One Nation March

The Campaign Disconnect

Isaiah J. Poole — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 12:36:02 -0400

One in five American kids was living in poverty in 2009. Across the country, once solidly middle-class families are lining up at food pantries and soup kitchens for groceries or a hot meal. In New York City, a startling indicator of the continuing economic stress is the rise in the number of homes that don’t have kitchens.

Election Day is approaching, but neither party cares to focus on the nightmare facing millions of Americans who have been laid low by unemployment, home foreclosures, personal bankruptcies, and jobs that offer only part-time work, lousy pay and absolutely no benefits.

In an era of extreme economic inequality (which is another way of saying economic unfairness), Wall Street can be on a roll and corporate profits can streak toward the moon at the same time that ordinary American families are stuck in depression-like conditions with precious little hope of relief.

One Nation March: How Big Is America's Heart?

Deepak Bhargava — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 13:51:57 -0400

On Saturday, I'll have the privilege of addressing more than 100,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial for the One Nation Working Together rally to send the message that we want the change we voted for in 2008. This gathering of progressives will bridge many issues: jobs for all, comprehensive immigration reform, civil rights, environmental justice and education—all worthy and important concerns.

Yet, at its core creating one nation is about the values of inclusion and generosity. Sadly, the last few months have been divisive ones for our nation: immigrants scapegoated in Arizona, Muslims targeted in New York and a refusal by our elected leaders to see or hear the suffering in our communities brought on by the economic crisis. Some now say that America's best days are behind us, that we can't afford the values that made us great: compassion, inclusion and a commitment to the common good.

America is truly at a turning point, and we have to answer these questions: How big is our heart? Do we have room for everyone? Are we One Nation Working Together or two Americas at war? Notably, we will gather tomorrow in the same spot where in 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. once dreamed that "we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood."

I will stand in that spot representing my organization, the Center for Community Change, which was founded in the memory of another fallen champion of building one America, Robert F. Kennedy. Economic inclusion was a center piece of Kennedy's courageous and ill-fated 1968 campaign. For RFK, or Bobby as he was affectionately known, America's economic divisions were not an issue so much as an outrage. Bobby shined a light on America's invisible poor. He was willing to stand and declared un-apologetically that "America can do better."

Unfortunately, in the last 40 years we have not done better. This was confirmed just a few days ago when the Census Bureau released numbers demonstrating that the income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to the widest amount on record. Poverty in America is growing faster than ever, and nowhere are America's divisions as a nation more starkly drawn than the economic inequality tearing us apart. Consider that:

44 million Americans, nearly one in seven of us, are living in poverty (defined as a mere $22,000 in annual income for a family of four).
One in five children and more than one in four African Americans or Latinos is now poor.
The poorest poor are at record highs. The share of Americans below half the poverty line, $10,977 for a family of four, reached 6.3 percent. It is the highest level since the government began tracking that category.

How can this be? Why are we not outraged? How is it possible that every one of America's political leaders did not issue a statement declaring a new-found commitment to addressing the horrible reality that America's economy is now built on a vast chasm of inequality?

There are many reasons why we casually accept the broken lives of millions of our citizens as simply a rational consequence of the unregulated market.

For instance, too often we embrace the myth that wealth is created by heroic individual entrepreneurs rather than all of us together, and therefore that extremes of inequality and wealth are justified. Too often we value the private accumulation of wealth over our shared quality of life. Too few of our leaders are courageous enough to stand up and say that inequality in wealth and income beyond a certain point -- and we are surely well beyond it -- is bad for democracy and bad for the economy.

We've been cowed by our opponents' use of the race card into ignoring that racial inequality is not separable from economic inequality in the United States. They are part and parcel of the same set of structures.

Finally, we ignore one of the crucial historic lessons of our democracy that broader participation by workers and communities improves rather than impedes economic productivity, innovation and growth.

There are many false ideas that have contributed to acceptance of widespread poverty and extreme inequality. But ultimately our acceptance of terrible poverty amidst such extravagant and nearly incompressible wealth is possible because we underestimate the heart of our nation.

Let's be clear: America has a big heart. According to Gallup data some 60 percent of Americans give to charity and nearly 40 percent volunteer their time. The outpouring of support by Americans after the Asian tsunami, the earthquake in Haiti and Hurricane Katrina was truly historic. In an earlier time, our nation lifted millions of seniors out of poverty when we created one of the most successful government programs ever in Social Security. More recently, we moved to cover nearly all kids and health reform will expand coverage to more than 30 million Americans.

How big is America's heart? Big enough that together we can and must seize the initiative to again make inequality and division a moral outrage. This nation has a heart big enough to employ every person looking for job. It's big enough to let every immigrant in America have a chance at the American dream. It's big enough to say 1 in 5 children living in poverty is simply NOT acceptable. America's heart is big enough to say that all in our communities are our brothers and our sisters, and we must advance together as one nation.

Ultimately, that's what tomorrow's One Nation march is about: standing together united as one country and declaring that we will not be divided and turned against one another.

America's heart is big enough for everyone.

Guest blogger Deepak Bhargava is the executive director of the Center for Community Change.

Tomorrow's One Nation March In DC And Around The Country

Dave Johnson — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 11:12:08 -0400

Does the corporate-sponsored Tea Party speak for you? Or are we One Nation, Working Together?

One Nation Working Together For Jobs, Justice and Education for All. How can you not agree with that? How can you not demand that Washington hear this, and get going on delivering the change that we voted for? There is a march tomorrow along with events around the country, with that message. You should attend.

Tomorrow, October 2, the One Nation Working Together march takes place. More than 400 organizations (go see) are working together to help make this happen and to add their voices demanding a country that works for US.

If you are not able to come to DC, there are local events all around the country. Click here to learn how you can participate and add your voice.

Please read the Who We Are, Why We March statement. We are ... US. "We march for a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. We march for jobs, justice, and education. We march for an economy that works for all. We march for a nation in which each person who wants to work can find a job that pays enough to support a family."

The other day Bill Scher wrote, in Why March Saturday? Take Back The Discourse (That The Tea Party Stole),

... a larger turnout Saturday in support of "jobs, justice and education" than Glenn Beck's recent rally in support of "Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck" will be very hard for the media to ignore.

Simply achieving parity in media attention blunts the Tea Party's corrosive influence on the discourse, opening up the possibility for a serious, responsible dialogue on the next steps America must take to recover from the conservative-created recession.

Isaiah Poole wrote, in Who Will March For Patricia Reid?,

A coalition of labor, civil rights and community organizations is seeking to bring hundreds of thousands of people to Washington on October 2 for the "One Nation Working Together" march. A principal goal of that march is "to build a more united America – with jobs, justice and education for all."

The march's supporters include "people who got thrown out – thrown out of our jobs, schools, houses, farms and small businesses – while Wall Street's wrongdoers got bailed out. We are families who pray every day – for peace and prosperity; for deliverance from foreclosures; for good jobs to come back to urban and rural America. We are unemployed workers – forced to watch hopes for bold action dashed – because some Senators threaten filibusters, and other would-be champions fold in fear."

According to The New York Times,

The rally’s platform looks like a liberal wish list: extend unemployment benefits, raise the minimum wage, end the foreclosure epidemic, enact legislation making it easier to join unions, increase infrastructure spending to create jobs, “fix our broke immigration system” and end immigration round-ups that “encourage racial profiling.” The march’s sponsors hope it will help turn some of these wishes into legislative reality, in part by giving the Democrats some highly visible and clamorous backing to push through stalled legislation.

“Our rally is standing up for the change we voted for two years ago,” Mr. Gresham said.

Here is your chance to show up and be counted. Do people just hand the reigns back over to the right and let us fall into another decade of conservative dominance, or do we get out there and do something?

10-2-10 Rally Gives Progressives a Chance to Stand Up Straight

Robert Creamer — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 17:01:34 -0400

This Saturday, a broad coalition of progressive organizations will hold a massive One Nation Working Together rally—actually kind of a revival—aimed at allowing progressives to emerge from a defensive crouch, stand up straight and mobilize our forces to do battle in the decisive midterm elections.

Due to a navigational error, the U.S. 4th Infantry Division landed on the wrong inlet on Utah Beach in Normandy on D-Day in 1944. For hours they were disoriented and pinned down by German defenders. Then the only general to accompany the amphibious assault, General Ted Roosevelt (son of President Teddy Roosevelt), personally rallied his troops from the beach, over the seawall and established a beachhead that was critical to the successful invasion of France that ultimately ended World War II.

Saturday's rally is aimed at energizing thousands of latter-day General Ted Roosevelts who can fan out across America and do the same for the progressive forces that can be successful on Nov. 2 if -- together -- we stand up straight, take the offensive and refuse to be pinned down by constant attacks from the right.

The president's speech to 27,000 in Madison, Wisconsin, last Monday night fired up all present. It was a great start. But this weekend's rally organizers plan to communicate one central message to the thousands of activists who will gather in Washington Saturday: The President and other Democratic political leaders are not the only ones responsible for rallying our forces. We are all the generals who will rally our troops off this beach. It's up to us to take the leadership to prevent the Big Business, Wall Street-dominated, Tea-Party Republicans from reclaiming right-wing domination of American politics.

For forty years the right was on the offensive in America. At least when Bill Clinton was president, Democrats had a team on the field, but in so many respects the right-wing offensive continued until their crushing defeat in November 2008.

For the last 18 months, the progressive forces have once again been on the offense. But the entrenched corporate interests didn't roll over and play dead. They fought tooth and nail—they lied, they bit, they poked eyes—and did everything in their power to stop change.

Progressives won a lot in the last 18 months. We stopped the Great Recession caused by the Republican's policies from turning into the Great Depression. Over the intense opposition of the insurance companies, after 60 years of trying, we passed health-care reform that will finally make health care a right in America—and begins to hold those big private insurance companies accountable. We passed landmark legislation to rein in the recklessness of the big Wall Street banks that collapsed the economy and cost eight million Americans their jobs. We created a consumer agency that will be launched by Elizabeth Warren—a true progressive champion for the middle class.

Along the way Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Act to ensure women get equal pay for equal work. It expanded the State Children's Health Insurance Program. It completely reorganized the Student Loan Program to end wasteful bank subsidies and guarantee that every kid can get financing for his or her higher education. It passed a budget that massively changed the spending priorities of the federal government.

We did all of this in the face of constant, unrelenting fire from corporate interests.

But as any progressive can tell you, there is so much left to do. We can't stop now. We can't let the furious, intense opposition from Wall Street, the insurance companies, Big Oil and the far-right fringe discourage or dispirit us. We can't allow them to successfully take over one or both Houses of Congress. That would bring any opportunity for serious progressive change to a screeching halt.

We have to get off the beach and get back on the offense.

Sometimes the day-to-day back and forth of politics can cause us to forget what's really at stake and the massive gulf between progressive and right-wing values—the difference between our vision of society and the vision of the other side.

We have to remember the fundamental difference between the right's belief in the unbridled pursuit of individual interest and our commitment to the common good; selfishness versus commitment to others; division versus unity; fear versus hope; that we're all in this together, not "all in this alone."

For the first few years after my wife, Jan, and I were married in 1980, her great aunt lived with us during the week. Jan and I both worked, so Aunt Sylv looked after the house and was very involved in raising Jan's two kids and my daughter.

Sylvia Lazar was a warm, wonderful woman who by that time was in her 70s. She'd come to the United States as a teenager from the Ukraine and still spoke with a thick accent.

Silvia had grown up in a Ukrainian shtetl—a small peasant town where the family purchased water each day from a salesman who carried two buckets from the river on a yoke over his neck. Oxen and horses were the principal means used to transport goods and people. Life in her shtetl was very much as it had been for hundreds of years.

Her family moved to the United States by way of Canada in the early part of the last century to escape anti-Semitism and find a better life.

By the time she died in the mid-1980s, the world around her had been completely transformed. In the place of oxen, she had flown on jet planes, lived in air-conditioned homes with running water and indoor plumbing. She lived to see the development of antibiotics that forever changed the treatment of infectious disease. She watched a television as men landed on the moon.

Worldwide, life expectancy had skyrocketed. The standard of living in the developed world had exploded.

But Sylv had also lived through two great world wars that had killed tens of millions. She had seen six million of her fellow European Jews systematically slaughtered in the Holocaust. She'd seen pictures of the explosion of the atomic bomb and lived through an accelerating arms race and cold war between America and the USSR that included her homeland.

She watched with all Americans as the world approached the edge of the nuclear precipice during the Cuban missile crisis. And she had cheered on her niece Jan, who become active in fighting the growing environmental crisis brought on by exploding human economic activity.

Over the tiny span of one lifetime, Sylvia Lazar had been witness to the qualitative transformation of society its culture and technology. She had seen both the breathtaking possibilities and the horrific dangers unleashed by the accelerating march of technology and human history.

Whenever I think how hard it is to make social change, I think about Aunt Sylv.

In the thick of political battle, it's often difficult to see the qualitative change. But all you need to do is back up a little distance from the everyday struggle to see how quickly our world has been, and is being, transformed before our eyes.

Only 155 years ago, America was ending its great Civil War. Human slavery was abolished in America a mere eight generations ago.

That century-and-a-half represents .002% of the seven million years of human evolutionary development. It represents only 1% of the 13,000 years since humans made the critical evolutionary advance -- agriculture.

Politics is fundamentally the means through which human societies make choices about their futures.

Radical conservatives like to argue that the world is a dangerous place -- that the tough, hard-nosed, survival-of-the-fittest, individualist values are necessary to protect our survival. They claim that only by standing up fiercely for our own individual self-interests will we be successful at defending America and the values of "Western civilization." They claim that radical conservative values are tough, and that progressive values are soft.

But progressive values are the farthest thing from "pie-in-the-sky," "soft," "unrealistic," "head-in-the-clouds" precepts for action. In fact, right-wing values are mainly rationales for allowing the rich to become richer and the powerful more powerful. In fact, progressive values allow us the best opportunity to survive and succeed in the future world that is simultaneously bristling with unprecedented danger and beckoning with undreamt-of opportunity for our children and future generations -- if we go there together.

It's time for us all to remember that there is a lot more at stake this fall than who gets to wield the big gavel in the House of Representatives.

For everyone who was inspired and energized by the 2008 campaign, who believed that they were making history: You were right. We took a lot of ground, but the war is far from over. Now it is time to saddle up and report for duty once again.

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book: "Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win."

A Chance To Show The Public -- TAKE THE VOTES

Dave Johnson — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 15:07:11 -0400

Our form of government depends on an informed public. But currently the gap between what the public wants and what the public knows is huge. Democrats in Congress have an opportunity this week to draw sharp contrasts between the parties, so voters can be made aware of the choice this November. They owe it to the public to help them make decisions. Choosing to avoid votes is a choice to hide this information from the public, and allow the misinformers to prevail.

What the public wants:

1) American Manufacturing: This summer the to learn what the public understands about American manufacturing. According to the poll,

A majority believe the U.S. no longer has the world’s strongest economy—a title they want to regain
Voters are anxious about the economy—specifically China debt, spending and loss of manufacturing
86% of voters want Washington to focus on manufacturing, and 63% feel working people who make things are being forgotten while Wall Street and banks get bailouts
Two-thirds of voters believe manufacturing is central to our economic strength, and 57% believe manufacturing is more central to our economic strength than high-tech, knowledge or financial service sectors
Across all demographics, voters’ economic solutions center on trade enforcement, clean energy, tax credits for U.S. manufacturing and replacing aging infrastructure using American materials, a surprising overlap between Tea Party supporters, independents, non-union households and union households.

2) Good jobs with benefits: Just ahead of Saturday's One Nation Working Together march and local events (please click through and see how you can add your voice) the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) has released the results of a poll conducted by Lake Research. This poll shows that the American public is overwhelmingly in favor of government action that addresses income inequity and that seeks to level the playing field for all American workers. UFCW writes about this poll here. The results can be seen in Powerpoint slides here.

A chance to show the public:

Chinese Currency: This week the Congress can vote on a bill to push China to stop manipulating its currency. If China's currency were at market rates goods made here would be more competitive in world markets, and this rebalancing would help Chinese businesses and people decide to purchase goods made in America.

Offshoring: Congress is voting on a bill to change tax policies and discourage companies from sending jobs out of the country. The bill gives U.S. employers a two-year break from payroll taxes on wages paid to new U.S. workers performing services in the United States. The bill also bill discourages companies from shipping jobs abroad by eliminating certain favorable tax rates.

Tax cuts for the rich: Democrats are deciding whether to vote on giving the middle class a tax break, while ending the Bush-era tax cuts for the rich. The public deserves to know where candidates stand on this.

Leading

Democrats are leading in the right direction on currency, on manufacturing and on jobs. But it is important to TAKE THE VOTES, so the public can see for sure who is for things and who is against things. The voting matters as much for what the public understands, not whether it will pass, tells the public that there are politicians who get it. Theater matters because the public, in a democracy, must know where their representatives stand. And voting for smart policies, pas or fail, is not just theater, it is doing the right thing.

Taking these votes combines smart politics and smart substance and it is smart before an election. The public deserves to know.

Why March Saturday? Take Back The Discourse (That The Tea Party Stole)

Bill Scher — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 15:00:50 -0400

This Saturday, progressives will be marching on Washington for the One Nation Working Together rally. Should you bother?

The New York Times reports:

Predicting a crowd of more than 100,000, some 300 liberal groups — including the N.A.A.C.P., the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the National Council of La Raza and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force — are sponsoring a march on Saturday in the hope of transforming the national conversation so it focuses less on the Tea Party.

What does that mean?

I am one liberal is who is not deeply concerned the Tea Party will gain enough political power to take over the country. As I wrote in July for The Hill, "The Tea Party is not large. Poll after poll has shown the Tea Party to be nothing more than a far-right faction of the Republican Party. They do not represent anything close to a majority of the country (a mere 18 percent in the April New York Times poll). And the more other Americans hear about the Tea Party's conservative ideas, the less they like it."

And the Tea Party was not effective in shaping the national conversation when the President and Congress were seriously legislating. Also from my earlier piece in The Hill: "After it's main salvo to kill healthcare reform – spreading the 'death panel' smear – was flatly debunked in the September 2009 presidential address, dubious Tea Party claims ceased to be an obstacle to passage. (Reluctant 'centrist' Democrats, peddling their own false information about the cost of reform, were the ones who dragged out the process.) The Tea Party's follow-up attack, twisting the Wall Street reform bill into a 'permanent bailout' bill, barely registered at all."

In other words, when the left-center congressional majority was busy legislating, it crowded out Tea Party nonsense.

But now, the divided Democratic caucus in Congress has ceased to put any additional major reform on the table for the time being. And the Tea Party is filling the void.

With the media boost generated by right-wing victories in low-turnout Republican primaries, and a mere 87,000 who came out to hear Glenn Beck's ramblings, Tea Party screeching has stolen the discourse and crowded out thoughtful policy discussion -- such as 300 economists sounding the alarm about the need to put public investment in jobs ahead of deficit reduction.

If we can't take back the discourse, it will be difficult to renew the mandate for change next year, press Congress to build upon the successes of the Recovery Act to create millions more jobs, and continue pursuit of critical progressive reforms in areas such as clean energy and immigration.

The media has been applying a lower bar of success for Tea Party rallies than it did during the massive protests against the Iraq War. So you might be skeptical that a large turnout Saturday would make a difference.

But the million-strong turnout of the 2006 pro-immigration rallies caught the media's attention, took back the conversation from the anti-immigrant right-wing, and squelched the anti-immigrant legislation which had passed the House.

Similarly, a larger turnout Saturday in support of "jobs, justice and education" than Glenn Beck's recent rally in support of "Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck" will be very hard for the media to ignore.

Simply achieving parity in media attention blunts the Tea Party's corrosive influence on the discourse, opening up the possibility for a serious, responsible dialogue on the next steps America must take to recover from the conservative-created recession.

You can make that happen Saturday. Click here to join One Nation.

For Jobs, Justice and Education

OurFuture.org Staff — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 14:55:45 -0400

Who Will March For Patricia Reid?

Isaiah J. Poole — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 17:29:54 -0400

What do you say to a person with a story like the one of suburban Seattle resident Patricia Reid, the unemployed 57-year-old profiled in The New York Times on Monday?

...[F]our years after losing her job she cannot, in her darkest moments, escape a nagging thought: she may never work again.

College educated, with a degree in business administration, she is experienced, having worked for two decades as an internal auditor and analyst at Boeing before losing that job.

But that does not seem to matter, not for her and not for a growing number of people in their 50s and 60s who desperately want or need to work to pay for retirement and who are starting to worry that they may be discarded from the work force — forever.

The Times story goes on to note that there are more than 2.2 million people unemployed people who are 55 and older, half of whom have been unemployed for six months or longer. The unemployment rate in this group has doubled since the beginning of the recession in late 2007.

Conservative policy rhetoric has been particularly unkind to this group. They hear from people such as Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., that the extended unemployment benefits they need to weather the worst recession in decades is that they're just lazy. After all, do the math: Is there any reason why, with an estimated 3 million job openings as of July, 15 million people can't get a job if they work hard enough?

Sharron Angle, the candidate who wants to depose Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada, thinks that people like Patricia Reid should get off their degrees and high-level work experience and be willing to fold linens at the nearest no-tell motel for the minimum wage that her buddies at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Heritage Foundation would just as soon repeal. (Think conservatives have given up on minimum-wage repeal? Read this article in the current issue of Forbes' magazine.)

Add to all of this the push to raise the retirement age because, we are constantly being told, people are living longer and can thus work longer. No one, of course, is asking the obvious question: "Work longer doing what?"

An economy that is creating private-sector jobs at the rate of about 78,000 a month, which is where we have been for the past three months, will collapse under the combined weight of baby boomers forced to delay their retirement and new young entrants into the workforce. As we have been repeatedly noting, we need to create well over 400,000 jobs a month for the next three years just to repair the damage done by the Great Recession.

The Glenn Beck followers who marched on Washington in August, many of them so-called Tea-Party party voters, did not hear an answer to the struggles of people like Patricia Reid. There are only attacks on the recovery efforts by the Obama administration and Congress that prevented the economic cataclysm we would have had if we had followed the prescription of the Tea-Party bankrollers to do nothing. They keep talking the same trickle-down economics that they have been peddling since the Reagan years, as less and less actually trickles down.

Since the Tea Partiers do not have an answer for the Patricia Reids of the nation, we as progressives must. We must place a top priority on creating the jobs that will prepare the nation for success in the new economy—jobs that range from fixing our roads to teaching our children to researching the next generation of energy technologies. We must make the investments that will set the stage for private sector jobs creation.

A coalition of labor, civil rights and community organizations is seeking to bring hundreds of thousands of people to Washington on October 2 for the "One Nation Working Together" march. A principal goal of that march is "to build a more united America – with jobs, justice and education for all."

The march's supporters include "people who got thrown out – thrown out of our jobs, schools, houses, farms and small businesses – while Wall Street's wrongdoers got bailed out. We are families who pray every day – for peace and prosperity; for deliverance from foreclosures; for good jobs to come back to urban and rural America. We are unemployed workers – forced to watch hopes for bold action dashed – because some Senators threaten filibusters, and other would-be champions fold in fear."

Who will come to Washington and march for the nation's Patricia Reids—whether they are 57, 37, or 17—for whom the recession has not ended and to whom the conservative movement has turned its back? Who will march for the kind of economic policy that is embodied in the economists' statement released by the Institute for America's Future last week? Tea Partiers won't, but we must, pointing the way to long-term prosperity for poor and middle-class people now being left behind.

Third World America: Reagan Revolution Drags Us Down

Dave Johnson — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 11:51:56 -0400

The recession ended in June, 2009? What? Seriously? No one told the millions of unemployed. And last week we got more bad news: 44 million of us living in poverty, and that was last year, before unemployment and COBRA subsidies started running out for the unemployed,

... four million additional Americans found themselves in poverty in 2009, with the total reaching 44 million, or one in seven residents. Millions more were surviving only because of expanded unemployment insurance and other assistance.

We are living in the Reagan Revolution every day. Conservative policies are making us poor and poorer,

Who counts and who doesn't count? We hear so much about the "middle class" but rarely about the plight of the poor. And of course we hear again and again that the wealthy are "successful" and the "job-creators" who shouldn't be "punished" by being asked to give something back to the country that enabled their wealth. Conservative "market" thinking and Ayn Randian "the poor are losers" dehumanizing ideology has become pervasive and dominant as we transition from one-person-one-vote democracy to one-dollar-one-vote plutocracy. In this plutocratic environment the national discussion of tax cuts for the wealthy saturates the corporate media, while the 44 million of us in poverty now are barely mentioned and count for little.

Arianna Huffington's new book, Third World America, documents what is happening to us. RJ Eskow explains,

Third World America is direct and clear in its message: Decades of aggressive corporate lobbying, driven by bankers and other large corporations, have led to a series of policy decisions that are eroding the American standard of living. The details are all there: The financial industry's gone from 2.5% of our GDP in 1947 to 8.3% right before the meltdown. Financial profits went from a maximum of 16% between 1973 and 1985 to 41% right before the crisis hit. And rather than being chastened by their failure, or disciplined by taxpayers in return for being bailed out, bankers have embraced their old ways with enthusiasm. Meanwhile the American households that rescued them lost $13 trillion in wealth between mid-2007 and March 2009.

Last week more than 300 economists issued a dire warning that the current conservative "austerity" approach to the economy is dangerous. Focus on jobs now they say,

More than 300 economists, policy experts and civic leaders have signed a statement warning political leaders of “a grave danger” that the still-fragile economic recovery will be undercut by austerity economics of the kind being pushed by conservative politicians and by the White House deficit commission. Read the statement and more at dontkilljobs.org.

Meanwhile, all over the blogs this weekend was the story of the whiny rich, complaining that they "only" make a few hundred thousand a year. Why are they whining?

The reason is that the income inequality has become so extreme that even the really rich see people above them who make VASTLY more than they do, so they feel like they aren't making hardly anything at all. They don't look down, they look up, and they see people making millions, hundreds of millions, even billions in a single year.

One more nasty outcome of the Reagan Revolution: even the really rich feel poor compared to the really, really rich who are the primary beneficiaries from conservative policies.

What can you do? There is a One Nation Working Together rally in DC on October 2. PLEASE click this link and find out what you can do to help, even if yo can't make it to DC. There are local events across the country.

And remember, the election is coming up. We need to remind people that it was conservative policies that got us into this mess. It was conservatives who bailed out the banks. It was conservatives who ran up the massive debt. It was conservatives who killed the jobs.

Other posts in the Reagan Revolution Home To Roost series:

To Lift The Economy, Lift Wages
Tax Cuts Are Theft
Reagan Revolution Home To Roost -- In Charts
Reagan Revolution Home To Roost: America Drowning In Debt
Reagan Revolution Home To Roost: America Is Crumbling
Finance, Mine, Oil & Debt Disasters: THIS Is Deregulation

See the Reagan Revolution Home To Roost series.