Regressivism: Defunding Democracy through Class Warfare

For the past 30 years, the notion that a healthy democracy is based on the free exchange of ideas and that citizens should be able to freely organize to influence public policy has been under aggressive and institutionalized attack. When Republicans controlled the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives and an increasing number of state governments, conservative activists seized the opportunity to undermine democracy by restricting who qualified for tax-exempt status (thereby undermining government and foundation funding sources for non-profits), public trust, and restricting the attention that civil disobedience protests received from the mainstream media.

The dominance of the Republican Party over this time period and an increasingly assertive conservative movement created a broad intolerance for dissenting voices and lack of access to public funding for liberal organizations. Funded by foundations and corporations, the conservative movement's objective was to silence its contemporary critics on the one hand and any future dissent on the other by defunding education and other "liberal" domains.

What started as a plan to 'defund the left' in the United States inspired conservatives around the world to adopt the same strategy. The consequences of this regressive Republican strategy in the United States was aptly articulated by Rick Kepler:

I am an American worker, and you are damn right I want the wealth to be shared and spread. I am talking about the wealth my hard work helped to create, but was taken from me by George Bush's base, the very rich, or as I know them, my corporate bosses. For the past eight years I have watched W.'s and McCain's (Country Club First) base grab the largest share of our country's wealth. Where did they take it from? They took it from my family's pocketbook, and my co-workers' families' pocketbooks. They stole the wealth that I was trying to build for me and my family when they stripped my pension plan from me and told me to invest in a 401k. Then they stole most of that 401k and other workers' 401k savings with this economic meltdown. This was a massive transfer of wealth from the workers' pockets into the already stuffed pockets of the rich. My retirement savings and my co-workers' savings all across America have been looted by the corporate bosses, who just got bailed out while we got left out. Again! [Rick Kepler, The American Worker, 21 November 2008]

Workers are finally "getting it." Most Americans, however, are still in the dark as the current majority Democratic Congress is not aggressively investigating the government abuses that the Left has catalogued on blogs for more than five years. More recently, citizens in Argentina and, currently, in Iceland has shown the world what an appropriate public response should be to put conservatism on the defensive. Yet, in the United States a New Era democratic president is attempting reconciliation rather than retribution or criminal enforcement of the US legal code. His actions could set back a global movement that in the end could result in more violent revolt against entrenched neo-con governments everywhere.

The inaction of Congress and the Obama administration may further exacerbate the capacity of citizens seeking a more expansive democracy to solve their problems and improve the quality of their lives. It's a strategy that empowers Republicans as revealed in the recent debates in the US Congress. To overcome this New Era politic the progressive movement in the United States must rise to the challenge and confront the Democrats in the streets. A dialogue will not occur until the American people engages its government at the seat of power. Many individuals are doing just this.

In a recent TruthOut perspective, 'Ending the Hidden Agenda Behind Tax Cuts,' Joe Brewer, has published an analytical framework that the public can use to better understand the regressive strategy that was used to inculcate Americans to act against their long-term interests by appealing to their immediate short-term self-interests. One of the key components of this strategy is tax cuts. Brewer writes: "It's time to tell the truth about tax cuts. This phrase dominates political discourse and is coughed out every time a conservative public figure opens his mouth. It is treated like the basis of sound reasoning, yet no one points out what should be obvious - that 'tax relief' and 'tax cuts' are just code words for destroying the capacity of government to serve the public."

So well we know. This is why an even larger stimulus plan will be necessary. The public sector that serves the needs of citizens is running on fumes as Republicans continue to stonewall in social spending in favor of...yawn...tax cuts. This class war is far from over and the stakes are very high for all Americans.

Other Resources

• SourceWatch
• Alternet
• TomDispatch
• TruthOut
• Baseline Scenario
• Bill Moyers Journal — The Economists
• ShovelWatch
• Economists View
• Institute for Policy Studies
• Real News
• GRITtv
• The Nation Magazine
  

Is the Obama Administration Undermining Equal Justice Under the Law?

A recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds that 65% of Americans are in favor of investigating allegations that the Bush administration used torture to interrogate terrorism suspects and its program of wiretapping U.S. citizens without getting warrants. In writing for The Nation magazine, David Cole challenges the Obama administration to hear the will of the people:

"President Barack Obama came to office promising change and, to his credit, has already issued orders to close Guantánamo and the CIA's secret prisons and to stop the CIA's use of cruel and inhuman interrogation tactics. But in a pair of recent cases, Obama has shown a troubling unwillingness even to acknowledge the wrongs that the Bush administration committed. Both cases involve Binyam Mohammed, a Guantánamo detainee who was allegedly a victim of rendition and torture at the hands of US captors. On February 4 an English court announced that it could not disclose how US officials had interrogated Mohammed, because Washington would not let it do so, declaring the information secret. And on February 9 a Justice Department lawyer told the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that a lawsuit challenging the legality of Mohammed's treatment had to be dismissed because it touched on 'state secrets.'

In both instances the 'secret' is that we tortured suspects in the 'war on terror'—a secret heard round the world, but one the Obama administration is apparently unwilling to have acknowledged in a court of law. As the British judges wrote, 'We did not consider that a democracy governed by the rule of law would expect a court in another democracy to suppress a summary of the evidence contained in reports by its own officials...relevant to allegations of torture and cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment, politically embarrassing though it might be.' Accountability demands open acknowledgment that serious wrongs have been committed, not inflated claims of secrecy that allow the wrongs to go unremedied."

Simply saying that the Bush administration and its various security officials were shameless or were only following orders is not good enough. These officials violated international treaties to which the United States is a signatory. The ball is in your court Mr. President. Can you rise to the occasion? This is not 1865 in which racism and slavery were still issues. This is the 21st century and the nation is different and enforcement of human rights violations must be punished.

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An Economic Bill of Rights

President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Excerpt from message to Congress on the State of the Union
11 January 1944

It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

• The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;


• The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;


• The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;


• The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;


• The right of every family to a decent home;


• The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;


• The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;


• The right to a good education.
  

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.

Source: Rosenman, Samuel (ed.) The Public Papers & Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt , Vol XIII. (NY: Harper, 1950), pp. 40-4.