Tax the Rich: Minnesota's Governor Teaches Scott Walker A Lesson

DAN DIMAGGIO FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

According to Governor Walker and his Koch-backed counterparts in other states, their efforts to do away with most collective bargaining rights in the public sector and force public workers to pay more for their healthcare and pensions are a simple matter of arithmetic.

But across the border from Wisconsin in Minnesota, Democratic Governor Mark Dayton has proposed an alternative idea: Raise taxes on the rich to help close the budget gap. Dayton's budget plan would increase taxes to 10.95 percent on Minnesota families earning over $150,000 a year (or single adults earning more than $85,000). He would also add an additional 3 percent surtax on the superrich - those earning more than $500,000 - for the next 3 years.

Even raising taxes on the rich to these levels would only cut Minnesota's budget deficit in half, and Dayton has also proposed cutting the state workforce by 6 percent and removing 7,200 childless adults from Minnesota Care, moves that should be fought by progressives. Nevertheless, Dayton's "Tax the Rich" plan shows that there is nothing inevitable about the limited option of breaking public unions proposed by Scott Walker and some other GOP governors.

If a similar tax hike on the rich were proposed in Wisconsin, it would raise $600 million, far more than the savings to be had from Walker's assault on public workers.

As one would expect, Dayton's plan has met with opposition from the Republicans who control Minnesota's legislature. "This is a feeble and pathetic attempt at going back in time to raise taxes and increase spending," said Kurt Zellers, Minnesota's Republican House Speaker.

How ironic when the right-wing criticizes others for wanting to "go back in time," given that their entire political premise is based on attempting to turn back the clock on all progressive reforms. The Koch brothers, for example, seem to have a particular hatred for the expansion of government inaugurated by the New Deal, which led to reforms like the right to form a union and Social Security insurance.

Glenn Beck's venom is aimed even further back, at the Progressive Era, when journalistic muckrakers and radical political movements were able to push for greater health and safety regulations, the income tax, and other reforms. For Beck, this path led, inexplicably, straight to Hitler.

According to Tea Party activists and others on the right, they are just harkening back to the vision of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, standing up for individual liberty in the face of government tyranny. Never mind that perhaps the biggest concern of many early American leaders was the negative effects of concentrated wealth on liberty and democracy.

In reality, the efforts of Gov. Walker, the Koch brothers, Beck, and others are aimed at taking us back to the 19th century era of the Robber Barons. The Kochs, who the Center for Public Integrity's Charles Lewis likened to "the Standard Oil of our times," are shrewder (and richer) than railroad magnate Jay Gould, who famously remarked, "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half." But their divide-and-conquer strategy of pitting private-sector workers against the public sector reveals a similar spirit. And just to make sure that we understand the comparison, Indiana's Deputy Attorney General tweeted a helpful call for the police to "use live ammo" on protesters in Wisconsin's Capitol Building.

Unfortunately, the attempts to go back in time by the Koch brothers and right wing, while pathetic, are far from "feeble." The forces arrayed against working people in the US and globally have been strengthened enormously over the past three decades thanks to the concerted political efforts of big business, along with increased global competition for profits. The Democratic Party has largely gone along with this process, seeking to position itself as the more far-sighted and responsible party of 21st century capitalism, against the more rapacious and narrow-minded Republicans.

Proposals like Dayton's to raise taxes on the rich thus face a fairly inhospitable political climate. His proposal is unlikely to pass on its own, and that will likely mean that even more cuts affecting working people and the poor will have to be proposed in Minnesota as well. But, no matter the outcome of their struggle, Wisconsinites have reminded us of the power of popular protest to fight for economic justice.

If we want to see budget deficits dealt with through raising taxes the rich rather than hammering the poor and working class, that will mean hitting the streets. The Koch brothers know this. Jane Mayer quotes one of the Kochs' closest allies, Matt Kibbe, president of the Tea Party group Freedom Works, in her New Yorker expose of the billionaire brothers: "We read the same literature Obama did about nonviolent revolutions - Saul Alinsky, Gandhi, Martin Luther King. We studied the idea of the Boston Tea Party as an example of nonviolent social change. We learned we needed boots on the ground to sell ideas, not candidates."

Fortunately, this weekend will also witness the birth of US Uncut, spawned from its British counterpart, which will seek to organize direct actions against some of the biggest tax dodgers. With any luck, this group, along with the protesters in Wisconsin, Ohio, and beyond, can help change the debate and show that there's nothing inevitable about making public workers - or any workers - pay for this economic crisis that was created by the rich.