WICHITA, Kan. - Kevin Hall's recent article (Politics and public opinion aside, Americans are under-taxed) fails to emphasize the main thinking point for American taxpayers.

It is not that we are over-taxed or under-taxed. It is that the disparity between 94% of the taxpayers and the upper 6% is growing wildly. Conservatives from Tea-Partiers to Republicans to conservative Democrats have ignored that principal for almost a decade; in fact, they are doing their best to increase the disproportion in the distribution of wealth.

At this time, 51% of Americans do not pay any federal income taxes. Everyone should be pleased. Right? The percentage tax rate though for the uppermost taxpayers has dropped from a high rate of 34% to about 24% and the Republicans have sworn to give the wealthy more.

The wealthiest corporations are running record profits. Exxon made another 11 million dollar profit while the gas prices are going up supposedly in response to the Libyan crisis. However, Republicans are screaming that entitlements are to blame for the increasing deficits.

So let's (they say) gouge the heck out of programs for the poor and middle class.

WICHITA, Kan. - The Pakistan army ordered a cut in U.S. military personnel within its borders on Thursday. This move by the Pakistani government seemed to be in reaction to the unilateral American commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Fine! Let's get all 257 of our United States troops out of Pakistan.

Then, let's take away the 2 billion in annual taxpayer funded foreign aid (or maybe only 1.7 billion, who's keeping track). According to Reuters, Pakistan is paying $900,000 to a Washington public relations firm to push Pakistan's defense of the bin Laden story - that none of their army, their police, their much vaunted ISI intelligence service had any idea that the huge installed-in-2005 luxurious facility nested in the suburb of Islamabad was hiding the most wanted man in the world. Even though Bin Laden's hideout was just 'down the street' from Pakistan's West Point.

Now, Pakistan's titular president has run off to France leaving the military in charge of the country.

WICHITA, Kan. - And now where do we go after writing down our voting reminder for 2012. Let's see. Obama for President and no insulting conservatives for any office, anywhere.

President Obama had the courtesy to call former Presidents Bush and Clinton before the public announcement was made. President Obama gave credit to the American military and intelligence services for a job very well done. He credited Leon Panetta for taking the job of getting Bin Laden and pursuing it until it was done.

But have any Republicans given his administration anything but the tiniest bit of credit? They have been grudging in their respect. The American public must remember that in November 2012.

Editor's Note: This is the 4th column written by this author for her series, "Decreasing the Deficit." The first three include: The Truth Behind Entitlements, The Defense Budget, and, Earmarks, Pork and the Golden Fleecing of America.

WICHITA, Kan. - Listen, my children, and you shall hear about what really constitutes a fair taxation system. To be simplistic, it is a system that involves taxing those whose income is larger than they need to provide for themselves and those for whom they legally are bound to provide. Such a system leaves those who live under the poverty standard untaxed allowing them to get on their feet financially, at which time they too would enter the tax rolls.

In the United States today, in fact since about 1986, the disparity between middle and upper income earners has grown. Today the middle income is being crushed into the poverty level. Anyone who tells you differently is lying to you and if you accept their untruths, you, gullible American that you are, are accepting the blarney they are trying to cram down your throat.

WICHITA, Kan. - Politico's Simmi Aujla reported in December that Hal Rogers (R-KY) was elected to chair the powerful House Appropriations Committee. Rogers has been named the Prince of Pork for his co-opting millions of taxpayer dollars for his own district's projects. In total Rogers has taken U S taxpayers in the amount of $246 million in earmarks over the past two years. One of Rogers' earmarks passed millions in our money to a reservation in Namibia for the preservation of cheetahs for whom his daughter works.

In January Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) castigated President Obama for pledging to veto any earmarks that came across his desk as part of another bill. Reid waved a small copy of the Constitution and declared, "I'm going to fight as hard as I can against President Obama on these earmarks."

That was after Reid decided to abandon a 1,924-page catchall spending measure laced with home state pet projects, or earmarks.

WASHINGTON - When Gen and President Dwight D Eisenhower warned America in his presidential farewell address against the military industrial complex, he was far seeing. And we, the taxpayers of the United States weren't listening and didn't pay attention. We have let the growth of the Defense, the Pentagon Budget lose all perspective in importance. Projects are being put forward, billions spent and wasted on military programs that have no hope of success, and, indeed, are not even wanted. Here are a few.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) told The Huffington Post. "NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization - a relic of the Cold War) is a great drain on our treasury and serves no strategic purpose." Lawrence J. Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who has argued that the defense budget can be cut without harming military readiness, said Frank's idea has merit. "Barney Frank has a good point," said Korb. "We ought to rethink the whole idea of NATO." Korb continues, "The FY 2010 defense budget was $533.8 billion -- excluding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you add those in, it comes out to a whopping $663.8 billion, which is "more than the combined defense expenditures of the next 17 countries." He estimates that approximately 20 percent of the baseline defense budget is NATO-related, resulting in about $100 billion in spending each year.

WICHITA, Kan. - Today is the first day of the week that President Obama and the Republican House are to go at it, as my father used to say, hammer and tongs on the budget and the deficit.

Obama is proposing a budget of 3.7 trillion dollars, a budget that he claims will reduce the deficit 1.1 trillion in the next decade. Of course, Speaker of the House Boehner immediately stated that that 1.1 trillion-deficit reduction was not enough. What both of them, in fact most of our elected representatives and senators, ignore completely are the entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare. They don't want to talk about those benefits paid for over a lifetime of work by 94.7% of the American population.

That is a simple problem to solve, depending on whether the conservatives are willing to solve it despite having to listen to the screaming and gnashing of teeth (pardon the cliché) from the bank and Wall Street executives drawing obscenely monstrous bonuses and the Kochs, et al at the very top of the income tower.

WICHITA, Kan. - Here are some of the good, the worse and the worst reasons, or excuses, for our occupation of Afghanistan.

"This will not end well," George Will, the conservative columnist wrote early on after we lapped our war in Iraq over into Afghanistan. As political predictions go, it was right on. As a matter of fact, it is not even close to ending. Despite President Obama's promises hopes and commitments, Secretary of Defense Gates this week sent in 1400 more troops.

I cringe when I see another announcement of an American soldier, sailor or Marine killed over there or another man from the supporting NATO countries who has died. I always remember the Wartime Prayer found in Eleanor Roosevelt's papers: "Dear Lord, lest I continue my complacent way, help me to remember that somewhere, somehow out there, a man (or woman) died for me today. As long as there be war, I then must ask and answer, 'Am I worth dying for?'"

WICHITA, Kan. - Every American should read this article, especially those of us who are losing faith and becoming impatient. Two friends sent this on to me, Lynn Stephans and Mary Cole and I am grateful for their activism. Please take the time to read Canadian William Thomas' column.

WICHITA, Kan. - Today's US Senate agenda holds a pair of votes, one on a proposal to extend all expiring Bush era tax cuts on individuals with incomes of less than $200,000 a year and married couples making less than $250,000; the other to renew them for all tax filers with incomes of less than $1 million. These are practical bills in light of the current deficit worries of some. They would tax the rich and keep some extra money in the pockets of the poor and middle class. But Americans who like to make bets on such matters succeeding or not would be wise to bet against passage of either option.

Led by Sen. McConnell, their arrogant minority leader in the Senate, Republicans plan to circumvent sanity and prevent passage of both bills to further the interests of the super rich individuals and corporations such as the Koch brothers. As if the pockets of the super rich needed even more bounty in their pockets and treasure chests.

Americans cannot possibly be thinking about what they read and hear.