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"Class Warfare" Javier Hernandez-Miyares on flickr
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So apparently, the phrase of the week from Republicans is “Class Warfare!” as a response to President Obama’s proposal for a new Millionaire’s Minimum Tax. Paul Ryan and Lindsey Graham both used the phrase yesterday on the Bobble head shows. The proposed tax has also become known as the “Buffett Tax” in honor of billionaire investor Warren Buffett who has long noted the irony of his paying a lower tax rate for his investments (aka Unearned Income) than the rate paid by his secretary (Earned Income). Of course, the folks at Forbes Magazine and the Murdoch NY Post think it is a bad idea to do such a thing.
The reality is, and Buffett noted years ago, we are in a class war:
“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
Today as I was surfing through the various news sites, I saw a real example of the class warfare in action, although in a more subtle fashion than the whining about possible taxes on millionaires. It was this article from the NY Times on possible cuts to military retirement benefits.
Military pensions and health care for active and retired troops now cost the government about $100 billion a year, representing an expanding portion of both the Pentagon budget — about $700 billion a year, including war costs — and the national debt, which together finance the programs.
…snip…
“We’ve got to put everything on the table,” Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said recently on PBS, acknowledging that he was looking at proposals to rein in pension costs.
One way to decrease those healthcare costs might be to end the occupations of Irak and Afghanistan and all the other adventurism around the world. Traumatic Brain Injury tends to have a significant increase to costs as does dealing with the need for prosthetic devices and rehab services.
Advocates of revamping the systems argue that they are not just fiscally untenable but also unfair.
The unfairness lies in ordering our troops into multiple tours in combat zones then expecting the individuals to pay for their own treatment. Military service is not a business. Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines are not generic employees. They are asked to make significant sacrifices for their service that goes beyond overtime pay or anything else asked of people in civilian businesses.
Those critics also argue that under the current rules, 83 percent of former service members receive no pension payments at all — because only veterans with 20 years of service are eligible. Those with 5 or even 15 years are not, even if they did multiple combat tours. Such a structure would be illegal in the private sector, and a company that tried it could be penalized, experts say.
Of course, if someone is injured during one of those multiple combat tours, the system is supposed to provide them tax free pension under the Veterans Administration (assuming the system is working is it is supposed to work – which unfortunately does not always happen).
By far the most contentious proposal circulating in Washington is from a Pentagon advisory panel, the Defense Business Board. It would make the military pension system, a defined benefit plan, more like a 401(k) plan under which the Pentagon would make contributions to a service member’s individual account; contributions by the troops themselves would be optional. Mr. Panetta has said that if adopted, the plan would not apply to current military personnel.
Oh right, just what we need. We’ve already seen the fallacy of the 401K in the private sector with folks not able to retire due to losing their entire 401K to the Wall St. casino. Now, lets give the military retirement system to the casino operators. Yeah, that will work wonders I’m sure and all the military retirees will become Millionaires subject to the Buffett Tax, right?
Deficit hawks, led by Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, have begun taking smaller steps, pushing for an array of cuts to military benefits, including ending subsidies for base commissaries and tightening disability compensation for diseases linked to Agent Orange.
Oh yeah, let’s make the cost of groceries more expensive when there are already junior enlisted people collecting food stamps.
As many folks are no doubt aware, I grew up in a small town (hence the blog name of course). In small towns all over the country and in many cities as well, there have always been three major economic paths helping folks from lower incomes to progress to higher incomes; military service, the US Postal Service, and other government employment at all levels. The salaries, while not always great, allowed folks to live and the benefits, including the retirements, made up for the lower salaries. Now, we are seeing the attacks on the Postal Service (as documented by emptywheel). We’ve seen the attacks on government employees at all levels as if they are not real workers working real jobs but some type of imaginary work that has no impact on the economy. These attacks have come about because the private sector has been spending decades destroying the salaries and pensions of workers and seemingly the only folks with decent pay and benefits remaining are government workers.
It IS class warfare and Warren Buffett is correct, his class is winning and the country as a whole is losing.
And because I can:
Cross posted from Just A Small Town Country Boy by Richard Taylor
25 Comments
I cross-trained from aircraft mechanic to general accounting in the USAF. We studied commissary accounts at tech school.
Commissaries are not subsidized. The base must have a commissary to provide for the chow halls. Military personnel are allowed to shop and buy at the cost that Uncle Sam pays, plus a small amount for overhead associated with retail
Similarly, Post exchanges are funded by a revolving fund and spin off their profit into other base services like the theater. They are not subsidized either.
Hey! A fellow 672XX! I actually did the Commissary accounting for 15 month in MI and 2 1/2 years in HI.
But it would be too difficult to explain to someone like Coburn that whatever minimal subsidy is provided wouldn’t save enough to pay his senate mail franking bill
Edit: The subsidies most likely are in the cost of utilities and Veterinary Services for food inspections and such plus salaries for some of the back office folks at the Commissary who are civil service employees
Class warfare baby!
We know the enemy for who they are!
Rich people and the brown-nosers who kiss their butts.
But there are many more of us than there are of them. And they have no real power outside of what the government gives them. There are no mystical lines-of-force running from Bill Gates to his property—and all those 100 dollar bill in his pocket are only worth more than monopoly money because the US government says they are.
Joined FDL today! Figured I put my money where my keyboard is. Class warfare has been going on for 30 years! Time for the serfs to rise up. But don’t count on the dems to help–they are part of the problem.
Single Payer is the realistic solution to the problem. Medicare for everyone would slash the country’s deficits, and getting out of all the overseas adventures of our military would end all budget problems. Why can’t this happen?
The quick, mainstream answer is that there are just too many republicans and special interests blocking medicare for all. And of course they are to take the lion’s share of the blame, but it’s also the people who are just intelligent enough to know that medicare for all is best, but they insist on voting for the lesser of two evils due to the highly irrational belief that someday, they just might throw us a bone. Anyone who’s been paying the slightest bit attention can tell you that this isn’t going to happen. It will require very pro-active advocacy, stepping beyond even the other “right wing” of the corporate party known as the democrats.
I actually think of myself as a 43171. Acft. Maint. General, 1 and 2 engine jets. Most of my good memories and all of my good stories were from the flight line.
My major memory of the accounting was when a young pregnant one-striper complained about me harassing her by saying “Good morning” to her every day.
I couldn’t complain too much about 672XX life. After the 15 months in MI, I got 4 years in HI. In MI there were 2 of us doing the Commissary vs. 4 in HI, even though the paperwork volume was not even a third more (By dollar, HI was 5 times the size of MI commissary) – but it was all the difference between a northern tier SAC base versus a MAJCOM base.
Then I wound up in Accounts Control where I dealt with everything which was quite helpful in the promotions test. I sewed on E5 under 4 1/2 and would have been eligible to test for Tech about four months after I got out but had completed a CS degree and didn’t want to re-enlist.
They attack the police, fire dept., and the military personal and these morons still vote for them?
Well truthfully, they are s easily fooled into thinking just because a “D” is in the WH, this is all Ds fault, even though both are just branches of the corporatist party.
Amazing, isn’t it?! See all of us teachers, firefighters, garbage collectors, shop keepers….i.e., ‘regular people’…..thought we were electing a real change agent and not a Trojan Horse. How sad we are today!
I still know many, many Democrats who are totally clueless.
2012 will be very interesting. Sadly so.
Welcome, ADC14, and thanks for your membership. Glad to have you.
Why not? Republicans have been involved in crass warfare for decades.
A middle class massacre has been going on for 30 years. Let’s hope we can progress to class warfare.
Class warfare? I’m for it. But I’d like to start winning for a change.
Spot on.
http://www.bgladd.com/PoorJohnFleming.jpg
“So apparently, the phrase of the week from Republicans is “Class Warfare!””
Damn those guys are good. Hijacking yet another commonly understood phrase and turning it into its opposite in order to get citizens to identify with their oppressors.
Let’s dissect what “class warfare” really means to Republicans.
The Republicans are waging “class warfare” like the French aristocrats waged “class warfare” against the French peasants, like the British aristocrats waged “class warfare” against the American colonialists, like the Robber Barons of the late 1800s waged “class warfare” against American workers, like “class warfare” slave-owners waged ‘class warfare” against the blacks in the South and waged “class warfare” against the North in the Civil War, like elitist tyrants, political and economic, have waged “class warfare” against everyone else in their society throughout history, all so the “class warfare” elitists can hold onto all the power and wealth, leaving scraps for everyone else to fight over.
We are seeing today the same elitist-driven conservative “class warfare” that was waged during the late 1920s and early 1930s, one that skyrocketed unemployment up to 25 to 33 percent in a few short years, one driven by severe austerity measures and cutting government spending pushed by elitists in the United States, Britain, Germany and elsewhere, one that led to the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany and eventually World War II.
A wealthy FDR stepped into the breach of this elitist-driven “class warfare” disaster in early 1933, going against the madness and greed of the elitist “class warfare’ class, increasing government spending, creating jobs, driving down unemployment, raising tens of millions of American citizens and their families out of the depths of the Great Depression, and incurring the wrath of members of the elitist “class warfare” class who plotted to assassinate him. FDR was a true American hero. Would America have been ready to fight and defeat the Nazis if the Great Depression had not been addressed and instead had been allowed to fester through the remainder of the 1930s, leaving America severely weakened?
So, it is not surprising that President Obama (although his policies have hardly matched FDR’s in size and scope) has received a record number of death threats from right-wingers, members of the elitist “class warfare” class of today. Not only has he received a record number of death threats compared to any previous president, but probably more than all previous presidents combined. Which is actually a good sign that he’s pissing off so many of these hardcore right-wing “class warfare” elitist class members, because if he wasn’t then we’d already probably be in another Great Depression and well on the way to another World War, although atmospheric global warming will probably take care of all of this, no matter what anyone is trying to do to mitigate the situation, now or in the near future. Oh, wait, this future chaos, warfare and mass migrations over resources will be a result of the Republicans’ “class warfare,” too.
The reality is, and Buffett noted years ago, we are in a class war:
In 1980, there was a class war. Only the wealthy showed up, and they’ve been trickling down on us ever since.
Back to the commisaries for a moment. Given the accounting info above, the issue is not that they are a cost center for the military, but rather that a potential profit opportunity is lost.
Nothing drives a Republican crazier than having to compete with a not-for-profit model. Nothing.
Hey Strat,
Former 423X0 Aircraft Electrical Systems Specialist. The most interesting work I’ve ever done. Served from ’78 to ’83. First at McClellan in Ca then at Ramstein in Germany. KC-130′s, HH-53′s, C-135′s, T-39′s.
I saw the Air Force at it’s best and at it’s worst. I will say that the Commisary, the BX and all the other services offered were always professional, clean and well stocked. I never had a problem with any of them.
Rat own!
Conservatives Golden Virtues.
1. Cheap labor.
2. Privatize assets.
3. Socialize* liabilities.
(*Who says they aren’t socialists?)
You forgot the Roman patricians’ war on the plebeians, and pre-Solon Athens. The wealthy have been waging this war for a very long time, and they’ll use everything from rhetoric and media control to voter suppression and yes, assassination to perpetuate it. As henry Ford and Prescott Bush demonstrated, if not for FDR this country would have not addressed Nazism, but actually welcomed it as an efficient capitalist authoritarianism, the same ends the Tea Party and”Freedomworks” are aiming for. Money is everything to them, country or humanity means nothing. The fight will be grim, but capitulation grimmer.
I think this was a mistake.
One of the keys to winnning the class war for them has always been keeping it out of sight.
This gives the media – who would never mention class warfare without permission – permission, nay orders, to discuss it.
You may be right. It could backfire. But twisting the meaning of the phrase as the Right is doing at least confuses the issue and many people. The Right did the same with the word Fascist. Notice how the Tea Baggers apply it, without a clue as to its meaning.