More Class Warfare from "Just to the Right of Center"--Whatever did you expect?

New face--same old class warfare, but it's a less extreme class warfare, no longer coming from the hard right but from "Just to the Right of Center."

Well, that's a relief.

Ms. Elizabeth Hovde says the Oregon legislature blew it by not lowering the minimum wage in this session.

As a spokesperson for those Just to the Right of Center, those who used to call themselves Conservatives and/or Libertarians, Ms. Hovde wants to "tweak" the minimum wage law that was passed by the people through an initiative vote.

Typically, not letting the hob-goblin of consistency get in their way, this comes from people with a history of rising up in outrage when anyone suggests "tampering with the will of the people" by "tweaking" any of the cock-eyed tax or prison "reforms" that Conservatives have used to undermine the infrastructure upon which Oregon's middle class once rested.

But, hey, to change "the will of the voters" about the minimum wage--well, that's no big deal to the very people who not so long ago could preach, with the straightest of faces, the benefits of "local control" here in Oregon while, at the same time, passing laws prohibiting such control by school districts that wanted to keep military recruiters off campuses or by cities and counties that wanted to pass gay rights ordinances.

I digress.

Ms Hovde's commentary "justifies" lowering the minimum wage with a commonly used rhetorical device--a string of allegedly ironic "never mind" statements.

All of these she trots out are actually "so what?" statements in that they are either prove nothing or are based on the reality-denying fantasies of the Just to the Right of Center/Conservative oracle--the School of Religious and Economic Faith at the University of Chicago. You would do well, therefore, to do as she says--never mind what she says.

She begins with "never mind" that Oregon has the second highest unemployment rate in the country.

No one has ever shown me a study of sound methodology that demonstrated any substantial link between minimum wage and the availability of jobs. You will have as many jobs as there is business going on to need them, generally speaking. Her statement that a high minimum wage stifles employment is a warmed over Libertarian myth that they prove by saying it's "just common sense." (Ever notice how what people say is common sense has more commonality than it does, upon reflection, sense?) This is repeated and repeated notwithstanding the inability to show convincingly (just read the studies they've ginned up to "prove" it) any such connection in the real world. If you want to see Libertarianism in action, by the way, visit Somalia today. There's a place where you don't have to worry about "men with guns" showing up if you don't do what those in charge want.

I digress, again.

This connection between the minimum wage and the availability of work is very like that argument you bought a while back in passing property tax "relief." Remember? Based on the ideological fantasies of the those now locating themselves Just to the Right of Center you were told that lowering property taxes on businesses would lead to lower rents and prices in stores. That's because, they told you, it was just common sense. In a free market if the cost of doing business goes down the imperative of competition forces sellers to lower their prices. Since property taxes are a cost of doing business if they are cut so are prices. The iron and hidden hand of the free market would force rents and prices down.

Makes sense, doesn't it?

You do remember them saying this to convince you to pass property tax "relief," don't you?

Still waiting for those lower rents and prices, are you?

I digress, once more.

"Never mind," Ms. Hovde continues, that Oregon's minimum wage is higher than the national minimum wage.

Again, never mind this statement because it is even less sincere than it is persuasive.

I wonder if Ms. Hovde, upon seeing the federal government jump off of the capitol dome, would think it a good idea for Oregon state government to do the same. I wonder, too, what other federal standards she and the Conservatives and Libertarians standing "just to the right of center" with her here in Oregon think we should adopt because they are federal standards.

Those now styling themselves as being "just to the right of center" often argue, in regard to Roe v. Wade, that the United Sates is a federal republic in which things should be worked out in the laboratory of the states, as the people there see best for them.

Well, here in Oregon our current minimum wage is an example of that very principle at work. Is Ms, Hovde, on behalf of those Just to the Right of Center saying that the people of Oregon--you--aren't smart enough to govern yourself as you see fit? In passing the minimum wage law does Ms. Hovde think you were too stupid to know what was good for you? Do you, the voters of Oregon, need some "smarter" entity (see below) to set the minimum wage at an "appropriate" level?

Ms. Hovde skips on to say that you should "never mind" that one in six people in Oregon receive food stamps but here she's wrong--you should mind this fact, although not because it has anything to do with the minimum wage. The sad fact of one in six Oregonians being on food stamps should be firmly laid at the feet of the class war waged on you from Just to the Right of Center.

Would people making a minimum wage that was lowered to a level "appropriate for the economic conditions" (to be determined, apparently, by those Just to the Right of Center) be earning enough to ineligible for food stamps?

Is she gunning for two in six people in Oregon getting food stamps?

She returns to being correct, however, when she says you should "never mind that Oregon would need 1,200 to 2,000 new jobs a month to stay even with population growth" because there is no hope that cutting the minimum wage will increase the number of jobs.

Think about this: employers wouldn't "invest" the money from cutting wages in hiring new people because they would have to pay for the book keeping and the tax contributions and unemployment insurance and all the rest of the overhead involved in having workers. More employees, with the same revenue, would lower the bottom line.

So, Ms. Hovde's advice to "never mind" anything she said is, pretty much, good advice. It's all irrelevant to the minimum wage and proves nothing.

Does she just want to distract you into continued sacrifice to those tired and once more discredited economic idols so you heed the guidance of their priests--you know, the people like her and good old David (what was his last name?) who stomped off the editorial page once there were fewer people on his side of the Red Rover game than on the other.

Or is she so taken with her faith in her savior--the hidden hand--that she really thinks that there is such a thing as a free market, one that is beyond the manipulation of human beings, especially human beings with a lot of money?

It doesn't matter which, of course. If you were in the middle class, or aspired to be there, the people now presenting themselves as being from Just to the Right of Center have knocked the snot out of you for 30 years. And if you listen to her they will keep right on doing that.

You made some real progress between the Great Depression and President Reagan, but that's gone, dismantled and sold for scrap by so called Liberals as well as the Conservatives--those Just to the Right of Center--all of whom rely on the campaign contributions of those who, perched on piles of money, can hire/bribe politicians to set things up to make their piles larger. And you know where the money comes from to increase the size of their piles. But that's another post. One you've read, from me, several times, now.

Just as in my day, these people--whatever they call themselves in the moment--have handed you this stuff for years. Now they have been in charge of economy for the last eight years, after chipping away at the safeguards built into it for twenty years before that. All the time talking about tax cuts bringing prosperity and unleashing the power of capitalism.

How has that worked out for you?

If they are right why are you so worried about the future they have created for you?

In the end you will have to crawl out your window, away from the control of the Just to the Right of Center Libertarian Conservative types, if you are going to set things right in Oregon, set things right for you and for your children.

Trust me, I know this is hard.

But remember, this aint beanbag. This is class warfare Ms. Hovde is waging on you, from Just to the Right of Center, as it's been waged on you for years. And you are losing.

Yes, class warfare.

When I heard that Karl Rove considers Mark Hanna to be his role model I almost came up out of this grave. When I realized, though, that it was the form of Senator Hanna, not the content, that Rove saw himself emulating I felt a little better--as much as "feeling better" can have meaning to me, anymore.

Mark Hanna was an Republican kingmaker in the 19th Century and he was no Progressive (he kept TR--a great exploiter of reform sentiment--off of the Republican ballot for President, at one point), let alone a Populist. He nonetheless understood something that Rove and your current Republican leadership never did and never will. Oh, they get the inter relation between business and government. Boy, do they get that. They just will never get that stable capitalism, not predatory capitalism is the key to making this thing work.

When George Pullman refused to arbitrate a dispute with his workers Mark Hanna sent his brother to persuade him to do so and, upon the refusal, upon the beginning of the nationwide strike that ensued, Good Senator Hanna said words to the effect that "Any boss who won't meet his men half way is a damned fool."

You, know, like Hanna knew, that class warfare has and will go on forever. You can no more stop it than you can credibly deny it. Nothing is more ridiculous, except perhaps for a self--aggrandizing perpetrator of domestic violence on a Friday night front porch in his sleeveless undershirt surrounded by cops yelling about how she had it coming or your big brother telling your mom that you hit him first, than pundits and US Senators crying about wealthy victims of "class warfare" as they stuff bags of lobby money into the dikes through which things like minimum wage and union organizing bills try to seep.

What we (Mark and I and you) know, despite our different times and places, is that people like Vanderbilt and Karl Rove don't understand the self delusion--they underestimate how much one has to feed the goose to keep her laying. (Of course, it could be my delusion that they think it's important to feed the goose. Sometimes it looks as though they believe that geese come and go and when one is starved to death another jumps onto the nest.)

Class warfare is so smooth, now, that the bosses have workers who don't see they are not met halfway and think they are well off and don't have to care if anyone else is, until the Vanderbilts and Roves have driven it all into the ground and realize their true situation. They start to ask where their cheese (or 401k "balances") have gone and all of sudden they are told that they are waging "class warfare" (tsk, tsk) against the rich.

Forget the lack of justice in all this just appreciate the danger to the stability of the country, of any country. If you want to see one of the most refined manifestation of this dynamic look at Mexico where 6,300 died in the drug wars last year. Although those running that show are not trying to redress the grievances of the poor in a country with a small middle class, a smaller upper class and a huge underclass, they are nonetheless one kind of outcome of a sustained, one sided class warfare.

The genius idea of the United States seemed to be, long about the time I died, what the red diaper babies of the Sixties would come to call the "em-bourgeois-ment" (the "middle-classing") of the working class. Giving the blue collar worker a stake in the system seemed to have provided a context of relative labor peace and an infrastructure out of which came a rising tide of prosperity for the whole country.

Mark Hanna was the Karl Rove, and the Charles Begala, of the Progressive (and Populist) era, at least in the sense that he was the strategic mastermind. His famous statement about meeting workers half way made them think they had a piece of the piece, a stake in the outcome. It made them middle class. It made the country prosperous and stable.

But with the Karl Roves (in both parties) in charge these last 30+ years that has changed. The middle class is shrinking--has been shrunk--by Republican Conservatives doing the bidding of those who aspired to and then attained the status of "too big to fail" and, therefore, too big to need to worry about how the rest of you were doing or what you would say about how well they were doing.

And that's where you are right now, as a Republican Party, as a country.

The American people may well be waking from their Stockholm Syndrome Nightmare/love affair with "conservatism" and Fox News (not to mention CNBC and all the rest of the media more worried about its access to "newsmakers" and corporate profits than in telling people what's going on) may not be able to lull them back to sleep.

To take the shell of the Republican Party back, and to regain political legitimacy (and integrity), Progressive Republicans have to return to Mark Hanna's vision. We have to stop destroying the midde class and start allowing people to re-promote themselves into it. It may mean a return to interest rates of 6-10% on investments, but it will also mean having the kind of stability upon which prosperity that doesn't shrink by 30% on a cycle is maintained.

You have to moderate and modulate class warfare.

A modest proposal: stop the war on unions. Meet the workers halfway. But don't do it like the Democrats want to to do it. They want to improve the strength of one side vis a vis the other. You want balance. You want stability.

Propose something truly progressive: compulsory arbitration of disputes over wages, benefits and working conditions. Put both sides on an even playing field.

Few who have ever been involved in a strike (other than those who fight for both sides--the union organizers and the lawyers who represent the bosses) have ever liked strikes--they are ugly for those involved and affected and often don't make any economic sense for one or both sides.

A complete system of dispute resolution through mediation and arbitration exists in the United States. Why not use it?

Class warfare is unavoidable in a capitalist system. But using government as a platform from which to fight it, which is how we got to where we are now, is self destructive. Government should be a countervailing, balancing mechanism.

No one knows when to quit when it comes to centralizing power in his own favor. And the Progressive approach is to make sure, as the republican Constitution of the United States tries to make sure, that no one has the ability to centralize so much power that the whole structure is brought down by their ability to overreach.

Today's Republican Party thinks there is no reason to do any balancing.

Libertarian fantasies about human nature, about rational people who will act in their own (and everyone else's) best interest are as obviously false as the socialist fantasies about human nature. They are actually, at bottom, the same fantasy--that humans are "perfectable."

But you know better. You know that everyone wants "socialism" for himself and "free enterprise" for everyone else. You know that we all need to both watch and watch out for one another.

So, if you are a Republican who has had enough of the dysfunctional relationship between the middle class and the concentrations of wealth that control the Party, and if there are other Republicans willing to talk to the American people about expanding the middle class, decentralizing economic/political power and controlling the ability of any group to wage economic and political warfare on any other group, the time is ripe to step forward. There's a future there. If you would be more inclined to vote for the Romney who ran for President thirty years ago than the one running right now now is the time.

As I said in the beginning, though, I don't think that you can do it. I think if you try those who control the party now will expell you as they have expelled anyone, over the years, who held onto views like this. I think you'll be forced to start another party to pursue this agenda--one between, in the middle of, the current Republican and Democratic Parties. But I also think that the experience of trying to regan control of your own party, and being rudely rebuffed for talking common sense, will be necessary to impart enough "off your ass" to you to get it going and get it done.

So good luck. I'll be watching. Got nothing else to do.