The GOP Made the Theft of the Nation's Wealth Perfectly Legal at the Expense of America's Working Class: A BF Series

BuzzFlash Editor's Note: With great reluctance, BuzzFlash had to cancel the September 27th conference in Philadelphia focusing on why progressives should embrace issues of importance to the working class -- and why the two groups should find much common ground. The registration was just too low to justify continuing on with the groundbreaking day of investigating "The GOP War on the Working Class." If you want to know what we had planned, you can listen to this interview with me, Mark Karlin, Editor of BuzzFlash.com, with Bob Kincaid of Head-on Radio, about what we had in store: https://www.yousendit.com/download/bVlBUGhkdENuSlJFQlE9PQ.

But out of disappointment sometimes comes a renewed commitment. And BuzzFlash decided that it would turn the now-canceled conference into an online series on the GOP War on the Working Class, and the needs of America's eroding Middle Class. If you are a daily BuzzFlash reader, you will notice that we have begun posting more stories on this topic, and we are beginning an original content series on the issue. We will carry on this campaign online, and ask you not to pass up articles on the working class, like the one below, but to commit yourself to reading them and taking action to put working and middle class needs at the top of your progressive agenda.

Mark Karlin, Editor and Publisher, BuzzFlash.com

PART ONE OF A BUZZFLASH SERIES ON THE REPUBLICAN WAR ON THE WORKING CLASS
by Meg White

Although few have noticed, there is a crisis in working class America.

It doesn't help that this crisis comes in the midst of the housing crisis and the catastrophe known as the War on Terror. But the crisis of the working class strikes at the very heart of America, and the disappearing middle class requires the attention of progressives and Democrats around the nation.

I'm guilty of ignoring the problem myself. For example, I honestly can't tell you how many times I've walked past the members of Unite Here Local 1 holding signs in front of the Congress Hotel on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, absorbed in my own troubles, not bothering to wonder why they've been on strike for longer than anyone else in the country.

However, just because I'm not a union member doesn't mean I don't appreciate, and in some ways benefit from, the efforts of organized labor. And the struggles in which organizers engage are similar whether they work within the progressive political movement or the labor movement. Notions of elitism should not blind us to our similar needs and values.

The numbers tell a shocking story. The U.S. economy hasn't been this unequal since just before the Great Depression. Since President George W. Bush took power, the median income of working-age American families fell by more than $2,000. The number of people applying for food stamps hit a record high earlier this year. U.S. industries ship out jobs while sheltering themselves from paying taxes overseas thanks to permissive laws.

But it's not just laws. Private industry union membership has dwindled from a high of 35 percent to just more than seven. Alongside that development, the bargaining power of the American worker has also diminished. Yet productivity keeps going up; so who benefits?

Whenever progressive politicians try to show how Republicans are beating down the working class with their attitudes and policies, right wing pundits and players accuse them of trying to wage a class war. Using that logic, however, Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, along with his regressive economic policies, amount to a class war waged on behalf of the moneyed elite.

A recent study shows that there is growing support among white-collar professionals and other non-organized workers for the continued existence of strong unions. But politicians too often don't get the memo when it comes to taking concepts like "labor" and "union" off the dirty word list. Too many Democrats on Capitol Hill cower when the Republicans accuse them of fomenting a "class war" when they defend the right to organize.

The Republicans started their party's convention on Labor Day. They pay lip service to working men and women without saying the dreaded word "labor." They take poorly understood pending legislation like the Employee Free Choice Act and try to turn the issue around by lying in ad campaigns and make Democrats look like they're anti-union (we'll have more on Republicans demonizing unions and the Employee Free Choice Act later in this series on the working class).

In fact, the nonpartisan Annenberg Center's FactCheck.org calls McCain's ad attacking Obama's fiscal policy as anti-working class "another stitch in what we've called his pattern of deceit on Obama's tax plan." In their research they found that Obama's plan would save working families more than $1,000 a year, while McCain would save the same family only $325.

The Democrats' bona fides with the working class don't stop at taxes and the Employee Free Choice Act. It's also clear that liberals have the working class in mind when it comes to healthcare, job training, job safety and the Equal Pay Act, among other issues.

A good deal of the problem has centered around the notoriously bad marketing strategies of the Democrats over the past few election cycles. Some don't know where Democrats (or Republicans, for that matter) stand on labor issues. Republicans often oversimplify and hype "free trade," but it is an exceedingly esoteric issue, and injecting it in black-and-white terms into platforms and political discussions does little to foster understanding.

And that doesn't take into consideration the fights among liberals. A fiscal argument within the Democratic Party has been raging since 2006, when Congressional elections swung in their favor. Some on the left have been calling for a reexamination of Rubinomics, a policy named after former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. This neo-liberal policy was dominant in the prosperous era of the Clinton Administration, championing free trade and a lower budget deficit. But there are serious questions as to its continued applicability in an age of stagnant wages, the Bush deficit, and lost jobs. Along with Rubin himself, who is now an executive at Citibank, those advocating the continuation of Rubinomics are entrenched in the upper echelon of the financial sector. Ultimately, the neo-liberal economic policies of the last three decades are driven by Wall Stree.

At the heart of this question is where economic policy should originate: Wall Street or Main Street? McCain tries to be the guy next door, but he's clearly not a neighbor to any "average American family," unless average means an annual income of $5 million.

Obama did march with Unite Here Local 1 on Michigan Avenue before going off to serve in Washington. When he left Chicago, he told them that if they were still striking when he came back, he would stand with them again. And four years later, he did.

Still, concerns remain over whether Obama's financial advisors might tilt him back toward the neo-liberal economic consensus of an economy dictated by the interests of the corporations and financiers.

For too long, the Democratic leadership and progressives alike have largely allowed the right wing to roll over the working class, and that needs to stop now. As we have noted at BuzzFlash, whenever the Republicans hear a hint of a Democrat asking for economic justice, the GOP shouts that Democrats are fomenting class warfare, and the Democrats usually back down. But, of course, the GOP has been inciting class warfare for decades by diverting many working class voters with wedge issues and then picking their pockets.

If a Democrat calls for economic redistribution, the Republicans him or her of advocating "socialism." But the Republicans have been redistributing the economy to the wealthy, with a rapid acceleration since 1980. The primary goal of the GOP is economic redistribution, but to a privileged small percentage of the American population. It's not "socialism"; it's just basic theft of the nation's wealth from an eroding middle and working class to an oligarchy. And they have, as David Cay Johnston notes, made larceny "perfectly legal."

This election, there is a lot at stake, for both the working class and progressives alike, and it's time each side started paying attention to the other. As your online source for progressive news, BuzzFlash supports Obama for president, but also supports dialogue among progressives all over this country about the "Republican War on the Working Class," so that America can get the leadership it needs and deserves.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

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