"My friends, this election is about much more than who gets what. It is about who we are. It is about what we believe. It is about what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself." - Pat Buchanan 1992
I couldn't have said it any better myself. Pat Buchanan was right, we are in a war for the soul of America but it isn't being fought in the entertainment media or the human rights arena. No, this war is being waged on the streets of America by millions of reality based workers struggling to survive. It is a war between "enterpreneurial" leeches and the defenseless.
The unemployed face a job market decimated by outsourcing and factory relocation to foreign countries. Adding to the problem of finding a new job is the profound change in the way hiring proceeds in the U S. Many, if not most, of the larger employers are now hiring via temporary employment agencies. This allows employers to "drive before they buy" and on the face of it, seems rather benign. However, many of these employers use this procedure to create a kind of swinging door employment. The temps are employed until the deadline for mandated permanent status is near and then they are dismissed. After a short lapse, these same temps are rehired for another temporary stint. This allows employers to evade pay increases and benefits because the workforce is all temporary but even this egregious practice pales in comparison to the rise of employment agencies for day workers. It is hard to imagine the soul of a person eager to get his cut from the meager wages of people desperate for work even if on a day to day basis but these agencies exist.
Another hallmark of this "culture" war is the blossoming of legal loan sharking. It is almost impossible now to drive through any commercial strip without being bombarded by business signs for pawnshops, checking account loans or car title loans. This is the one true growth area in an economy that has shipped a huge quantity of its employment base overseas. With the downward pressure on wages created by the oversupply of labor, many Americans find themselves turning to these operators out of desperation and ignorance. A less well known method of parasitic manipulation of the disadvantaged has evolved from the legitimization of credit scoring. If a borrower cannot not meet the threshold score for the sought after financing, he is then offered loans that are at less favorable terms. This is known as "B" or "C" paper or sub-prime lending. It does not take a financial genius to understand that lower scores mean higher rates of return and there is no oversight to stop abuse. A more recent development in piling on is the new banking rules enacted by Congress that eliminate float time on checks and allow the banks to quit sending cancelled checks to the customer. If a copy of the check is needed by the customer, he will have to pay for it. The banks estimate billions of dollars in increased overdraft fees caused by the lack of float time so the least among us will get dumped on disproportionately by this congressional payback.
The third measurement of this "culture" war is our tolerance of homelessness. Funding for public housing has been largely replaced by Section 8 or rental vouchers. These programs function in a way that produces the worst of all outcomes. There are enough dollars in these programs to underpin high rental rates but not nearly enough dollars to serve those in need. Except for the unpredictability of financial fallout created by loans secured by inflated real estate values, it might be better for the homeless, if the government got totally out of the business of rent subsidy so that rents would come in line with demand. But of course, we never cut income for the ownership class in this country. We just like to make it look like the money is serving the poor.
The fourth and final measurement (in this discussion) of the war for America's soul is our healthcare crisis. I am being generous here but maybe most Americans do not understand what it means to be uninsured. For them, I offer this anecdote:
A good friend of mine's mother worked for a drugstore in a small town for most of her life. She didn't make very much but she did have benefits. The drugstore was sold to a chain that promptly fired all employees. She was rehired at a lower wage and with no benefits. She developed breast cancer. Without insurance, she could not afford appropriate treatment. She did not qualify for Medicaid and since her condition was chronic not acute, the hospital emergency room was not obligated to admit and treat her. She was only admitted to the hospital when she was dying.
I don't know if we don't understand that lack of health insurance means that if you get seriously ill, you will die or we just choose to ignore that unpleasant information. All I do know is that the accusation of class warfare notwithstanding, the Democrats need to come home and defend the little guys who are getting run over by this winner take all culture. These are the moral values that deserve our attention.