Gov. Brown showed that tenaciously standing on principle can win

As we may recall, Barack Obama abandoned the Abe Lincoln strategy and opted for the FDR/Harry Truman playbook during the past election. He actively campaigned on the premise that the chasm between rich and poor was growing, and that the largesse of the rich was growing at such a pace at the expense of working people that there was some considerable doubt that the few had the good of society as a whole in mind. The rich had been the recipients of  policies that benefited only them for so long that they had gotten used to it and didn’t want to give it up. Like the Koch brothers, they behaved like big, pampered babies at the very idea of that their tax rates might roll back to the modest rates of 2000.  But a majority of Americans weren’t buying the sob story when so many had seen less so that the few could get (much) more. 

For Obama, having an opponent like Mitt Romney was a godsend; Romney had that patrician holier-than-thou air that he was never able to completely fake-off, and it was clear that he had little regard for the troubles and tribulations of working people. His ideas were Ronald Reagan’s “trickle down” hoax run amuck. That Romney made his many millions in a vaguely sleazy way also helped set him apart from the working “plebes,” and the policies he proposed only seemed to promise to make class distinctions greater rather than less.  Thus Obama was able to win the election while promising to raise the taxes of the wealthy, in part because a majority of people were unsympathetic to the their “plight.” Those who benefit at the expense of the underpaid and unemployed, must pay more for the cost of maintaining a civilized society which allows them enjoy the fruits of their “labor.”  Don’t tell us how much the rich are “hurting.” It isn’t even a relative subject.

At the moment, Republicans still haven’t got the message—mainly because in the Southland, they represent the old antebellum mentality, using the race-card to keep the oblivious in line. They are the very definition of “class consciousness.” With the threat of a “fiscal cliff” looming, who blinks first is beside the point. This is about whether Obama and the Democrats have the courage to stand on principle, given the fact that Republicans have none; if you want proof of that, just look how they paid for—or rather, didn’t—two wars started by George W. Bush. Even his father wasn’t that foolhardy. The wars of Bush II were the first in U.S. history in which no effort was made to raise revenue to meet its costs; Bush and his Republican-controlled Congress refused even to reconsider the massive tax cuts they had just given the wealthiest Americans. This was “fiscal responsibility?” Why Democrats don’t throw this mendacity in their faces cries for an explanation other than complete cowardice. 

Not that all Democrats construct their responsibilities on the basis of “principle.” Two Democratic state senators in Washington--Sens. Rodney Tom of Bellevue and Tim Sheldon of Potlatch—decided to caucus with the Republicans and give them control of that body. Did the people who voted for them know that they were voting for the “principles” of Republicans? If they wanted to do that, they would have just voted for their Republican opponents. But the voters did not, and these two frauds explain themselves by insisting that their Democratic colleagues are too much spenders and not enough cutters.  What they are really saying, of course, is that they are afraid that Democrats will approve some kind of revenue increase at the expense of the very well-off. Who are these the people supposed to be representing, anyways? As usual, the Republican idea of “bipartisanship” is getting a couple of frauds like these two to side with them without seeking any kind of common ground or compromise. 

Meanwhile, in Michigan we see what Republicans without opposition feel free to do. Republicans passed a law that outlawed the requirement of workers in a union to pay union dues; such a law makes no sense if workers expect to have competent representation and build a strike fund. Obviously, the forces behind this do not have the workers’ interests in mind; they merely wish to cause the slow death of unions without actually making it appear so—and to defund union  political campaign coffers, the only viable force capable of opposing the seemingly limitless pockets of corporations. Not surprisingly, these same Republicans have no qualms about deepening the chasm between the rich few and voiceless many—which includes, of course, no similar limits on the political spending by corporations, regardless of the opinions of the workers toiling in them.

The occasional voices of sanity that recognize the connection between the public welfare and civilization have been largely suppressed. In 2010, Washington’s Initiative 1098—a very modest state income tax devised and supported by William Gates, Sr. on his fellow toppermost of the income pyramid, went down to defeat despite the plummeting funding of education and public services—which, among other things, has priced more and more in-state students out of the college market. This defeat of the initiative was in part due to a state with a dual and contradictory nature: “liberal” on social issues, yet fiscally conservative; it seems that the majority of the citizens like to think of themselves as “progressive,” but when it comes to insuring the funding needed to turn “ideals” into reality, their minds suddenly become very closed. The Seattle Times, of course, railed against 1098, deviously suggesting that the tax might be extended to everyone (but most “outrageously” to the Blethens). But most conspicuous was the pitiable support from the governor, Christine Gregoire. She should have known more than anyone the long-term consequences of failing to address the revenue shortfall issue while public services continued to sustain massive cuts. Yet her “support” was tepid at best—declaring her intention of voting for it, and little else. And this state is closer than ever to the low service, low-education support of Deep South states. And a few pitiable “Democrats” in the state senate de facto change parties to insure that the state continues in this downward trajectory; after all, the state can always import what it fails to support in its own citizenry.

But it doesn’t have to be this way, and perhaps not surprisingly California Governor Jerry Brown—a fiscal conservative who made the mistake of piling-up a huge state budget surplus that became the target of the anti-tax zealots who passed Proposition 13—constructed and campaigned with vigor for the passage of Proposition 30, a tax plan intended to save the state education system. Last October, Andy Kroll wrote in Mother Jones that the California higher education system was once the greatest in the world—practically free to any qualified resident—but today, thanks to the “tax revolt” of the late Seventies, “California bled that system dry. Over three decades, voters starved their state—and so their colleges and universities—of cash. Politicians siphoned away what money remained and spent it more on imprisoning people, not educating them. College administrators grappled with shriveling state support by jacking up tuitions, tacking on new fees, and so asking more each year from increasingly pinched students and families. Today, many of those students stagger under a heap of debt as they linger on waiting lists to get into the over-subscribed classes they need to graduate.”

With education funding facing a $6 billion yearly shortfall, Gov. Brown--who as Secretary of State in the early 1970s successfully fought Big Oil in election law violation cases in the State Supreme Court--again aggressively crusaded throughout the state for the passage of temporary state income tax hike of up to 3 percent for those making at least $250,000. In the end, enough people were convinced that the public good outweighed the greed of the few. Brown admitted "We had a lot of obstacles. We overcame them." His opponents underestimated the power of people when they were sufficiently informed of the costs associated with short-sightedness and listening to the clarion call of the moneyed elite only looking after their own bottomless “welfare.” 

Gov. Brown showed that when sufficiently motivated and armed with truth, a majority of voters can tip the scales in favor of the larger benefit. Obama has attempted to bring reality to the people, campaigning for support of his revenue plans. It is the duty of citizens to make certain that their legislators hear their voices, not that of corporate lobbyists and a few multi-billionaires who can’t bear to part with what is barely a drop in the bucket for them. Republicans are, of course, completely tone deaf; unfortunately it seems that many Democrats do not have the principles or the will of someone like Brown who knows that being fiscally sound also means requiring that vital programs remain sufficiently funded by whatever means necessary. Just as imprisoning people has a much greater cost than educating them and making them productive contributors to the economy, defunding “entitlements” like Social Security and Medicare only means taking more money out of the pockets of working people that would have been used to power a consumer economy. The senselessness and folly of the right can’t be made any more plain--or that of a few Democrats who have already forgotten what the message of this past election was.