Tag Archives: Reagan

March 16, 2011 · 10:09 pm

A Reply to My Conservative Friend…

I have a friend from childhood who grew up in the same blue-collar Westside Cleveland neighborhood that I did and was raised a Catholic, as I was. We both went to the same high school, played football and wrestled on the same team, and rocked in the same band.

Over the years, my buddy has evolved into a conservative – while I have remained a liberal. Those two generic political labels do not adequately sum up the total of our beliefs, but they do describe a basic divide in the way we approach solutions to social and political problems.

He bought into Ronald Reagan. I did not.

I believe that my friend and I would like to see the same kind of just, peaceful and loving world come to pass. He is more traditionally religious than I am, but we both share a reverence for the Gospel message of Jesus and its revolutionary humanity. He’s a good man, with a good heart — and a good and caring friend. He’s the kind of guy you want to have in your foxhole. He’s a great dad, too.

But we disagree on so many things.

Lately, he and I have exchanged a series of e-mails in which we’ve debated current events from Obama’s election to the Madison Uprising. In his most recent e-mail, he laid out what amounts to his personal political manifesto. Normally, I would fire off a direct reply. But in this case, I think a public reply might be helpful to those on both sides of our polarizing political divide who struggle to maintain a civilized and constructive dialogue despite their differences.

My friend’s words are in italics…

Ok, I have a few minutes before I head off to teach…

I am a conservative by learned behavior Paul.

I am a liberal from the cradle, raised by a union factory worker from the South and an elementary school teacher from Coal Country. Mom and dad came through the Depression under the Democratic leadership of FDR and watched progressive legislation like the New Deal and the G.I. Bill combine with a robust labor union movement to build a strong Middle Class in post-War America.

My dad told me when I was a small child that the difference between Republicans and Democrats is that “Republicans are for the rich – and Democrats are for the working man.” And while there are some notable Democratic corporate shills like Senators Joe Lieberman and Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, by and large what my dad told me has proven to be true. Right now, in my home state, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is among the strongest pro-labor votes in Congress.

As I have witnessed over the years, liberal policies that strive to seek justice for all, help the poor, feed the sick, and bring comfort to the least among us are far closer to the Gospel of Jesus than the “Greed is Good”, Ayn Rand-loving, Chamber of Commerce pro-corporate true-believers in the conservative movement who treat “trickle down economics” as gospel, despite that fact that it’s been discredited by the past 30 years of clearly observable history.

I believe the rich can keep what they make.

I, too, believe the rich can keep what they make. I just believe that they should keep a lot less of the excessive multi-millions and billions they stockpile through investments in businesses that make generous use of the public commons (roads, bridges, courts, public education, etc.) while paying taxes on a far smaller percentage of their income than the working people whose taxes actually pay for that essential infrastructure which makes an efficient and productive marketplace possible.

Yes, the rich can keep what they make. But they should keep a lot less of the billions they make by setting up offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere. Working people don’t have enough money to set up such legal tax-dodging schemes. (It’s not a level playing field, my brother. The very rich play by an entirely different set of rules.)

Let’s take a look at how much money the rich kept in their silk-lined pockets during the time period that conservatives often describe as the “good old days”…

When Republican President Eisenhower built the massive federal interstate highway system – the greatest boon to freedom of movement and economic development in this country in the 20^th Century – he did so less than a decade after World War Two left the government deeper in debt than it is today (in inflation-adjusted dollars). At the time, the top marginal tax rate for multi-millionaires was 91 percent. And there were still plenty of mansions getting built and yachts being bought. But we were also investing in America.

Under Nixon, after the federal government paid off our World War Two debt, built the highways, brought electricity to rural America, sent millions of military veterans to college for next-to-nothing, and expanded public education — the top tax rate was 70 percent. Twice what it is today. And the American economy and the middle class were still growing. Heck, even under Ronald Reagan it was 50 percent.

Today, conservatives and Tea-baggers get all frothy at the mouth over President Obama’s desire to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans from 35 percent to 39.6 percent – even though the more than $40 billion in revenue that would generate in just one year would pay for nearly all the social and education investments the GOP wants to cut.  (See the bottom of the big graphic, below.)

I believe in a flat tax with 0 exemptions.

Billionaire Steve Forbes has been pushing this canard for years. The flat tax is not a fair tax. Let’s remember that income tax is not the only tax Americans pay. There’s also sales tax, property tax, vehicle licenses, bridge and road tolls, fishing licenses, etc. A working family making $30-70,000 a year spends just about every dollar of their income just trying to make ends meet – and thus, the poor and middle class spend a far higher percentage of their annual income on the full range of taxes than multi-millionaires and billionaires do. This is called regressive taxation. Don’t be fooled by billionaires extolling the virtues of a flat tax. It’s a shell game.

I believe ALL religions should be taught in schools, they all have the same basic rules and it might change kids, for the better.

I agree with you here. It’s conservatives who generally attack comparative religion classes. Of course, it would be a challenge to survey the more than 300 religions and denominations in the United States, from those who believe in one god, to polytheists who believe in many gods, and those who believe in no god. (Not to mention Americans who believe in god as represented by an animal, a tree, or an alien being.) I’m not sure all these religions share the same basic rules – but it would be a fascinating field of study for all Americans, and society would doubtless benefit by children engaging such diversity from elementary school forward. I agree that it would change kids for the better.

But let’s also agree on two things:

1. Let’s keep science and religion separate. Kids who believe the Earth in only 6,000 years old will never compete in Science with kids in China and India. Kids can’t compete in Biology if they reject Evolution. And stem cell research (which Bush outlawed here) is already helping friends who are suffering from paralysis and cancer.

2. Our Constitution prohibits establishment of a national religion. So, though you and I – and a majority of Americans – profess to be Christians, that’s the law. Our Founders did not want the religious war of Old Europe to be re-fought in America. And they’d had enough of state-sponsored religion: where Kings claimed God gave them a Divine Right to dominion over the common people.

Gun control didn’t work in Chicago, we just changed the stats. Obvious gang killings became suicides because that’s what the mayor wanted.

You obviously know more about how “the stats” were changed in Chicago – but I don’t see why one big city mayor trying to game his town’s violent crime numbers has very much to do with intelligent, fair-minded efforts by local communities to regulate gun shows or to keep cheap handguns out of the hands of criminals, children, and the mentally unstable. Seems like a worthy goal to me.

Our Constitution states that, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Other than National Guardsmen, how many people do you know who are members of a “well regulated Militia”? And I don’t count guys in camo gear running around the backwoods in Idaho preparing for whatever version of the apocalypse they’re into.

My family were all hillbillies. I learned to handle guns at a young age and they were kept and handled SAFELY. Though I don’t believe the common guy needs to be allowed to have an AK-47.

Who can argue with gun safety? If you must have a gun in your house, by all means keep it safe. But all the statistics make it very clear that while people say they keep guns in their home for safety – it’s vastly more likely that their gun will wind up killing a loved one, a neighbor kid, an innocent victim, or the owner himself by accident than that gun will ever be used to kill an intruder in a fantasy scenario defense of home and hearth.

And yes, let’s keep the AK-47s in the hands of cops and soldiers. I totally agree with you — though those guys running around Idaho in their camouflage do not.

I have no right to not allow Gays their rights…

Great. I’m with you so far…

…but MY church should not be forced to perform marriages, nor should a PRIVATE school be forced to allow a behavior THEIR religion does not accept as normal.

First of all, I’m not aware of any proposal by progressives, liberals or Democrats to force churches to marry gay people. That’s not even on the table – nor would it ever be. The issue is what the state and federal authorities must recognize.

On the other hand, there are areas where the government can and must see that all churches abide by the law. Murder is against the law. A church can, therefore, cannot burn a woman at the stake, whether they think she’s a witch or not. Sounds reasonable, yes?

Likewise, private schools cannot disregard the law. Can a private school allow a 16-year old to drink beer on campus? Smoke pot? Grow his own in Horticulture class?

Private is private, public is public.

Again. As in the burning of witches, you can’t get away with illegal acts in a private setting. The Boy Scouts can’t keep black children and Asian kids out because of the color of their skin, despite the fact that they’re a private organization. Therefore, they can’t exclude gays, either. In American, we do not discriminate, either in the public square or behind closed doors. Do you want to go back to the days when black golfers couldn’t play in The Masters in Augusta, Georgia? Or when Little Richard couldn’t stay in the same hotel or eat at the same restaurant while on tour with Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis? How about if no kids of Polish descent could be Boy Scouts? Or no “Wops” could join the local country club or Chamber of Commerce?

Most of the CFD is republican, working folk.

Given how little GOP has ever done for working folk, that’s sad to hear. But, after Wisconsin, you’ll see that begin to change. The firemen and cops who backed Governor Walker are now standing in solidarity with the unions. They know they’ll also wind up on the GOP hit list. To break the labor unions is to accelerate working America’s race to the bottom.

Most of the people at my church are republican working folk.

Alas, I can see how conservative politicians and religious leaders who exploit issues like abortion and gay marriage have driven a wedge between religious working people and the liberals who are actually their natural allies. “God, guns and gays.” It’s a shame.

I think there is a big difference between TRUE poor and the leeches of the system. In Chicago, most of the ghetto areas are filled with gangs and system abusers, NOT true people who want or deserve help.

I’m sure you didn’t mean to say “true people”. I’m sure you meant “true poor people”.

Jesus, however, never differentiated between poor people. He never called them leeches. If he was here today, he would be ministering to the slums, the ghettos, and the gang-infested areas. He wouldn’t blame the victims.

Gangs are bad. No doubt. Alcohol Prohibition in the 1920’s and 30’s led to a rise in street gangs and organized crime. Today, the War on Drugs has done the same. Then as now, gangsters are mythologized in the movies and feared in the streets. Then as now, selling contraband is often one of the few ways a poor young man with no social or economic advantages can make decent money. (Mickey D’s can’t employ everybody.) That doesn’t make it right. Legalize drugs. Treat the addicts and non-violent offenders, rather than ship them off to an increasingly for-profit prison system where money is made by filling jail cells. That would begin to help.

People who steal $500 from someone with a gun because they need a hit of crack go to jail. (The U.S. keeps a higher percentage of its population behind bars than the regimes in China and Russia.) But if you steal billions from working people by duping them into confusing adjustable rate mortgages – or rob them of their hard-eared pensions at the same time your top corporate execs make millions in bonuses – that’s just the American Way, right?

Ok, gotta go teach now…

Watch out for that tsunami.

Alas, my friend, not long after you sent your e-mail, that tsunami hit. It reminds us all how fragile life is, and how precious. So is friendship.

Let’s keep talking, buddy. And maybe we’ll find common ground.

What’s the alternative?

16 Comments

Filed under Politics, Truth

Tagged as conservative, Democrat, drugs, GOP, labor unions, liberal, Madison Uprising, Nixon, Obama, progressive, Reagan, religion, taxes

January 16, 2011 · 4:17 pm

“I’m Stickin’ to the Union…”

“If I went to work in a factory, the first thing I would do is join a union.” Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In the mid 20^th Century, back in the day when the postwar United States was the preeminent world power, we could boast a robust and growing organized labor movement which improved conditions for working Americans — union and non-union alike — and helped to build the great middle class in this country. But the labor movement – union men and women alike – paid in blood to give generations of their fellow workers a share of the American Dream.

Big Business didn’t just give Americans the 5-day working week, the 8-hour workday, and vacation and overtime pay. The Robber Barons didn’t give up Dickensian child labor without a fight. Do you think you’d have a pension today if your union brothers and sisters hadn’t fought for it? Many brave men and women in the Labor Movement died to win these basic workplace conditions. We take for granted so much of what organized labor earned for us over nearly two centuries of heroic struggle.

But the battle for workers’ rights didn’t end back in the 1930’s and 40’s. There’s been no final victory. Rather, the struggle for economic justice in the workplace is ongoing. And for the past three decades, American workers have been losing what little we’ve gained.

Ever since President Ronald Reagan broke the air traffic controllers strike in the summer of 1981, the right wing has mounted a steady counter-attack against organized labor. In 1983, 20% of U.S. workers were union members. By 2009, only 12% of American workers were unionized. Today, 30 years after Reagan renewed the right wing assault on labor unions, only one in 10 workers are union members. That’s right. Union membership has been cut by half since Reagan took office.

And the anti-union drumbeat continues.

Today, revenue-strapped GOP governors complain that hard-earned public employee pensions are generous boondoggles we can’t afford. Teachers unions are constantly under attack — as though earning about $40 thousand dollars a year for heroically schooling America’s youth (while working most weekends grading papers and spending personal funds for school supplies) is too high a price to pay for an educated electorate. Right wing politicians call out nurses and firefighters as overpaid unionists with luxurious benefit packages. Meanwhile, in the halls of Congress, contemporary union-busters are taking steps to weaken unions and limit American workers’ ability to bargain collectively.

Greedy elitists have been working very hard for the past three decades to give unions a bad name.

The Republicans and their corporate overlords have managed to confuse a shockingly large percentage of blue-collar lunch-bucket working Americans to buy into their anti-union rhetoric – despite the fact that the gap between executive and worker pay has become truly obscene.

In 1965, American CEOs earned 24 times what the average worker in their company took home. By 1978, the CEOs got paid 35 times more than their average employee. That figure rose to 71 times more in 1989. By 2005, CEO pay had risen astronomically.

Blue collar, Joe the Plumber Republicans might be shocked to learn that the average American CEO in 2005 earned 262 times the pay of their average worker. In other words, CEOs earned more in one day than an average worker earned in 52 weeks. And in the last five years, it’s only gotten worse. Today, according to the accounting firm, Towers Perrin, the average CEO is paid 500 times more than the average worker.

And that’s only half the story. Working class fans of conservative supply side economic theory should know: nothing trickled down.

While the top corporate executives were lining their pockets, the wages of working Americans declined in real dollars.

In 1979 the average hourly wage in the U.S. was equal to $15.91 in 2001 dollars. By 1989 it was only $16.63 per hour: a gain of just 7 measly cents a year for the entire Reagan decade. (In case you already forgot: CEO pay during that same period rose from 35 times what workers earned to 71 times what the guy on the line made.)

During the Clinton years, there was a slight up-tick in workers wages. Between 1995 and 2000, the average wage rose to $18.33 per hour, driven in part by higher pay for college-educated workers in the tech and service sectors.

But for the more than 100 million laborers without a college degree, average inflation-adjusted hourly wages at the end of 2000 were less than they were in 1979.

That’s what blue collar Reagan Democrats got for switching their allegiance from a union-friendly party to a union-busting party. Reagan and his corporate cronies waved the flag at hardworking blue collar Americans, puffed them up with pride about that “shining city on a hill”, riled them up about abortion and gay marriage – and then robbed them blind. The right wing is still doing it. And working class people are still falling for it.

The shameless profit-grab at the top of the corporate food chain has taken place while for the past 30 years U.S. worker productivity rose steadily as wages remained flat.

Since Ronald Reagan took office in 1980, American worker productivity has increased by nearly 40%. Yet, I remind you, real hourly wages for workers have declined since Reagan’s inauguration.

So who got the reward from all that increased worker productivity? Who got the big performance bonuses? The CEO’s, upper management and Wall Street middlemen did. (Of course, today’s grease monkey, shipping clerk, loading dock foreman, or self-styled Joe plumber can dream of one day becoming a CEO or stock trader himself himself. Or he can play the lottery.)

Workers have fallen behind while the fat cats stuffed record profits into their bulging pockets. (All the while crying that the unions were making it impossible for their companies to compete.) Yet the corporate elite aren’t satiated with their outsized slice of the economic pie. So, their right wing tools in government are stepping up their attacks on organized labor.

In my own home state of Ohio, newly-elected Republican Governor John Kasich proposes to deny the right of 14,000 state-financed child care and home care workers to unionize. He also wants to ban strikes by teachers, much the way some states bar strikes by the police and firefighters.

“If they want to strike, they should be fired,” Mr. Kasich said in a speech. “They’ve got good jobs, they’ve got high pay, they get good benefits, a great retirement. What are they striking for?”

By the way, this is the same Governor Kasich who has complained (rightly) that white-collar state employees are not paid enough to attract the best candidates to public service in Ohio. (In the GOP worldview, what’s good for college educated white-collar workers need not be shared by lowly blue-collar workers. Yet they have the nerve to call Democrats “elitists”.)

The right wing attacks the labor movement to convince blue collar Americans that unions are simply greedy and corrupt. This anti-union calumny is promoted by the GOP and bankrolled by big business execs and Wall Street moneymen whose own greed and corruption was manifest in the final years of the Bush administration. (BTW, it was blue-collar working Americans whose hard-earned payroll and income taxes bailed these A-holes out.)

Of course, there have certainly been some illegal shenanigans now and then in the annals of organized labor. (We still don’t know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried.) But that doesn’t change the fact that the union movement in America has been a force for good in this country. And that union men and women paid for what we now take for granted in the workplace with their freedom and their lives.

Listen up, my working class friends who vote Republican: I’m talking to YOU. It’s time for a history lesson. A history, alas, that you can no longer read about in most public school textbooks, thanks to conservative members of your local school board.

April 27, 1825: Carpenters in Boston are the first to strike for a 10-hour workday.

July 1835: Child laborers in the silk mills of Paterson, New Jersey strike so they only have to work an 11-hour day — 6 days a week.

July 1851: Two railroad strikers are shot dead by the state militia in Portage, New York.

January 13, 1874: Unemployed workers demonstrating in NYC’s Tompkins Square Park are attacked by mounted cops who charge into the crowd, beating men, women and children with billy-clubs. There are hundreds of casualties, but the Police Commissioner says, “It was the most glorious sight I ever saw.”

July 14, 1877: The “Battle of the Viaduct” in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. Protesting members of the Chicago German Furniture Workers Union are put down by federal troops (recently returned from an Indian massacre) killing 30 workers and wounding more than 100.

September 5, 1882: 30,000 workers march in the first Labor Day parade in New York City.

May 1, 1886: Bay View Tragedy. About 2,000 Polish workers walk off their jobs in Milwaukee in protest of the ten-hour workday. They march through the city, gathering other workers until they are 16,000 strong and gather at Rolling Mills, sleeping in nearby fields. Wisconsin Governor Jeremiah Rusk calls out the state militia, and on May 5th, as the workers chant for an eight-hour workday, the commanding officer of the militia orders his men to shoot into the crowd (some of whom were armed with sticks, bricks, and scythes) killing seven, including a child.

October 4, 1887: The Louisiana Militia, aided by bands of “prominent citizens,” shoot 35 unarmed black sugar workers striking to gain a dollar-per-day wage. They also lynch two strike leaders.

May 11 to July 10, 1894: A nationwide strike against the Pullman Company begins when workers walk off the job after their wages are drastically reduced. On July 5, the 1892 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago is set ablaze, and the mobs begin burning and looting railroad cars and fighting police in the streets. On July 10, 14,000 federal and state troops succeeded in putting down the strike, killing 34 American Railway Union members. Strike leaders, including Eugene Debs, are imprisoned for violating injunctions, causing disintegration of the union.

September 1897: The Lattimer Massacre. 19 unarmed striking coal miners are killed and 36 wounded by a county sheriff’s posse for refusing to disperse near Hazelton, PA. Most of the victims are shot in the back.

March 25, 1911: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, occupying the top three floors of a ten-story building in New York City, is consumed by fire. 147 people, mostly women and young girls working in sweatshop conditions are killed. Greatly adding to the death toll was the incredible fact that Triangle bosses had locked the factory doors from the outside to keep the ladies from taking breaks.

June 11, 1913: Cops gun down three maritime workers (one of whom is killed) who are striking against the United Fruit Company in New Orleans.

1914: According to the Commission on Industrial Relations, approximately 35,000 workers were killed in industrial accidents and 700,000 workers were injured in the U.S.

April 20, 1914: The “Ludlow Massacre.” In an attempt to force strikers at Colorado’s Ludlow Mine Field to go back to work, company “guards” (hired by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and other mine operators) attack a union tent camp with machine guns, then set it afire — killing five men, two women and twevlve children.

January 9, 1915: The famous labor leader Joe Hill is arrested in Salt Lake City and convicted on trumped up murder charges. Despite worldwide protests and two attempts to intervene by President Woodrow Wilson. Hill is later executed. In a letter written shortly before his death, Hill urged his supporters, “Don’t mourn – organize!”

August 19, 1916: Strikebreakers attack picketing strikers in Everett, Washington, while local police refuse to intervene.

Three days later, 22 union men attempting to speak out are arrested. On October 30, vigilantes force union speakers to run a gauntlet, whipping, tripping and kicking them, and impaling them against a spiked cattle guard at the end of the gauntlet.

In response, the union calls for a meeting on November 5 – but when the union men arrive, they are fired upon. Seven people are killed in The Everett Massacre (also known as Bloody Sunday) and 50 are wounded. An unknown number wind up missing.

March 15, 1917: The Supreme Court approves the Eight-Hour Act under the threat of a national railway strike.

August 26, 1919: United Mine Worker organizer Fannie Sellins is gunned down by mining company goons.

March 7, 1932: Police kill striking workers at Ford’s Dearborn, Michigan plant.

October 10, 1933: 18,000 cotton workers go on strike in Pixley, California. Four are killed before the workers win a pay hike.

1934: During the Electric Auto-Lite Strike in Toledo, Ohio, 1,300 National Guardsmen including three machine gun companies are called in to break up as many as 10,000 strikers and protesters. Two strikers are killed and over two hundred wounded.

September 1-22, 1934: A strike in Woonsocket, Rhode Island results in the deaths of three workers. Over 420,000 workers ultimately go on strike.

1935: The National Labor Relations Act is passed. It guarantees covered workers the right to organize and join labor movements, to choose representatives bargain collectively, and to strike.

May 30, 1937: Police kill 10 and wound 30 during the “Memorial Day Massacre” at the Republic Steel plant in Chicago.

June 25, 1938: The Wages and Hours Act passes, banning child labor and setting the 40-hour work week. It establishes minimum wages and maximum hours for all workers engaged in covered “interstate commerce.”

That’s the basic progressive history of labor unions before Ronald Reagan (himself a former Screen Actors Guild union president) began his successful counter-attack against organized labor.

The fact is that unions have a positive impact on the wages and working conditions of unionized and non-unionized workers alike.

Unions raise the pay of unionized workers by roughly 20% — and raise compensation, including both wages and benefits, by 28%. Plus, unions raise wages more for blue-collar than for white-collar workers — and more for workers who do not have a college degree. Unions force nonunion employers to follow suit. Organized labor’s impact on total nonunion wages is almost as big as its impact on union wages.