Politics

Metella Porcia is my old handle on a now-defunct social website called AncientSites that I belonged to ten or so years ago .  It allowed people with an interest in ancient civilizations (well, at least some of us had an interest in them) to meet online and discuss our interests, play online games, and-- well, essentially it was similar to Facebook .  I chose the handle I did as a sort of joke-- the Metelli and the Porcii (Portii--the family name was off of a list and whoever chose that one misspelled it) were two of the most hidebound conservative families in late Republican Rome.

 My own political inclinations are pretty far to the left: I think one of the main functions of a good government is taking care of those who most need protection, and that those include the poor, the victimized, the sick, the young and the old.  Although I strongly believe military spending is vital for the protection of a country, I do not believe that spending several times as much money as any other country in the world on the military is likely to do anything other than encourage military adventures abroad.  I also think that continuing to throw money at the very rich has very little effect on job creation, at least job creation in the United States, and I don't believe continued refusal on the part of the Republicans to consider restoring tax levels to pre-2001 levels for the very wealthy will make the fiscal crisis any better.  I do think that continuing to disassemble the social safety net will eventually lead to societal instability and unrest, and that defaulting on our government's loans will cause the economy to collapse completely.  I wonder if people like Ryan and McConnell have thought at all about what they might be creating.

I think that how our country taxes needs to be more equitable, with corporations and the very wealthy paying a greater share, and perhaps --just possibly!-- tax credits being tied to job creation in the United States!  I think also that we should cut back on military spending, and use the savings to fund programs that help more of the lesser privileged people in this country: programs like WIC, more money for education--including grants (less emphasis on loans!) for higher education, retraining for jobs, and healthcare for all (yes, I do mean single payer!).  Right now we have a privileged upper class that is doing very well indeed, while the majority of people in this country are not as well off as they were thirty years ago.  I find this a frighteningly unstable situation, and I think we need to get it fixed.