Posted on 02/21/2011 12:24:33 PM PST by YankeeReb
The Republican strategy is to split the vast middle and working class -- pitting unionized workers against non-unionized, public-sector workers against non-public, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don't believe these programs will be there for them, and the poor against the working middle class.
By splitting working America along these lines, Republicans want Americans to believe that we can no longer afford to do what we need to do as a nation. They hope to deflect attention from the increasing share of total income and wealth going to the richest 1 percent while the jobs and wages of everyone else languish.
Republicans would rather no one notice their campaign to shrink the pie even further with additional tax cuts for the rich -- making the Bush tax cuts permanent, further reducing the estate tax, and allowing the wealthy to shift ever more of their income into capital gains taxed at 15 percent.
The strategy has three parts.
The Battle Over the Federal Budget
The first is being played out in the budget battle in Washington. As they raise the alarm over deficit spending and simultaneously squeeze popular middle-class programs, Republicans want the majority of the American public to view it all as a giant zero-sum game among average Americans that some will have to lose.
The president has already fallen into the trap by calling for budget cuts in programs the poor and working class depend on -- assistance with home heating, community services, college loans, and the like.
In the coming showdown over Medicare and Social Security, House budget chair Paul Ryan will push a voucher system for Medicare and a partly-privatized plan for Social Security -- both designed to attract younger middle-class voters.
The Assault on Public Employees
The second part of the Republican strategy is being played out on the state level where public employees are being blamed for state budget crises. Unions didn't cause these budget crises -- state revenues dropped because of the Great Recession -- but Republicans view them as opportunities to gut public employee unions, starting with teachers.
Wisconsin's Republican governor Scott Walker and his GOP legislature are seeking to end almost all union rights for teachers. Ohio's Republican governor John Kasich is pushing a similar plan in Ohio through a Republican-dominated legislature. New Jersey's Republican governor Chris Christie is attempting the same, telling a conservative conference Wednesday, "I'm attacking the leadership of the union because they're greedy, and they're selfish and they're self-interested."
The demonizing of public employees is not only based on the lie that they've caused these budget crises, but it's also premised on a second lie: that public employees earn more than private-sector workers. They don't, when you take account of their education. In fact over the last fifteen years the pay of public-sector workers, including teachers, has dropped relative to private-sector employees with the same level of education -- even including health and retirement benefits. Moreover, most public employees don't have generous pensions. After a career with annual pay averaging less than $45,000, the typical newly-retired public employee receives a pension of $19,000 a year.
Bargaining rights for public employees haven't caused state deficits to explode. Some states that deny their employees bargaining rights, such as Nevada, North Carolina, and Arizona, are running big deficits of over 30 percent of spending. Many states that give employees bargaining rights -- Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Montana -- have small deficits of less than 10 percent.
Republicans would rather go after teachers and other public employees than have us look at the pay of Wall Street traders, private-equity managers, and heads of hedge funds -- many of whom wouldn't have their jobs today were it not for the giant taxpayer-supported bailout, and most of whose lending and investing practices were the proximate cause of the Great Depression to begin with.
Last year, America's top thirteen hedge-fund managers earned an average of $1 billion each. One of them took home $5 billion. Much of their income is taxed as capital gains -- at 15 percent -- due to a tax loophole that Republican members of Congress have steadfastly guarded.
If the earnings of those thirteen hedge-fund managers were taxed as ordinary income, the revenues generated would pay the salaries and benefits of 300,000 teachers. Who is more valuable to our society -- thirteen hedge-fund managers or 300,000 teachers? Let's make the question even simpler. Who is more valuable: One hedge fund manager or one teacher?
The Distortion of the Constitution
The third part of the Republican strategy is being played out in the Supreme Court. It has politicized the Court more than at any time in recent memory.
Last year a majority of the justices determined that corporations have a right under the First Amendment to provide unlimited amounts of money to political candidates. Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission is among the most patently political and legally grotesque decisions of our highest court -- ranking right up there with Bush vs. Gore and Dred Scott.
Among those who voted in the affirmative were Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. Both have become active strategists in the Republican party.
A month ago, for example, Antonin Scalia met in a closed-door session with Michele Bachmann's Tea Party caucus -- something no justice concerned about maintaining the appearance of impartiality would ever have done.
Both Thomas and Scalia have participated in political retreats organized and hosted by multi-billionaire financier Charles Koch, a major contributor to the Tea Party and other conservative organizations, and a crusader for ending all limits on money in politics. (Not incidentally, Thomas's wife is the founder of Liberty Central, a Tea Party organization that has been receiving unlimited corporate contributions due to the Citizens United decision. On his obligatory financial disclosure filings, Thomas has repeatedly failed to list her sources of income over the last twenty years, nor even to include his own four-day retreats courtesy of Charles Koch.)
Some time this year or next, the Supreme Court will be asked to consider whether the nation's new health care law is constitutional. Watch your wallets.
The Strategy as a Whole
These three aspects of the Republican strategy -- a federal budget battle to shrink government, focused on programs the vast middle class depends on; state efforts to undermine public employees, whom the middle class depends on; and a Supreme Court dedicated to bending the Constitution to enlarge and entrench the political power of the wealthy -- fit perfectly together.
They pit average working Americans against one another, distract attention from the almost unprecedented concentration of wealth and power at the top, and conceal Republican plans to further enlarge and entrench that wealth and power.
What is the Democratic strategy to counter this and reclaim America for the rest of us?
Robert Reich.Fmr. Secretary of Labor; Professor at Berkeley; Author, Aftershock: 'The Next Economy and America's Future
I'm not sure of the protocol for posting an email, so apologies in advance if I violated any rules. This was something sent by the IBEW to the membership.
This paragraph really killed me:
Republicans would rather go after teachers and other public employees than have us look at the pay of Wall Street traders, private-equity managers, and heads of hedge funds -- many of whom wouldn't have their jobs today were it not for the giant taxpayer-supported bailout, and most of whose lending and investing practices were the proximate cause of the Great Depression to begin with.
Now wasn't congress controlled by liberal democrats since 2006, and therefore any bailouts to Wall Street were voted in by the left. The lies contained here are too numerous to list, but it shows how the union leadership plays on the ignorance of much of the membership. I'm ashamed to be a member when I see crap like this.
Its hard enough to believe that anyone would actually pay him to be an economics professor, since he appears unable to grasp simple accounting.
To the Left, “the working/middle class” is compromised exclusively of union members and public employees. No one else.
It is always amusing to hear Rat advocates of “identity politics” yap about pitting Americans against each other.
In other words the "looters" versus the "producers"... I think I've read this somewhere before?
The Democrat Party is completely dependent on sustaining a set of massive lies that convince hard working middle class Americans that the Democrat Party is looking out for them. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Democrat Party takes care of special interest groups: Blacks, Illegal immigrants, labor unions, and social misfits. They make criminal arrangements with big business and banks to favor them over their competitors in exchange for money and political support. Middle class America are the big losers in all of this and the people of Wisconsin are figuring this out. The Democrat Party is showing that they cannot tolerate the will of the people when that will stands up against their Communist goals.
I think that unions in the USA find themselves at a critical point. First, with the exception of public employees, union membership is declining. Among skilled craftsmen(women) there is strong job demand and what unions can add to the benefits of those skilled professionals is becoming more marginal.
From my perspective, Unions seem to be able to “help” the most (or at least appear to) for workers with low skills, which is where a lot of union growth is occurring.
In my state, WA, teachers are in bed with the democratic party and unions (and trial lawyers) have been found guilty of getting a political consultant to set up illegal campaign contributions and help run political campaigns against some democratic incumbents who were not “liberal enough” for the union leadership. This level of shamelessness, especially in the teachers and service workers union has lead to some fall out within the democratic party in this state, especially with the Democratic Governor.
I see unions and some democratic politicians as having overplayed their hand and are now being seen by the general public as hurting the “common good.” In such a situation it is not surprising to try to convince people that there is a vast right wing republican conspiracy afoot to split the vast middle and working class. It is spin trying to salvage a failed effort in Wisconsin and elsewhere.
Thanks for the post and keep the power flowing!
Not really. “Labor” Secretaries are generally likely to incline left and towards unions. That is why they want the post in first place...
Reich is simply an extreme example.
Hmmmmm.... how many of these folks donated to Dems ???
So basically the strategy is to point out reality while the dems continue to live in fantasy land..
This is why the nation can not survive as it is. The Left and Right have fundamentally and irreconcilable views on life. Reich and Obama and Sunstein believe we are all Homer Simpsons, and only they can lead us to the Promised Land. And they will enslave us to do it.
Cue Randy Newman . . .
Robert Reich is Paul Krugman without the dapper looks and jovial personality.
The shorter version. They both look like Sadrs.
This garbage was old when Clintoon was president and still is.
People like RR see the “pie” (economy) as something that is of a fixed size and everyone doesn’t get a fair share.
Democrats want to control the size of the pie and how much everyone gets.
Conservatives want to have a smaller government and a bigger share of a bigger pie for everyone that’s willing to work for it.
Note how Democrats constantly refer to “Class.” The use of the term indicates that party’s current Marxist roots. Instead of thinking can we afford to continue to pay without harming all, they immediately turn to class war rhetoric.
Actually, Robert Reich is Paul Krugman's mini-me.
Regards,
TS
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