My mother has never liked Mother’s Day. She says it’s a phony holiday designed to boost profits for Hallmark Cards. I say, Who cares as long as everybody’s happy? After all, I tell her, Hallmark isn’t Blackwater or Halliburton. And besides, not all profits are evil.

That doesn’t mollify her. In fact, I think she’s beginning to suspect I’m a capitalist roader at heart. In any case, she continues to issue ominous threats toward anyone who might ever send her another Mother’s Day card.

But that’s my Mom.  She’s not feeling so well right now, but she was still able to reiterate those combative sentiments to me today. (I believe the phrase “drawn and quartered” was employed.) She’s an extremely kind person in most respects, but this holiday brings out the aggressive side of her nature.

Granted, most mothers aren’t as adamantly opposed to this day as mine. But if you’re not the card-giving type – or if you are, but are also looking for more socially conscious commemorations of motherhood – here are seven fine activist ways to honor the mothers of America.

 1. Tell our leaders to stop talking about budget cuts.

I don’t know about you, but my mother and father always told me: If you do something stupid and bad things happen, don’t do it again. It aggravates many of America’s mothers when this advice isn’t followed.

And yet, astonishingly, our leaders in Washington are still arguing over who can cut the deficit more efficiently, even as we’ve watched this kind of austerity economics devastate the economies of Europe. And they keep doing it even as deficits are falling.

Mother wouldn’t like that. So write them and tell them you want them to stop.

2. Demand that Congress repeal the sequester.

The sequester is a remarkably stupid policy, even by today’s degraded standards. It has already cost the country a lot of lost jobs, and has shrunk the economy at a time when government should be investing in its growth. As Dave Johnson notes, sometimes it’s even costing the government money to enact these “cuts.”

Overall the sequester will almost certainly increase deficits, rather than decrease them, a phenomenon we’ve already seen in Europe.

Congress needs to repeal this numbskull grab-bag of destructive cuts and invest in growth instead. The President needs to stop using “I’ve got a smarter austerity plan” argument and start arguing forcefully for jobs and growth. If he refuses, other Democrats need to step up to the plate as the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a handful of others have done.

Mothers are working Americans, and the sequester is costing them jobs. Mothers and fathers need Head Start and other vital programs which are being cut by the sequester.

You can go here to drop a Mom-centric message to Congress: Repeal the nitwit sequester once and for all.

3. Demand more education funding, rather than less.

Mothers and fathers also care about their children’s education, and funds for education are being slashed. We need to hire more teachers, stop trying to siphon education money off to private corporations, provide our schools with adequate supplies, and rebuild the ones that are in bad shape.

At the higher-education level, it’s time to start making education affordable again. It’s the ticket to economic advancement, and the way to regain some of our lost social mobility. Cheaper student loans – really cheaper loans, like those Elizabeth Warren are proposing – are an urgently-needed first step.

Then we need to make sure that doesn’t fund a sudden inflation in college tuitions, which are already sky-high, and set about making education affordable. That includes revitalizing our public colleges and universities, while slashing their tuitions. (Yes, the rich will have to chip in. Mother knows best.)

4. Insist that Congress create jobs – for the young, for our crumbling infrastructure, for the future.

Those crumbling schools need workers to rebuild them. So do our crumbling roads, bridges, and other infrastructure.

The men and women hired for those jobs will spend money on things they need, and that will create more jobs in the future. Mothers, like fathers, are sending their children as emissaries into an unknown future. This will make that future a better one.

It will also help alleviate the devastating youth unemployment rate in this country.

5. Tell Congress not to pass the President’s destructive Social Security cut. (It’s also a tax hike.)

The most cynical con in this country is the idea that cutting Social Security cost-of-living adjustments – through the President’s proposed “chained CPI” – is being done to protect “the younger generations” from “greedy geezers.”

This cynical provision hurts younger people more than it will hurt the already-retired. Besides, older people aren’t “greedy” just because they expect to the benefits they’ve paid for throughout their working lives.

And that’s no way to talk to your mother.

6. Support the fast food and retail workers’ strike.

Low-wage workers went on strike last week in New York, and the walkout is spreading like wildfire: first to New York, then Chicago, then to St. Louis, and now to Detroit. Terrance Heath has a good write-up on working conditions in Detroit.

The D15 campaign of Detroit fast food and retail workers lists some of the corporations being struck, including McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, Dollar Tree, Little Caesar’s, Domino’s, and Long John Silver’s.

Most low-wage workers are employing by larger corporations, including some of the largest in the country. Those corporations have been enjoying record profits and have paid their executives record bonuses, while at the same time underpaying their workers and resisting any attempt to raise the minimum wage.

The working mothers of America are too often the victims of these predatory practices. Some of them are on those picket lines. They could use your support.

7. Contact Congress and demand they raise the minimum wage.

The minimum wage has failed to keep pace with inflation, depriving generations of Americans of a decent life. If it had kept pace with inflation, it would be more than $16 per hour by now.

More than seven million children have parents who work minimum wages. As we explained in “Real Faces of the Minimum Wage,” most minimum wage workers – nearly four out of five – are adults. And, much as it bedevils the conservatives who race-bait the issue while professing concern for minorities, most of them are white. (We’re looking at you, Wall Street Journal.)

You can go here to sign a petition demanding an up-or-down vote on the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013.

Postscript: Mother’s Work Day

Julia Ward Howe, who wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic, was the one who first popularized the idea of Mother’s Day. She got the idea from Anna Jarvis, an Appalachian housewife who organized “Mother’s Work Days” to provide sanitary conditions for troops on both sides of the Civil War. Jarvis went on to promote worker health and safety issues, as well as reconciliation between Northern and Southern soldiers.

There’s a different kind of Civil War being waged today. It’s a Class War, and the wealthy are waging it on the rest of us. As we’ve said before, the Class War is a War On Women. It’s time to take action against this economic assault on all women, including the Mothers of America. What better day to rededicate ourselves to that struggle than Mother’s Day?

When it comes time to ask your friends and neighbors to join in the struggle, or to let your elected officials know how you feel, you know what to say: Tell ‘em Mother sent you.

If, like me, you’re a working parent or any other adult struggling to balance the demands of work and family, you know the two biggest challenges to pulling off that balancing act: Time and Money. We never have enough of either, and have precious little control over what we do have. Now, House Republicans have introduced a bill to make sure we have even less.

It’s called the “Working Families Flexibility Act of 2013″ (H.R. 1406), and it’s as Orwellian as it sounds.

In fact, it fits this Wikipedia definition of “Orwellian” rather nicely: “Official encouragement of policies contributing to the socioeconomic disintegration of the family.”

The bill is scheduled for a vote on the House floor tomorrow. It isn’t any more likely to be signed into law than it was in 1997, 2003, or any of the other times Republicans introduced it in one form or another. In fact, it won’t go any further than the House. If it did, working families would end up with even less time and less money, in exchange for the GOP’s favorite variety of faux “flexibility.”

It’s (Not) Your Time

This “Working Family Flexibility Act” does not give workers the “flexibility” to take time off when they want. You have to ask for it, but you might not get it. According to the language of the bill, an employee “shall be permitted by the employee’s employer to use such time within a reasonable period after making the request if the use of the compensatory time does not unduly disrupt the operations of the employer.”

A few key phrases stand out.

• “… shall be permitted …”: Workers “shall be permitted” to use their comp time by their employers. In other words, an employer may allow you to use your comp time when you need it, but you don’t have a right to use your comp time when you need it. You must ask permission to use your time, and then you must be allowed to use it.
• “… within a reasonable period …”: What’s a reasonable period of time? Who decides? The same people who decide whether you can use your time or not: your employer. Maybe it’s a month, maybe two weeks, maybe you have until the end of the week. Actually, employers are the ones with all the flexibility here. They can decide to put all time over 40 hours into a “pot” to be used for future time off, over which they have complete control.
• “… does not unduly disrupt …”: What constitutes “unduly disruption” of your employers business? Who decides? Again, the same people who’ve made all the decisions so far: your employer.

Do you need to use your comp time to attend a critical parent/teacher conference at your child’s school? Tough luck if your employer decides that  your absence would be too much a “disruption.” Getting that big order out the door, finishing that major report, or even just staffing the dinner rush trumps everything else — including family.

“It’s your time,” intones the TV spot for the bill. “You shouldn’t have to choose between work or family.” Well, it’s not “your time.” As far as this bill is concerned, “your time” belongs to your employer, to be doled out (or not) as they see fit. You can request it, sure. But, as we say where I come from, “Asking ain’t getting.” Your request can be denied.

As for “choosing between work and family,” don’t worry. You won’t be the one making the choice. Your employer will decide, and will grant you use of “your time” if it doesn’t disrupt their business or their bottom line.

It’s (Not) Your Money

Every day thousands of Americans volunteer to work overtime, and even jump at the chance, because they need the money to pay for various family-related expenses. Sometimes, overtime pay can mean the difference between putting food on the table and keeping the lights on, or going hungry and sitting in the dark. Sometimes, it helps pay for medical expenses, or defrays the cost of putting kids through school.

Time-and-a-half pay can make a huge difference for working families. The “Working Family Flexibility Act” will insure that many working famines have even less money, by reducing take-home pay. Families will lose the supplemental income that overtime pay provides, and that money will end up in employers’ hands instead.

An employer can not only decide to put all time exceeding 40 hours a week into a “pot” of time off to be doled out at a later date, but employers can also decide when that date will be. Employers can hold on to that “pot” until the end of the year. Employers can even designate “a 12-month period other than the calendar year,” so long as they tell their employees.

Workers, then, are not paid for their overtime work during the current pay period. Instead, their overtime pay becomes an interest-free loan to the employer, to be paid back to the worker at the end of the year – or even later.

The flexibility in this comp time bill would have employees working unpaid overtime hours beyond the 40-hour workweek and accruing as many as 160 hours of compensatory time. A low-paid worker making $10 an hour who accrued that much comp time in lieu of overtime pay would effectively give his or her employer an interest-free loan of $1,600 – equal to a month’s pay. That’s a lot to ask of a worker making about $20,000 a year. Indeed, any worker who accrues 160 hours of comp time will in effect have loaned his or her employer a month’s pay. This same arithmetic provides employers with a powerful incentive to increase workers’ overtime hours. Instead of having to pay time-and-a-half wages when an hourly-paid employee works longer than the standard 40-hour work week, the employer incurs no financial cost at the time the extra hours are worked.

Even then, workers get extra days off, not the extra money overtime provided before it was transformed into comp time.

The bill includes a “safety valve”  provision for workers to “cash out” of such agreements. But, as the Chicago Tribune’s Rex Huppke pointed out, those safety valves would be fine in a perfect world,  but they don’t always work in the real world.

It’s Not Your Choice

The bill presents the whole comp-time exchange as optional. Employers can choose to offer comp time instead of overtime, and employees can choose to enter into comp-time agreements with their employers. But Huppke asks “What happens if your employer tries to deny you the hours you have accrued?”

The bill explicitly prohibits that, but in the real world the interminable recession and the reality of working in a “no-quit” economy make it simple enough for an employer to make you “an offer you can’t refuse.”

In principle a worker’s agreement to receive comp time instead of overtime pay is supposed to be voluntary. But anyone who has worked at a $10 an hour job understands what it is to get an offer from your employer that you can’t refuse. Under the provisions of the bill, employers are not supposed to threaten, intimidate or coerce employees into agreeing to comp time in lieu of wages. But employers don’t need to resort to such tactics. Everyone understands that in this economy, with unemployment still at recession levels, the employer holds all the cards. Workers who refuse to go along with an employer’s request for comp time instead of wages know that their commitment to their employer will be questioned. They fear that in a crunch they will be vulnerable to having their hours cut or being let go. In a weak job market, very few hourly-paid workers can risk that. Without a union to protect their right to refuse to trade overtime pay for comp time, and with no funds in the bill for enforcement of these provisions, the voluntary nature of such agreements is highly suspect.

Faux “Flexibility”

When Republicans start touting “flexibility” working Americans and their families should make haste to their battle-stations, because it’s an attack. If Republicans are offering your “flexibility” with one hand, they are usually taking away a lot more with the other hand. (For example, giving states more “flexibility” in administering Medicaid actually means slashing Medicaid’s federal funding, and block-granting the remains to the states to administer as they please.)

In conservative doublespeak, “flexibility” stands in for “freedom,” but for middle-class, working-class and low-income Americans, it means “freedom” to try and get by with a lot less. That’s  because the “Working Families Flexibility Act,” doesn’t actually give working family more flexibility. (The Healthy Families Act introduced by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, which would allow the 40 percent of private-sector American workers who have no access to paid sick days to accrue paid sick leave, does a much better job of this.) It takes flexibility away from our families and gives employers more flexibility to make their employers work longer and harder for less.

A quick comparison of organizations supporting the “Working Families Flexibility Act” and the organizations opposing it makes it clear that this bill is really about taking flexibility away from working families, and given employers even more flexibility to make their employees work harder and longer for less. On one side, we’ve got the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Council of Chain Restaurants, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, and the International Foodservice Distributors Association, representing companies that employ many low-wage workers who rely on overtime, and have little enough “flexibility” already. On the other side, organizations like the Family Values At Work Coalition, the AFL-CIO, the Main Street Alliance, the National Employment Law Project, and the Service Employees International Union speak for the working families who would be harmed by this Republican-backed bill.

The National Partnership for Women and Families spells out exactly what’s wrong with the “Family Flexibility Act.”

The Working Families Flexibility Act offers a false choice between time and pay. The bill’s supporters claim H.R. 1406 would give hourly workers more flexibility and time with their loved ones by allowing them to choose paid time off, rather than time-and-a-half wages, as compensation for working more than 40 hours in one week (“comp time”). But the irony is that workers will only get more time with their families after they’ve spent long hours away at work. And there is nothing in H.R. 1406 that guarantees that workers will be able to use the comp time they have earned when they need it.

The worker flexibility offered by H.R. 1406 is nothing more than a mirage. That’s because this proposal gives the employer, not the employee, the “flexibility” to decide when and even if comp time can be used. The bill permits the employer to deny the request entirely if the employee’s use of comp time would “unduly disrupt” operations or to grant leave on a day other than the day requested by the employee. This means that H.R. 1406 provides no guarantee that workers can use their earned time when a child falls ill, to attend a parent-teacher conference, or to help an aging parent settle in to a nursing home. Employers can veto an employee’s request to use comp time even in cases of urgent need.

H.R. 1406 would put workers at very real risk and provides an interest-free loan to employers. An employee who does not accept comp time could be penalized with fewer hours, bad shifts and loss of overtime hours. And because it is cheaper to provide comp time than to pay overtime wages, there is a significant incentive for employers to hire fewer people and rely on overtime hours – paid for in future comp time – to get work done. It would permit employers to defer compensation for unused comp time for as long as 13 months, creating an interest-free loan for employers and hardships for workers.

Once again, Republicans are advancing policies that benefit the powerful at the expense of hard-working Americans, and selling it as “flexibility” instead of calling it was it really is — class warfare against working families.

In our post-mortem of the 2012 elections, the Campaign for America’s Future was one of the few organizations willing to say that “class war” was not only the common theme of many of the Democratic Party’s electoral successes but it is a strategy that the party should proudly embrace as it moves toward the 2014 and 2016 elections.

It’s taken six months after our “wage class war” report was posted for a major mainstream media outlet to probe our claim with any depth, but today Politico reporters Jonathan Martin and John F. Harris echoed our conclusion that “class warfare works.”

“That fundamental reality of the Obama years — that the president won a second term in large part because he gave new life to an old brand of class-based politics — continues to echo six months later as the dominant factor shaping American politics this spring, as the parties slog through the latest fiscal fight,” Martin and Harris write.

In his analysis of the 2012 elections, Robert Borosage said that the weak economy rendered President Obama and swing-district Democrats politically vulnerable, and wealthy Republican benefactors put up big money to go in for the kill. But with the Republican standard-bearer, Mitt Romney, being “inescapably the candidate of, by and for the 1 percent,” the Obama campaign was able to use populist themes to hold together the coalition of young people, women and people of color that helped get him into the White House in the first place.

But, as Borosage also noted in his analysis, Obama is not by nature a populist class warrior, and nothing reveals that more than his current willingness to champion a cut in Social Security benefits in order to win a “grand bargain” with Republicans on tax reform.

That is what brings us to what Politico accurately calls “both a political challenge and a definitional moment.” Having won significant electoral victories over the tribunes of the 1 percent in 2012, will President Obama and the Democratic Party soil that victory by doing the 1 percent’s dirty work for them on such issues as Social Security?

The most distressing answer to that question is in the comments to Politico by Obama political strategist David Axelrod, who goes so far as to echo the rhetoric by Republicans like Rep. Paul Ryan in justifying cuts to Medicare and Social Security.

“The most persuasive case for reforming Medicare is saving Medicare,” Axelrod is quoted by Politico as saying. “You don’t want to see the Big Bad Wolf making those decisions.”

Unsaid by Axelrod, of course, is that the American public does not want to see anyone making a decision to reduce Social Security benefits – neither bad wolves nor pliant sheep – when what we desperately need is a strategy for strengthening benefits and making seniors more financially secure.

Particularly insulting is Axelrod’s assertion that those of us who have been opposing President Obama’s proposal to limit Social Security cost-of-living adjustments through what is called the “chained CPI” are more interested in using retirement security “as a club with which to pound the opposition” and don’t want to “address long-term problems with the programs.”

But class war as viewed by progressives is not war for war’s sake. The economic future of low- and middle-income people – and thus the country at large – is at stake, as a result of a sustained, decades-long attack fueled by conservative economic policies on workers and the pillars of shared prosperity.

Solutions based on a different vision of an economy that works for everyone are at the very core of this fight. On Social Security, for example, we have shown how Social Security’s solvency can be assured for at least the next 75 years through a combination of more equitable taxation – asking wealthier individuals to pay more into the system – and bolder policies to grow the economy and get unemployed people working again, so that they are once again paying Social Security taxes.

What the White House and Congress should remember is that class war is in fact today’s central political reality, and any politician who wants to win either a future election or a positive political legacy should be on the side of working people, not the plutocrats and ideologues bankrolling the policies of austerity and income inequality.

Republicans criticize government spending when it is about making our lives better. Of course, by definition all government spending is done to make our lives better. (In a democracy government spending is We, the People deciding how and where to spend the money. Would we decide to spend money to make our lives worse?) In a plutocracy, though, it’s a very different story.

If you live in Wisconsin, for example, your tax dollars are used to help drive down your wages – and everybody else’s.

The Washington Post has the story: Wis. taxpayers spend close to $850,000 for lawyers to defend restrictions on public unions,

Wisconsin taxpayers have spent close to $850,000 defending lawsuits over Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s 2011 law that all but ended collective bargaining for most public workers.

And the lawsuits aren’t over yet.

Ending collective bargaining means ending the right of employees to band together so they have collective power. Instead of individuals coming to the boss and saying, “Please throw me a crumb if you feel like it,” with a union it’s all of the workers, together, saying “Let’s talk about how we can work together to grow this business for all of us.”

Who Benefits From Low Wages And Restrictions On Unions?

Ending collective bargaining and other restrictions on unions are about one thing and one thing only: driving down the wages and benefits that working people receive. And when you do that, see if you can guess what happens. From the post 40% Of Americans Now Make Less Than 1968 Minimum Wage,

The chart shows that wages used to go up as productivity went up, but in the 1970s they decoupled. Productivity kept going up but wages stagnated.

That is what happened when trade agreements broke the ability of unions to ask for a fair share of the proceeds. Businesses started moving jobs out of the country to low-wage, “business-friendly” non-democracies, and said to people who wanted raises “shut up or we’ll move your job out of the country, too.” This “decoupled” productivity increases from potential wage increases.

So the benefits of our economy started going to just a few people, instead of being spread around. The post, Is This Where The (Middle-Class) Money Went? tells that story:

Now, here’s another chart. This chart shows that financial-sector and non-financial-sector compensation used to rise together, but in the late 70′s / early 80′s they decoupled. Financial-sector compensation took off, while non-financial-sector compensation did not.

Race To Bottom

The problem isn’t just Wisconsin by any means. In Michigan Races To Bottom With Anti-Union Law I explained, (“lectured,” my wife says. “Shut up,” I mansplained.)

Pay attention to what is happening in Michigan, because it will add even more downward pressure to your wages and benefits, wherever you live and work. Republicans in the Michigan legislature have rammed through anti-union “right-to-work” laws making union dues voluntary even as unions a required by law to provide services to members and non-members. They say this will make Michigan more “business-friendly” by driving down wages and benefits, thereby stealing jobs from states where working people have rights. The actual intent is to get rid of the unions altogether, and their ability to fight for the 99% in the ongoing class war with the 1%.

From this week’s post, Obama Shouldn’t Buy The Lower-Corporate-Taxes Line,

Downward Spiral

Imagine states A and B. State B cuts their tax rates and passes laws that restrict unions, keep minimum wages low and other wage-lowering measures to “attract businesses” and their jobs from state A. As successful as state B might be at getting companies to move there, what is the effect on the larger economy of all of the states? Obviously the overall wages in the larger economy will fall as the same jobs move to a state with lower pay. And even the jobs that remain in state A are under pressure to reduce their wages, with the employers threatening to move their companies to state B as well.

And the government of state A has less revenue to fund their schools and courts and infrastructure, while the government of state B sacrificed revenue to make their state more attractive. So the overall level of investment in public goods also drops.

By reducing standards State B is undercutting the ability of the people in state A to control the companies in state A. State B has enabled companies to extort lower wages and other advantages elsewhere. State B is undercutting State A’s ability to be an effective democracy.

This is what is happening around the world as these giant companies put the squeeze on governments, with the threat to just go somewhere else. This is what happens when corporate power is allowed to reach such a level that it challenges the power of governments to control them. Originally the corporations We the People enabled in order to accomplish things that are good for US have changed into a force with enough wealth and power that instead of providing good jobs and goods and services, they instead demand we pay them tribute.

So as the country converts from democracy (representative government for you nitpickers) to plutocracy, we should expect more of this. Or, alternatively, we can get corporate money back out of our politics, out of the think tanks, etc., and back into the corporations where it is only used to run the business. And then we can try to remember what a democracy is supposed to be like — where we do things to make our lives better.
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MORNING MESSAGE: As Federal Prosecutors Cash In, Big Bankers Go Unpunished

OurFuture.org’s Richard Eskow: “We needed heroes after the financial crisis. Instead we got bureaucrats, compromisers, and perhaps something much worse. Federal law enforcement officials, our ‘thin gray line’ against banker crime, were charged with restoring the balance of justice and reducing the threat of future crises. Seems they had other things on their minds. Now the Obama administration’s first-term posse is riding off into the sunset. The most visible departure is Deputy Attorney General Lanny Breuer. Remember those submissive or avaricious sheriffs in the old Westerns, the ones who were always letting the bad guys run wild ? ‘Sorry, Ma’am, I’d like to help you and the boy but there ain’t nothin’ I can do.’ That’s Breuer, whose shattered credibility and extreme reluctance to prosecute has become the stuff of legend. But he’s not the only one. Meet the senior partners in a firm that is more aptly named ‘Covington, Burling and Justice.”

Economic Growth v. Inequality

U.S. Income Inequality Worse Than Many Latin American Countries [Huffington Post]: “Latin America has long been viewed as a region plagued by some of the worst wealth inequality in the world. But in recent years, those figures have turned around, while in the United States income inequality is on the rise. Adam Isacson, analyst for the Washington Office on Latin America, notes the change on his blog. According to recent figures on income published by the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the U.S. income gap now exceeds that of several countries in the Americas.”

Wages Recover For Top One Percent, While Stagnating For Most Workers [Huffington Post]: “If you feel the economic recovery hasn’t helped your pocketbook much, it’s not just your imagination. The annual wages of the bottom 90 percent of workers declined by 1.2 percent between 2009 and 2011 when adjusted for inflation, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. Meanwhile, the top one percent’s wages rose 8.2 percent during the same time period by the same measure. The richest Americans have benefited the most from the economic recovery so far. The top one percent captured 93 percent of all income gains during the first full year of the economic recovery (2010), according to a study by Emmanuel Saez, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley.”

If you care about deficits, poverty, or profit WaPo’s E.J. Dionne says you should care about growth: “The moment’s highest priority should be speeding economic growth and ending the waste, human and economic, left by the Great Recession. But you would never know this because the conversation in our nation’s capital is being held hostage by a ludicrous cycle of phony fiscal deadlines driven by a misplaced belief that the only thing we have to fear is the budget deficit. Let’s call a halt to this madness. If we don’t move the economy to a better place, none of the fiscal projections will matter. The economic downturn ballooned the deficit. Growth will move the numbers in the right direction.”

Robert Kuttner write that reversing economic inequality will be Obama’s heaviest lift: “President Obama is off to a good start in his second term. “We, the people,” he pledged in his second inaugural, “still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity.” Amen to that. But as the economy continues its agonizingly slow recovery, his greatest challenge will be to reverse the economy’s widening inequality. Ordinary working families are falling further and further behind the cost of living. …So the challenge, as President Obama famously told “Joe the Plumber” is to spread the wealth around. How do we do that? Here are four ways.”

GOP v. Economy

Pauk Krugman sorts out the GOP’s problem with “makers and takers”: “Republicans have a problem. For years they could shout down any attempt to point out the extent to which their policies favored the elite over the poor and the middle class; all they had to do was yell “Class warfare!” and Democrats scurried away. In the 2012 election, however, that didn’t work: the picture of the G.O.P. as the party of sneering plutocrats stuck, even as Democrats became more openly populist than they have been in decades. As a result, prominent Republicans have begun acknowledging that their party needs to improve its image. But here’s the thing: Their proposals for a makeover all involve changing the sales pitch rather than the product. When it comes to substance, the G.O.P. is more committed than ever to policies that take from most Americans and give to a wealthy handful.”

Wonkblog’s Suzy Khim writes that Paul Ryan is saying sequester is definitely going to happen: “On Sunday morning, Rep. Paul Ryan reiterated a message that House Republicans have been trying to push since the fiscal cliff deal happened: The GOP is unafraid to let the sequester take effect. ‘I think the sequester is going to happen,’ Ryan said on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.’ ‘We think these sequesters will happen because the Democrats have opposed our efforts to replace those cuts with others–and they’ve offered no alternatives,’ Ryan said. Ryan’s comments reinforced House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) insistence that the sequester would be the biggest point of leverage for Republicans to extract the cuts that they want. And at least rhetorically speaking, other House GOP members have stepped into line.”

Threat of automatic cuts costly to federal agencies [Washington Post]: “The drastic $85 billion in automatic spending cuts Congress approved in hopes of heading off another deficit showdown may or may not occur, but federal agencies say the threat has been disrupting government for months as officials take costly and inefficient steps to prepare. …This is what happens when the federal government prepares for something Congress never intended to become a reality. If Democrats and Republicans cannot end their deficit standoff by March 1, the cuts will kick in across the country. Sequestration, as the law is known, has sent agencies scrambling to buffer themselves, spending time and money that ultimately may be for naught.”

GOP v. Democracy

The Daily Beast’s John Avlon says something’s rotten in the state of Virginia: “In the wake of their decisive 2012 election defeat, Republicans aren’t digging the demographic changes making once safe states like Virginia go for Obama the last two presidential elections. Their response, as Michael Tomasky detailed yesterday, is to try and change the rules to allow electoral votes to be split up by congressional districts, compounding their advantage created by the rigged system of redistricting. In many of the states – Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Ohio – this is at the level of legislative discussion rather than action. …This is an inversion of the basic principle of democracy: that elections are won by the candidate who gets the most votes. To add insult to the intended injury, Virginia humorist and political blogger Paul Bibeau pointed out that the bill would have the effect of making Obama voters count as three-fifths of a person.”

 At PR Watch, Brendan Fischer reveals that ALEC has opposed “popular vote” efforts that would guard against electoral college rigging: “The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has actively lobbied against state plans to implement a national popular vote for president, urging state legislators to preserve the Electoral College — which GOP legislators are now trying to rig to ensure the the next president is a Republican. In late 2011, ALEC officially changed its policy on the Electoral College to implicitly support allocating electoral votes by congressional district. In December 2011, ALEC reconfirmed its support for the Electoral College, but with one tweak — official ALEC policy no longer supports allocating electoral votes based on the winner of a state’s popular vote for president.”

Laurence Lewis, at DailyKos, writes that the GOP’s war on democracy will tear the country apart: “Republicans can’t win national elections anymore, having lost the popular vote in five of the last six, and with demographics shifts moving solidly against them, rather than try to better represent the will of the American electorate, they’re instead going to try to break the system so that the will of the American electorate no longer matters. And it would be perfectly legal, because we choose our presidents through the Electoral College, and there are very few rules about how the electors are allocated. Make no mistake: This is a war on the very concept of democracy and republic. This is a war on the very nature of our system of governance. If it succeeds, it will tear this country apart.”

Immigration Debate Update

 Sam Knight, at Political Animal, gasps in shock and awe at Arizona’s latest anti-immigrant measure: “Just when you thought Arizona couldn’t go any further out of its way to repel non-whites and foreigners, a state representative wants orderlies to join Phoenix’s draconian crackdown on undocumented immigrants. According to a state ABC affiliate, State Representative Steve Smith proposed House Bill 2293 last week. It’s a bill that ‘would require hospital workers to attempt to verify a patient’s citizenship, essentially make a note of it and call authorities.’ …The law wouldn’t just cost the state and federal government money by scaring away undocumented immigrants. It could also keep legal U.S. residents, tourists and foreign students away from Arizona. Who would want to visit a state that could end up requiring people to carry their passports on them at all time in case they get hit by a car or mugged? And what happens if a legal resident or visitor shows up at a hospital unable to verify her status?”

Senators Reach Agreement On Overhauling Immigration [NPR]: “A bipartisan group of leading senators has reached agreement on the principles of sweeping legislation to rewrite the nation’s immigration laws. The deal, which was to be announced at a news conference Monday afternoon, covers border security, guest workers and employer verification, as well as a path to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants already in this country. Although thorny details remain to be negotiated and success is far from certain, the development heralds the start of what could be the most significant effort in years toward overhauling the nation’s inefficient patchwork of immigration laws.”

Our nation was gripped by so many fallacies and delusions in 2012 that the whole Mayan calendar end-of-the-world thing didn’t even make the list.

Even those apocalyptic prophecies were more plausible than the idea that cutting Social Security will help the deficit, that government spending cuts will jump-start the economy, there were no crimes on Wall Street, or that we live in a “divided nation” whose “center” wants more business as usual in Washington.

Here then, without further ado, are our Top 12 Political Fallacies for 2012.

1. Austerity works.

Last year we said austerity economics was dead. It is. Unfortunately nobody told the politicians. They’re still trying to force it onto the people of Europe, even as its effects make the economies there progressively worse.

They’re trying to force more of it on us, too. The Republicans want to decimate Social Security, Medicare, roads and highways, education, programs for the poor … The Democrats offer a more modest form of austerity, but austerity’s exactly what the President last proposed to Congress.

If austerity’s so good for us, why are they trying to terrify us with the a”fiscal cliff”? T heirMonster In the Closet is austerity. Apparently they don’t see the irony in that. But there’s something else they shouldn’t overlook.

Obama will never run for office again, but most of Democrats on the Hill will. Hope they don’t forget that – because we won’t.

2. We need less government spending.

The flip side of this delusion is the notion that government spending is our problem. It’s not. In fact, right now it’s the solution.

We need more jobs to stimulate the economy. Without them, large segments of the population will continue to live in a prolonged state of deprivation unless government does something about it.

We need more better education and more advancement opportunities for our children. And our roads, bridges and schools are crumbling all around us.

Spending cuts aren’t even the solution to the Federal deficit – not in the short term. Government spending falls as a percentage of GDP when the whole economy grows – and the way to make it grow is by priming the economic pump and building for the future, not with shortsighted spending cuts.

Know who’s a real job creator? Someone with a job.

3. Social Security is in ‘crisis’ and we need to cut it.

No, and No.

Yes, Social Security has a projected long-term shortfall in its ability to pay benefits,starting in 2036 or so. But that projection’s based on a lot of different assumptions – including the assumption that we won’t fix our wage stagnation problem, that we can’t put a lot more people back to work, and that we lack the political will to lift the payroll tax cap to make up for the shortfall in revenue caused by the unexpected increased in six-, seven-, and eight-figure income as the result of growing wage inequity.

And anyone who says that retiring Baby Boomers are part of the problem is peddling snake oil. The last Boomer was born in 1964, and we fixed Social Security in 1983. At least, it was fixed until the top 1 percent – and top 0.1 percent – started hijacking our national income.

What’s changed since 1983? We didn’t produce more Boomers. In 1983 the youngest of them was already old enough to drive to the record store for the latest Huey Lewis and the News album.

What we HAVE produced is more wealth inequity.

4. Medicare benefits need to be cut, too.

Medicare has a serious long-term cost problem. But cutting benefits won’t help – whether it’s done by raising the Medicare age, by limiting what it pays for, or imposing arbitrary caps on what it will spend.

If we do those things, overall health care costs will continue to rise. And we’ll have sicker seniors, more seniors in poverty, and seniors who don’t live as long.

Means-testing won’t cut it, either. Scratch most means-testing proposals and you’ll find they’re not targeting “millionaires and billionaires” – they’re aimed at the middle class.

We already know how to handle “millionaires and billionaires” more fairly: Raise their taxes. That’s simple, clean, efficient, and fair.

The only way to fix our Medicare cost problem is by fixing the impact of unrestrained greed on our health care system. We need to do something about that — now.

We don’t need to cover less. We need to pay less.

5. We’re “living beyond our means.”

More snake oil.It’s undertaxed corporations and billionaires who are living beyond our nation’s means, by claiming an inordinate and unearned share of our nation’s wealth and not paying their fair share of taxes for it.

We have the means to be the country we’ve always been. What we’ve lacked is the political will to buck the moneyed forces who are dismantling a system that’s worked for 75 years.

Ours is a country that won two world wars. We once led the world in economic growth and blazed the way in science, technology, and the arts. We decided to send human beings to the moon and back in ten years … and did it.

Now we’re told it’s “beyond our means” to live as well as we did in 1969. There’s a word for that, but it’s not printable.

6. Our problems aren’t anybody’s fault.

This fallacy might be called the “Sh*t Happens” school of economic thinking. It says that the economy just crashes from time to time, recurrent and unavoidable disasters just like earthquakes.

But we avoided these crises for decades by regulating Wall Street and prosecuting crooked bankers. When we stopped doing those things we got another crisis.

Cause and effect.

7. Banks paid back what they owed us from the bailout.

Here’s why this is a fallacy: First, we don’t have a full accounting even now. Secondly, we’re still responsible for the enormous amount of toxic risk which Wall Street created and the government then assumed on its behalf.

Besides, that’s not how business works. Every major bank in this country was a failing business with intolerable risk exposure. Loans under those conditions are of enormous and inestimable value.

When you ask nothing in return – not partial ownership, not a percentage of the profits, not even an end to their criminal behavior – you’re giving away the store. And when you give those loans to serial crooks and cheaters – people who serially cheat you – people, you’ve been had.

8. Wall Street-ers didn’t commit any crimes – or they’re too hard to prosecute.

Which gets us to our next fallacy, or fallacies. There’s overwhelming evidence, and a mound of billion-dollar settlements, demonstrating that banks — and individual bank executives — broke laws over and over in the run-up to the current crisis.

These mountains of prima facie evidence were ignored, and continue to be ignored, by the Obama/Holder Justice Department.

Now we’ve learned that all the banks knowingly defrauded regulators in a LIBOR scandal. All of them!

LIBOR is like one of those Agatha Christie novels where all the suspects did it.

9. “Ideologues” are getting in the way of “bipartisan” and “technocratic” solutions to our problems.

This is another fallacy – one they’ve been using to sell unwise, unpopular, and unfair policies. It’s usually attached to billionaire-funded corporate agendas like those of the “Simpson Bowles” plan, the Democratic group called Third Way, and the corporate CEOs of “Fix the Debt.”

They always say their plan’s been designed by “technocrats,” but that “ideologues” and “divisiveness” are getting in the way.

But the so-called “ideologues” fighting austerity represent Americans in all walks of life, across the political spectrum. They also represent a growing consensus among most economists who aren’t tied to right-wing institutions – including Nobel Prize winners like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, and those who work for the IMF.

There’s a word for the people who keep complaining that the “ideologues” are getting in their way: Lobbyists.

10. A “divided nation” elected a “divided government” through a democratic process.

No. Democrats won the Presidency and the Senate by decisive margins, both state-by-state and in the popular vote. They even won a handsome victory in the House, but lost it because of sleazy GOP gerrymandering.

They won because they promised to defend Social Security and Medicare, and to tax earnings over $250,000. Now the President and Nancy Pelosi are pushing a plan that cuts Social Security, even though there’s no evidence the Republicans are insisting that Social Security be part of the deal.

Think the election would have turned out this way if Obama and Pelosi had told the public what they’d be doing in December?

Republicans aren’t speaking for half of a divided nation. And Democrats who don’t live up to their campaign promises aren’t honoring the small-”d” democratic process.

11. It’s about politicians.

“Obamabots” vs. “Obama bashers”: It’s on. Again. But it’s not about Obama – or Bill and Hillary, or any other political leader. If you attach your hopes to them you’re setting yourself up for a snow job, like Bill’s huckstering of late for the Fix the Debt/Simpson/Bowles corporate austerity plan.

But the flip side – hating or resenting them – is a distraction, and it can eat away at the soul.

Politics is not a celebrity sport. Corporate interests understand that. They’ve gotten a lot of politicians to throw the game by throwing their money around, and even some of the better ones feel they’ll lose if they don’t compromise.

Sure, brave politicians can make a huge difference. (Thank you, Bernie Sanders. And Raul Grijalva. And Keith Ellison. And Jan Schakowsky. It’s a long list, and we hope to add Elizabeth Warren and a couple more names to it soon.)

We still need to “emancipate ourselves from mental slavery” — especially in the form of hero-worshipping or demonizing the human beings who hold or seek high office.

12. We’re helpless.

Yes, it’s a rigged game. Yes, our democracy’s been tainted and compromised.

But mobilized citizens prevented the President from proposing Social Security cuts in his 2010 State of the Union speech. The Occupy movement changed Democratic political rhetoric, which changed poll numbers aand arguably changed the election results.

Some people say, So what? Look at what they’re trying to do now. That’s true — about some of them. But we’ve gained leverage, and we should use it.

While we’re developing new political leaders and institutions, we must stay mobilized for the struggles already underway: To protect Social Security and Medicare. To rein in Wall Street crime. To defend ripped-off homeowners and other mistreated corporate customers. To fight spending cuts and protect the vulnerable. To create jobs — good jobs — for every American who wants to work.

Difficult? Sure. Risk of failure? Definitely. But impossible?

That’s a fallacy.

Related posts:

The War On Women Is a Class War
Lemmings
Talking With Krugman: He’s Anti-Austerity, Pro-Peter Gabriel, and “Not That Cosmic”
The “BS” Austerity Plan Nobody Wants … And We May Get Anyway

Pay attention to what is happening in Michigan, because it will add even more downward pressure to your wages and benefits, wherever you live and work. Republicans in the Michigan legislature have rammed through anti-union “right-to-work” laws making union dues voluntary even as unions a required by law to provide services to members and non-members. They say this will make Michigan more “business-friendly” by driving down wages and benefits, thereby stealing jobs from states where working people have rights. The actual intent is to get rid of the unions altogether, and their ability to fight for the 99% in the ongoing class war with the 1%.

What Are So-Called “Right-To-Work” Laws?

“Right-to-work” means the right to work in a unionized business that has a negotiated contract without paying dues to the union.

The 1947 Taft-Hartley Act allows states to prohibit unions from collecting fees from non-members or making union membership mandatory, and states that do this are called “right-to-work” states. So-called “right-to-work” laws prohibit labor contracts from requiring employees who are covered by the contract to pay dues to the union that won the contract. But the unions are still required to represent every worker who is covered by a contract — even workers who are not members of the union and do not pay union dues. This costs money, so the union is drained of funds and power, thereby weakening their ability and incentive to fight for better wages and benefits.

Stealing From Other States, Lowering Wages And Tax Revenue

The appeal of these so-called “right-to-work” laws is that by weakening the ability of workers to band together and fight for better wages and conditions, they result in lower wages, benefits and safety standards. This is supposed to make these states more attractive to employers, which then brings jobs to the lower-wages states as employers leave states where worker have rights.

This affects wages across the larger economy. Any jobs that do move to these states come from other states. So in the larger economy of the country the effect of these laws is to shift wages, benefits and safety standards downward. This brings pressure that forces all wages for all employees down, which further lowers the country’s tax base, reducing the entire country’s ability to educate, maintain and modernize infrastructure, etc.

As jobs shift to lower-wage states, pressure to lower all wages increases, and the collection of income tax revenue decreases. The ability of consumers to make purchases decreases as well. Infrastructure investment declines. Education declines. Over time the country falls behind the rest of the world and it become more expensive and more difficult to catch up.

Or, in other words, exactly what we are seeing all around us now.

Studies Of The Effects

A May, 2011 Bureau of Labor Statistics study found that “right-to-work” states have lower wages (examples: 9.4% lower for all occupations, 11.4% lower for teachers) than states with union rights.

A January, 2012 study by American Rights at Work, New Research Counters Arguments for “Right-To-Work” Laws, examined a number of studies and found that “recent studies rebut claims of economic growth and instead find that laws suppress wages.”

In Nonunion Wage Rates and the Threat of Unionization Henry Farber, Professor of Economics at Princeton University found that after Idaho passed a RTW law in 1985, there was a statistically-significant drop in nonunion wages relative to other states.

Feb, 2011, Economic Policy Institute (EPI), Does ‘right-to-work’ create jobs? Answers from Oklahoma,

Despite ambitious claims by proponents, the evidence is overwhelming that:

• Right-to-work laws have not succeeded in boosting employment growth in the states that have adopted them.

• The case of Oklahoma – closest in time to the conditions facing those states now considering such legislation – is particularly discouraging regarding the law’s ability to spur job growth. Since the law passed in 2001, manufacturing employment and relocations into the state reversed their climb and began to fall, precisely the opposite of what right-to-work advocates promised.

• For those states looking beyond traditional or low wage manufacturing jobs – whether to higher-tech manufacturing, to “knowledge” sector jobs, or to service industries dependent on consumer spending in the local economy – there is reason to believe that right-to-work laws may actually harm a state’s economic prospects.

Sept, 2011, EPI, ‘Right to work,’ The wrong answer for Michigan’s economy, findings included,

• Right-to-work laws lower wages—for both union and nonunion workers alike—by an average of $1,500 per year, after accounting for the cost of living in each state.

• Right-to-work laws also decrease the likelihood that employees get either health insurance or pensions through their jobs—again, for both union and nonunion workers.

• By cutting wages, right-to-work laws threaten to undermine job growth by reducing the discretionary income people have to spend in the local retail, real estate, construction, and service industries. Every $1 million in wage cuts translates into an additional six jobs lost in the economy. With 85 percent of Michigan’s economy concentrated in health care, retail, education, and other non-manufacturing industries, widespread wage and benefit cuts could translate into significant negative spillover effects for the state’s economy.

Labor’s Reaction

On CNN this morning UAW President Bob King explained that this bill threatens worker rights. “It demonstrates to workers and really a broad spectrum of the populous that we have to work hard, we have to fight hard to protect our rights.” Explaining that workers already have the choice to join a union, King said,

“You don’t have to be a union member. But you have to pay your fair share. Just like if you live in a community, you pay for your fair share of the road cleaning, of the police, of the fire,” King argued. People who benefit by [the union's] collective bargaining benefit by this procedure. They pay a fair share of the cost of representation.”

Steelworkers leader Leo Gerard called on Michigan governor Snyder to veto the law, (click through for the entire statement)

“The USW active and retired members join other unions and allies in Michigan and across the nation to call on Gov. Snyder to support the proposal of the state’s Democratic congressional delegation. We ask the Governor to use his veto power to stop this unnecessary and divisive right-to-work bill.

“If the Governor feels this bill will move Michigan forward, he should delay the final legislative votes and allow an amendment that would put this issue before the public as a state ballot initiative. We urge Governor Snyder to delay his signing of the bill. Let the people of Michigan debate and vote on a consequential matter that will affect all working families.

“We know the newly-elected Michigan state legislature convening early next year has added Democrats that would reject a right-to-work-for-less bill. Right-to-work is only supported by millionaires and billionaires who profit by taking more money out of the workers’ pockets.

Demonstrations and Disruptions

In a sign of things to come, 12-15,000 people demonstrated today at Michigan’s capitol building. There were confrontations, including mounted police charging into the crowd. Former Congressman Mark Schauer was pepper-sprayed.

Ned Resnikoff, writing in, Michigan passes ‘Right-to-Work’ but fight isn’t over at the Ed Schultz website,

Shortly after noon on Tuesday, Michigan’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives gave its final approval to the state’s hotly contested “right-to-work” legislation, as thousands of the bill’s opponents rallied outside. But labor activists and their allies say that the fight isn’t over yet, and they’re already plotting their strategy for keeping Michigan a union stronghold.

“This fight is not over by a long shot, regardless of what happens today,” said Zack Pohl, the executive director of Progress Michigan.

See Also

Mary Bottari at PRWat: Michigan Passes “Right to Work” Containing Verbatim Language from ALEC Model Bill

AFL-CIO ‘Right to Work’ for Less fact sheet.

Economic Policy Institute, Unions and Labor Standards, a collection of articles, posts and studies of the effects labor and anti-labor policies.

Nicole Pasulka at Mother Jones, Right-to-Work Laws, Explained

Josh Eidelson at Salon, Koch brothers, Tea Party cash drives Michigan right-to-work bill

Amanda Terkel at Huffington Post, Big 3 Automakers Reportedly Worried About Michigan Right To Work Legislation

Teamster Nation: RTW passes in #MI as thousands try to enter Capitol

OurFuture post on being “business-friendly, China Is Very “Business-Friendly”,

China is very, very “business-friendly.” Corporate conservatives lecture us that we should be more “business-friendly,” in order to “compete” with China. They say we need to cut wages and benefits, work longer hours, get rid of overtime and sick pay — even lunch breaks. They say we should shed unions, get rid of environmental and safety regulations, gut government services, and especially, especially, especially we should cut taxes. But America can never be “business-friendly” enough to compete with China, and here is why.

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An extremist website called World Net Daily says that the Campaign For America’s Future, where I am a Senior Fellow, is “radical.” They’re worked up about our Wage Class War website, which documents 2012′s successful class-based political campaigns and promotes this winning strategy in future elections.

In the hallucinogenic haze that is today’s far right, apparently it’s “radical” to promote ideas and policies supported by most American voters – including, in many cases, most Republicans.

Agreeing with Republican voters isn’t really radical, of course. So who, exactly, thinks “Wage Class War” is unreasonable?

Conspiracy Central

World Net Daily is a leading source for those tinfoil-hat “birther” theories about President Obama. It also says that he’s “fomenting civil unrest” so that he can implement “martial law.”  Founder Joseph Farah thinks Americans are approaching the same apocalyptic fate as the ancient Israelites who were “destroyed by God,” adding that we’re in “full apostasy boogie.” (That must be something like Janis Joplin’s “Full Tilt Boogie” — but with lousier music.)

Still, there’s a method to the Daily’s madness. When it published a piece claiming that Social Security promotes homosexuality and wages war on the family, for example, it was executing a strategy other right-wingers have accurately (and approvingly) described as “Leninist.”  The same is true of its attacks on public schools, which it calls “brainwashing hubs.”

It’s tempting to write them off as kooks, but they have lots of readers. No wonder so many Americans think Obama’s a Muslim. A Daily contributor says he has a “secret Muslim ring” that he uses to signal his Jihadist pals.

They’re the comic-book ravings of well-funded – and surprisingly influential – extremists.

Don’t You Know There’s a War On?

The lead paragraph in the Daily’s piece says the Campaign For America’s Future (CAF) is a “radical think tank” whose new site is “urging politicians and activists to wage class warfare while hailing what it calls a new era in politics – the use of class warfare to win elections.”

I don’t know where the writer gets some of his weirder conspiratorial ideas, but I do know this: a class war has been raging for decades, and it wasn’t the American majority who started it. But it’s on. That war is an all-out economic assault on anyone who isn’t at the very pinnacle of wealth, power, and privilege.

That war’s been remarkably successful, too. The US now has more economic inequality than most developed nations – even more than Egypt – as the wealthiest among us have seized an ever-growing share of our national income. A CBO study shows that the wealthiest 1 percent of households increased their share of our national income from 20 percent in 1979 to 40 percent in 2007. And after 2008′s financial crisis, the wealthy enjoyed all the economic growth that followed.

All of it.

The American majority didn’t start this class war. But we deserve to win it.

Winning the War

And make no mistake: The “class war” argument is a winning one. This year’s election proves it. So do the polls. Our own polling shows that voters overwhelmingly reject the World Net Daily/John Boehner agenda.

Very large majorities – including most Republicans – want higher taxes for millionaires and reject tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. They’d rather invest in growing the economy than focus on deficit reduction. They (including a resounding 71% of Republicans) want to tax corporations’ overseas profits.  They (including 72 percent of Republicans) reject Medicare cuts and reject lower “cost of living adjustments” (including 61% of Republicans) as a way to cut Social Security.

Sorry, conservatives: They’re just not that into you.

These findings are consistent with earlier polls showing that 75 percent of Republicans – including 76 percent of Tea Party members – oppose Social Security deficit-reduction cuts. A slim majority of Republicans even supported the “public option,” the right’s bête noire. That plan would let all Americans buy into Medicare, rather than rely on the flailing and overpriced private health insurance system.

The verdict is in: The American people know there’s a class war waging – and they support a strong defense.

Red (State) Dawn

Some say the right-wing class war began with Lewis F. Powell’s infamous 1971 memo, which urged corporate America to attack the free expression of ideas in universities, monitor and bully the press, and inundate the public with misleading propaganda. (See Thom Hartmann and Dave Johnson for more.)  That memo’s reflected in “Discover the Networks,” which attacks anyone whose opinion it dislikes by claiming they knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody else … who also held opinions it dislikes.

Think of it as “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” for McCarthyites.

World Net Daily’s Aaron Klein approvingly quotes Discover the Networks in his attack on CAF. He also thinks it’s quite damning that at some time or another CAF was connected with an organization that was connected to <gasp> … George Soros.  But then, Klein’s written a book called The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists.  Enough said.

Where does World Net Daily get its money? Farah got extremely nasty with a reporter who dared to ask that question – and refused to answer. So we don’t know who financed and set up this operation.

C’mon, guys: Let’s see your birth certificate.

Lennon & McCartneyLenin & McCarthy

McCarthyism is one right-wing strategy. Another ‘s laid out in a paper published by the right-wing Cato Institute. It advised fellow travellers to undermine Social Security with a “Leninist strategy” of “neutralizing” its elderly supporters, while misleading younger ones into thinking it won’t be there when they retire – a strategy we’re saying played out today in the “fiscal cliff” and deficit-reduction talks. (See Michael Hiltzik or the original paper.)

But the public’s smarter and more vigilant than they thought, and it still strongly supports Social Security. That’s bad news for Vladimir Ilyich Cato.

It’s also bad news for World Net Daily, whose approach could be called “Leninism squared”: neutralize anybody with different opinions, while arguing that the government itself is an illusion … or a conspiracy.

I, Radical

If it’s radical to support the American majority, consider me a proud radical. If it’s radical to defend important and successful social programs, and to work to make them even stronger, count me in.

And if it’s class war to defend ordinary Americans from Wall Street greed and corporate criminality, or to fight for a society where everyone has a fair chance to get ahead, then call me a class warrior.

I’ve got friends, too – and they’ve got friends, and they’ve got friends, and they’ve got friends … enough to cause a computer meltdown at Discover The Networks.

That’s why we’re winning elections. And we don’t plan to stop until this war is won … for the good guys.

Here’s a news flash for the folks at World Net Daily: If they think it’s “radical” to defend Social Security, fight for Medicare, and make sure that the wealthy pay their fair of taxes, then stick around. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

In case you were wondering if class war had anything to do with the outcome of the presidential vote in 2012, take a look at the “income” breakdown in The New York Times exit polls for the top 10 swing states.

The division is stark. In eight of the 10 battleground states (Florida, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin), President Obama won voters with incomes under $50,000 while losing voters with incomes of more than $50,000. In the other two swing states (New Hampshire and Colorado), Obama won voters with incomes under $50,000 while tying voters over $50,000 (and losing the subset of voters with incomes over $100,000).

Less than $50,000? Obama won. More than $50,000? Obama lost (or tied). Tell me again why so many Democrats want to screw around with the benefits and retirement ages for Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid? Maybe it’s their lack of class…