Class Warfare? Bring it On!

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, among other Republicans, is accusing President Obama and Democrats of instigating class warfare. That's like claiming the town you've been shelling for 30 years started the war when it finally fired back.

Sorry, but this latest episode in the ages-old conflict between the have-nots and the have-enough-to choke-ons has been heating up for three decades, waged by the likes of the Business Roundtable, National Review, the Koch brothers, the tea party, Fox News, the Heritage Foundation, Karl Rove, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, conservative Supreme Court justices, Republican officeholders and dozens of other major players on the right. The astonishing thing is that it's taken Democrats this long to return fire.

What else would you call the calculated off-shoring of good paying middleclass jobs; the synchronized, multi-state efforts to suppress voting by the young, the poor and minorities; the coordinated attacks on unions; and the incessant assault on middleclass entitlements and negotiated employment benefits? Sure looks a lot like Republican-corporate class warfare to me!

As if to underscore the point, a new Congressional Budget Office study reports from 1979 to 2007, 80 percent of total income growth has gone to the top 1 percent of earners with their average inflation-adjusted, after-tax income growing 275 percent compared to 40 percent for the middle fifth. The top 2o percent now own 92 percent of the nation's wealth.

What? You think those numbers are simply the result of the wealthiest working harder or being smarter? Or maybe the middleclass slacking off? No, they're the result of years of special interest lobbying, manufactured market bubbles, bailouts, sweetheart trade deals, crony capitalism, gaming the system, turning Wall Street into a giant casino - 41 percent of total business profits now come from money churning up from 7 percent 30 years ago - and Republican administrations slashing the top marginal tax rate from 70 percent prior to 1980 to 35 percent today.

This is not about redistributing wealth. This is about making sure it's distributed fairly to begin with! Sharing the gains and spreading the pain.

Workers' productivity is among the best in the world, but their wages have flatlined for the last ten years. Fourteen million Americans are unemployed but the money center banks and multinational corporations are announcing huge profits. One in four homeowners' mortgages is underwater but bailed-out Wall Street executives are pulling in record salaries.

Eighty percent of Americans are hurting…bad, while 20 percent are enjoying levels of affluence unprecedented since the 1920s.

Those on the yachts have always loved the phrase "a rising tide lifts all the boats" - presumably to rationalize their rapacious consciences. At least in mid-century it was true. The wealthy did well; the middle did well. Now the rising tide simply swamps the rowboats.