Bob Herbert: Reviving the Dream

[babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/opinion/10herbert.html?ref=opinion

Reviving the Dream

By BOB HERBERT
Published: March 9, 2009


Working families were in deep trouble long before this megarecession hit. But too many of the public officials who should have been looking out for the middle class and the poor were part of the reckless and shockingly shortsighted alliance of conservatives and corporate leaders that rigged the economy in favor of the rich and ultimately brought it down completely.

As Jared Bernstein, now the chief economic adviser to Vice President Joseph Biden, wrote in the preface to his book, “Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? (And Other Unsolved Economic Mysteries)”:

“Economics has been hijacked by the rich and powerful, and it has been forged into a tool that is being used against the rest of us.”

Working people were not just abandoned by big business and their ideological henchmen in government, they were exploited and humiliated. They were denied the productivity gains that should have rightfully accrued to them. They were treated ruthlessly whenever they tried to organize. They were never reasonably protected against the savage dislocations caused by revolutions in technology and global trade.

snip//

Now, with the economy in free fall and likely to get worse, Americans — despite their suffering — have an opportunity to reshape the society, and then to move it in a fairer, smarter and ultimately more productive direction. That is the only way to revive the dream, but it will take a long time and require great courage and sacrifice.

The right-wingers do not want that to happen, which is why they are rooting so hard for President Obama’s initiatives to fail. They like the direction that the country took over the past 30 years. They’d love to do it all again.

[fencesitter]

1. This is a great article...

I'm suprized there has been no comments.

What's nuts is the working people on the right are still blind to all this, so thoughly blinded by straw men and wedge issues. OBama just passed the largest tax cut in history for working people and they're out there railing about no tax cuts. What, I don't want a tax cut, give it to those guys making over 250,00 a year, cut the capital gains tax? Give more tax breaks to corporations instead of us?

[truth2power]

2. Thank you, babylonsister, for posting this....

someone also referred to it in the comments section of an article over at CommonDreams.

I think a crucial part of the article is the following:

"The right-wingers were crafty: You smother the dream by crippling the programs that support it, by starving the government of money to pay for them, by funneling the government’s revenues to the rich through tax cuts and other benefits, by looting the government the way gangsters loot legitimate businesses and then pleading poverty when it comes time to fund the services required by the people."

That's been going on right before our eyes for the past eight years. Defund social programs. Destroy the social safety net. Americans have been so brainwashed they CAN'T fathom what's hiding in plain sight.

A case in point: Less than an hour ago I got a phone call from an acquaintance of mine. She was raving mad. Something about a man living across the street from her who is getting "welfare" as she termed it. How could he be so lazy and be taking money from us taxpayers, she said. I couldn't make any sense of the details, but I reminded her that people like Madoff and his ilk, and the filthy rich CEOs, grifters all, were robbing us and our children, grandchildren etc.

She absolutely ignored what I said and continued to rant about her neighbor. How can things ever change when people like her are absolutely colluding in their own destruction?


edit> typo