, but believe it bears discussion.

After posting a link about Kevin's influence on this political debate on Canton Patch's Facebook page, readers responded in force. Here's a sample of what they wrote:

Poco Kernsmith disputed the 53 percent figure, writing, "The percentage paying 'no taxes' is almost zero."

The blame game

Sommer Foster defended the 47 percent, writing "Did they write the tax code? Are they irresponsible even though they pay state taxes, property taxes, gas taxes, sales tax, and a dozen other taxes? What about the corporations who used the tax code to their advantage and paid 0% (or pretty close to it) in corporate taxes...I'm sure the 53% will rail against them for being irresponsible and not paying their fair share, or wait, that would be a reasonable argument so of course they are not in favor of it!"

Joy Flood added (in part), "I always say, you have no idea what other people are going through. Maybe that person lost his home after a layoff. Maybe they or a loved one are bankrupt after dealing with illnesses. Maybe that other person isn't perfect like you are and made a stupid mistake that landed him in this position. Maybe that person USED to be able to afford a home & children until he lost his job, and now he's desperate. You have no idea why that person needs help ..."

The CNN Money story included a photo of a man (not Kevin) holding a sign that said he and his wife were poor, but went back to school, prompting Robert Carr to ask "...how exactly did he go back to school if he was in poverty? Maybe government hand-out student loans with low interest rates, perhaps?"

What the world owes us

College professor Andrew Urbaczewski thanked his parents "for teaching me that the world and this country owes me nothing, and my father for leaving his communist homeland at 15 with $2 in his pocket and coming here and making something of himself. If he sat in a park and protested (Vietnam back then or bankers today) he would have been worse off than he was back in communist Poland ... this lesson about the world owes you nothing comes on the first day of every semester. I am a 53%er, and (to Poco Kernsmith) that's 47% of tax units, not people, who pay no income tax."

His comment prompted Joy Flood to add, "...No one is born knowing how to maneuver successfully through life, such skills must be taught, and some people need to be taught. I hate seeing how cold and unfeeling my country has become in my lifetime. "I've got mine, now screw you, go figure it out for yourself" is today's mantra. How sad that is."

A 3 percent miss?

Getting the last word (at least on that thread), Tony Daughtrey wrote, "When Robber Baron Jay Gould hired strikebreakers to suppress working Americans, he said, 'I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half.' Missed it by 3%. And today's class-traitors do it without pay."

I tend to believe what Abraham Lincoln once said on the campaign trail, though one would have to recognize that the government of which he spoke actually meant the American people and might substitute the 99 and 1 percenters for his references to those who were then slaves and those who were free:

"A house divided against itself cannot stand," he said, quoting the Bible and Mark 3:25, then embellishing. "I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South."

The real question

Instead of asking what "percent" describes you as a taxpayer or pointing fingers at the other percents, I'd like to know: What will bring this fracturing country together again?