The Real Class War

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Average pre-tax incomes in 2006 jumped by about $60,000 (5.8 percent) for the top 1 percent of households, but just $430 (1.4 percent) for the bottom 90 percent, after adjusting for inflation, according to a new update in the groundbreaking series on income inequality by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Their analysis of newly released IRS data shows that in 2006, the shares of the nation’s income flowing to the top 1 percent and top 0.1 percent of households were higher than in any year since 1928.

Average Income in 2006 up $60,000 for Top 1 Percent of Households, Just $430 for Bottom 90 Percent. Chye-Ching Huang and Chad Stone, Center for Budget and Policy Priorities

I was watching Fox News on Saturday, after Senator Obama’s vice-presidential announcement, and William Crystal, that weird rolly-polly gnome of the right, called Senator Biden the perfect candidate to start the class war. They mean, of course, that Biden is pro-union and pro-women, generally speaking, and can start hammering away at McCain’s “welfare for the rich” economic programs.

It’s classic right-wing rhetorical Judo, as Huang and Stone’s work shows. You take the truth– that there’s been a radical shift of wealth from the poor, working, and middle-classes to the rich– and you insist on the opposite. If you repeat it often enough, it starts to sound like the truth. The farther you get from the actual truth, you more you need to exaggerate. Thus, “The Audacity of Socialism.”

Posted in: Economics, Online Places, Union, War, Writing

All We Are Saying, Is Give Hope a Chance

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Roosevelt had called for a “New Deal for the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic heap” in a direct appeal to the working class and the poor that few if any major party candidates had ever made. He already had a record as Governor of New York supporting pro labor and pro social welfare policies, even though those policies had only been enacted in a very limited way. New forces, progressive and largely independent political forces ,were already rallying around him.

I would say the same thing today about Senator Barack Obama. He has a solid record as a progressive in both the Illinois State Legislature and the US Senate. His campaign has mobilized independent non party progressive forces in a way unprecedented excepting the mobilization of non party forces of the religious right behind the Republicans, since the McGovern campaign of 1972 (and his chances of victory today and infinitely stronger than McGovern’s then). Those who are attacking him from the left because of his inconsistencies and lack of specific policies are ignoring both what American politics is and what he is and can become.

Hopefully, McCain and his party will go down to the crushing defeat that the Bush administration and the congressional GOP has richly earned in this coming watershed election. If we are successful in making that happen, an Obama administration will be in a position to address both the present crisis and begin to reverse the disastrous policies of a generation. If we don’t succeed, 1932 on an even grander scale will very likely be the shape of things to come.

Political Affairs Magazine – Bush, Herbert Hoover, and Memories of the Great Depression.Norman Markowitz

Markowitz reminds me that my worries about Obama, particularly his “liberal-as-conservative” centrist rhetoric, has one major ambiguity: events on the ground. It’s not certain, in other words, that the policies of an Obama presidency will be as timid as those of the candidate.

Maybe we are all hoping for some sort of magic, one moment evoking one or more Kennedys, the next F.D.R. Only time will tell, of course. But I think FDR might be the better precedent, particularly if the economy continues to tank. McCain is certainly Hoover like in his love of the powers-that-be.

Even if the economy is just all dull and listless, as it has been recently, but not Depressed, the idea is still sound. If both House and Senate are Democratic, for example, we can fight for a single-payer plan; they could substance to any green building program.

I don’t why Obama would stop laws to make organizing easier; we can keep his feet to the fire about the war on the one hand, and the bases in Iraq, on the other. I certainly would rather have a Democratic administration in the case of another Rita or Katrina. So maybe hope really is an option.

Posted in: Economics, Union, War, Writing

Fool Me Once, Shame on You, Fool Me Twice…

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We have seen, for example, that after nearly thirty years of bipartisan government-bashing, even in the wake of massive catastrophes like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the notion of public obligation to provide for the citizenry’s well-being is steadily being wiped out of public consciousness. (And, by the way, those precocious NGO engineers are energetically instrumental in doing a lot of the wiping.) And it’s crucially important for those who identify with the left to recognize that there is no designated moment at which the crisis becomes intolerable and “the People” either “wake up” or “rise.” That is simply not the way politics works. Absent concerted, organized intervention, it could go on indefinitely, with all kinds of inventive scapegoating available to stigmatize the previous rounds of losers and provide desperate reassurances to the next. And that would be a political situation and social order likely to grow ever uglier and more dangerous.

blackagendareport.com –Where Obamaism Seems to be Going, Adolph Reed, Jr.

Obama has seemed to me, from the very start, as a Liberal’s Liberal. At one level he’s inspiring, if for no other reason than the fact that he’s an African American man seemingly doing the impossible. I’ll vote for he for that reason alone.

On the other hand, he’s gone from vague to right-of-center faster than anyone would have predicted. One reading might suggest that he tried to look progressive to beat Senator Clinton, and is not trying to look like Senator Clinton in order to beat Senator McCain.

That seems logical to me and it makes me angry. I think this is what I hear in Reed’s rant against fake progressive politics. What we don’t know, yet, is just how deep Obamma’s pragmatism runs or in what vein. I just don’t believe he’s an empty opportunist, although he is clearly ambitious.

Phil Ochs saw this sort of opportunism in the Liberals who opposed the war only in so far and it could get them elected. They were certainly responsible for keeping the Vietnam War alive years longer than public sentiment and common sense would dictate.

On the other hand, I won’t believe he has truly progressive intentions until, say, he get’s elected and changes his mind in favor of a single-payer plan. I won’t believe his progressive intentions until he outlines an true green jobs program. The list could go on forever.

The point is that I will vote for Obama, even if I suspect that he’s more liberal than left, because I think it’s less risky than voting for McCain/Bush. McCain is never going to shut down those bases in Iraq, no matter what public sentiment says; he’ll Hoover away as the economy goes down in flames.

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HNN Poll: 61% of Historians Rate the Bush Presidency Worst

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“It would be difficult to identify a President who, facing major international and domestic crises, has failed in both as clearly as President Bush,” concluded one respondent. “His domestic policies,” another noted, “have had the cumulative effect of shoring up a semi-permanent aristocracy of capital that dwarfs the aristocracy of land against which the founding fathers rebelled; of encouraging a mindless retreat from science and rationalism; and of crippling the nation’s economic base.”

HNN Poll: 61% of Historians Rate the Bush Presidency Worst, Robert S. McElvaine, April 1, 2008

This is old news by internet standards, but I am fascinated as much by the argument– which is specific and detailed and, finally, persuasive– as by the comments. The article is worth reading because it suggests the outlines of how reason might be returned to the public debate over politics.

I included the above comment from one of the surveyed historians because it neatly summarizes the criteria that underlies the assessment. An effective president should mute if not nullify capital, encourage rationality and scientific inquiry, and build the economic base.

I did not check all of the comments, but I doubt there is anyone willing to argue that the Bush administration fought for labor, nurtured the growth of knowledge, and created a thriving economy. At best, the argument is that he “did what he had to do” to fight terrorism.

The comments are interesting because the arguments against the survey’s conclusions reflect exactly the distorted political culture cultivated by the Bush administration. The goal of the anti-survey comments, in other words, is to shift the argument away from the criteria and towards the historians.

Ironically, these arguments reflect exactly the worst sort of bad-faith partisan arguments that the right wing so often attributes to academia. I think this “duck the issue” rhetoric is the best indication that the historians are on the right track. I doubt Bush will look any better in 50 years.

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