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Comment on Jon Schwarz’s “Today’s Class War Is the 1 Percent Versus the People Just Below Them”

Jon Schwarz in the Intercept wrote an intelligent and innovative essay Today’s Class War Is the 1 Percent Versus the People Just Below Them, in which he summarizes some of the economic history of the United States since World War Two and references Adam Smith’s warnings about the “great proprietors” of feudalism. Schwarz thinks the super-rich, in their endless greed, are planning to go after the wealth and power of the technocrats — those in the top 10% of wealth holders.

Schwarz’s analysis is not just plausible but is a much better explanation of our society’s dynamics than you’ll get from most of academia, and certainly than what’s transmitted by the MSM. He’s absolutely correct about Adam Smith. It’s not just that the elite don’t like to read stuff, Smith is hard to read with arcane language. So most of the advocates of laissez faire economics have never read him. Maybe Ayn Rand.

I do have some quibbles.

There are four main classes in the US today, not three.
• The owners, 1% or so with a .01% sub class wielding the real power.
• What Schwartz calls the technocrats, what used to be the high end of the working class, which is all that’s left of it. It also includes a segment of unionized trades who are still paid a living wage and small business owners.
• Guy Standing’s Precariat. The gig economy, wage workers one setback (illness, rent hike, job downsized, car accident, crime victim) away from disaster because they have no savings, are in debt up to their eyeballs, and are losing ground steadily. The Uber drivers and others trying to capitalize their transportation asset as a way to make ends meet, but with absolutely no control.
• The underclass, growing exponentially since the 2008 meltdown. About to explode as consolidated ownership of the housing stock drives more and more of the population into homelessness, and metastasizing debt of every kind traps people (thanks for that Bankruptcy Law Joe Biden). Includes our huge prison population. There is no way out except death, no matter how hard you work.

The presence of the Soviet Union had a lot more to do with allowing redistribution to the working class than the memories of WWII horrors experienced by scions of wealth. More of them served in WWII than in later conflicts, but the really connected still mostly avoided the worst duty. Besides, both the US and UK ruling classes would have preferred not to fight Hitler, but circumstances, for once, went against them. They liked the way Hitler and Mussolini dealt with the destabilization of the working classes. They always would have preferred to join forces with him against the USSR. Stuffing the workers full of cheap food and consumer goods was expressed as a strategy in fighting Communism and Socialism, which has scared the shit out of our ruling class ever since 1917, and worried them quite a bit even before that. Fred Kaplan’s, “1959” in describing a trip to the US by a Soviet minister makes it clear that even the Soviets recognized how well that strategy was working. Our elites even made some money doing it, but nothing like what they are raking in now, looting the Treasury, privatizing public revenue streams, and collecting a percentage on our entire financialized economy.

This isn’t a case of a new generation greedier than the last. It’s the result of a strategy, largely, but not completely outlined by the Powell Memo. Add which had roots at least as far back as the Du Pont brothers’ American Liberty League in 1934. The shellacking that Goldwater took espousing all the ideas the ruling class held dear scared them as much as the Bolsheviks killing the Tsar and his family had. The largesse was always going to be temporary, but they saw it had outlived it usefulness and was about to result in expanded demands from the working class, and they didn’t have the political power to stop them at that point. The Soviets Union was still around, but it was clearly a dead man walking. Besides, communists and socialists in the US had been almost completely purged, labor unions largely emasculated, in the late ’40s through the ’50s, with tens of millions of independent small farmers, always a potential source of trouble, driven from the land in a slightly slower process that wrapped up in the ’80s. Democratic politicians instead of pointing to the real causes of the stagflation of the ’70s, were falling all over each other to be the most “fiscally conservative.” Who was going to lead a Left or Left populist rebellion in the US?

They combined a final push against the USSR (Zbigniew Brzezinski convincing Carter to arm the Mujahideen, outright attacks on Left leaning sovereign governments in Latin America, Reagan’s military buildup) with a full court press against any vestige of social liberalism and Keynesianism, and with a restoration of market worship and privatization starting with the Carter administration. (A nice man, perhaps our best ex-president ever, but a lousy president who normalized a lot of right wing economic nonsense within the Democratic Party, and who squandered the political capital of Watergate, the real cause of the Vietnam disaster, rampant interventionism, and the findings of the Church and Pike committees for nothing in return.) That there was a tax rebellion, a sagebrush rebellion, a shareholder rebellion, a rewriting of why the Vietnam War was a disaster, a Libertarian Party formed, and more right wing unrest, all beginning in the late ’70s early ’80s is no coincidence.

On RFK, Jr. and the New York Times

Despite consistently negative media coverage, RFK Jr. easily polled a higher favorability rating (+19%) than either of the two presumptive nominees, who both are negative (-7% Biden, -10% Trump).

The NYT article that ran Monday about the RFK Jr. campaign is typical of the slant to the news. Not an opinion piece, it nevertheless reeks of the hopes and wishes of the well paid servants of the oligarchy, while ignoring inconvenient aspects such as what might best serve the interests of the working class. You know, the general welfare that all our elected officials pledge to support. The RFK Jr. campaign is a “headache” for Biden, not a representation of a large segment of the party who would otherwise be voiceless in the POTUS campaign. So much for democracy, even among the fewer than 30% of eligible voters who elect a POTUS candidate. Much less the 100 million-plus eligible voters the decrepit two-parties can’t lure to the polls.

RFK, Jr. leads far ahead of Biden and Trump, according to a poll
RFK, Jr. leads far ahead of Biden and Trump

The President has plenty of weaknesses, as does his presumptive opponent. (For that matter, so do all the “realistic” prospects on either side of the partisan divide.) What RFK Jr. is campaigning against are the systemic weaknesses that have been built in over the past 50 years, no matter which party is in office. I don’t recall the NYT ever complaining about the votes Hillary Clinton received because of the narrative the Times had helped construct about her husband. As opposed to, say, a narrative formed around the Kennedys at least partly because two family members died for their political beliefs, which differed from the prevailing wisdom of the ruling class. Yet, the idea that “Mr. Kennedy’s popularity in polls is largely because of his family” was repeated at least three times in the article. Nor are “billionaire donors” a problem so long as they are giving to “acceptable” candidates. The Times routinely celebrates bipartisan achievement when it means party elites coalescing around corporate welfare. But RFK Jr. “consorts with right figures” when he attempts to meld growing apprehension from across the political spectrum over our blank check to Ukraine into support for a policy of peace. The Times, at least 8 months ahead, with the date not firmly set, is already spinning a potential defeat of Biden by Kennedy in the New Hampshire primary as “cosmetic.” His stands on Big Pharma using its power to put profits ahead of human health, and the Dem nomination process being rigged are mischaracterized and dismissed as ”conspiracy theories” although both represent actual practice understood by much of the population. And in the case of Dem rigging, supported as their right by a court decision.

As reflected by the statements of Rep. Garcia of California, the Biden strategy will be to double down on the fear mongering that the US has used to sell its imperial project to voters for 75 years. “His views and worldview are dangerous.” This from someone supporting an administration that has made the prospect of both direct US involvement in another war and even a nuclear exchange much more likely through the expansionist and aggressive policies that RFK Jr. would walk us back from.

That Trump was elected once, got more votes a second time despite fulfilling very few of his campaign promises, and could conceivably succeed in a third try despite indictments and possible convictions, should have tossed the “electability” canard into the dumpster. Along with the excitement Bernie’s campaigns generated, a lesson should have been learned that the average US voter is not happy with the way our economy is shaping their daily lives. (And again, a plurality doesn’t even bother to vote, and it’s not because they are so happy, but because they have lost hope.) All “electability” has ever meant is that the candidate it’s applied to is a paid up member in good standing of the status quo. Yet here it is being trotted out by Mr Castro as if that could possibly be in doubt about Biden. Perhaps Castro should consider that his “electability” might actually be the problem, and hammering it might make things worse for him. Leadership is based on inspiring people, not convincing them you are “electable” by haranguing voters about your supposed “accomplishments.” (A “summer of events promoting his legislative achievements”? Come on. What malarky!)

Biden is not inspiring. For good or bad, to a large segment of the population, Trump is. Dems tossed aside an inspiring candidate twice in the past two elections. Yet most of the very little they have accomplished when they managed to win anyway in 2020, was based on the inspiration and support generated and mobilized by that discarded candidate. They should be leery of doing it a third time. Perhaps more to the point, they should abandon their systemic advancement of uninspiring drones, who will make no waves, to the top of their political heap.

The poll represented in the photo I posted was not mentioned in the article.

The New York Times article is here (behind a paywall).

Joe Lieberman supports the hard right Washington Policy Center

Here’s a good reason to demand more from “Democratic” elected officials than a ‘D’ in parentheses after their name and a blue tee shirt. Otherwise, after they spend a career selling you out they go on to headline fundraisers for the Washington Policy Center, one of our state’s ALEC affiliates and a far-right dumb tank. Was there ever any difference between Joe Lieberman and Newt Gingrich? It wasn’t Gingrich that derailed the public option for Obamacare.

Joe Lieberman supports Washington Policy Center

“WPC’s Annual Dinner events are must-attend evenings that attract more than 2,500 elected officials, business & community leaders, raising over $1 million to support WPC’s work.”

WESTERN WASHINGTON
OCTOBER 12
Hyatt Regency
Bellevue, WA

EASTERN WASHINGTON
OCTOBER 24
Davenport Grand
Spokane, WA

Commentary on Unmair Haque’s “The Despair of the American Working Class is Real”

The Despair of the American Working Class is Real

Haque does a good job of outlining the deeds of the far right and the effects on its minions, many of whom are cutting their own throats. But one must also ask, why the supposedly Left-wing party, the Democrats, has NOT effectively fought the revived traditional fascism of Trump and his supporters (or its antecedents in the GOP over the past forty years). Fascism is, after all, Capitalism’s response to its inherent contradiction, subsequent crisis and ultimate failure in democratic societies. Fascism is the jettisoning of liberal democracy for authoritarian dictatorship, sold to the masses on the basis of ultra-nationalism, xenophobia, and racism. All because the economic system cannot both continue to extract wealth fast enough to please those it serves AND distribute enough crumbs to keep the masses happy. FDR’s response, regulating Capitalism, limiting the power of the economic royalists, and beginning the process of placing a social democratic floor beneath the general population, widely regarded as “saving Capitalism from itself,” would still be a far saner program, with a much better chance of being “sold” to the voters because it has a track record of success.

Unfortunately, the coordinated response of the economic ruling class against the New Deal has been even more successful. One of the more effective tactics, left out of both the Powell Memo and this critique from Haque, was that they began buying Democratic politicians wholesale in the 1970s and now own the entire neoliberal corporate wing of the party. Other names it goes by are “Third Way,” and “New” Democrats. ” They have effectively sold a plurality of Dem voters a similar, equally self-destructive “story”, one contrary to the progressive values most of the base still hold. One of denial and delay in acting on those values, tied to a bogus issue of “electability.” It will lead to exactly the same place as the GOP’s “story”. “Story,” in both cases is a euphemism for lies.

They attempt to save face by pointing to a supposed middle way. One where a slightly larger (perhaps up to 20% of the population vs 10% in the GOP’s version) group of servants and lackeys of the economic royalty will be allowed to survive with at least some dignity intact and, gasp!, entrance to that group will be open to minorities and others targeted by the the old-style Fascists. Left unsaid is that the vast majority of the entire population will face declining living standards, precarity, and descent to a permanent underclass. It still includes Social Darwinism, trickle-down economics, and austerity among its tenets. It shares, and so could not challenge the core belief of Reaganism, “[t]hat everything in the economy and society should be private, and nothing should be public.” But the oppression will be distributed equally, no-longer with an outsized basis in race. Their program was described by Sheldon Wolin as “Inverted Totalitarianism.” The illusion of democracy with the results of fascism. Whether they succeed or the outright fascists do, the results for the average person will be largely the same. Neoliberal elected Democrats work for the same sorts of people, if not precisely the same individuals, that GOP politicians do. Which is why they are ineffective opponents of outright fascists and spend most of their energy trying to stop the growing progressive movement, which is increasingly becoming one of Democratic Socialism and not simply a revival of the New Deal. “It is only collectively that a working class can enjoy the basics of modern life”

The sad fact is that FDR’s New Deal was the Middle Way between Socialism and Capitalism. In attempting to split the difference between it and the fascists, the neoliberal Dems have self-compromised to the point where their program, with its decided lack of an appealing vision of a positive future for most, cannot garner the overwhelming mass support it would need to triumph. So they resort to the same sorts of doublespeak and lies as the GOP, such as calling Biden a new FDR, the BS that corporate tax cuts will improve the economy for workers, and that we can train and educate our way to full employment in a broken system. They rely on the same jingoism and empty patriotism, creating enemies abroad to divert the public from its real enemies here at home. Echoed by the Democratic half of the imbecilic pundit class (as with our politicians, in service to the oligarchy not the public) that Haque (as Hedges, Frank, and others before him) disparagingly describes.

Yet, if the moronic communications I receive from the Washington State Democratic Party are any indication, they will continue their failed strategy of running against Trump and Trumpism without providing any actual alternative to, or even addressing, the failure of our system that so many are living with. And all the while the collapsing health of the natural world and globalization’s side-effect of increased demand for global economic justice both point to the fact that we must now go much further than FDR’s program.

Response to Yoni Appelbaum’s article in the Atlantic, How America Ends

At its start, this article Yoni Appelbaum’s How America Ends bends over backwards to create a false equivalency between right and left extremists in terms of the use of violence. (If it weren’t for James Hodgkinson, they’d be hard pressed to name an incident on the left that is in the public consciousness).

Nor is there a Dem POTUS saying things like this: “’Our radical Democrat opponents are driven by hatred, prejudice, and rage,’ Trump told the crowd at his reelection kickoff event in Orlando in June. ‘They want to destroy you and they want to destroy our country as we know it.’”

“’Partisans are willing to explicitly state that members of the opposing party are like animals, that they lack essential human traits,’ the researchers found. The president encourages and exploits such fears. This is a dangerous line to cross. As the researchers write, ‘Dehumanization may loosen the moral restraints that would normally prevent us from harming another human being.’”

As it progresses, it cannot help but move towards framing the problem of potential violence as coming almost exclusively from the Right. (I would suggest that the “some of worst excesses of the 20th century … carried out by totalitarian left-wing regimes” had more to do with the lack of democratic tradition in the nations they were carried out in, and economic and physical attacks on those nations by Capitalist powers, than anything inherent in Socialism.) The article poses a motivation that is only an explanation for the desperation and rage from that direction:
“… the biggest driver might be demographic change. The United States is undergoing a transition perhaps no rich and stable democracy has ever experienced: Its historically dominant group is on its way to becoming a political minority—and its minority groups are asserting their co-equal rights and interests.”
“When a group that has traditionally exercised power comes to believe that its eclipse is inevitable, and that the destruction of all it holds dear will follow, it will fight to preserve what it has—whatever the cost.”

“… the transition is already producing a sharp political backlash, exploited and exacerbated by the president. In 2016, white working-class voters who said that discrimination against whites is a serious problem, or who said they felt like strangers in their own country, were almost twice as likely to vote for Trump as those who did not. Two-thirds of Trump voters agreed that ‘the 2016 election represented the last chance to stop America’s decline.’ In Trump, they’d found a defender.”

I do think that Texiera WAS wrong, not just premature. The demographic change forced by the Left will be primarily driven not by identity but by age. Not due to some magic generational pattern repeating itself, but by the increasing exploitation of the rising generations entering the working class. This does not negate the fact that much of the enmity the Right currently whips up in its voting base is indeed identity-based. But the neglect of a conservative ideology in favor of promoting fear and advancing wedge issues will simply compound their inability to win younger voters. “A conservatism defined by identity reduces the complex calculus of politics to a simple arithmetic question—and at some point, the numbers no longer add up.”

More and more US workers no longer can afford to buy their own production (or that of China, or automation, or even afford a place to live) and so the Capitalists home in on reclaiming wealth lost to the working class thanks to the New Deal, austerity to keep us from snagging anything more, and privatizing revenue streams extracted by the state through taxation as the way to keep filling their coffers. With home ownership having declined every year of the Obama administration, Social Security and Medicare demonized by the GOP as “entitlements,” and more than 50% of discretionary federal spending going to the military industrial complex and other economic sectors where corporate welfare is rife (as well as the increasing privatization of education, incarceration, Medicare and Medicaid, etc.) this process is already well under way.

And as far as needing a center-right to “wall off more extreme right-wing movements, shutting out the radicals who attacked the political system itself” to save democracy, have no fear. The GOP ceased fulfilling that function long before Trump’s rise. The center-right is hale and hearty in the U.S., they just call themselves Democrats and comprise the corporate/ neoliberal wing of the party. I’ve been suggesting for years whenever they spout failed GOP economics that they go and fight for human rights for all in the Republican Party where they belong.

In the end, the article veers off course toward the belief that Trump’s excesses will bring him down. Really? The rise in those supporting more immigration from “less than a quarter” to “more than a third,” does not strike me as “spectacular.” It also conflates Capitalism and democracy, the standard lie of American exceptionalis, mis-attributing the cause of a series of 20th century events to identity fears (with no mention of anti-Labor and anti-Socialist violence). The basic problem continues to get worse, average Americans face a harder time making ends meet. What will bring Trump down is presenting a vision of America that includes economic fairness and social justice for all, and in which they want to live. We face not the crumbling of America’s democratic institutions (“the American system”), but the excesses and impending collapse of the monopolized, corporatized Capitalist system that has accompanied them for the last 150 years.

What real freedom includes

Dear America, universal health care is what real freedom looks like

Frank Luntz tells GOP politicians to use the word freedom a lot. Unfortunately, the only freedom they really represent is for the wealthiest to get wealthier and put their boots directly on the necks of the working class, with an emphasis on people of color. (Corporate Dems differ only in that they are willing to drop most of the racism and bigotry, and are generally too stupid to claim the word freedom.)

The wealthy know where their interests lie, and vote (and more importantly invest their political donations) accordingly. The blue-collar white working class that has become the GOP base generally confuses freedom with license. For instance, to them it’s freedom to ride their ATV wherever they want, destroying everything in their path and ignoring their dependence on oil from people they say they hate. Most of their “freedoms” do seem to involve some sort of dependency, on Middle East Oil, on health insurance companies and Big Pharma saving their asses (and bankrupting them) after a lifetime of indulging in the crap produced by Big Ag.

Not at all the freedom the Founders envisioned, which was the ability to support your family without having to kowtow to a monarch and the aristocracy or the bishops of a state-sponsored church. A few even looked askance at the growing power of newfangled joint stock companies. They certainly didn’t see the self-government they bequeathed to their progeny as a substitute target for ire. Nor did they provide the Second Amendment as a way to let the populous revolt more easily. Democratic participation was the means they saw to avoid tyranny and the militias were to defend the self-government from rioting tax revolters without the expense of a standing army. (As in the Whiskey Rebellion.)

Our history, until about 40 years ago, has been an expansion of democratic tools and access to them. They are still inadequate as is that access, but the purpose of the progressive movement is to return to moving forward on expanding them.

Trump will be elected?

Huffington Post published an article by Michael Rosenblun: Donald Trump Is Going To Be Elected. See also Trump shatters GOP records with small donors.

The American people will be losers no matter who wins the POTUS election . The problem, and therefore the solution, lies in the perceived understanding and emotions of those same American people. Transforming them is not an easy task. My advice, work for and support legislative and congressional candidates who have progressive values. Locally, we have Joe Pakootas: http://www.pakootasforcongress.com/

If there is hope for Clinton, it is to create a reverse coattail effect. Pushing harder on POTUS and statewide races will not help district candidates much.

At the national and state level, the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign aren’t even in the right ballpark. They are in denial or ignorance about the actual state of the American economy and have adopted so many aspects of the GOP’s voodoo economics they have sheathed their best weapon. For example, it is hard to provide hope of achieving anything on climate change, and thus make it an effective issue, if you limit yourself to neoliberal responses.

Not that the Greens or Libertarians are doing any better. Stein is running against the Dem Party, which will make some folks feel good but is not a path to winning or growing the Greens to major status. Johnson is being fundamentally dishonest in saying he agrees substantially with Bernie. Neither is a solution.

George Lakoff has a longer piece that offers good advice. Yet, as he says himself, “More than half a million people have read my books, and Google Scholar reports that scholars writing in scholarly journals have cited my works well over 100,000 times. Yet you will probably not read what I have to say in the NY Times, nor hear it from your favorite political commentators. You will also not hear it from Democratic candidates or party strategists.”   https://georgelakoff.com/2016/07/23/understanding-trump-2/

We could have just nominated Bernie. Lakoff doesn’t mention him, but he was pretty much following Lakoff’s script for progressive victory, while Clinton’s campaign is hardwired in the other direction.

• Go positive with YOUR vision (“we have to be realistic” is not a vision, saying “Trump’s vision is evil” simply spreads and reinforces it),
• Focus on VALUES (neither neo-liberalism nor liberal interventionism is a progressive value set),
• Stay out of shouting matches and name calling (above all, avoid calling the voters names, “basket of deplorables” indeed).
• Prioritize human freedom issues over identity issues (Her identity as a woman is played as a major asset by her campaign).

Should progressives vote for Hillary if she wins the nomination?

My statement on the discussion of whether or not to vote for Clinton should Bernie not win the Democratic nomination and the many permutations of that discussion:

I support the values embodied in the Democratic Party’s Washington State Platform (and many other state and local platforms, and quite a bit of what winds up in the national platform, although small-d democracy in the party ends at the state lines.). I need to see more than a blue t-shirt with a “D” on it to support a candidate, I need to see CREDIBLE support (a track record, not just lip service) of those values from any candidate I work for or even vote for.

The primary problem with the party has been that we’ve not held our elected Dems accountable to those values and as a result working Americans have been sold out to the corporate tools of the wealthy power elite. (The GOP has always wanted to return us to the Gilded Age, they only started succeeding when many elected Dems stopped fighting back in the late 1970s.) An organized movement to change this started after the 2004 Democratic convention, Bernie’s candidacy sprang from it and has advanced it more than many thought possible.

This is a movement, and as such, it is more than one man. Bernie is incredibly principled and politically astute. But, as he repeatedly says, this is about US not him. In our system, political parties perform many valuable functions. That the Democratic Party has been slacking on upholding its values and performing interest aggregation among its members (among other things) and selling out working Americans is not an indictment of the party system, it is an indictment of the too many rank-and-file Democrats and others who share the values the party supposedly stands for thinking that someone else will do the work to make it accountable. As my friend Anita said in the thread this was written for— learn the rules and start playing. There are plenty of folks already inside the party who need your help and will hold the door open for you.

If Bernie is not on the general election ballot the pertinent question is not which sell out or no chance message candidate you will vote for, but what will you do to advance those values and ensure that 2016 is the last Presidential election where there is a Democratic candidate that does not support working class Americans. But not a single delegate has been committed at this point (super delegates are by definition uncommitted, so getting worked up over them is counter-productive), so at this point every ounce of effort should be going to ensure that Bernie wins the Democratic nomination.

Bernie Sanders and Foreign Policy

Bernie’s statement on regime change never being a good idea, and mentioning Guatemala, Mossadegh, and Allende is heading toward the vision of what we actually need to do. End our imperial foreign policy, start closing our military bases overseas, focus on our domestic problems. Whether it’s a winning issue with a majority of the public is another matter. They have been quite literally scared out of their wits with a decade of BS propaganda about the “evildoers,” and on and on. Older voters got the Cold War BS. It’s hard to both educate and win in the same campaign. That’s why he’s focused on domestic economic issues, a broad consensus that working families are being screwed already exists.

When foreign policy comes up, IMO, he should frame talk about pulling back within the first 150 years of American foreign policy, not the more recent anti-imperialist strain of criticism that has been effectively marginalized by the corporate war mongers. Avoid foreign entanglements, spread democracy abroad by be a shining example here at home. In that vein, he needs to bring up his opposition to the USA PATRIOT Act and domestic spying more too. Clinton is very vulnerable there.

Saying that we need to have a discussion about why the American military is being used around the world to protect our supposed “commercial interests” when those commercial interests increasingly consider themselves global corporations, not American ones, might also prove useful. They ship our jobs overseas, they invest overseas, they offshore their profits, they avoid US taxes, but without the US military, the global casino economy and resource extraction racket they’ve created is vulnerable.

The nation is progressive!

Once again, our nation, which largely holds progressive values has not shown them at the ballot box. Our party’s message and messaging, campaign techniques, and ability to deliver on its (vague) promises must all be called into question.

Exit polling done Tuesday revealed that even among the (largely GOP-favoring) voters “A stunning 64 percent said they believe America’s economy ‘favors the wealthy.’ ”

Polling done the week before once again showed that the “middle” is vastly overrated. Of seven options on taxation- “Just over two-thirds — 67 percent — opted for the three options that involved raising taxes on the rich. Only 22 percent chose any of the conservative tax options.” That leaves only 11% (the truly befuddled) in the “middle.”

The article includes a link to the the Oct. 28 NY Times article, “Nothing in Moderation.” that describes the polling more fully.

http://www.commondreams.org/…/peasants-still-have-their-pitchforks/

New research from Berkeley political scientists gave Americans a choice of seven policy options on taxes, with the first three all involving raising taxes on the rich and the last three all involving options that would cut the taxes rich people pay. Americans overwhelmingly chose the first three options. (Photo: Darya Mead/Flickr/cc)