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| AMWW#122: HEY! YOU! GET OFFA MY CLASS!
by Abe Munder, the Wheeled Wonder
(AbeMunder@aol.com)
Even in the land of free speech and honey, we do have our limits.
Here in the USA, where you might hear the F-word on any given street,
and gunfire on some of the others; where belly buttons and boobies sell
everything from cars to colas; where you can burn the flag or wear it
as a bikini; here in America the only real swear word is C-L-A-S-S.
In America, where you can say anything, you cannot discuss class.
Abe, Abe, come on now, buddy! What's with the C-word! And in public,
no less?
It's true. Probably because so much of the American mythos is about
upward mobility. Even those who come out losers, still aspire to be
rich, identify with the rich. "Dallas" and "Dynasty" were more than
tacky evening soaps, and even a minimum-wage earner is on a first-name
basis with Donald Trump, and willing to overlook the world's most
obnoxious comb-over. (Lord save a shoe salesman who came to work with
that animal on his head.) No, when you speak about class--sorry, I
mean "bling"--the mob breaks out its pitch forks and torches.
It's a strange prohibition. Breathe that word, and you are somehow
aiming below the belt. Burning savory meats to Baal, or worse, to
Marx. As if classes do not exist in America.
But I think the word's gained currency, now that we're facing natural
calamities. Pledged money is rushing to flood the Gulf Coast once
again, to the tune of $200 billion. It's going to cost what it costs,
is the stated policy. A blank check. Whatever gets the job done.
Get the job done we must. Only it's difficult to imagine how we'll
afford it.
Whether we're in a position to absorb hurricane recovery now is a good
question. The balance sheet says we are waging war across two oceans
at the same time that we cut taxes. Not one round of targeted tax cuts
to spur economic investment, but several. History tells us that's
mixing the wrong two bottles in the chemistry set.
Lyndon B. Johnson ran the economy under by waging an open-ended foreign
war simultaneously with the War on Poverty. It created inflation,
leading to the stagflation of the 1970s. Remember that fun-fair? Half
the steel jobs in my town disappeared, poof, like some David
Copperfield publicity stunt. I recall a Time magazine cover of a
runaway train hurtling downhill toward certain wreckage, and the
caption "Is Capitalism Working?" There was actual doubt. Oh yeah,
plus high oil prices, because East Texas cowboys don't know from no
conservation no how.
George W. Bush is also waging an open-ended foreign war simultaneously
with successive waves of tax cuts. Pushing the same dusty red buttons.
By noting this, I'm not making a partisan argument, but one for good
government. This is addition and subtraction, Second Grade math.
Responsibility is nonpartisan.
Particularly I'm calling out reckless spending, which again is
nonpartisan.
Johnson was a Democrat with a Democratic Congress, and raised
discretionary spending (not counting Social Security) by 33.4 percent,
adjusted for inflation.
Bush is a Republican with a Republican Congress, and not counting the
new $1 trillion (that's with a T-R) Medicare drug program, raised
discretionary spending by 35.1 percent (conservative writer Andrew
Sullivan's figures). And we have yet to spend the trillions (there's
that T-R again) to shore up Social Security and Medicare as the massive
Baby Boom generation retires.
This is dangerous, warn several economists. Paul Volcker, the former
Federal Reserve chief who engineered growth in the Reagan years and
most recently headed the commission blasting the U.N. oil-for-food
fiasco, expects a major financial crisis within five years. A dire
pronouncement from a man who understands the value of optimism in our
economy.
Soon the bill will come due, like it did in the 1990s when the
government shut down and people bellyached for five years about a
dismal job market. Who will be asked to make the sacrifice when it's
time to balance the books?
Among the first will be those who rely on Medicaid. They are the
disabled and disadvantaged, whose numbers have grown in the past few
years. Why will they get stuck with the tab? Because they have no
voice and fly under the political radar. If it weren't for the TV
stations lately, they would be utterly invisible. Politicians don't
hear from them, don't get contributions from them, and so guess who's
going to pull the short straw?
Those least able will bear this economic fallout. That's 37 million
poor, the Census Bureau says, and 17.8 percent of America's children.
Not the people who most benefit from the economy or the tax cuts, who
will contribute little to the bailout. This, too, while the government
heaps out billions in pork-barrel spending through this summer's
highway and energy bills; while House Majority Whip Tom DeLay last week
declared "there is no fat left to cut in the federal budget."
Translation: no non-Medicaid spending left to cut. You can bank on
that, if on nothing else lately.
In devastated Mississippi, Governor Haley Barbour has been itching to
ax Medicaid for years, before Katrina was a breeze in Mother Nature's
eye. Last year, it took a judge to stop Barbour from cutting the rolls
by 65,000--presumably welfare mothers, but also thousands of poor
retirees, infirm and disabled who are nowhere near jobs. At any rate,
these are folks who live by splitting nickels, but Barbour's determined
to squeeze every single nickel from this rock. When the media glare
moves back to Washington, he'll get back squeezing.
So, when these public money-bingers chide us about class warfare, I
will rise to that bait. I realize that tax cuts fuel growth. To date,
there have been $1.4 billion of them, a vast majority of which were
pocketed by the upper echelon. You may argue that this privileged one
percent powers the economy. OK, and here comes the part when all good
citizens pony up. That's what you do in a crisis--and we have one on
our hands. We have grown out of recession, and now it's time for
everyone to mind the store again, to pull together to accomplish the
big things before us.
Let the investors keep their profits--that is part of what we decided
in November. But the repeal of a single measure, the cut in the estate
tax, which benefits only the richest 1.2 percent, would free up $290
billion to fund the fight in Iraq, plus rebuild two of our heritage
cities. That leaves 1.1 trillion little goodies on the table to enjoy.
That's not class warfare: each person rises in the same ship, and each
person does a bit of bailing.
Yet the president insists no new taxes be levied. Nobody sacrifices,
except the poor, the disabled and the families of the soldiers.
That, my friends, is classist.
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