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Gibson writes: "The anti-spending rhetoric of Bryant, Walker, and other Republican governors isn't about creating jobs. It's about escalating the class war the plutocracy is waging on the 99 percent."

Carl Gibson was arrested for his participation in Moral Monday in Raleigh. (photo: NewsObserver.com)
Carl Gibson was arrested for his participation in Moral Monday in Raleigh. (photo: NewsObserver.com)


No War But the Class War

By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News

09 September 13

 

t could be said that the 2007 film "There Will Be Blood" is an allegory about how the United States treats oil-rich countries. But it could also be interpreted as an allegory about how the wealthy prey on the poor.

In the film, oilman Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, goes into oil-rich communities, deceives the locals with promises of good schools, good jobs, and fertile soil for growing crops, and ends up plundering the community's resources while ruthlessly crushing anyone who stands in his way. "There Will Be Blood" was loosely based on the book "Oil," by Upton Sinclair, who wrote it as a takedown of winner-take-all capitalism. Sinclair's book is about a ruthless oilman who is willing to lie, cheat, and destroy anything and anyone - including those close to him, and even himself - to attain his goal of amassing wealth.

The most memorable scene from the film, in which Daniel Day-Lewis's character taunts his nemesis with the line "I drink your milkshake," is a reference to the Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s, when Interior Secretary Albert Fall of the Harding administration was eventually convicted of accepting bribes. Fall explained the concept of drainage, using a straw to sip a milkshake from far away as an example. Edward L. Doheny of Pan-American Petroleum bribed Fall with a $100,000 loan, yet was the only one who escaped Senator "Fighting Bob" LaFollette's investigation unscathed. That process of the rich preying on the poor while politicians look the other way continues today, even more nakedly than before.

While I was catching up with Kirsten, an old friend of mine in Jackson, Mississippi, she sent me a photo of this sign that Phillip, her husband, just wore in a crowd setting, explaining their dire economic situation. She's pregnant with her second son, and Phillip just got laid off from his full-time job and is now waiting tables at Applebee's at $2.13 an hour, the federal minimum wage for servers that hasn't changed in 22 years. Kirsten, Phillip (not their real names), and their 1-year-old son live in Mississippi, where Governor Phil Bryant has steadfastly refused federal funds for Medicaid expansion due mostly to his hyper-partisan "anti-spending" ideology, as have other Republican governors around the country for the same abstract ideological reasons.

Because of Gov. Bryant holding out on Medicaid, Kirsten told me she's been unable to get healthcare for her infant son, and is worried about what she'll have to do for her second son after he's born. Mississippi still ranks at or near the bottom in comparison to other states when it comes to social welfare rankings like joblessness, child poverty, child obesity, and infant mortality. Rather than making sure poor families can afford to take their kids to the doctor, Gov. Bryant is investing the state's tax dollars in lavish taxpayer-funded subsidies of $300 million for Toyota and $1.3 billion Nissan, and is showing so much disdain for the public health of Mississippians that he's floating the idea of selling off public land to be used as nuclear waste dumps.

My current state of Wisconsin isn't much better. Governor Scott Walker has also refused federal funds to expand Medicaid for hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites. His budget cuts have resulted in the closure of four Planned Parenthood clinics around the state, limiting poor women's access to free breast cancer screenings by putting the burden on them to travel to a major city's clinic instead. Under the Walker administration, thousands of Wisconsinites making over 133% of the federal poverty level (a paltry $23,383 for a family of four) will see their Badgercare premiums go up, while those making 150% above the federal poverty line will see their premiums double. This means someone making a very modest $33,400 would have to pay roughly $1,600 a year, or 5% of their monthly income, just to have access to basic healthcare. And under Walker's changes to Badgercare, anyone who fails to make a payment gets taken off the program for an entire year.

Walker's treatment of corporations is vastly different from his treatment of the impoverished. His flagship "economic development" program, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), was found to have violated several state laws in its first audit, giving out millions in taxpayer dollars to corporations without any oversight or statements on how the money would be spent, even outright losing track of $8 million in past-due loans. Gov. Walker publicly backed away from his campaign promise of creating 250,000 jobs in his first term, then had his office call the TV station that published his comments and asked them to take down the story.

For all their tired bloviating about how stopping the spending is necessary to grow jobs, Mississippi and Wisconsin have very little to show for it, as both states are near the bottom in most job-related rankings. The latest national jobs numbers explain the crux of the problem - the unemployment rate has ticked down to 7.3%, the lowest mark in 5 years. But the new jobs being added are in the fast food and retail sectors. Workers in over 50 cities just went on strike to protest the poverty wages that billion-dollar corporations are paying them. True job growth doesn't include the jobs worked by the Wal-Mart strikers, who walked off the job in a nationwide day of action in 14 cities, protesting the world's richest retailer paying them so little they have to depend on public assistance to meet basic needs.

All of this proves that the anti-spending rhetoric of Bryant, Walker, and other Republican governors isn't about creating jobs. It's about escalating the class war the plutocracy is waging on the 99 percent. And as Warren Buffett said, his side is winning. These governors are only the lieutenants in the class war - the generals calling the shots are the ones donating to their campaigns, making sure those politicians stay in power so the last remaining scraps clung to by the masses can be redistributed upward and corporate profits can keep hitting new record highs. While the people of North Carolina, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and other states are working 2 or 3 jobs at starvation wages to meet basic needs, Wall Street just posted a whopping $42.2 billion in record profits this past quarter. The stock market has posted multiple record highs this year. Corporate profits are skyrocketing precisely because the corporations are basking in the wealth made on the backs of the starving masses.

The class war is being waged on the Congressional front as well, not just in individual states. This is evident in the first Congress elected by unlimited corporate electoral spending refusing to allocate any money toward food assistance in the most recent farm bill. The vast majority of Congress are millionaires, and the vast majority of groups lobbying for legislation in Washington are funded by multinational corporations. The millionaires in Congress denying food for their hungry constituents is the very essence of class war. Class warriors like Representative Steve King (R-Iowa) like to talk about the "dependency class" and alleged welfare fraud, even though the USDA found there were zero dollars in overpayments to those using food assistance programs. There's no logical reason to oppose feeding hungry people other than an inherent need in certain politicians to starve more poor people.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, corporations' top lobbyist, consistently outspends all other lobbying groups by vast margins each year. By comparison, the two largest labor unions, funded by working people's dues to lobby for working people's interests - the SEIU and the AFL-CIO - spent $7 million on lobbying last year as opposed to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's $136 million. It isn't hard to see why Congress won't raise the minimum wage but bends over backwards to continue giving out billions in taxpayer handouts to the oil and gas industry.

Congress is also getting regular visits from the war lobby, consisting of large military contractors like Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and Boeing. Raytheon, who manufactures Tomahawk cruise missiles and sells them to the US government for roughly $1.5 million apiece, would get almost half a billion taxpayer dollars from the initial bombings, were such an attack to take place. As a result of the talks of an intervention in Syria, Raytheon's stock is soaring. It's obvious to anyone that Congress is now a brothel - how much they put out depends on how much you're willing to put in.

"If you really want war, let's go to war on unemployment, which actually isn't 7.3 percent, but closer to 14 or 15 percent," said U.S. senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at Fighting Bob Fest (named after the same "Fighting Bob" who led the Teapot Dome scandal investigation) in Madison, Wisconsin. "Let's go to war on Wall Street ... on the greed that caused the worst economic downfall since the Great Depression."

Senator Sanders, the first self-identifying socialist in Congress in over 60 years, is also one of the few members of the Senate who will openly acknowledge that there's a class war in America today. During his speech, Sanders repeatedly mentioned the "oligarchy" that was corrupting the political system and turning Congress into lapdogs for lobbyists.

"Some say Congress is regulating the banks. But I'm a U.S. Senator, I know how this works. The banks regulate Congress," Sanders said. "The reason Congress has a 15% approval rating is very simple. On every issue, Congress consistently ignores the will of the people."

With the whip count for a bombing of Syria leaning very heavily on the NO side at the time of this writing, it's looking likely that the will of the people who don't want a war will trump the will of a president who does. And if we can mobilize to stop a war thousands of miles away, then we can certainly mobilize to stop the class war happening right in our own backyard.



Carl Gibson, 26, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , and follow him on twitter at @uncutCG.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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