Go Away, Bill
He’s back. Like an old lounge act that doesn’t know when to quit, like an overbearing brother-in-law you can’t get out of your house, like a bad tamale that keeps repeating on you — Bill Clinton is pushing himself on the Democratic Party again, trying to get back onto the center stage of national policy-making.
Some former Clinton cabinet officials, staffers, and political operatives have been scheming with Bill to press his Republican-Lite agenda on the party this year. The New York Times reports that Clinton and team are assembling a staff to coordinate this unprecedented political offensive by an ex-president, intending for him “to play a central role in setting an issue agenda for the Democrats and for the party’s aspiring congressional and presidential candidates.”
It’s the “legacy” thing again. Clinton spent eight years in the White House so obsessed with what his historical legacy might be that he forgot to build one. Instead of being a real Democrat and standing tall for working families, poor people, small farmers, the environment, minorities, or others who need a champion, Clinton was most comfortable currying favor with the corporate powers. He tried to outdo the Republicans on such issues as passing job-busting trade scams, bashing welfare moms, holding down wages, and dispensing corporate welfare. He went so far that the Republicans even complained that he was stealing their agenda.
Yet, now, he’s miffed that some of the congressional Democrats are taking pro-worker, pro-environment, pro-poor people stands. “It’s important that the Democratic Party not turn away from Clinton’s centrist legacy,” scolded one of his team players.
Spare us. Thanks to Clinton’s corporatist policies, the workaday majority has no one standing up for them, and they’ve quit voting. Indeed, in the last presidential race, 100 million people didn’t vote — nearly all of them Democrats who feel they have no home. Far from rallying around Clinton, the Democratic Party needs to rally around the people. The hell with Clinton’s so-called “legacy” … let’s build a future!
Explaining the Income Gap
This week’s Gooberhead Award goes to hot-shot Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, whose claim to fame is that he once was head of Ronald Reagan’s council of economic advisors. You might remember that Reagan was big on the trickle-down economic theory, asserting that if government helps the rich get richer, these privileged ones then will trickle on the rest of us, showering us with the refuse of their wealth. Feldstein was one of the engineers of this policy of elitist economic effluence.
Well they certainly did make the rich richer. Indeed, half of the economic gains from the Reagan period to today has ended up in the pockets of the wealthiest 1% of Americans. Another 40% of the gains went to the next 19% of well-off Americans. That left very little to trickle down to the underlying 80% majority.
The result is that the gap between the top 20% and the rest of us has now grown wider in our country than in any other industrialized nation. Professor Feldstein tells The New York Times that this imbalance puzzles him … but doesn’t bother him. Asked if America should worry that Wall Street barons make a killing while workaday folks get killed, Feldstein is smug in his ideology, telling the Times: “I say no.”
In this goober’s mind, income inequality is simply a “natural” consequence of the new, high tech, whiz-bang economy that he says rewards “talent, skills education, and entrepreneurial risk.” So if you’re not rich, it’s because you’re an untalented slug. He adds that the income gap also exists because some people “may choose not to work as hard as investment bankers.”
I wish Feldstein had to spend a year in the shoes of a single mom working three jobs to hold her family together. That would give the professor a real lesson in talent, skills, risk-taking, hard work … and real-life economics. What a goober.
Charles Schwab’s Ducky Deal
Charles Schwab is one lucky duck. Not only is he a billionaire stockbroker, heading the Wall Street firm that bears his family name, but he also has his own private duck-hunting club on 1,500 acres of wetlands in picturesque Northern California.
He calls his place Casa de Patos, which is Spanish for House of Ducks. Schwab knows that his feathered friends are attracted to rice fields, so, to lure more of the game birds within gunshot range, Charles has had much of Casa de Patos planted in rice.
Now, as you might expect, Schwab didn’t get to be a billionaire by spending his money foolishly. No, instead he spends your money foolishly. Charles Schwab, billionaire duck man, discovered the federal farm program. Schwab discovered he was eligible for rice subsidies from us taxpayers. Lots of subsidies. We taxpayers fork over some $500,000 a year in federal crop-support funds so Schwab can be sure that guests at his exclusive hunting club have plenty of ducks to kill.
The farm program was originally meant to help struggling small farmers — not a pleasure-seeking Wall Streeter with a net worth of some $4 billion. With program perverters such as Schwab, we taxpayers are sitting ducks.
To help stop cheaters like Charlie, and to return the farm program to real farmers, contact Farm Aid: 617/354-2922.
Jim Hightower’s latest book, If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates, is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.
This article appears in January 11 • 2002.