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The Real Agenda of the Right
The
following examples are recent documentation of the anti-worker,
anti-union ideology of the American Right.
This is to supplement the information provided in the report “Politics
in
America
: The Right Wing Attack on the American Labor Movement” which was
issued in August 2002. The
original report can be found on the web site of the Wisconsin State
AFL-CIO at www.wisaflcio.org in
the column marked “Labor News You Can Use”.
Joanne
Ricca
July 2005
“The Democratic
Party will be forever doomed. If
we take control of the legislature and the executive branch, we will
reinforce our control of the judicial branch to direct it against the
Democrats. We will bring
about a modest limit of the ability of the people to initiate lawsuits
against corporations, which will damage the lawyers who specialize in
these cases, which is one of the props of the Democratic Party.
We will accelerate the decline of the unions.
We will cut funding to groups of public employees, like
teachers, who are one of the great sources of Democratic votes.
And we will begin to move the welfare state toward a private
system in pensions and health care.”
“In
Twenty Years the Welfare State Will No Longer Be Needed”
Interview with Grover Norquist published in Nueva Economia,
a supplement to El Mundo, Madrid, Spain, September 12, 2004
“Norquist
plays the role of national ward boss, delivering the coalition that has
rallied around the president’s policy agenda.
Norquist calls it the “Leave-Us-Alone Coalition”, a grouping
of gun owners, the Christian right, homeschoolers, libertarians, and
business leaders that he has almost single-handedly managed to unite.
The common vision: an
America in which the rich will be taxed at the same rates as the poor,
where capital is freed from government constraints, where government
services are turned over to the free market, where the minimum wage is
repealed, unions are made irrelevant, and law-abiding citizens can pack
handguns in every state and town.
‘My
ideal citizen is the self-employed, homeschooling, IRA-owning guy with a
concealed-carry permit,’ says Norquist.
‘Because that person doesn’t need the goddam government for
anything.’ He goes on to
say: ‘We plan to pick up another five seats in the Senate and hold the
House through redistricting in 2012.
And rather than negotiate with the teachers’ unions and the
trial lawyers and the various leftist interest groups, we intend to
break them.’ He adds:
‘We are deadly serious. We do intend to have a smaller and less
intrusive government, and every time the government gets smaller there
are fewer Democratic precinct workers in the world.’”
“The Soul of the New Machine” by Michael Scherer
Mother Jones Magazine, January/February 2004
“Old-fashioned
values may count when conservatives appear on the stump, but once
conservatives are in office the only old-fashioned situation they care
to revive is the regimen of low wages and lax regulations.
Over the last three decades they have smashed the welfare state,
reduced the tax burden on corporations and the wealthy, and generally
facilitated a return to a 19th century pattern of wealth distribution.
Thus the primary contradiction of the backlash:
It is a working-class movement that has done incalculable,
historic harm to working-class people.
The leaders of the backlash may talk Christ, but they walk
corporate. Values may
‘matter most’ to voters, but they always take a back seat to the
needs of money once the elections are won.”
“The
trick never ages, the illusion never wears off.
Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in
capital-gains taxes. Vote
to make our country strong again; receive de-industrialization. Vote
to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity
deregulation. Vote to
get government off our back; receive conglomeration and monopoly
everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote to stand tall against
terrorism; receive Social Security privatization.
Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a
social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in
our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are
rewarded in a manner beyond imagining.”
“Lie
Down for
America
: How the Republican Party Sows
Ruin on the
Great Plains
”, by Thomas Frank
Harper’s Magazine, April 2004
“Republicans
plan to use Congress to pull . . . and vulnerable Democrats into the
cultural wars over gay rights, abortion and guns, envisioning a series
of debates and votes that will highlight the candidates’ positions on
divisive issues, according to congressional aides and GOP
officials….One of the most divisive issues looming is a proposed
constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages, which President Bush
has endorsed….Another possible wedge issue is a long-standing proposed
constitutional amendment to outlaw burning the American flag.”
“GOP
Plans Votes to Put Democrats on the Spot”
Washington
Post,
March 2, 2004
“But in
terms of direct mail—the financial lifeblood of most advocacy groups,
including many Christian conservative organizations—some in the
movement believe opposition to gay marriage will be even more potent
than its other great cause, the fight against abortion.
‘Abortion has never been a strong direct-mailer’, said
Richard Viguerie, founder of American Target Advertising and the dean of
conservative direct mail. ‘But
in my opinion and the opinion of my executives, this is a world-class
wedge issue. Every
instinct in my body tells me this is going to be a big mailer.’”
“Conservatives
Use Gay Union As Rallying Cry”
New York
Times,
February 8, 2004
(Note:
Richard Viguerie wrote "The
New Right: We’re Ready to Lead” in 1980 and was a key leader
along with Paul Weyrich, Howard Phillips and Terry Dolan in developing
the “bait and switch” single-issue strategy of today’s Right. As
an example of the anti-union sentiment on the Right, Viguerie pulled his
family from a neighborhood church because the priest had given a sermon
on Cesar Chavez, who was head of the United Farm Workers Union at the
time.)
“According
to cleverly misleading reports from the Heritage Foundation and
other like-minded sources, the deficit is growing because Mr. Bush
isn’t sufficiently conservative: he’s
allowing runaway growth in domestic spending.
This myth is intended to divert attention from the real culprit: sharply
reduced tax collections, mainly from corporations and the wealthy.
And this
was part of a larger con. What’s
playing out in
America
right now is the bait-and-switch strategy known on the right as
“starve the beast.” The
ultimate goal is to slash government programs that help the poor and the
middle class, and use the savings to cut taxes for the rich.
But the public would never vote for that.
So the
right has used deceptive salesmanship to undermine tax enforcement and
push through upper-income tax cuts.
And now that deficits have emerged, the right insists that they
are the result of runaway spending, which must be curbed.”
“Red
Ink Realities” by Paul Krugman
New York Times,
January 27, 2004
“Watching the fiscal
crises gripping cities and states across the
U.S.
is like watching a chain-reaction auto wreck in slow motion.
I don’t think the general public has a good sense yet of the
pain that will result from the carnage. There are those who have long
dreamed of the day when governments would be so drained of revenues they
would have no choice but to call a halt to many of their functions.
The realization of that dream is getting closer, in part because
its tragic implications remain obscure to vast segments of the public
served by those governments.”
“States
of Pain” by Bob Herbert
New York Times, November 21, 2002
“To Daniel J.
Mitchell there is hardly an area of government that can’t be improved
by competition from the
private sector…Conservatives such as Mitchell, an economist at the
Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C. think tank, say the rough and
tumble of competition will create better services while trimming
costs…. ‘We’ve been frustrated in some areas, but we’re also on
the offensive. The unions
and the left—they’re like the little Dutch boy trying to stick his
finger in the dike, except there are now 10 holes springing in the
dike.’”
“Conservatives
Accelerate Push For Private Sector Competition”
Capital Times,
December 8, 2003
During his lifetime in
the U.S. Senate, Strom Thurmond (R-South Carolina) had one of the worst voting
records on rights and protections for workers and unions. Thurmond’s
AFL-CIO Voting Record indicates that he voted “right” only 12% of
the time on legislation of benefit to workers—that is only 61 votes
out of 517 cast during his Senate career. Senator
Thurmond vigorously fought
the original Civil Rights Act and strongly promoted traditional family
values. Recently it was revealed that former Senator Strom Thurmond
fathered a child in 1925 with a 16-year old African-American maid who
worked for his family. The Christian Coalition had this to say:
“From a moral
standpoint, yes, what happened was wrong,” Roberta Combs, president of
the Christian Coalition, said. “That’s
not the traditional family. That’s
not how it’s supposed to be. But
we’re not going to sit around today and criticize Strom.
He’s helped so many people.
He’s touched so many lives.”
“When
Family Values Clash With Family Secrets”
New York Times, January 4,
2004
“Most of our economic
regulation is stupid…What possible reason is there for regulating wages and hours?”
Prof. Epstein said. “If
my takings doctrine prevails, you have no minimum wage laws.
That’s fine. You’d
have an OSHA a tenth of the size. That’s
fine too. You’d have no
antidiscrimination laws for privileged employees, which would be a
godsend.”
“The Right and U.S.
Trade Law: Invalidating the
20th Century”
The Nation, October 15, 2001
“The 13,000 richest
families in America now have almost as much income as the 20
million poorest. And those
13,000 families have incomes 300 times that of average families.”
“For Richer:
How the Permissive Capitalism of the Boom
Destroyed American
Equality”, New York Times Magazine,
October 20, 2002
“…America has two
tax systems, separate and unequal. One
is for wage earners, and most of us know firsthand that that system
works effectively. The other
is for the wealthy, who control much of what the IRS knows about their
finances and who in recent years have paid a shrinking share of their
incomes to sustain the civilization that makes their riches possible.
Wealth is more concentrated in America than at any time since 1929.”
“The
Loophole Artist” by David Cay Johnston
New York Times Magazine,
December 21, 2003
On Social Security:
“Never mind the rhetoric about retirement security; the real
reason for the attack on Social Security is ideology.
Here’s what Edward Fuelner, president of the Heritage
Foundation, wrote to supporters: ‘…today’s policies are a product
of the Great Society of the 1960s, which grew out of the New Deal of the
1930s, which was an assault on founding principles articulated in the
18th century….Connecting the historical dots is no small task.’
The important thing is to understand what’s really going on
here. The ideological powers
behind the current administration want to do away with Social
Security—not to offer retirees a better deal, but because they are
opposed to the program in principle.
Unfortunately, that’s an argument that won’t work in the
political arena; Social Security is very popular.
So the strategy they have adopted is to declare that the program
is already dead, or nearly so. If
the facts say, on the contrary, that Social Security is very much alive,
the administration doesn’t want to hear about it.
And it doesn’t want you to hear about it either.”
“Connect
the Dots” by Paul Krugman
New York Times, April 2, 2002
On Medicare:
“This is an ideological battle.
This bill is a big victory for health insurers and conservatives
because it increases the viability of Medicare HMOs and puts commercial
insurance on a course toward employers scaling back health care
contributions and individuals taking on the responsibility for their own
health coverage.”
Charles Boorady,
Analyst at Smith Barney
“Gauging the Winners in the Medicare Bill”
New York Times,
December 14, 2003
“On July 30, 1965,
Lyndon Johnson …signed the bill that created Medicare. Medicare was a
desperately needed program and it grew to be a wildly popular one.
But conservatives were outraged by it.
Socialized medicine, they snarled. Un-American.
Johnson’s biographer recalled that Ronald Reagan saw Medicare
as the advance wave of socialism, which would ‘invade every area of
freedom in this country.’ Today
President Bush will sign into law a prescription drug benefit under
Medicare that will introduce the first cold drafts of bitter reality to
the G.O.P.’s long dream of dismantling Medicare as we’ve known
it.”
“Stalking
the Giant Chicken Coop” by Bob Herbert
New
York Times, December 8, 2003
“Nothing better
captures the difference between the Republicans who took over Congress eight years ago and
those who control it now than their attitude toward term limits.
When the GOP rebels rode to power in 1994 under Newt Gingrich and
Dick Armey, after 40 years of unbroken Democratic control of the House
of Representatives, one of the promises in their ‘Contract with
America’ was to limit the time anyone could serve it that body.
The promise was quickly abandoned….”
“Different
Perspective Has GOP Rethinking Term Limits”
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, January 5, 2003
“Term limits was the
cry of nearly all the Republicans in 1994 when they took over the House, defeating
many Democrats. They would
come to Washington, do the job of cutting back ‘big government’ and
then move aside so others could have a chance.
One of the major upsets occurred in the state of Washington where
an upstart by the name of George Nethercutt beat Congressman Tom Foley,
a long-time Democratic leader. Nethercutt
promised the voters ‘three terms and I’m out’.
Guess who is running for a fourth term?
‘To term-limit yourself really reduces your effectiveness’,
said Nethercutt. Tom Foley
had an 80% lifetime pro-worker voting record according to the AFL-CIO.
In contrast, Rep. George Nethercutt had only a 2% lifetime
pro-worker voting record as of 1999.”
“Term Limits Campaign
a Ruse Used to Defeat
Pro-Labor Candidates”, Wisconsin Research Center
Newsletter, Fall 2000
“While the Bush
administration is gung-ho for democracy in Iraq and Zimbabwe, there is
one place it wants to be sure it never sees the light of day:
the American workplace. I
am talking here about a right that most Americans thought they had won
back in 1935—the right to form unions and bargain collectively.
Over the years, that right has been whittled away by legislation,
poked with holes by appeals courts and reduced to irrelevancy by a
well-meaning bureaucracy that has let itself be intimidated by political
and legal thuggery. As a
result, any company willing to use intimidation and delaying tactics
will never have to sign a first contract with a union, even if employees
really want one.
Given these toothless
remedies, it’s no surprise that only seven groups of Wal-Mart
employees have ever gotten to vote on having a union, with only one of
those—10 butchers at a store in Jacksonville, Fla.—actually voting
in favor. And gosh,
wouldn’t you know that just weeks later, Wal-Mart decided to eliminate
the meat-cutting function at the Jacksonville store and ship in pre-cut
meat instead. Although the
company explained the change had been under consideration for six months
at least, Leonard Page, then the acting general counsel of the NLRB,
told me Wal-Mart couldn’t produce even a single document to prove it.
Some months after the
Jacksonville incident, Page decided it was time to get serious with
Wal-Mart, and set up an appointment with top executives at their offices
in Bentonville, Ark. But the
day before his trip, he got a call from the White House thanking him for
his services and instructing him to clear out his desk even though no
replacement had been named.”
“Workers’
Rights Are Being Rolled Back” by Steven Pearlstein
Washington Post,
February 25, 2004
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