In 1978, after the nation’s biggest corporations had ganged up to defeat a moderate, pro-union labor law reform bill, then United Auto Workers President Douglas Fraser complained about a “one-sided class war” being waged against workers in the United States. In the past quarter-century, that war has only intensified. That’s what makes President Bush’s recent comments particularly galling. Seeking to discredit… return to article
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Reader Comments (17)Page 1 of 1 pagesLeft Overs
Left over
“crap from the 60’s”
Bush Junior said that
years back
when people pointed out
he
got into
Andover
Yale
Harvard
only
because of
his
family name and money.
You are being divisive he shouted
You are waging class war he maintained.Dubya says
the same thing
today
when you point out
that
he
wants to cut dividend taxes for the rich
and
make
working mothers on welfare
work
an additional ten hours
away
from their kids.
He says:
You are waging class warfare!Why are the rich
never accused
of
starting that war?
Of launching
preemptive attacks against
the
poor mothers
accusing them
of
building
weapons of mass struggle?Squeezing their labor
and
preventing their vote.
Bush
must consider the poor
just
some left over
crap
from
the
60’s.
Posted by stew albert on Jan 22, 2003 at 7:53 PM Bush says in his speech about his plan
“Now, some will say in Washington, of course, that’s not much money…It’s a lot of money to somebody making a decision whether or not to expand a business. ”Maybe he should expand on that and say “It’s also a lot of money to someone who wants to buy a new BMW, a new summer home or a new Brooks Brothers suit.”
Posted by Paul on Jan 23, 2003 at 4:05 PM I’m originally from the US; heading back in a few short months.
What amazes me if the lack of any ‘left’ cohesion in the US.
They are winning. But we are disconected, fractious and divided. They win becuase they are simply greedy and scum rises to the top.
We, ‘the left’, lose becuase we cannot sustain ourselves around the #1 REAL problem in the US (not race, not gender, not the environment [substitute any other special interest], although these too are affected by): CLASS. -
Posted by r.e.kelly on Jan 24, 2003 at 12:19 AM this is the first coherent piece on the REAL agenda of Shrub Junior’s administration that I’ve run across. I’m afraid we’re too far down the slipppery slope of empire to have any chance at democracy, but at least someone is still saying something about it, though not in mainstream print media like Newsweek. We are too far gone for that, I’m afraid.
Posted by dave koon on Jan 30, 2003 at 1:57 AM Everything in this article is based on the false premise that Bush is trying to steal from the poor. When will you left wingers learn that socialism doesn’t work and that the most effective way to improve the lot of workers (consumers) is to make things healthy for employers. Give a man a few dollars and you feed him for a day. Give a man a job and you feed him for life.
Posted by Hal Coffin on Feb 1, 2003 at 6:13 AM Right On! You said it exactly the way it is! For the misguided that voted for Bush, I can only say, “told you so”! We need to change the laws so that Clinton can again run for President. At least he cared and fought for the little people. Greatest president of the US ever.
Posted by Joyce Mills on Feb 2, 2003 at 11:14 PM What is really amazing is how this administration has gotten the support of the very people they are ” screwing” ... Corporate America have their CEO in the white house now, and all hell is breaking loose!
Posted by tom daniels on Feb 3, 2003 at 5:21 AM More like Homeland Insecurity if you ask me… our real threat of destruction comes from within. Dubya and his Daddy’s policies will do more harm to America than all terrrorist attacks combined. Hello people, our infrastructure is crumbling and our “Leader” is trying to wage a war that his Daddy couldn’t finish properly. This will further drain our economy and combined with the typical Republican Trickle-Down Theory, will leave the ordinary American unemployed, standing in a food bank line. Remember Reaganomics? I sure do and the Bush2nd administration looks alot like it. But you can’t blame me, all Republicans look alike.
Posted by Nena Blackwell on Feb 8, 2003 at 2:36 AM Jefferson said, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” He wasn’t talking about the enemy outside the gates; he was warning of the enemy within. That enemy is here now.
Posted by Jim Handrigan on Feb 8, 2003 at 5:05 AM .......Bush is the worst president, perhaps the worst ever. He is screwing our economy into the ground, while handing the rich money our government cannot afford. He acts as if the poor, suffering millionaires will all go broke if they don’t their kickback! If being rich is so terrible, torment me, please! NO BUSH! NO BUSH! NO MORE BUSH!
Posted by Bobby on Feb 9, 2003 at 8:50 AM When bush cheated his way into office, my fear was that he would be a shallow and foolish president. now it has become clear that he is also dangerous. We will be paying for his extreme hard right domestic and foreign policies for decades down the road. At a minimum I wish he would pronounce the word nuclear correctly….
Posted by c k rhoades on Feb 18, 2003 at 2:47 AM “All the policy talk is political packaging to delude middle-class voters and the media. But after years of failing to fight effectively, and often even joining the anti-government, pro-rich juggernaut as a junior partner, the Democrats will have a hard time making the class war two-sided, even if they want to do so.”
The Nation’s (The Nation magazine) writers do a great disservice to their readers by supporting their ‘one party/ two factions’ state, which they do when they make faces at the Republicans and then encourage us to cheer on the Democrats to beat them.
Americans aren’t even close to a system that can support ‘all’ of it’s citizens. You need campaign finance reform - yesterday. You need to strip corporations and the rich of their political power. (Citizens should focus on electing politicians who will talk about taking away criminal corporations’ charters, not to mention refusing government contracts to de facto criminal corporations.) Try punishing them. They all have it coming and that’ll do the trick.
You need some form of proportional representation, for sure, rather than the managed chaos you have, whose deleterious effects hit the majority, but not the rich minority.
Posted by Rick Battams on Mar 15, 2003 at 6:42 PM Further to my above comment; I meant to say, ‘And David Moberg appears to be following their example’.
Also, Real progressives don’t yammer on about the Right’s ‘shrinking of government’. That’s not what the capitalists (Can I use that word?) are attempting. The size of government is a red herring. The issue is, Who is government serving?
Social spending isn’t axed as an excuse to shrink government, which in that scenario would be one more thing that ‘we’ can’t afford. Social spending is targetted (and the action isn’t backed up with statistics to support it) because defunding publicly funded programs, institutions etc is the first step in ripping those away from the people and handing them over to the minority profiteers.
First you defund. That destroys, which is to say that it makes the defunded program, etc inefficient, ragged, ugly… whatever. That, in turn, discredits it, since regular folks too often don’t think critically about important matters, one of the charming side effects of brutal North American work culture which keeps so many of us distracted. When we have down time, the need is to ‘not’ work, but to play. Dealing with the crap that capitalists do to us is work. So people just see broken down publicly funded education, health care, water services, energy systems… whatever, and they whine about it. In that way, those publicly funded programs etc are discredited. Then the neoliberal politicians - who are capitalists first and leaders when they have no choice - perk up with the solution: Privatization!
But that is not the solution, as the studies show. Look at health care for example. A recent study has shown that American ‘for profit’ health care means more death, period. Common sense would tell you that. You’ve now got investments not in the program or system that you’re ‘rescuing’, but with a view to enriching capitalists, whose main tool for acquiring profits is cost-cutting.
Posted by Rick Battams on Mar 15, 2003 at 6:45 PM I agree with the author 100%. If Bush gets his way on his ‘economic stimulus’ plan, he will be doing this nation an incredible disservice and he will be increasing the growing gap between the rich and poor in this country. The real losers are clearly the shrinking middle class. See http://www.ctj.org for some analysis that shows the taxation structure broken down. Increasingly, America taxes the poor more and the rich less than almost any other country in the world. That is not the way it should be. What does that tell you about this administration’s priorities? Its scary.
Posted by Chris Beaumont on Mar 17, 2003 at 3:07 AM being a baby boomer I agree with most that is said, but talk is cheap. Somehow we need to organize, form a shared concensus, and support leaders who will execute that will. But How?
Posted by jrc on Mar 19, 2003 at 7:51 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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Also by David Moberg
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