How often do we get to elect someone to Congress who turns around and says exactly what we hoped he would? Jim Webb begins his Wall Street Journal Editorial "Class Struggle" with these powerful words.
The most important--and unfortunately the least debated--issue in politics today is our society's steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America's top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the economic health of working people. The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes.
Read the rest here.
John McCreery
Yokohama, Japan
This was my main reason for supporting Webb, and am I happy and proud to have him as our senator-elect. :)
As Jim was fond of saying early on, “the old labels are fading away”. The lazy journalists, more shallow pundits, and GOP propagandists (Limbaugh, etc.) who say Jim Webb is a "conservative" are in for a very rude awakening! In a word, it’s all about FAIRNESS, hardly a concept attractive to today’s self labeled “conservatives”. If the self described “conservatives” of the present thought they had an ideological soul mate in Webb they will learn very soon that they are very wrong.
The radicals in our midst are those who want to continue the redistribution of income to a small elite, while taking away opportunity from an ever-growing "permanent underclass." The radicals are the ones who want to send others to fight in wars that enrich them, the ones who want to preserve the best educations for their children, the ones who want to keep their gated communities "pure." They are not conservative. They are myopic, selfish radicals who endanger the very social fabric of our nation.
Jim Webb calls attention to just how wrong and dangerous for social stability such greed and selfishness is. How refreshing to have someone in office who speaks in complete sentences, not bumper sticker slogans, and who has a vision of how to fix this great land of ours.
Steve
So, we have here the opening salvo, in enemy territory, the Wall Street Journal.
Webb has lifted his best artillery, his words, to start defending the nation against the hordes of Corporate elites and super rich who believe it is their manifest destiny to exploit and rape the nation of it's treasure.
BRAVO!
Our so-called robust economy is built on a blanket of borrowed money and an increasingly service-oriented and non-productive economy. We are beholden to the Chinese banks from whom we borrow and our economy is on a spending spree. We've mortgaged the country and we're out spending the money we got from our refi on all the cool stuff we want and our very expensive new hobby in Iraq. Some day we're going to have to pay the note, and then where will we be? We'll have an economy in which not only our blue collar but a lot of our white collar jobs have been outsourced and our productive capacity will be severely diminished. We're turning into a depository for cheap foreign goods and we're losing our self-sufficiency. We're ceding control over our economic well-being to the foreigners who hold our loans. What's good for business is no longer what is good also for America because businesses have become globalized. Maybe you're doing well now, but you should start worrying about how things will be for your descendants 25 years from now.
We need 150,000 new jobs a month (I think a month, not a year) in order to keep up with population growth. We are not keeping up with the growth.
The only bummer is the comments....did anyone follow the link to the reader comments? Not a single positive comment
Freakin' wingnuts :)
Not A Wingnut, I wouldn't worry about the comments too much; it must have been like an ice-cold shower coming out of the warm-water spigot to the WSJ readers, so it's no surprise they didn't like it. But, at least they got to *see* it :)
I don't know how many of you here read WSJ. I don't read it on a regular basis but I'm often referred to specific articles/editorials in it by various blogs and private acquaintances and, sometimes, get the whole paper, just to keem my thumb on the pulse, so to speak.
The news/reporting part of the paper is pretty much like that of any other major paper (NYT, WaPO, LAT, Boston Globe) -- a slight skew to the right, but, in general, very respectable (WSJ published the article on US monitoring bank records the same day NYTimes did. It just didn't get bitch-slapped the same way the NYT did
It's only the Op-ed section that's "all GOP, all the time", and only the higher standard of literacy keeps it from being a printed version of Faux Snooze. For Jim's -- totally subversive -- POV to have been presented in WSJ's Op-ed pages *at all* is nothing short of a seismic upheaval :)I think it was, probably, his "Reagan credentials" that got the piece published though his "Reagan credentials" were not mentioned anywhere -- just that he's a Senator-elect from VA.
I can just imagine the rude awakening of all those who regularly read the WSJ op-eds for the pleasure of nodding their heads in agreement...then having the head snap back in horror... Some of them will, probably, cancel their subscriptions over their almost-strokes. I wouldn't worry; it's good for them to have to contemplate another POV, if only to shoot it down (just as it's good for us to see what the wingnuts think).
YOU GO, Jim!
Very interesting thing about the new Senate is the number of people with common views about the issues Jim raises in the article. There are a bunch of prairie/MW populists currently in the Senate. Also, people such as Boxer. With Webb, Tester, Brown and Casey bringing in some fresh enthusiasm for these issues, I think we have an opportunity to make a lot of noise.
People are going to be blown away by the difference between Jim and George Allen.
Globalization IS happening, and can't be stopped. The thing we have to do is make sure that the American worker is still kept in mind as we adapt to an internationalized world. Webb understands this. He knows that we have to modernize, but can't ignore the working man as we do.
The grand total is $3479 per person/year. With an average household size of 2.59 in the United States, we are running combined deficits of $9010.61 per household. Can you sustain running that much in debt every year, indefinately?
Globalization has been successful for the rich. They have accumulated more wealth. However, the middle-class and poor have been left behind - we have had stagnant wages for 30 years. I believe that any type of globalization that leaves the largest portions of the county behind is by definition, a failure.
So the "free traders" - which I don't think is an accurate description of them - can ink all the trade agreements they want. If they don't change something about what they are doing, the results will be the same.
If a person does the same thing over and over again, and each time it fails, what does that say about one's self? There are many members of Congress who owe us an explanation to that question.
Also, that $9010.61 you owe from last year has been collecting interest. Who do you think will pay it, when, and how high will the costs be after considering interest?
Our trade policy is wreckless, and we are going to one day pay a heavy price for it. If not us, then our kids. My guess it will be us AND our kids - who knows maybe their kids.
if the link won't work the title of the book is Beyond Capitalism. I heard this guy yesterday on the radio talking about the quiet revolution that has been going on for 30 years and is growing. Worker owned businesses, going from walmarts back to smallmarts. According to him it is only a matter of time before we will adopt these practices on larger scales. Getting townships back in control and in control of their own wealth.
Note that Jim's message is very similar to John Edward's 'Two Americas' message. One of John Kerry's misjudgements in 2004 was the decision to suppress Edwards' populist rhetoric during the Presidential campaign. Edwards went off the national radar screen, and his economic populism was nowhere to be seen. Sigh..
Watch for Republican reactions. In recent years they have been quick to denounce Democratic economic populist rhetoric as 'class warfare' or similar phrases. I think that they understand quite well the power of this message to affect their base, and potentially wedge it. So far they have not tried this attack on Jim Webb, but it is surely coming. My bet is that Jim will rise to the occasion.
Jim makes me proud to be a Virginian. Go, Jim go.
Would he, please? I am in a REDDER than Red district. Hope to seen him in Florida for 2008 - primaries especially because we need to get more appealing Dems elected here who can run on the populist agenda. So far, not so much.