Between 1979 and 2007, the income gap between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the poorest 40 percent more than tripled. Today, the richest 10 percent of Americans control two-thirds of the nation’s wealth, while, according to recently released census data, average Americans saw their real incomes decline by 2.3 percent in 2010. Though our economy grew in 2009 and 2010, 88 percent of the increase in real national income went to corporate profits, one study found. Only 1 percent went to wages and salaries for working people.
That is but one paragraph from a powerful, and well documented, op ed by my acquaintance Sally Kohn in today's Washington Post. The piece is titled President Obama shouldn’t be afraid of a little class warfare. After beginning by reminding us that the President said that it isn't class warfare, but math, Sally writes bluntly
No, Mr. President, this is class warfare — and it’s a war you’d better win. Corporate interests and the rich started it. Right now, they’re winning. Progressives and the middle class must fight back, and the president should be clear whose side he’s on.
Kohn reminds us of the Powell memorandum, the outline of the plan offered in 1971 by future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, that has served as the blueprint for the likes of the Koch Brothers and others. She frames her arguments with statistics that make clear what is happening, not only in the paragraph with which I began, but in that which immediately follows where she points out that at a time when corporate profits and bonuses are at historic highs and growing faster than the revenue which funds them, 1 in 10 Americans in unemployed and 15% are in poverty.
Then Sally offers this:
As a progressive activist who has marched against many wars, I try to avoid militant rhetoric. But only “class warfare” accurately describes a situation in which 400 people control more wealth than the poorest 150 million Americans combined. If “class warfare” isn’t the richest of the rich fighting tooth and nail against unions and any tax increases while record numbers of people lose their homes, what is?
I will return to the words in Kohn's piece anon.
I want to make another point, one I think supported by this op ed.
Too often we abandon rhetoric that should be ours, letting the Right co-opt it. We saw that when the likes of Republican consultant Arthur Finkelstein turned the word "liberal" into an epithet - Democrats seemed afraid of it. It was only then we saw the rise in use of the term Progressive. I AM a progressive, but I am also proudly a liberal, willing to claim the history of that proud term and what it has brought to this nation - Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, the various GI bills, racial justice, the opportunity for those who are different in many ways to participate more openly and fully in American society.
In not having pushed back against Republican use of the term "class warfare" we have given up important ground, an important rhetorically weapon. Rather than being on attack against the depredations being imposed upon the vast majority of Americans, we have been defensive in our argumentation. We have thus lost the rhetorical advantage.
Kohn writes about this. She first offers a frame - the rise of democracy around the world in places we might not have expected it, then points out our response needs to be more than the usual suspects - middle class white anarchists protesting Wall Street (which I note despite a larger size than many Tea Party events failed to draw press notice precisely because it was dismissible as the usual suspects doing a usual kind of action - although I admire those who took on the task, some of whom are also my friends). Then Sally writes the following:
Imagine millions of Americans withholding mortgage payments to banks that refuse to adjust underwater loans. Imagine divestment campaigns to pressure public pension funds and universities to pull their money from the private sector and put it into government bonds. Imagine students staging sit-ins to protest teacher layoffs. Imagine families who have lost their homes squatting in vacant, bank-owned properties. Imagine a nationwide call to arms, as passionately nonviolent but as violently passionate as the pro-democracy movements sweeping the Arab world. After all, according to the CIA, income inequality in the United States is greater than in Yemen.
Some of this is already happening. There are nascent movements to persuade people not to pay mortgages to entities that cannot prove they own the mortgage. That may be part of the reasons some banksters are pushing Congress to legalize the improper handling of mortgages and defaults already done so that they do not face financial ruin - that and the patent illegality of the MERS process represents a major threat to their wealth and financial power.
But there already are disinvestment campaigns underway. In New York State for example, the efforts by New York Communities for Change to persuade communities to end banking relationships with predatory firms like JP Morgan Chase that survived and thrived thanks to federal bailouts but have failed to reform their ways in how they deal with customers are beginning to bear fruit.
Such direct action in the tradition of Gandhi and King that Kohn suggests can be part of the answer to what the vast majority of us confront.
But Kohn goes further and suggest this become the theme of the presidential election next year. After all,
Some people might not be willing to stop paying the mortgage, but they could vote their conscience. The notion that Democrats have abandoned the working class fueled anti-union, pro-tea-party sentiment in the 2010 elections. Yet Republicans have made clear that they would rather cut Social Security and Medicare benefits than raise taxes on the rich or increase spending to help our economy.
We can and should be making this argument, that what the Republicans are advocating is class warfare against most of us on behalf of those who are, as Warren Buffett has pointed lout, already winning the war.
Sally Kohn makes the argument that taking a firm approach which might anger those on Wall Street who in the past have been a major source of the President's financial support is likely to be popular with the American people. After all,
Three out of four Americans support raising taxes on the richest of the rich. Even a majority of Republican voters favor such tax increases. With a once-popular president running for a second term, the Democratic Party must do the right thing. If it can’t now, when will it be able to?
She quotes Bill Clinton at his Global Initiative saying “Whether you can win or not in a fight that’s worth fighting, get caught trying.”
But this IS a fight we can win, if the President, and the other Democrats, are willing to step up.
I recently had an off the record conversation with a high ranking administrative official who acknowledged that rather than focusing on deficit reduction the administration should be taking advantage of historic low interest rates to finance the economic stimulus that would benefit all of us - refinance higher interest debt, as the Fed may now be doing with its "twist." Put people to work rebuilding crumbling infrastructure - dams, bridges, schools - and building new infrastructure - providing high speed internet in rural areas where companies could then locate call centers at costs competitive with placing them overseas. I know there are those in the administration who understand this, from both economic and political perspectives.
No, it is not possible to get such programs through the House. But propose them and fight for them and thus make clear where they stand - and where the administration stands.
Make it a major part of the political discussion.
Fight the election on the grounds of helping Americans who are suffering.
If the economy recovers, the deficits will begin to take care of themselves.
Remember that Kathy Hochul won what should have been a safe Republican district by hammering her opponent with the Ryan budget plan and what it did to Medicare.
Sally Kohn acknowledges that in the past week Obama has, at least rhetorically, begun to become more aggressive:
“If asking a billionaire to pay the same rate as a plumber or a teacher makes me a warrior for the middle class, I wear that charge as a badge of honor,” he said.
Her final words are a reiteration of the fact that this is class warfare, and then a short question, which I will offer by offering the song which it brought to mind, words of the great Pete Singer: