Class Warfare

By Ed Raymond, Staff Writer

Bring It On—Or The Lab Will Blow Up

The only element that will save the United States from the disasters of Rome and other failed states and tribes is the rebirth of the middle class. We are now in a combination of plutocracy, corporatocracy, and fascistic feudalism. Parker J. Palmer, founder of the service organization Center for Courage and Renewal, recently wrote a remarkable paragraph in the prelude to his book “Healing The Heart of Democracy” : “Democracy is a non-stop experiment in the strengths and weaknesses of our political institutions, local communities, and the human heart. The experiment is endless, unless we blow up the lab, and the explosives to do the job are found within us. But so also is the heart’s alchemy that can turn suffering into compassion, conflict into community, and tension into energy for creativity amid democracy’s demands.”

Right now in this country we have too many people ready to light the fuse to the explosive devices in this democratic lab. Ambrose Bierce, author of the “The Devil’s Dictionary” and one of my favorite cynics, reveals one reason in this pungent line: “In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.”  I look at Snow White Michele and the Seven Republican Dwarfs and I cringe in anticipation of their next selfish bomb. But then we must also consider who they are trying to govern. A new poll in South Carolina reveals that fully one-third still believe that President Barack Hussein Obama is a foreign-born Muslim. And these people vote for our leader? But there are tiny glimmers of hope we will succeed in our recovery from greed and ignorance.

I was made proud the other day when my fellow Marines, just one day after the demise of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” tried to recruit new Marines at a gay community center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Gays in evangelical Oklahoma?  My God, what is this country coming to?  All branches of the Armed Forces were invited to the center,  but only the Marine recruiters showed up. Master Sgt. Anthony Henry was a little apprehensive about his first visit with Oklahoma gays because Marine generals had not been in favor of repealing “Don’t Ask.”  He parked his car so he could make a fast getaway! But he may have succeeded in getting some recruits for an all-expenses vacation trip to Parris Island, S.C. for boot camp. I can attest it’s a lovely hideaway.

Will We Let The Corporations And The Current Supreme Court Win?

I think readers would enjoy a new biography of Ambrose Bierce titled “Ambrose Bierce: The Devil’s Dictionary, Tales, And Memoirs.”  Bierce was a real-life Civil War hero, enlisting as a private at the very beginning. He survived the war, going through 15 commendations for bravery under fire. He was at Shiloh, Chickamauga, and Kenneshaw Mountain, some of the bloodiest battles of the war. He was hit in the head by a rebel bullet at the mountain. He said his head “felt like a broken walnut.”  Later he described war as “meaningless and murderous slaughter, devoid of virtue or purpose.”

He emphasized the horrors of war, often over the objections of his editors for being too graphic. He had seen everything, from soldiers with jaws shot off and wild pigs eating the intestines and stomachs of the wounded still alive on the battle field. He was not interested in being “pretty.” He is our Jonathan Swift. He defined religion as “the daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.”  He was also smart enough to call a corporation “An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.”  Corporations and their loyal employees in Congress have now established the United States in 65th place in an international study of income equality in the world. The question now is whether the Republican Party’s yelling of “Class warfare! Class warfare!” in support of the rich they represent will win the day.

Mr. Buffett And His Secretaries

Obama has finally proposed that millionaires and billionaires pay at least the same tax rate as their secretaries and servants. All economists except those employed or bought by the Heritage Foundation, The American Enterprise Institute, the Hoover Foundation, and all the other right wing lobbying groups say the gap between the haves and the have-nots has been exploding for 30 years. It’s way past time to discover whether the damage from this disparity is fatal to our “empire.”  We used to have millions of stable, single-wage households. No more. Now it often takes more than two incomes to sustain a household. We have people with unexamined lives insisting that we still lead the world in the upward mobility of our workers. No more. We are way behind all European nations in upward mobility ratios.

The Republican Supreme Court has now ensured that corporations are actually people so they can give unaccountable millions to their Congressional employees. Now that labor unions have been essentially destroyed by corporations and deep recessions, the incredible shrinking middle class has no lobbyists in the high -rent districts of the capitol. We used to lead the world in the ratio of college graduates to total population. No more. Increasing college costs and double-digit tuition increases for the poor and what is left of the middle class has destroyed the one ingredient in upward mobility that counts—education.

Do The Poor Really Have To Have Dirt Floors And Root Soup?

We even have right-wingers suggesting that our poor aren’t really poor because they may have DVD players, microwaves, cars, and actually eat most of the time. The Heritage Foundation propagandists in recent “ research” (In the Census Bureau results) say the poor don’t have it so bad. The foundation does not mention the thousands living in cars, under bridges, in homeless shelters, and in cardboard boxes. Shall we go back to the Middle Ages to determine who is poor?  Should our poor have dirt floors, no windows, have root soup every day, and eat acorns when they are available? Should they own a cow? Can they poach a rabbit on the owner’s land? Give me a break.

Even Alan Greenspan, the free marketer, the follower of Ayn Rand and John Galt, the architect of our Great Recession on Wall Street because he believed “his” people wouldn’t be so greedy to push subprime mortgages out the back door, was worried about income inequality back in 2005: “This is not the type of thing which a democratic society—-a capitalist democratic society—can really accept without addressing.”

“We’re Broke. We’re Bankrupt—But Banks Don’t Want Your Money!

Republican governors and legislators keep yelling about the country being broke. We’re rolling in dough! Deposits in banks are totaling $10 trillion. Just in the last three months commercial banks have increased their deposits by $429 billion, double the deposits of last year. Banks don’t want your money now. Mike Moebs, a banking consultant in Illinois, says: “Banks and credit unions are doing everything they can to get rid of the cash except make loans.” More than 400 banks have failed since 2008, but many are drowning in cash, paying as little as 0.1% on one-year certificates of deposits

The Bank of New York Mellon is actually charging customers for depositing more than $50 million in its bank! In 2007 banks were paying 5.4 percent on Certificates of Deposit. This year some banks are paying 0.9 percent, translating to 90 cents annually for each deposit of $100. Big deal. Car dealers are pushing middle class consumers to buy cars by taking a three percent loan at their local banks or credit unions. Banks are trying to dump mortgages for less than four percent. There are very few takers. When did anyone pay a gimmick-free three percent on an auto loan?

Here We Go Again—Because No One Gets Rich Own His Own

We have had many class wars before, although we like to believe we live in a classless society. Remember when Andrew Carnegie’s private army killed strikers at his Eastern steel plants? Remember when John D. Rockefeller’s private and public army killed strikers in Colorado? At the end of the 19th century we had nationwide railroad strikes resulting in violent confrontations between labor ad management. Buildings and equipment were blown up by unions. The LA Times building was blown up by a union in an assassination attempt because of the paper’s national anti-union position.

No one gets rich on his own. The rich depend on society for infrastructure, labor, and capital to get rich. The richest man in the country, Bill Gates, even tried to get richer at one point by calling his computer programmers “private contractors” so he wouldn’t have to pay unemployment, Social Security, and other benefits. The tax courts rejected his scam. Bill is currently worth $59 billion and is finally spending some of his money building toilets for the third world. I don’t know whether that means Mississippi and Kentucky. Bill first thought he would reform education by changing curriculum, teacher training, and standardized testing. His naive ideas went into the toilet so he started to build them.

Bill tops the Forbes “400” rich list again this year. He and his fellow 400 increased their net worth by 12 percent in the last year while the net worth of your neighbors did not increase at all. As the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. The last 30 years has been the largest transfer of wealth in the nation’s history. It is ironic that the 400 richest have a combined net worth of $1.53 trillion––about the same amount as our projected deficit.

Additional Signs Of The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire

:: Last week I mentioned that Proctor and Gamble was changing market strategy by excluding the shrinking middle class from their advertising campaigns. The company that brought Ivory, Tide, Bounty, and Gillette to market introduced a new dish soap this week. It’s called Gain and is very cheap so even the poor can buy it.

:: Michael Bloomberg, the $20 billion mayor of New York, is worried about the unemployed rioting in the streets. Last week a thousand picketed Wall Street, the “home of blood-sucking warmongers.” Bloomberg is not considered a worrywort. The Republican Governor of Ohio John Kasich told journalists: “I’m worried about this country. For the first time in my life, I’m worried about this country.” He never said that when he had a program on Fox News.

:: For the first time in history fatal drug overdoses (37,485) killed more people than traffic accidents (36,284) in this country. Are people trying to forget something in their lives? The increase in overdoses by middle- class and middle-aged men and women is rather remarkable. High school kids throw drug parties by bringing prescription drugs from home. They mix them all up in a bowl and then take a handful to digest.

:: A federal study confirms mental illness is on the increase in the U.S. Over 11 million now need treatment for anxiety and depression disorders. Mississippi, the poorest state, has over 13 percent of its adults classified as clinically depressed.

:: The poor and what is left of the middle class are so desperate lottery ticket sales are surging across the U.S.

:: Child abuse cases are increasing as much as 65 percent during this recession. The largest increase is in shaken baby cases.

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