Republicans Can't See the Pitchforks Coming

The two time popular vote loser and twice impeached, previous occupant of the White House has convinced nearly two thirds of Republican voters that the 2020 election was stolen and that he had  nothing to do with inciting the insurrection at the capitol on January 6^th. Texas Republicans along with those in other Republican controlled state legislatures are using that bull excrement to push through a wide range of voter suppression measures. They’re doing this out of fear that the high voter turnout seen in the 2020 election will continue and that will cause them to lose power. It’s a foregone conclusion that they’ll use partisan gerrymandering again to hold on to a greater share of the legislative and congressional seats than their vote totals support when redistricting comes up in the special session the governor plans to call later this year.

I frequently disagree with conservative pundit Jennifer Rubin on issues and policy but I think she’s spot on with her recent analysis of Republican rhetoric and actions in the Alabama state legislature regarding a nearly 30 year ban on yoga classes in public schools. While a guest on MSNBC Rubin said of Republicans, “They've come to believe that this is politics. That talking about yoga in classrooms is a substitute for governing, for solving actual problems. You know the state of Alabama is not one of the top ten states when it comes to education, health, longevity. It's not like there's any dearth of problems in the state of Alabama. But this is what they focus on. And it's actually, it's funny. But it's actually strategic because if they didn't talk about this nonsense; if they didn't fan the flames of white Christian nationalism, then they'd actually have to address the problems of Alabama. They'd actually have to vote for things and be held accountable. So they can't have that. So let's talk about yoga and Dr. Seuss and the whole, you know, grab bag of nuts that these people obsess about.”

Now replace yoga with permitless open carry or abortion and replace Alabama with Texas and Rubin’s analysis still holds. All the culture war issues they rant about are a diversion to avoid addressing real issues like the terrible maternal mortality rate in Texas, the low quality of public education in much of the state due to under-funding, the 19% of Texas children that suffer food insecurity, the high rate of families lacking medical insurance, and so much more. The same holds true for Republicans in our federal legislature.

The only point that Rubin missed is that reason Republicans cling to power is to make sure that big business and the wealthy keep their unfair tax breaks and continue to get contracts for government business funded by the taxpayers. All this has caused massive and continuing wealth inequality.

Back in 2014 Seattle based entrepreneur Nick Hanauer and member of the 0.01%, you know, the folks with private jets, 200 foot yachts, and 10 cars in the garage, wrote an op-ed for Politico titled “The Pitchforks are coming … for us Plutocrats”. In the column he said, “…there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples.”

Republicans are desperate to hold on to power but unwilling to change their policies to achieve majority support so they cheat. In a 1962 speech, John F. Kennedy said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 26, 2021

Unchecked Income Inequality Leads to Revolution

There is plenty of evidence going back more than 2000 years and continuing to the present that high rates of income inequality can cause revolutions. Teddy Roosevelt’s progressive policies especially trust busting kept a lid on that unrest at the turn of the last century. Franklin Roosevelt had to act again in the 1930’s to address income inequality and his policies remained in effect through the 1950’s and 1960’s during which our economy boomed. We are rapidly reaching that state again where income and wealth inequality surges out of control and can lead to significant unrest.

Between 1880 and 1890 there were over 20,000 strikes involving approximately 6.6 million workers. In 1899 in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, union miners, led by the Western Federation of Miners attempted to unionize non-union mines, and have them pay the higher union wage scale. The miners were frustrated with mine operators that paid lower wages, hired Pinkerton or Thiel operatives to infiltrate the union; and routinely fired any miner who held a union card. The worker versus owner confrontation culminated in a dynamite attack that destroyed a non-union mining facility, followed by military occupation of the district.

Government has often been used by the wealthy to keep wages down by suppressing workers rights, sometimes violently, as in the case of the Railroad Strike of 1877, which was precipitated by pay cuts. President Rutherford B. Hayes called out federal troops and the violence eventually led to the deaths of over 100 people. Local governments also stepped in to support their wealthy benefactors such as in the 1897 Lattimer massacre near Hazleton, Pennsylvania in which 19 unarmed striking coal miners and mine workers were killed and 36 wounded by a posse organized by the Luzerne County sheriff for refusing to disperse. Most of the strikers were shot in the back.

Labor unrest wasn’t just happening in the United States, it was a worldwide phenomenon and in France and later Russia, then China, and Cuba, it ended in revolution which at least temporarily reset the level of wealth and income inequality. The United States has managed to escape such revolutions and retain a capitalist economy because of the restraints that Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt place on corporations. Unfortunately beginning in the 1970’s with Ronald Reagan and continuing under Bill Clinton many of those restraints were loosened. Every president since has had some part in removing restraints. States have done their part as well such as the mis-named Right to Work laws passed in many states including Texas which only serve to break unions.

Once again income and wealth inequality in the United States is rocketing toward the stratosphere and many Americans are being left out, some are getting angry. It’s in the interests of the wealthiest among us to recognize that the to 1% of Americans owning the same wealth as the total had by the bottom 40% is unhealthy for their continued physical well being, think guillotines, and the existence of their assets, think Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. History tells us that they won’t act on their own to save themselves.

No one looks forward to suffering through a French style revolution, though you wouldn’t know it from the tax bill passed recently that serves to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich. Fortunately Bernie Sanders and many Democratic Party leaders have concluded that it’s past time to take action to reduce income inequality before it’s too late. Your votes in November can help lead the way back from the brink.

Revolution may well be in the works

A little over two years ago billionaire venture capitalist Nick Hanauer wrote an essay for the online magazine Politico in which he argues that “the pitchforks are coming for the plutocrats”. He says that people like himself, Bill Gates and Donald Trump had better heed history and take action to relieve the societal stresses created by wealth inequality and poverty soon or like the French and Russian revolutions the masses will become fed up and take it out on the people who have abused them for so long. Hanauer will tell you he’s not brilliant, he says he was a mediocre student and has no technical background, he just has a higher than average tolerance for risk and a knack for seeing where things are going a little sooner than the other guy.

Hanauer compared revolutions to bankruptcy in that both slowly move toward the cliff and then suddenly occur seemingly without warning. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said in a 1966 60 Minutes interview “I think that we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And, what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years.” Revolutions are messy and violent and everyone suffers, most of all those who are already suffering as the few systems that help them fend off starvation inevitably breakdown.

It’s been argued that acting on insight similar to Hanauer’s is what has held the country together many times over the last 240 years; one example being Teddy Roosevelt and his efforts to restrain the worst excesses of capitalism. Now that a minority of voters has managed to elect Donald Trump I fear that the chances of this nation’s leaders acting on enlightened self-interest to restrain capitalism’s natural tendency toward monopoly and increasing profits at any cost have been dramatically reduced such that we’ll see a return to the strife and violence of the 1920’s and 1930’s.

Efforts to right the ship like Moral Monday protests led by Rev. William Barber in North Carolina are modeled after the successes of the Civil Rights era. After this election many argued that it was successful in that Gov. McCrory was ousted and therefore a model for further efforts around the nation. Unfortunately the Republican led legislature there failed to get the message and instead set about stripping the governor-elect of virtually all power. As Fredrick Douglass said so eloquently “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

As Nick Hanauer pointed out revolution creeps up on you, we don’t know when it will happen or what will appear to be the precipitating event but we seem to be moving ever closer. Isn’t it time for our leaders to behave like Teddy Roosevelt and once again act relieve the pressure before it’s too late?

Published in the Seguin Gazette December 23, 2016