Scrooge & Marley, Inc. -- The True Conservative Agenda

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http://www.lyingsocialistweasels.com/scroogeandmarley.htm

 

June 21, 2004

 

 

Scrooge & Marley, Inc. -- The True Conservative Agenda

by Thom Hartmann

 

" That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not

to the few or the rich alone. "

--Thomas Jefferson to Horatio Gates, 1798.

 

There is nothing " normal " about a nation having a

middle class, even though it is vital to the survival

of democracy.

 

As twenty-three years of conservative economic

policies have now shown millions of un- and

underemployed Americans, what's " normal " in a " free

and unfettered " economy is the rapid evolution of a

small but fabulously wealthy ownership class, and a

large but poor working class. In the entire history of

civilization, outside of a small mercantilist class

and the very few skilled tradesmen who'd managed to

organize in guilds (the earliest unions) like the

ancient Masons, the middle class was an aberration.

 

If a nation wants a middle class, it must define it,

desire it, and work to both create and keep it.

 

This is because a middle class is the creation of

government participation (conservatives call it

" interference " ) in the marketplace, by determining the

rules of the game of business and of taxation, and by

providing free public education to all. And it wasn't

until 1776, when Thomas Jefferson replaced John

Locke's right to " life, liberty and property " with

" life liberty, and the pursuit of happiness " that the

idea of a large class of working people having the

ability to " pursue happiness " - the middle class - was

even seriously considered as a cornerstone obligation

of government.

 

(That was also the first time in history that

" happiness " had ever appeared in any nation's

formative documents. As Jefferson wrote in 1817 to Dr.

John Manners, " The evidence of this natural right,

like that of our right to life, liberty, the use of

our faculties, the pursuit of happiness is not left to

the feeble and sophistical investigations of reason,

but is impressed on the sense of every man. " )

 

Thomas Jefferson laid out in an 1816 letter to Samuel

Kerchival what today would be a blistering attack on

the conservative/corporate war on labor and Bush's

union-busting planned privatization of over 700,000

government positions.

 

" Those seeking profits, " Jefferson wrote, " were they

given total freedom, would not be the ones to trust to

keep government pure and our rights secure. Indeed, it

has always been those seeking wealth who were the

source of corruption in government. No other

depositories of power have ever yet been found, which

did not end in converting to their own profit the

earnings of those committed to their charge. "

 

He added: " I am not among those who fear the people.

They, and not the rich, are our dependence for

continued freedom. ... We must make our election

between economy and liberty, or profusion and

servitude. ... [Otherwise], as the people of England

are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen

hours in the twenty-four, ... and the sixteenth being

insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they

now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to

think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account;

but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves

to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow

sufferers. "

 

A totally " free " market where corporations reign

supreme, just like the oppressive governments of old,

Jefferson said could transform America " ...until the

bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons

of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for

sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the bellum

omnium in omnia, which some philosophers observing to

be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the

natural, instead of the abusive state of man. "

 

As Jefferson realized, with no government

" interference " by setting the rules of the game of

business and fair taxation, there will be no middle

class.

 

Although this may come as a sudden realization to

many, we've really known it all our lives.

 

For example, every year, millions of Americans revisit

Charles Dickens " A Christmas Carol " about Ebenezer

Scrooge and Bob (and Tiny Tim) Cratchit. Yet somehow

Americans fail to realize the subtext of the story

(and so many of Dickens' other works). That subtext is

that the middle class is not a normal thing: exploited

workers are the norm. In fact, in the

six-thousand-year history of the " civilized " world, a

middle class emerging in any nation has been such a

rarity as to be historically invisible.

 

As Dickens pointed out, Cratchit lived the typical

life of that day's English working poor. He couldn't

afford medical care for Tim, dooming his son to death

or a lifetime of deformity. He had no idea where his

Christmas dinner may come from, let along how to get

gifts for his children, and always lived on the edge

of the terror of unemployment and homelessness.

Although he had a full-time job at Scrooge & Marley,

Inc., he was so desperately anxious to keep his job

that he worked weekends and evenings and put up with

years of daily abuse from his employer.

 

This demonstrates the true liberal/conservative

divide. Conservatives believe what business does is

business's business, and government should keep its

nose out of it, even when it leads to centuries of

Tiny Tims and terrified-of-job-loss employees. As the

Wall Street Journal noted in 1997, Alan Greenspan sees

one of his main jobs as being to maintain a high

enough level of " worker insecurity " that employees

won't demand pay raises and benefits increases, thus

provoking " wage inflation. " ( " CEO inflation " is fine

with the cons.)

 

Liberals, on the other hand, to the notions

of the founder of today's Democratic Party -- Thomas

Jefferson -- that if the government doesn't actively

participate in regulating how the game of business is

played, the middle class (what in Jefferson's day were

the " yeomanry " ) would vanish.

 

The United States has had two great periods of what we

today call a middle class. The first was from the

1700s to the mid-1800s, and was fueled by virtually

free land for settlers. People owned the means of

their production (their farms), could sell their

surplus, and had time to be among (as deTocqueville

pointed out) the most well-educated, politically

active " non-aristocrats " in the world.

 

As big business grew in the 1800s after the Civil War,

the farm-based middle class collapsed, in large part

because the early progenitors of companies like

today's Cargill or ADM came to control the sale and

distribution of farm produce. Middle class farmers

rose up, created the Grange movement as part of their

own way of competing with the big ag companies, and --

seeing that their " representative government " was

being taken over by the largest corporate interests --

launched the Populist and Progressive movements.

 

Step one was to limit the size of corporations to

limit their power -- thus the Sherman Anti-Trust Act

of 1881 (still law, but unenforced for all practical

purposes since Reagan.)

 

Step two was to take Teddy Roosevelt's advice that,

" We must drive the special interests out of politics.

The citizens of the United States must effectively

control the mighty commercial forces which they have

themselves called into being. There can be no

effective control of corporations while their

political activity remains. " Progressives pushed hard,

and in 1907 a law was passed (still on the books)

making it illegal for corporations to give money to

politicians. It needs to be expanded.

 

The last parts of the progressive agenda included a

direct election of the U.S. Senate (Senators had been

pointed by political machines in the states) so the

progressives may get more democracy and

representation, and the hope that when women voted

(besides it being the morally right thing) they may

help break up the old boy's club of big business.

(These goals were achieved in 1913 and 1920.) And,

even in the face of corporate violence that often

escalated to murder, Americans struggled to bring

together the budding union movement.

 

But the middle class of the farmers never really again

recovered their middle class status in America

(although there are dying pockets of it still about,

supported by Willie Nelson, Farm Aid, and other

groups), and the Gilded age saw a very Dickens-like

America -- a small group of very wealthy business and

land owners and a very large class of desperately poor

workers.

 

It took the leadership of FDR for government to again

take a hand in creating a middle class, this time via

industrialized labor instead of land (times change,

and we'd taken about all the land we could from the

Native Americans).

 

The Wagner Act of 1935 guaranteed Americans the right

to form a union and bargain collectively with their

corporate employers. Combined with the later G.I. Bill

that sent millions of young men and women to college

and technical schools in the late 1940s and early

1950s, not only did America recover its prosperity,

but a second great middle class began forming. A

middle class that wouldn't have existed without

" government interference " in the game of big business.

 

(Some say WWII was the stimulus out of the depression,

and it was an economic stimulus from which many, like

the Bush family benefited [even to the extent of

helping out Hitler], but the real events of the 1930s

and 1940s that set the stage for a second American

Middle Class were primarily the Wagner Act, the G.I.

Bill, and tax changes ranging from raising the top

rate on the most rich to 90 percent to offering an

emerging middle class home interest tax deductions.

Spending money on weapons that serve no useful purpose

after they're used doesn't stimulate an economy the

way building roads, bridges, houses, or domestic

consumer industries, which " keep on giving, " does.)

 

And to stimulate that domestic economy, we instituted

progressive taxation, which gave workers more to

spend, thus stimulating demand for more goods and

services.

 

Progressive taxation has a long history: As Jefferson

said in a 1785 letter to James Madison, " Another means

of silently lessening the inequality of property is to

exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to

tax the higher portions of property in geometrical

progression as they rise. "

 

But the conservatives -- who since the days when John

Adams called working people " the rabble " and Alexander

Hamilton suggested they should play no (or only a

token) role in government -- fought back. A true

middle class represented a threat to the aristocrats

and pseudo-aristocrats of America's conservatives.

They may have to give up some of their power, and some

of the higher end of their wealth may even be

" redistributed " - horror of horrors - for schools,

parks, libraries, and other things that support a

healthy middle-class society but are not needed by the

rich who live in a parallel, but separate, world among

us.

 

At the height of early participation in the newly

empowered union movement (at one point 35 percent of

American workers were union members), in 1947, over

Truman's veto, congress passed the Taft-Hartley Law

that significantly weakened union protections defined

(and working well) under the 1935 Wagner Act.

Taft-Hartley was (and still is) a powerful weapon for

employers over employees (banning sympathy strikes,

etc.), and was used, although most aggressively in the

southern states (who declared themselves " right to

work " states under another provision of Taft-Hartley)

until Reagan declared a national war on unionization

with his attack on PATCO in 1981.

 

The cons had first launched their attack on labor in

1947, and Reagan brought it to full fruition:

education was next.

 

Today, although there are still some educational

benefits to GI's (Jessica Lynch joined the army to get

financial aid to go to college to become an elementary

school teacher, for example), they're minimal and hard

to both accumulate, track, and take advantage of (and

must be paid for in most cases). Although Jefferson

started the University of Virginia with the notion

that part of building a middle class (necessary to a

democracy, he said) would require people with some

education, and advocated a national program of free

education up to and including university levels, the

last state to fall from that ideal was when Governor

Ronald Reagan ended free enrollment in the University

of California system.

 

Jefferson said, in an 1824 letter: " This degree of

[free] education would ... give us a body of yeomanry,

too, of substantial information, well prepared to

become a firm and steady support to the government. "

 

The attack on higher education was being won (and

continues with cuts in college grant programs), and

the cons moved to attack the third requirement for a

society to produce a middle class: progressive

taxation. This, of course, infuriates the elite cons

who seem to truly believe that a CEO actually works

500 times harder than his employees (or is 500 times

smarter).

 

But history shows that the third pillar of creating a

middle class requires a modest control of how wealth

is distributed. The richest, who benefit the most from

our society, pay proportionately more, so the middle

class can have home interest deductions, child tax

credits, free public education, and health care.

Progressive taxation has helped create every middle

class in the First World, and without it the middle

class will vanish (to Steve Forbes delight,

apparently).

 

As Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1784,

" Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually

spared by the individual. " And, as earlier noted, as

wealth rises, so should taxes -- " geometrically. "

 

But as president, Reagan cut the top tax rate for

billionaires from 70 percent to 28 percent, while

effectively raising taxes on working people via the

payroll tax and using inflation against a non-indexed

tax system. It was another hit to the

already-beginning-to-shrink middle class, to be

followed by more " tax cut " bludgeons during the first

three years of the W. Bush administration.

 

Nonetheless, a never-ending parade of conservative

economists and commentators march through our living

rooms daily via radio and TV, assuring us that it is

good for American workers to go along with the

Wal-Martization of America, accept lower pay and few

benefits, and fear for their health, so multinational

corporations can " level the playing field " for labor.

 

They say it will create winners in the system, and

they are right. The winners are the multinational

corporations, and the losers are the rest of us. No

matter, say the TV commentators -- nearly all

millionaires themselves. " Free trade " sounds sexy;

" protectionism " sounds downright selfish. And it's all

too complicated to explain in 20 seconds, even quoting

Jefferson.

 

But, unless we repeal Taft-Hartley; start enforcing

the Sherman act, provide free education for Americans

(and not just Iraqis); abandon WTO/GATT and NAFTA;

restore progressive taxation (including on dividend

income); force corporations to pay their fair share;

and go back to selective tariffs to protect domestic

industries and stop offshoring to explicitly bring

home the ability for us to make our own clothes,

furniture, autos, and electronics, the conservatives

will have won and the middle class -- and, thus,

democracy -- will lose.

 

As Jefferson warned in an 1826 letter to Will B.

Giles, even then some conservatives " now look to a

single and splendid government of an aristocracy,

founded on banking institutions, and moneyed

incorporations under the guise and cloak of their

favored branches of manufactures, commerce and

navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered

ploughman and beggared yeomanry. This will be to them

a next best blessing to the monarchy of their first

aim, and perhaps the surest steppingstone to it. "

 

Jefferson's vision rose to fruition in the Gilded age,

was fought back by FDR, and again rose its

antidemocratic head under Reagan, the first Bush,

GATT/NAFTA Clinton, and Dubya.

 

If conservative economics are allowed to continue, and

we fully revert to the way life was lived by the

average person in America in 1890 or Dickens' England

(over 40 million in America already have, by the way,

many in the past 3 years), there will be no more

middle class, just a few more rich CEOs and Bushies,

and a lot more terrified workers living in slavery to

debt and terrified of unemployment or a serious health

crisis.

 

It'll be a marvelous thing for the profits of the

multinationals (including those who supply our

" news " ), but the end of a way of life in America, and

possibly around the world, since so many nations

imitate our lead. And only you and I - the ploughman

and yeomanry - can stop them and restore an America

where it's possible to raise a family on one income

and still have enough for housing, transportation,

food, education, vacations, health care, and a decent

retirement.

 

The middle class is not a " normal " thing: it's just

the core that holds together democracy and an

informed, healthy, and active citizenry.

 

To bring it back from its steady decline since the

Reagan era is going to take a lot of active work

spreading the word (call talk radio, blog, forward

this article and similar ones, write a letter to the

editor to your local paper), and participation in or

contact with elected officials at all levels (writing

elected officials, joining and volunteering to help

your favorite local political party or activist

organization, showing up for rallies, etc.). We must

get out the vote and remove the whole con bunch from

the White House and Congress, repeal Taft-Hartley, get

corporate money and lobbyists out of our governmental

processes, restore progressive taxation, rebuild our

schools, return to the tariff system that protected

American industries (and jobs and communities) from

1786 until 1996, strengthen Social Security, and turn

Medicare into a universal single-payer health system

(among other things).

 

Are you willing to join? Or would you prefer to

re-read " A Christmas Carol " to your children, so they

can understand the future America that conservatives

have in mind for them?

 

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project

Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of

a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show

that runs in 57 markets from coast-to-coast.

www.thomhartmann.com. His most recent books are

" Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance

and the Theft of Human Rights, " " The Last Hours of

Ancient Sunlight, " " We The People: A Call To Take Back

America, " and " What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return To

Democracy. "