A Marxist IQ for the Inaugal by Norman Markowitz
With Pesident Obama’s second inaugural coming and the Republicans up to their tired old tricks, I thought this week’s Marxist IQ should be directed to the inaugural, starting with a memory of second inaugurals past.
1.. Franklin Roosevelt second inaugural contained
a. a call for consensus on the deficit
b. a statement, “read my lips; no new taxes”
c. a call for further policies to aid the “third of a nation, ill housed, ill clothed, and ill fed.”
d. a call to join Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in their Anti-Comintern Pact to fight the “spread of Communism and Soviet influenced.”
2. The debt ceiling was
a. established in the Constitution when it was ratified at the end of the 1780s
b. established by conservative coalition politicians to block further New Deal social legislation in 1939
c. established to restrict military spending after the Korean War in the 1950s
4. established by Republicans during the George W. Bush administration in 2003
3. Historians make the point that the right to bear arms in the Constitution
a. was written in a pre industrial society where fire arms fired one shot, were difficult to reload, had limited range and were often inaccurate
b. was written in a pre industrial society where most people had no access to firearms since they could not afford what gunsmiths charged for them and/or lived in rural areas far from gunsmiths.
c.was written in response to arbitrary British colonial policy disarming the duly constituted militias of elected colonial legislatures
d. all of the above
4. With the exception of the United States, the countries with the lowest level of income taxes have
a. the highest and most equal distribution of income
b. the lowest and least equal distribution of income
c. the highest levesl of industrialization
d. the most advanced systems of education
5. The present economic policies of the Republican party would make complete sense if
a. the entire population of the U.S. could relocate to another planet
b. Ronald Reagan could return as President
c. Milton Friedman could return as Chair of the Federal Reserve
d. Dick Cheney could return as CEO of Halliburton
Answers to last week's !Q
1.c
2.d
3. d
4.b
5.a
