OPINION - The Rich Behind the Throne

"The Fox in the Hen House: No More Rich Behind the Throne Now Rich on the Throne" by Cliff Wilson, Cliff's Notes 7/15/2012

There was a time when being rich in America meant having much land or owning a mercantile business in a city - accumulating wealth and leaving it to one's offspring so they could enjoy a good life if they continued to work at the business or maintain the farm. Now being wealthy means accumulating vast fortunes of money by investing and using money to make more money - producing nothing of intrinsic value and then leaving vast fortunes to your children who proceed often to simply spend it and do little productive, perhaps continue to invest and financially back others hard at work.

There was a time when the most respected Americans were those who worked as teachers, public servants like the policeman, the firefighter, the librarian - the proverbial people in your neighborhood. They performed services for the many who worked at producing goods or growing things. They educated our children and protected us from criminals and catastrophes.

That America now exists only in the history books; it is "gone with the wind" as much as the mythical old south is. And, today America is one in which two classes struggle, not the age old haves and have-nots, but, the me-first vs. the society first. Those who feel that they belong to the village and those who see the village as a place to reside in while making one's fortune.

This year in America is a Presidential election year. These quadrennial exercises in choosing the national leader often reflect where America is. In the 1820's Jackson stood for the "man on the make" the young farmers and the mechanics and craftsmen of the cities vs. those who represented old money (Southern planters and northern bankers). The Republican party was founded in the mid-1850's not only on the platform of no extension of slavery but also the expansion of the economy into the west, cheap sale of government land and the federal government supporting a transcontinental railroad. The 1932 election was a contest between those conservatives who believe that doing nothing would solve the nation's economic problems and liberals who believed they could reform capitalism in ways that would preserve a free economy in America at the same time as protecting the livelihood and the quality of life of all our citizens. FDR, the liberal Democrat, saved the New Deal while most of the western world fell under the rule of dictators.

This year the new Republican party - the tea party radical right wing Republican party- advocates a combination of the better to do nothing philosophy and the help the rich and let what may trickle down. Republicans offer American not a mouthpiece of the super rich classes but an actual robber baron himself in Mitt Romney. I guess the superrich believe that rather than just controlling the President it’s time they had one of their own in the office. And the Democrats offer for re-election Barack Obama, a centrist Democrat, who accepts the basic tenets of capitalism but also adheres to the injunction of Abraham Lincoln (also of Illinois) that the function of government is to do the things that people can’t do for themselves.

It appeared in the 195o’s and 1960's that both parties had accepted the basic role of the federal government to protect the economic and civil rights of all our citizens. Even the Reagan revolution now appears as a modest effort to curtail some of the more liberal aspects of the post-New Deal years. But now we begin a new era - Republicans would put in the White House the fox to guard the chickens of America. At the turn of the 20th century when America faced a serious economic crisis President Theodore Roosevelt speaking softly from his bully pulpit faced down J. P. Morgan. The President if the one elected official who has the moral authority to speak for the entire nation and now the radical right wing tea party Republicans would put a J. P. Morgan in the White House to face down all the Theodore Roosevelts. A President of the 1% will misgovern and mislead the 99% unlike FDR who was called a traitor to his 1% because he proposed programs to benefit the 99%.