THE RICH GET RICHER, THE POOR GET SOAKED: This past Tuesday, the US Census Bureau released a bunch of statistics regarding income and poverty levels in 2004. More people were poor in 2004 than in 2003, and thus the rate went up a bit (from 12.5 to 12.7 percent). The median household income (adjusted for inflation) was stuck where it’s been for the past 5 years. Another 800,000 workers were without health insurance. And at the same time, the overall American economy grew by a robust 3.8% in 2004, and gross national product per capita (adjusted for inflation) went up by 3.4%. So someone is getting richer. Guess who? The rich, of course. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the top 5 percent of households in America experienced real income gains, while the other 95% stayed flat or lost income. Take a guess who lost the most — yes, the bottom 20%.
On Thursday (Sept. 1), the New York Times ran an editorial summarizing these facts. That editorial noted that the top priorities of our President and Congress are to repeal the estate tax and cut taxes on investment income — two big favors for the rich. As to the poor and working class, Mr. Bush and his friends plan to cut student loans, Medicaid and food stamps. And even worse, in order to fight the homeland security wars and yet keep cutting taxes, they have reduced funding for infrastructure programs such as highways, mass transit, college aid, and research by the National Science Foundation.
The Times thus pulled an uncharacteristic emotional string to summarize its opinion about what our current leaders are up to: “They should be ashamed of themselves.”
Then of course, we had New Orleans as the big story this week. We now realize that Bush and the Republicans had cut funding to fix the levees. And when the levees broke early this week, they were in no hurry to send the troops in to quell the chaos that ensued. Is it possible that the pendulum of public consensus in America will soon reach a high point in terms of rugged individualism and laissez faire, and start swinging back towards communal investment and sharing? Is it possible that working families will finally see through the “lottery ticket” rationale, i.e. the notion that if we let the rich have their way there’s a chance that my family will soon join them? And will they thus stop voting against their economic interests (as Thomas Frank explains in his book “What’s The Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won The Heart of America”) ?
As to the Democrats — can they wake up and cease the moment with a program that emphasizes education, infrastructure investment, health care equality, leveling of opportunity and sustainable growth — and at the same time avoid their old-fashioned Bolshevik / labor union habits of plundering the rich, choking off world trade, and showering the masses with pork barrel favors? And can they stop antagonizing the red state people about gays and guns and old-time religion and creationist theories? (No, wait — maybe they shouldn’t give up the few things that they are right about; but they do need to make Enlightenment values look more like common sense.)
Do we stand at the beginning of a turn-around? Nah. The masses don’t read the Times or the Census income reports, and they’ll forget about New Orleans by the time the crisp breezes of autumn roll around. The Republican/Conservatives still have awfully good spin doctors and 30-second ad makers, and the Democrats still don’t know how to do anything but complain. We need an Abe Lincoln or a Franklin Roosevelt to step forward, but all we get are Clintons and Bushes. Two Bushes, and maybe two Clintons. I really have to wonder if it’s the beginning of the end for the era of American greatness.
BUT A BIT OF GOOD NEWS: Earlier this year, on April 4, I made mention of a free computer program offered by Tom Meinen of Denver. The program is called RenameStar and it comes in handy for anyone with a digital camera or who otherwise has a lot of files to rename, as it lets you rename a big bunch of files very quickly and conveniently. Tom doesn’t seem to be getting rich off of it, even though it’s a darn good program — he’s still giving it away for free. But he does ask that in return for your using it, you do something good for somebody, even if it’s just a small thing – e.g. help serve a meal at a homeless shelter or go visit your aunt in the nursing home. That’s why he calls it “careware” (which some other software people are doing).
Anyway, Tom recently finished a new version of RenameStar, the 2.0 version. There’s even a Windows 98/ME version for us old timers. I installed it yesterday, and it’s quite nice; it has some really neat features that help you keep your computer files organized. So check RenameStar 2.0 out, and maybe consider kicking a few extra bucks into the New Orleans relief effort or something. The software site is www.renamestar.com. And you can find the Red Cross or the other relief agencies pretty easily. Even if the people at the top aren’t doing much to maintain America’s greatness anymore, stuff like this at the bottom might help save the day!