Class Warfare - It's a SNAP

Class Warfare is jargon that was originally associated with Das Kapital, Karl Marx’s epic analysis of economic history.  In it, he identified players – lords, serfs, bourgeoisie, proletarians, capitalists and others in a seemingly endless cycle (actually – his  cycle ended at Communism) of destruction and reformation, as humankind’s primitive responses evolved toward perfection. 

Marx had ideas that stuck.  Though the ideas are quaint or discredited today, their stamp is indelible and their power remains through the words they left behind.  Class warfare is the idea of eternal conflict between haves and have-nots.   In our current folklore, Marx has nothing meaningful to say and any argument can be debased if one can characterize it as being tainted  - somehow - by such monstrous thoughtcrime as exampled by ideas of Socialism or Class Warfare.

Interestingly, while wealthy President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was constructing the New Deal, he was accused by the small, privileged – er – class of holders of great inherited wealth as being a “traitor to his class.”  Ever since then, whenever a voice calls for what amounts to progressive taxation – having the rich pay more – these same critics accuse the maker of invoking Class Warfare, trying to drive a wedge artificially between parts of the actually harmoniously unified whole of American society.

Recently  billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg lambasted opponent mayoral candidate, Bill de Blasio for running a “class-warfare and racist” campaign.  President Obama is frequently accused of raising up class warfare to promote his agenda as in this September 17 article in Forbes:

The President claims that income inequality is fraying our social fabric.  In truth, it is government policies, especially our economic policies, which are tearing us apart.  One such culprit is our federal income tax system, which in some sense pits the portion of society that doesn’t pay income taxes against those that do.

…  In recent years, that division has become more and more public and is encouraged by this President’s class warfare and his phony talk about income inequality. 

The House just passed the Nutrition Reform and Work Opportunity Act of 2013. It still has to go to the Senate.  It proposes to slash $39 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps.  As reported by NEA:

Millions of Americans ... would go hungry without this program, nearly half of whom are children. It would also undermine the enrollment of low-income children in school meal programs, and 210,000 children would lose access to nutritious meals at school.

“Class Warfare”, by the rich against the most vulnerable sector of the society, in this case is an understatement.  This is the nuclear option used against a tribe armed with wooden spoons.  Food stamp recipients are 45% children, 20% disabled and 7.5% elderly (72.5% totaled).

Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan are the primary architects of the bill.  Cantor says the bill is about fairness:

“And we’re going to bring a bill forward … that actually says about food stamps, we want the people who need those food stamp benefits to get them. But you know what? It’s an issue of fairness. If they are able- bodied people who can work, they ought to do that in order to receive a government benefit. That’s the proposal we are bringing forward.”

In this case a label of Class Warfare is a little too academic and bland.  If you want to use a more closely congruent literary allusion in your language, slaughter of the lambs would be better.

Lies, Damned Lies and Suppressioin

How about this one:  Voter ID laws are meant to address rampant voter fraud; so are laws to restrict polling hours and early voting.  Conveniently, this lie was exposed by the perps themselves when the 2012 elections were barely over.  Former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer admitted that the voter fraud line was, in his words, “a marketing ploy”. The real goal was Republican victory by limiting access to early voters and others who overwhelmingly vote Democratic.  This assessment was corroborated by ex-Governor Charlie Crist.

Here’s another one:  Laws to curb unions from collecting union dues through paycheck deductions are just addressing a  straightforward civil rights and fairness issue.  If we can believe Grover Norquist, the so-called “paycheck protection” strategy may have started as early as 1998:  "This all started with a group of three guys in California. …  My contribution has been to take it nationwide …”

The three guys and their backer ran a pro-voucher conservative Christian group and they were frustrated by the power of  the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers to defeat their political initiatives.

There seems to be a preponderance of  mainstream opinion that the civil rights/fairness claim for “paycheck protection” is cynical and fraudulent.   A federal judge recently struck down Arizona laws on “paycheck protection” and restricting the right to picket, saying such laws were unconstitutional.  In a January 7, 2012 editorial, the New York Times described the eagerness for Republican administrations to use “model bills” engineered by ALEC:

Many Republican leaders are adopting model legislation proposed by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a national corporate-financed conservative organization that is also assisting the Republican push to require voter identification cards to suppress the vote of minorities, young people and other constituencies that tend to favor the Democratic Party.

There is little doubt that politics is also behind the Republicans’ push for right-to-work laws: they see an opportunity to further weaken unions, which are far more likely to support Democrats — as well as health care reform and a higher minimum wage — by slashing their funding and their donating power.

The Oregonian and Jill Gibson Odell both promote the fairness/worker choice rationale for limiting the power of unions to collect dues.  The Oregonian’s stance is lamentable and spurious.  Odell is the author of Initiative Petition 9 – the most threatening of the “right to work” initiatives that may end up on the ballot in 2014.  The Oregonian reports: 

 What is currently known as Initiative Petition 9 wasn't motivated by anti-union sentiment, insists Odell, who once served as legislative director for Oregon House Republicans. It is, rather, "a civil rights issue."

Facing Down Corporate Power in Boulder

Thanks to my sister-in-law, Donna, for posting this wonderful story to facebook.  I guess it’s wonderful because it’s kind of inspiring to read of a successful response to exploitation and bullying by corporate power.  The story is about how the Boulder, Colorado community discovered that they could go green and lower their utility bills despite the extraordinary pushback from the monopoly electrical utility. 

But it is also a powerful case in point.  Money can buy power because, not only can it buy political access, it can (often) buy public opinion as well. There is a point made in this video that is a deeply held article of faith by every experienced activist:  The 99-percenters will never be able to match the spending of the corporations, their CEOs or their major stockholders – spending on lobbyists, pollsters, consultants and super pacs.  The only hope everbody-else has against that kind of power is numbers.  People have to get on the phone, collect signatures, use cheap social media, and stand in the heat or rain in spite of concerted efforts to keep them from voting.

The other demonstration certainly bears endless repeating:  Corporations are not people.  They are tools.  They are controlled by boards and major stockholders and their first duty – by the terms of their charter – is to their stockholders:  not to their customers and not to their employees.   It is a happy coincidence when the needs of the many match the needs and proclivities of a large corporation.  This mechanical, relentless efficiency toward a very narrow end (enriching the stockholders) makes corporations potentially very dangerous.  They must be taxed enough to cover the resources they exploit – including, for example, their employees who need to be healthy and educated, or the environmental degradation that needs to be rehabilitated.  They need to be regulated because the drive to profit is indifferent to considerations of collateral damage.

The most insidious threat to the public from corporate power – more so than threats to health and safety – is the concentration of money.  That is the same thing as a concentration of power.  Strength in numbers can overwhelm such power but only with vigilance, knowledge and supreme effort.  The bad news is that the rich are getting richer.

Yogi Berra Said It Best

I read an email from Governor John Kitzhaber to his supporters.  It was an appeal for you to sign a petition.  As a signer you would declare that you were “in for schools”.  Your message to your legislators would be,

It’s time to get real about what our kids need to have a chance at successful lives. To do that, we have to put education ahead of politics. Let’s stand together in support of a reasonable proposal to improve school funding.

I have a bad feeling about this.  It is summed up best by giants far more eloquent than I.  Mark Twain said, "No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.”  Yogi Berra said, "It's deja vu all over again."

In June, Governor Kitzhaber and the Oregonian petulantly thumped State Senator Chris Edwards for voting with the Republicans to defeat a potential “grand bargain.”  Edwards contended that the “fix” would not restore the schools in his district.  This was a reasonable criticism since the touted goal was to gain more funding for schools.  A big source of the funding would be through “savings” from PERS (Public Employee Retirement System).  “Savings” in this context means pension benefit cuts to present and future public employee retirees.

Having dodged a bullet in June, many may have reason to be a little gun shy at the prospect of another shot at a “grand bargain” between the Governor and the Republicans in the state legislature.  PERS members are trying desperately to scrape the target off their back.

The state of Oregon is starved for revenue.  The only ones who disagree with that would be the Grover Norquist true-believers who would shrink government to the size where you could “drown it in a bathtub”. 

What are legitimate and likely sources for revenue?  Wait, first assume that you want “to put education ahead of politics” and that you want to “stand together in support of a reasonable proposal to improve school funding.”  So on these terms, further cuts to schools must be off the table as a revenue source.  There are other things that the state spends money on that could be cannibalized for funds:  prisons, human services including nutrition and public health, public safety, salaries or work days of state workers, pensions of state workers, etc.  There are federal sources – like grants, O & C payments, SNAP (food stamp) benefits; unfortunately, many of these are under threat, most immediately by the Sequester.

Cuts are – or at least they were back in June - an essential part of the big compromise, the so-called “grand bargain” to get everyone on the same page about state revenue and spending. So the easiest target, whichever that may be, is certainly in line for cuts to square the circle of this “grand bargain.”  

Governor Kitzhaber reminds us that “new revenue” (taxes) is another possible source of replenishment for state revenue.  This could include closing tax loopholes to corporations to restore lost revenue from those giveaways.  It might include eliminating preferential tax policies available only to the wealthy – an example of this in state and federal taxation is a reduced rate on capital gains. 

More actively it could be raising corporate tax rates to support the schools so they could provide the workplace skills that the business community says they miss in their new-applicant pool.  It could mean restructuring the full range of tax sources so that the system is truly progressive in its aggregate effect. It could mean raising taxes on those who can afford to pay them.

“New revenue sources” has an encouraging ring to it.  I’d like to see it.  All I'm seeing are cuts, more cuts and the victimization of the many to cut the tax bill of the few.

Krugman on Labor Day

Paul Krugman's Sunday New York Times article provides an up-to-the-minute, laser-focused reflection on the meaning of Labor Day in 2013.  It is provided here in full.

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September 1, 2013

Love for Labor Lost

By PAUL KRUGMAN

It wasn’t always about the hot dogs. Originally, believe it or not, Labor Day actually had something to do with showing respect for labor.

Here’s how it happened: In 1894 Pullman workers, facing wage cuts in the wake of a financial crisis, went on strike — and Grover Cleveland deployed 12,000 soldiers to break the union. He succeeded, but using armed force to protect the interests of property was so blatant that even the Gilded Age was shocked. So Congress, in a lame attempt at appeasement, unanimously passed legislation symbolically honoring the nation’s workers.

It’s all hard to imagine now. Not the bit about financial crisis and wage cuts — that’s going on all around us. Not the bit about the state serving the interests of the wealthy — look at who got bailed out, and who didn’t, after our latter-day version of the Panic of 1893. No, what’s unimaginable now is that Congress would unanimously offer even an empty gesture of support for workers’ dignity. For the fact is that many of today’s politicians can’t even bring themselves to fake respect for ordinary working Americans.

Consider, for example, how Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, marked Labor Day last year: with a Twitter post declaring “Today, we celebrate those who have taken a risk, worked hard, built a business and earned their own success.” Yep, he saw Labor Day as an occasion to honor business owners.

More broadly, consider the ever-widening definition of those whom conservatives consider parasites. Time was when their ire was directed at bums on welfare. But even at the program’s peak, the number of Americans on “welfare” — Aid to Families With Dependent Children — never exceeded about 5 percent of the population. And that program’s far less generous successor, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, reaches less than 2 percent of Americans.

Yet even as the number of Americans on what we used to consider welfare has declined, the number of citizens the right considers “takers” rather than “makers” — people of whom Mitt Romney complained, “I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives” — has exploded, to encompass almost half the population. And the great majority of this newly defined army of moochers consists of working families that don’t pay income taxes but do pay payroll taxes (most of the rest are elderly).

How can someone who works for a living be considered the moral equivalent of a bum on welfare? Well, part of the answer is that many people on the right engage in word games: they talk about how someone doesn’t pay income taxes, and hope that their listeners fail to notice the word “income” and forget about all the other taxes lower-income working Americans pay.

But it is also true that modern America, while it has pretty much eliminated traditional welfare, does have other programs designed to help the less well-off — notably the earned-income tax credit, food stamps and Medicaid. The majority of these programs’ beneficiaries are either children, the elderly or working adults — this is true by definition for the tax credit, which only supplements earned income, and turns out in practice to be true of the other programs. So if you consider someone who works hard trying to make ends meet, but also gets some help from the government, a “taker,” you’re going to have contempt for a very large number of American workers and their families.

Oh, and just wait until Obamacare kicks in, and millions more working Americans start receiving subsidies to help them purchase health insurance.

You might ask why we should provide any aid to working Americans — after all, they aren’t completely destitute. But the fact is that economic inequality has soared over the past few decades, and while a handful of people have stratospheric incomes, a far larger number of Americans find that no matter how hard they work, they can’t afford the basics of a middle-class existence — health insurance in particular, but even putting food on the table can be a problem. Saying that they can use some help shouldn’t make us think any less of them, and it certainly shouldn’t reduce the respect we grant to anyone who works hard and plays by the rules.

But obviously that’s not the way everyone sees it. In particular, there are evidently a lot of wealthy people in America who consider anyone who isn’t wealthy a loser — an attitude that has clearly gotten stronger as the gap between the 1 percent and everyone else has widened. And such people have a lot of friends in Washington.

So, this time around will we be hearing anything from Mr. Cantor and his colleagues suggesting that they actually do respect people who work for a living? Maybe. But the one thing we’ll know for sure is that they don’t mean it.