The main worry about Mr Webb, however, is that he is a genuine fire-breathing economic populist. He appears actually to believe the sort of stuff that Mr Obama only says during Democratic primaries. Since vice-presidents sometimes become presidents, this matters. American workers, says Mr Webb, "are at the mercy of cut-throat executives who are vastly overpaid, partly as a consequence of giving [the workers'] jobs away to other people." Illegal immigration and globalisation "threaten to dissipate" the American middle-class way of life. He predicts that, unless the government acts to restore "economic fairness", America "may well go the way of ancient Greece [or] greed-ridden Rome".
That is from The Class Warrior, which is subtitled Jim Webb would make a poor running-mate for Barack Obama. This piece in The Economist is interesting:
It give all the normal advantages that Webb would bring to the ticket: his military expertise, his prescience on Iraq, and so on. And, not unexpected, it repeats the canards about him as a candidate: in the paragraph immediately above the one quoted at the beginning of this posting we read
Mr Webb is an indifferent campaigner. His speeches are awkward, he clearly dislikes all the flesh-pressing and he looks like an angry potato. He has infuriated some Democrats (but pleased others) by bucking party orthodoxy on matters of race and sex. He thinks it unfair to poor whites that racial preferences designed to atone for slavery and segregation should be extended to virtually every other minority group. And in 1979 he wrote an article opposing combat roles for women entitled, simply: "Women Can't Fight". (He has since changed his mind.)
Still, the article points out that Webb remains a favorite to be the running mate when one looks at sites like Intrade. And it repeats to a wide audience the strengths he does have.
And what the publication absolutely fails to get is that Jim Webb is quite serious about economic inequity. The also seem to willfully misread some of what he has to say in his latest book.
Which is to be expected: Webb would represent a real threat to the kind of world favored by those who tend to read The Economist and they know it.
hat tip to Leaves on the Current, my spouse, for pointing out the article to me
and he looks like an angry potato
Union membership has been steadily whittled down to about 12 percent of the workforce, from a high of around 33 percent.
George F. Will, the most intellectual of apologists for the looting class, has even declared (in an editorial from January, 2007) that since labor is merely a commodity, the appropriate level for a minimum wage should be zero.
Isn't it about time for the working class to launch a counteroffensive?
Steve
The Air Lift was an incredible feat--- we supplied the million plus civilians in the Allied sector of Berlin with a life line of food and supplies and took out their manufactured goods completely by air, a plane a minute, stunning the world with our technical capabilities. When the Russians closed the Autobahn some Americans wanted to send our tanks down the Autobahn and force it open, thus, probably, starting World War III, but cooler heads prevailed, and we chose a non-belligerant response that flummoxed the Russians (we sent fighter planes to escort the endless stream of cargo planes going into Templehoff, and the Soviets never quite brought themselves to assault the planes directly.
Many years later I heard the wife of a German Army officer rise to her feet at a social function and publicly thank Americans for what we did. And Reagan rewarded the Controllers by breaking their union. May he rot.
Some decades later in 1981 Reagan fired the unionized civilian air traffic controllers in the U.S.
Thanks for the classic new term.
T.C.
At any rate, the term "looting class" is hereby released into the public domain with a GNU license for free and unrestricted use by any individual or organization. Consider "looting class" to be verbal freeware.
Here is how an unabridged dictionary entry might look:
Looting class
noun
An aristocracy of wealth and privilege, usually inherited. Seeks to preserve and enhance its relative status by reducing its taxes, both income and inheritance. Does so by increasing the relative tax burden on the working class while reducing the commodity price of labor as near to zero as possible, often by exporting jobs to areas of even cheaper labor. Assumes that labor is a commodity input, the chief purpose of which is to help maximize speculative profits accruing to the looting class.
As a mere commodity, labor is thought by the looting class to have no right to non-monetary benefits, such as health care, occupational or environmental safety, or reasonable amounts of leisure time. (If workers are permitted reasonable working hours and ample leisure time, they may find time to educate themselves and organize, rather than sit exhausted in the evenings in front a TV to watch the diversions and distractions provided by corporate media conglomerates, which of course are controlled by the looting class.) Such non-monetary benefits would tend to reduce profits and require increased taxes.
The looting class seeks to preserve a system in which the workers are encouraged and even compelled to carry a huge burden of personal debt. The carefully instilled fear of losing one's job and facing bankruptcy helps promote a docile work force disinterested in organizing to bargain collectively with the looters.
Government itself is purchased and manipulated by the looting class as a vehicle for promoting the looting class's particular interests, and the concept that government should promote the "greatest good for the greatest number" is utterly alien to the looter.
I also think its funny that more people play WoW than live in Virginia (or Michigan, or Georga, or New Jersey, or any other state outside that largest 6 of them).
I think we should offer WoW statehood though, that'd be interesting.
Thanks!
Steve