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Charles Jaco has written opinion and commentary pieces for dozens of magazines and newspapers. Each week, read and comment on a fresh on-line version. The discussion page enables you to share your view points world wide. If you would like to make a comment go to the " Join the discussion" link below. If you would like to view past editorials visit the Editorial Archive. Editorial 03/16/01 note: for links to information resources on the new Bush era, go to NewsBoom CLASS WARFARE Every tactician knows the first daffodils and crocuses mean it's time for a spring offensive. This spring, we've started early. Conservatives mounted a winter sitskreig, sitting on their duffs and yowling about those nasty liberals, minorities, and unions and their perfectly awful attempts at class warfare. Class envy, they bleated. The politics of division, they snarled. With the straight face of the Japanese ambassador on December 6, 1941 denying any attack on the U.S. was imminent, they've launched their own attack, all the while denying any such thing. This is class warfare from the people who invented the concept--the ruling class. The tax cut proposal is the tip of the spear. It manages to redistribute wealth nicely, taking money from programs that mostly benefit the rest of us and funneling the lion's share into their own pockets. They claim, with a straight face, that there are no cuts in spending, that just the rate of growth is being reduced. So that means less will be spent than was planned. Psst, fellas: that's a cut. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have said one-fourth to one-third of any projected surplus will have to be spent to bring the military up to where it should be. These cuts take care of that nicely, which is no surprise, since, for all their lip service to the military, ruling class apologists are deeply suspicious of any institution that protects the rest of us by using mostly poor whites, Hispanics, and blacks. If the devil's in the details, then you have to wade through several hundred turgid pages of Bush budget proposals to find Beezelbub. Take the line that removes money for anti-drug programs, and guards, at federally-funded housing projects. The conservatives claim the programs are ineffective. A friend of mine with a conservative bent summed it up more plainly--if that happens, then inner-city housing projects become, in his words, "self-cleaning ovens": gangs and drugs wipe everybody out, and then we can flatten the projects for scenic empty lots. The bankruptcy bill about the become law also squeezes off 7.65 mm rounds at the heads of everyone without a portfolio manager. In some societies, bank and credit card company managers charging 18 to 22 per-cent interest would have their hands chopped off as usurers. But they managed to convince Congress that people who declare Chapter 11 are bottom-feeding freeloaders. As the economy goes south, the monied firms are suddenly worried about thousands of people suddenly becoming unable to pay their bills. With all the finesse of Tony Soprano threatening to break kneecaps unless the vigorish is paid, they're about to make extortion legal. Now, even if you're flat broke, you'll probably be forced to declare Chapter 7, when guarantees that your future earnings will be garnisheed to pay off Visa, Citibank, and MasterCard, without whose gleeful assistance you wouldn't be broke in the first place. But the oppressed rich aren't just rising up on Capitol Hill. They're on the offensive across America. Take Milwaukee, where millionaire owners of the Milwaukee Brewers are so worried about paying their milionaire players that they soaked taxpayers for three-fourths of the cost of a new Brewer's ballpark. Tommy Thompson, GOP conservative Wisconsin governor and now secretary of HHS, was asked if he had any parting thoughts about using tax money for baseball stadia. His reply to the Milwaukee Sentinel--"I'd say if anyone in government is faced with a proposal like this, they should run away. Run away as fast as you can." Or take sagging old Pittsburgh, where the well-heeled owners of the Pirates stuck taxpayers with 95 per-cent of the cost for the Bucs new ballyard, even though voters in the 12-county Pittsburgh area had previously shot down public funding by a three-to-one margin. The trophy for middle American ruling class hubris, though, goes hands down to St. Louis. The country club owners of the Cardinals propose that taxpayers help them fund a new generation of megabucks ballplayers by paying two-thirds of the cost of a new ballpark. This in a city where a 10 year old was ripped to pieces by a pack of wild dogs because animal control was shorthanded and social welfare agencies were too strapped to keep the kid away from a drug-addled mother. This in a city that's facing the layoff of 100 cops because of budget shortages. This in a city whose schools are barely functioning and that has a worse infant mortality rate than Cuba. Class warfare? These people make Karl Marx look like a pussycat. |
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