[NYTr] Class War Still Means Just One Thing: The Rich Attacking the Poor

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Ed Pearl - Sep 4, 2007

[Should be required reading for every member of congress. -Ed]

Guardian/UK - Sep 3, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2161252,00.html


In the US, Class War Still Means Just One Thing: 
The Rich Attacking the Poor 

by Gary Younge

In July the Florida Republican state representative Bob
Allen was caught offering to pay a black undercover cop
$20 so that he could perform oral sex on him in a park.
Allen's defence? Blow jobs and cash are to black males
what kryptonite is to Superman - the only known means
of depleting their superhuman strength. "There was a
pretty stocky black guy," he explained to the arresting
officer. "And there was nothing but other black guys
around in the park." Fearing he "was about to be a
statistic", he claimed he would have said anything just
to get away. Allen had indeed become a statistic - yet
another desperate conservative politician mangling
logic to explain his hypocrisy.

Last week it was the turn of the Idaho senator Larry
Craig, who in June was caught propositioning an
undercover officer in the toilets of Minneapolis
airport. Two months later he pleaded guilty to
disorderly conduct without consulting his lawyer. Then
Craig, who finally resigned over the weekend, claimed
that he framed himself. "I was trying to handle this
matter myself quickly and expeditiously," he explained.
"In hindsight, I should not have pled guilty." If he's
telling the truth now he's a perjurer; if he was
telling the truth then, he's a gay man who legislates
against gay people.

There are moments when things really are the way they
seem and facts really do speak for themselves. Bad as
the facts may appear, attempting to rationalise them
only makes matters worse. Trying to convince people
otherwise only insults their intelligence.

So it would have seemed last Tuesday when the US census
bureau revealed its latest findings on income, poverty
and health. The report showed that since George Bush
came to power the poverty rate had risen by 9%, the
number of people without health insurance had risen by
12%, and real median household income had remained
stagnant. On the second anniversary of Hurricane
Katrina we learned the racial disparity in income and
the gap between rich and poor show no sign of abating.

Bush declared himself "pleased" with the results, even
if the uninsured presented "a challenge". He pointed
out that over the past year poverty had declined
(albeit by a fraction, and from the previous high he
had presided over) and median household income had
increased (albeit by a fraction and primarily because
more people were working longer hours). Maybe he
thought Americans would not realise that five years
into a "recovery" their wages were stagnant, their
homes were being repossessed at a rate not seen since
the Depression, and their pension funds were on a
roller coaster.

Having beckoned ordinary Americans with the lure of
cheap credit and stock market gains, the invisible hand
of the market has now grabbed them by the scruff of the
neck and is shaking them mercilessly.

Iraq has, quite rightly, dominated the national
conversation and will dominate Bush's legacy. But that
doesn't mean it will necessarily be the chief concern
for voters choosing their next president. In this week
that officially kicks off the presidential primary
season, sexual scandal is not the only issue to remind
us of the Clinton era. In 1991 Clinton's chief
strategist pinned a note on the wall of his campaign
headquarters to remind the team of its core message:
"the economy, stupid".

A similar focus may once again be necessary, although
translating that maxim into votes is not
straightforward. Paradoxically, the states with the
highest levels of poverty and lowest incomes are
staunchly Republican. Poor people tend not to vote, and
candidates tend neither to appeal nor refer to them.
However, economically they are a glaring and shameful
fact of American life; socially and culturally they
dominate the centre of almost every moral panic - but
politically they do not exist.

None the less, in recent years the conditions
associated with poverty have spread far beyond the
poor. Almost two-thirds of those who lost their health
insurance last year earn $75,000 or more. Homeowners
are also not so easy to write off, not least because
those hardest hit happen to be in politically sensitive
areas. Of the 10 states that have suffered the most
from foreclosures, six - Nevada, Colorado, Arizona,
Florida, Ohio and Michigan - are swing states.

Among the viable Democratic contenders, John Edwards
has embraced the economic agenda most forcefully. In
his stump speech he calls for reversing Bush's tax cuts
for those earning more than $200,000 a year, cutting
poverty by a third in 10 years and eliminating it
altogether in 30. Having announced his candidacy from
New Orleans he has walked many a picket line in recent
months and tells crowds: "The organised labour movement
is the greatest anti-poverty movement in American
history." With the brooding resentment at growing
insecurity now reaching a critical point, Obama and
Hillary are also shifting their focus.

Sadly it is unlikely this resentment will gain much in
the way of political expression beyond populist
rhetoric. The notions of personal reinvention and
economic meritocracy that lie at the heart of the
American dream are far more powerful and enduring than
the kind of class consciousness necessary to redress
the imbalance between rich and poor. Inequality of
wealth in the US has long been justified on the grounds
that there is equality of opportunity. The trouble is
that while inequalities have grown dramatically over
the past 20 years, equality of opportunity has been all
but eroded.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, in 1989
American CEOs earned 71 times more than the average
worker - today, by most calculations, it is up to
around 270 times. Meanwhile, social mobility has slowed
to a level below that in most of Europe, including
Britain.

Most Americans identify themselves as "middle class" -
but in the middle of what is not clear. Anything that
would identify working people as a group with a
collective set of interests that are different from and
at times antagonistic to the interests of corporations
has pretty much been erased from public discourse.
People will refer to "blue collar workers", "working
families", "the poor", the "working poor". But the
working class simply does not exist.

None the less, class does play a role. It is most often
used by the right to cast liberals as cultural
"elites". The price of Edwards's haircut, John Kerry's
windsurfing, Al Gore's earth tones - all are exploited
as illustrations of the effete mannerisms of those who
claim to speak for the common man and woman. Class is
not elevated to politics but reduced to performance:
that is how the fact that Bush has made so little of
his elite upbringing has become an asset.

The conservative columnist Cal Thomas said of Edwards:
"His populist jargon is nothing but class warfare." If
only. Long ago the wealthy declared war on the poor in
this country. The poor have yet to fight back.

In October 2000, Bush quipped to a group of wealthy
diners: "What an impressive crowd: the haves, and the
have-mores. Some people call you the elite; I call you
my base." If only the have-nots had such a determined
and confident advocate.

(c) 2007 The Guardian