Wins for the Middle Class

Tuesday's election results were full of good news for working people. Not that the struggle against unemployment, income inequality, and the decades-long attempt by America's wealthy to take all the nation's wealth for themselves is over--but at least we're fighting back.

The biggest news came out of Ohio, and it was a breath of fresh air. Anyone who has studied American history knows that the country is strongest, fiscally and in every other way, when it has a healthy middle class. The American dream has traditionally been to be part of the middle class. There was a time when class/income mobility was not just possible in America, but expected. That was when the rungs of the ladder were close enough that a person could reach from one to the next, and climb up.

A big factor in the rise of the middle class was strong labor unions. One person has little negotiating power against a big corporation, but en masse, people could win good salaries and benefits for themselves. The middle class that organized labor helped create gave people enough income to be customers for the goods and services those corporations provided, and the leisure time to take advantage of them.

But in 1971, a man named Lewis Powell sent a memo to the Chamber of Commerce and the heads of those corporations. He saw the spirit of the late 60s and 1970--the Clean Air and Water acts, the creation of the EPA, and other moves to make business more responsive to the people--as an attack on capitalism that had to be resisted. He urged the wealthy to create think tanks and other institutions, to create a movement aimed at attacking progressivism in every form. They would mold public opinion and control politicians.

His memo worked. Lobbyists flooded Washington DC. ALEC and the Business Roundtable and the Heritage Foundation and the CATO institute sprang up, dedicated toward pushing their particular propaganda on the country.

And one of their first goals was destroying the power of the unions.

Once unions had been all-American. Yes, there were those legendary mobbed-up union guys, but for the most part, unions were made up of regular working people. As noted, though, when organized, working people had power. They could raise money and deliver votes. They had to be demonized, and they were.

Now, unions have lost much of that power, though not all of it. And we--members of the American middle class--have suffered from it. Without unions, we've seen shrinking paychecks for decades, a problem made worse by the financial crisis that the new moneyed class--Wall Street's biggest players, members of the fabled 1%--brought on. With the Supreme Court's absurd Citizens United ruling, allowing corporations unlimited spending on political campaigns, the power of the unions we have left is more important than ever. The 99% needs to be able to stand up to the wealth of the 1%, and unions are one of the few tools we have that can make a difference on election day.

Here in Arizona, Tuesday brought good news on a different (but related) front. Republican State Senate President Russell Pearce was recalled--the first successful recall of a state senate president in American history. There were many reasons for the recall, not all of them political--Pearce and the person who'll be taking his seat, Republican Jerry Lewis, represent different aspects of the Mormon Church, and that was part of the contest. But Pearce has been a terrible force in Arizona for too long. More powerful than anyone but the governor (and that's debatable) he has led the way on many of our most regressive laws, including, notably, SB-1070, the ridiculous bill that made illegal immigration (which was already against the law) a crime.

Now, Pearce may hate Mexicans, but it's unlikely that he hates them any more than he hates every other non-white ethnic group on the planet. He's an equal-opportunity bigot. But SB-1070 wasn't really about immigration. As noted, it was already illegal to be an illegal immigrant. And fixing the immigration problem will require structural changes to the Mexican economy (or making our economy more like theirs, which is what has been happening lately). No, what Pearce was really up to was more underhanded. He is a big recipient of donations from his pals in the private, for-profit prison industry, which runs the federal prisons in Arizona. His bill (which was really written by those aforementioned friends, along with ALEC) was intended to create a new class of criminal in the state. Instead of deporting illegals back to Mexico, they could be locked up in federal prisons. At enormous cost to the taxpayers. So while the financially strapped state was cutting back its Medicaid program and closing parks and libraries and schools and firing cops and firefighters, we'd all be shelling out to imprison illegal aliens in for-profit prisons.

But Pearce was recalled, and in Ohio public-sector unions are back to stay. Democrats won the mayoral races in Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona's two biggest cities.

The day was an overall win for the forces of reason and sanity. There's a long way yet to go, of course. But if last night was a sign of a more motivated, involved middle class--if we have stopped pretending that electing people who care only about the richest among us will be good for all of us--then it's a precursor to a brighter tomorrow.

Comments

[Troy D. Smith]

Well said, Jeff. And excellent command of history. More people need to be aware of this stuff.

[Jeff Mariotte]

Thanks, Troy. It's a lot to learn, but I'm trying to educate myself, and hopefully encourage others to look behind the easy surface story as well.