October 15. 2008
Page A4
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The Truths about Class Warfare
Spare us the offensive rhetoric
B ob K eener
W hy do right-wing com m en­
tators get to say it’s class w ar­
fare to su g g e st th a t w ea lth y
people should pay more in taxes?
I’ll tell you w hat’s class w ar­
fare.
It’s class w arfare to pass two
sets o f m assive tax cuts that ben­
efit mostly the w ealthy as Presi­
dent Bush did during his first
term.
These two frontal assaults on
working folks, transferred almost
$100 billion to the top I percent,
w hile helping to turn a $5.1 tril­
lion 10-year federal budget sur­
plus into a $3.7 trillion deficit.
This devastating debt is already
a crushing burden on future gen­
erations o f average taxpayers.
It’s class warfare for presiden­
tial candidate Sen. John M cCain
to propose making the Bush tax
cuts perm anent - a coup de grace
for struggling Americans who al­
ready saw the median household
income go dow n from 2000 to
2007. This proposal would give
raises next year o f 4.4percent in
after-tax income to the top 0.1
by
percent and 3.4 percent for the
top 1 percent. Com bat pay, we
assum e?
It’s class warfare to spend years
deregulating the financial se r­
v ic e s in d u s try as B u sh an d
M cCain have done and then he
"sh o ck ed " w hen a speculative
zeppelin-sized balloon, fueled by
outlandish greed, bursts like an
atomic bomb, putting the entire
global econom y at m ajor risk.
It’s class w arfare to prop up a
few irresponsible Wall Street g i­
b u sin e ss e x e c u tiv e s ta x p a y e r
subsidies totaling more than $20
billion per year that in truth en ­
courage unlim ited pay packages.
It’s class w arfare to oppose the
E m ployee Free C hoice A ct as
both Bush and M cCain do. This
law would begin to bring a small
am ount o f pow er balance back
into the w orkplace by making it a
bit easier than it is now to form a
labor union. F urther, it w ould
com pel mediation and arbitration
if m an ag em en t and the union
don’t agree on a contract in 90
days.
Let's put the suggestion that
wealthy people should pay more in
taxes in perspective.
ants with $200 billion in aid pack­
ages in the form o f brand new
taxpayer-supplied loans, while the
A m erican H ousin g R escue &
Foreclosure Prevention Act, d e­
sig n e d to a s sist h u n d re d s o f
thousands o f hom eow ners suf­
fering under subprim e loans is
blockaded.
It’s class w arfare to give big
It’s class w arfare to oppose in­
creasin g the federal m inim um
w age as both Bush and M cCain
have done.
By 2006, w hen a proposed in­
crease was last voted down, the
value o f the m inim um wage had
fallen to its low est level in over
50 years. Even today, after in­
creases pul in place in 2(K)7, there
Palin Around with Terrorists
even though the W eather U nder­
ground that O bam a's buddy Bill
Ayres helped found n ever tar­
geted civilians. T he only person
they ever killed was one o f their
own in a fatal bom bm aking blun­
d e r in a G re e n w ic h V illa g e
tow nhouse.
Check out your own pals, Sarah
by T om H .
H astings
Sarah Palin is right to criticize
Barak O bam a for ’palling around
with terrorists,’ as she puts it.
A smart politician would nol
hang around w ith people w ho
have been connected to bom bs
that might have hurt civilians.
A f r ic a n A m erican A l l i a n c e f o r H om eow nership
(AAAH)
Presents
10 th annual
HOMEOWNERSHIP FAIR
Ms. Avila
The Johnson's
J ohn B ernard
T he w o rld ’s m ost pow erful
econom y is in peril thanks to an ­
other bout o f deception, denial,
greed and collusion.
Tw o pow erful forces - the
p ressu re to c o n tin u a lly grow
earn in g s co u p led w ith w ildly
c o m p e titiv e m a rk e ts s u p e r ­
charged by the internet -h a v e
revealed a fissure a mile w ide in
C E O m orality, leadership and
m anagem ent skills.
W hat happened at W ashing­
ton M utual that caused its co l­
lapse? And, what w as going on
at C hase that has allow ed them
to prosper in the m ortgage loan
crisis? T he price o f those who
failed will affect every American,
so I believe we m ust understand
the root cause.
P re ssu re to grow q u arte rly
earnings dem ands organizations
c o n tin u a lly im p ro v e p e r f o r ­
mance - and one o f a CEO s most
important jo b s is to put in place
an engine to drive that perfor­
mance.
If the CEO s expectation is that
everyone w orks harder as o p ­
posed to smarter, the top has set
the tone. W hen the organization
honors and rew ards the top per­
form er based purely on numbers
- w ithout regard to how they
were achieved - th e real moral ex­
pectations are revealed. Com peti­
tive pressures are great at reveal­
ing every ethically grey twist and
turn, and after aw hile, norm ally
ethically people begin to q u es­
tion their ow n sense o f right or
wrong. W hen we set our moral
com pass by looking at what our
com petitors are doing w e're in
trouble.
T he internet has done n o th ­
ing but heighten the com petitive
pressure, but it also has added
another dynam ic. T he w eb has
c r e a te d th e e ra o f m a ss
custom ization; today as buyers
we have m any m ore sellers to
choose from and so to com pete,
the sellers custom ize their solu­
tions to m eet our needs. C o m ­
peting in this environm ent d e­
mands flexibility - and that flex­
ibility com es in many forms.
I believe that in the mortgage
crises, the com petitive pressures
by
$ 4 T R ILLIO N y ?
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FEATHER THE NESTS
OF 'WALL. S T R E E T /
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is no state in the nation w here a
family or even an individual can
cover the basic cost o f living on
a full-time minimum wage.
So let’s put the suggestion that
w ealthy people should pay more
in taxes in perspective. It’s a tac­
tic to address econom ic inequi­
ties. It was em ployed after the
robber baron days o f the early
20th century and served us well
as a society until it was repealed
bit by bit, starting in the 1970s
and increasingly in recent times.
W hat’s good about it is that
it’s em bedded in how we pay for
governm ent - a benefit we all
share. It’s based on the u nder­
standing that w e’re all in this to ­
gether and that extrem e inequity
is bad for a dem ocratic society.
D isagree with the idea if you
want to, but spare us the offen­
sive rhetoric. Average Americans
arc on the front lines o f the real
class w ar and have been losing
long enough.
Bob Keener is communica­
tions director fo r United fo r a
hair Economy, an independent
organization raising awareness
about the dangers o f growing
economic inequality.
O f course, those bom bs o f the
W eather U nderground hack in
the late 1960s and early 1970s
were a stupid but understandable
response to the infinitely larger
n u m b e rs o f b o m b s th at w ere
d ro p p e d on p u rp o se by Jo h n
M cCain and others into civilian
neighborhoods and w orkplaces
in Vietnam.
In d e e d , M c C a in w as sh o t
dow n as he was bom bing Hanoi,
a city, not a m ilitary base nor a
m ilitary supply line such as the
Ho Chi M inh Trail. This was pa­
tently illegal then and it’s illegal
now. It s a war crim e. It was a war
crim e when it w as done by Japa­
nese to Chinese and M ongolians,
when it was done by G erm ans to
the British, and in turn when we
ta rg e ted c iv ilia n s in D resden,
H am burg, C o lo g n e, F rankfort,
Tokyo. Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.
were so great that mortgage loan
professionals began to “look the
other way” with regards to finan­
cial qualifications o f their buy­
ers - after all, everyone else was
doing it.
So, how does the pressure to
make earnings combined with the
mass custom ization realities of
the internet point to a failure in
C E O m orality, leadership and
m anagem ent? It’s pretty simple:
it’s their jo b to understand these
sophisticated dynam ics and to
lead their com panies through the
maze.
I believe the pressure to grow
earnings each quarter, com bined
with a m ass custom ization m ar­
ketplace, dem ands a new kind of
organiz<ftional thinking on the
part o f the C E O - not only to
succeed com petitively, but also
to do so w hile living up to a d e­
cent set o f moral standards. The
failing,! believe, is rooted deeply
in outdated leadership and m ana­
gerial practices.
Leaders are obligated today to
create a healthy "being” environ­
ment for their organizations. Well-
crafted values w on’t suffice - the
key is the environm ent the leader
creates through his or her own
behavior. Contradictory behav­
ior by the CEO - or tolerance o f it
- reverberates as truth through
the organization. Additionally,
leaders must manage the “doing”
environment. To ensure ethical
behavior is in place in their mana­
gerial capacity leaders m ust cre­
ate a m anagerial system where
appropriate controls establish the
boundaries o f actions to ensure
business effectiveness and ethi­
cal responsibility.
In the end, the credit crisis is
the direct result o f leadership not
effectively creating a culture o f
e th ic a l a c tio n an d sy stem o f
m anagem ent that dem ands ac­
countability. W hile the w ords
are there, the look-the-other way
ethic that lives up and dow n the
corporation's layers is the direct
responsibility o f its leader. The
credit crisis was caused by a lead­
ership lapse o f epic proportions.
John Bernard is a founding
partner o f ¡Ox Incorporated, a
Portland-based organization.
At least, how ever, there w as a c h a n c e to d efe n d th e m se lv es
justification for being at war with against the bom bings o f hospi­
G erm any and Japan. There was tals, civilian neighborhoods, and
none for our war on Vietnam just the infrastructure that kept their
people alive.
as there is none now in Iraq.
Were the Vietnamese a threat to
We pretend that the rest o f the
world cannot tell that our bom bs the U.S.? No. Were they a threat
are just as terroristic as anyone to a neighboring country ? No. Did
else’s. We pretend that they m is­ the UN decide that a military inva­
interpret any civilian deaths as sion was necessary to stop a geno­
somehow Am erica's intent to kill cide or other major human rights
people w ho are not armed. We violation? No. The U.S. unilater­
pretend that John M cCain wasn't ally decided to step in to seize a
colony the French lost in 1954.
a terrorist.
So let's not be quite so fast,
He was.
There was absolutely nothing Sarah. C heck out the character
noble about w hat M cCain did to and history o f your pals. Your
Vietnamese. He was one o f the running mate murdered Vietnam­
least likely to pay any price for e s e c iv ilia n s . N e ith e r B arak
his actions, bom bing them into O bam a nor even Bill Ayres, his
fireball oblivion from thousands pathetic ‘pal,’ did.
Tom H. Hastings teaches con­
o f feet in the air. Were they not in
possession o f antiaircraft rock­ flict resolution at Portland State
e ts th e y w o u ld h av e h ad no University.
Ms. Brown
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For more Information call 503-595-3517
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Sponsors: Portland Development Commission, Bureau of Housing and Community Development,
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KEUJEl WILLIAMS
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