George Wallace in a newer suit

(Cynthia Tucker, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, is a visiting professor at the University of Georgia. She can be reached at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com.)

http://nationalmemo.com/content/gingrich-still-relishes-his-role-provocateur

Newt Gingrich has always had a way with words -- provocative words, harsh words, incendiary words. He and GOP consultant Frank Luntz pioneered the Republicans' use of “catchy phrases” and misleading language, not only to demean their rivals but also to redefine their rivals' policies.

As speaker of the House, Gingrich famously fined his caucus members any time they failed to call the estate tax a "death tax." He was so successful that he apparently persuaded many Americans that the estate tax, levied only on the richest Americans, was routinely assessed on the dead bodies of common folk.

It's no accident, then, that Gingrich recently spoke of poor children with mean-spirited condescension, suggesting that many of them are criminals. 

He told a Des Moines audience, "Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of 'I do this and you give me cash,' unless it's illegal."

After he was roundly and deservedly criticized, Gingrich claimed that he only meant to point out the need for a strong work ethic, a fundamental all-American virtue. But if he had meant that, he would have said that. Many public figures, including President Obama and comedian Bill Cosby, would surely agree.

Gingrich was up to something else: updating the Southern strategy of appealing to conservative white voters who cling to hoary stereotypes and unfortunate misperceptions about the black poor. Gingrich's audience likely associated the phrase "really poor children in really poor neighborhoods" with black urban ghettos portrayed as havens of dysfunction, not with rural enclaves where white children struggle with a similar poverty.

And that's what he wanted them to think. By way of clarifying his remarks, he told reporters that he was specifically thinking of "people who are in areas where there is public housing" -- which is synonymous with the black poor.

Gingrich is no old-timey mossback, no Strom Thurmond or Jesse Helms. From time to time, he has enunciated racially enlightened policies that challenged Republican orthodoxy. But Gingrich is now waging a campaign to win the crown jewel of political offices, the presidency of the United States, and he is willing to say whatever he believes will win votes. He knows that the Republican base enjoys strident rhetoric and bombastic hyperbole, and nobody serves that up that better than he.

Gingrich also knows precisely where his support is coming from: older Republican voters. As Gallup's Jeffrey Jones put it, "Gingrich's support is heavily concentrated among (white) Republicans who are at least 50."

Those are also the voters who are most uncomfortable with the rapid demographic change symbolized by the election of a black president, according to The Pew Research Center. In a study released in November, Pew noted that older white Americans are more likely to be racially intolerant than younger whites.

Denunciations of poor black children as “lazy” and “inclined toward crime” don't run a high risk of offending that group.

Neither do Gingrich's attacks on child labor laws, which he contends have prevented poor children from taking jobs that would teach them the value of work, such as cleaning toilets and mopping floors at their schools.

If Gingrich were genuinely interested in offering poor children a road map to the American middle class, he might have started by acknowledging that globalization, among other forces, has exacerbated income inequality and made it more difficult for the poor to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, even if they work 12 to 14 hours a day.

But of course Gingrich is NOT really interested in offering poor children anything; he is simply using them to further his own agenda.

The Newtster might also have acknowledged that the dysfunction that too often attends impoverished American households is not limited to those who live in public housing; it also strikes those who live in ramshackle trailer parks and shoddy little shacks in rural environments. One wonders if Gingrich has taken a serious look at white poverty worsened by the curse of methamphetamine addiction?  [I can show him several examples in my own neighborhood . . .]

Furthermore, anybody who wants to see poor children succeed would encourage them to spend every spare hour reading, writing and learning arithmetic. In order to lift themselves up the ladder, they need the advantage of stellar academic skills.  Pretty hard to do homework with your head in a toilet.

Gingrich knows that as well as anyone, but he also knows what sells on the campaign trail. And the slander of poor black children is a hot commodity.

And anyone who has been paying attention thus far knows what an a-hole Newt Gingrich is.

Just sayin’.

***
Today David Axelrod managed to cap this beautifully by saying:


” … ‘just remember the higher a monkey climbs on a pole, the more you can see his butt.’ So, you know, the Speaker is very high on the pole right now and we’ll see how people like the view.”

capitalists without customers are out of business

To contact the writer of this article: Nick Hanauer at Nick@secondave.com.

To contact the editor responsible for this article: Max Berley at mberley@bloomberg.net.

[Blatantly re-posted from the following:  http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-07/raise-taxes-on-rich-to-reward-true-job-creators-nick-hanauer.html]

***

 It is a tenet of American economic beliefs, and an article of faith for Republicans that is seldom contested by Democrats: If taxes are raised on the rich, job creation will stop.

Trouble is, sometimes the things that we “know to be true” are dead wrong. 

For the larger part of human history, for example, people were sure that the sun circles the Earth and that we are at the center of the universe. It doesn’t, and we aren’t. And the conventional wisdom that the rich and businesses are our nation’s “job creators” is every bit as false.

Per Nick Hanauer:  I’m a very rich person. As an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, I’ve started or helped get off the ground dozens of companies in industries including manufacturing, retail, medical services, the Internet and software. I founded the Internet media company aQuantive Inc., which was acquired by Microsoft Corp. in 2007 for $6.4 billion. I was also the first non-family investor in Amazon.com Inc.

Even so, I’ve never been a “job creator.” I can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people. But if no one can afford to buy what I have to sell, my business will soon fail and all those jobs will evaporate.

That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small.

What does lead to more employment is the feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion a virtuous cycle that allows companies to survive and thrive and business owners to hire. An ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than I ever have been or ever will be.

Theory of Evolution

When businesspeople take credit for creating jobs, it is like squirrels taking credit for creating evolution. In fact, it’s the other way around.

It is unquestionably true that without entrepreneurs and investors, you can’t have a dynamic and growing capitalist economy. But it’s equally true that without consumers, you can’t have entrepreneurs and investors. And the more we have happy customers with lots of disposable income, the better our businesses will do.

That’s why our current policies are so upside down. When the American middle class defends a tax system in which the lion’s share of benefits accrues to the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer.

And that’s what has been happening in the U.S. for the last 30 years.

Since 1980, the share of the nation’s income for fat cats like me in the top 0.1% has increased a shocking 400%, while the share for the bottom 50% of Americans has declined 33%. At the same time, effective tax rates on the super-wealthy fell to 16.6% in 2007, from 42% at the peak of U.S. productivity in the early 1960s, and about 30% during the expansion of the 1990s. In my case, that means that this year, I paid an 11% rate on an eight-figure income.

(Me: my household paid 28% on five-figures and one of us is on social security. Just sayin’.)

One reason this policy is so wrong-headed is that there can never be enough super-rich Americans to power a great economy. The annual earnings of people like me are hundreds, if not thousands, of times greater than those of the average American, but we don’t buy hundreds or thousands of times more stuff. My family owns three cars, not 3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most American men. Like everyone else, I go out to eat with friends and family only occasionally.

It’s true that we do spend a lot more than the average family. Yet the one truly expensive line item in our budget is our airplane (which, by the way, was manufactured in France by Dassault Aviation SA), and those annual costs are mostly for fuel (from the Middle East). It’s just crazy to believe that any of this is more beneficial to our economy than hiring more teachers or police officers or investing in our infrastructure.

More Shoppers Needed

I can’t buy enough of anything to make up for the fact that millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans can’t buy any new clothes or enjoy any meals out. Or to make up for the decreasing consumption of the tens of millions of middle-class families that are barely squeaking by, buried by spiraling costs and trapped by stagnant or declining wages.

If the average American family still got the same share of income they earned in 1980, they would have an astounding $13,000 more in their pockets a year. It’s worth pausing to consider what our economy would be like today if middle-class consumers had that additional income to spend.

It is mathematically impossible to invest enough in our economy and our country to sustain the middle class (our customers) without taxing the top 1 percent at reasonable levels. Shifting the burden from the 99 percent to the 1 percent is the surest and best way to get our consumer-based economy rolling again.

Significant tax increases on the about $1.5 trillion in collective income of those of us in the top 1 percent could create hundreds of billions of dollars to invest in our economy, rather than letting it pile up in a few bank accounts like a huge clot in our nation’s economic circulatory system.

Consider, for example, that a puny 3 percent surtax on incomes above $1 million would be enough to maintain and expand the current payroll tax cut beyond December, preventing a $1,000 increase on the average worker’s taxes at the worst possible time for the economy. With a few more pennies on the dollar, we could invest in rebuilding schools and infrastructure. And even if we imposed a millionaires’ surtax and rolled back the Bush- era tax cuts for those at the top, the taxes on the richest Americans would still be historically low, and their incomes would still be astronomically high.

We’ve had it backward for the last 30 years. Rich businesspeople like me don’t create jobs. Middle-class consumers do, and when they thrive, U.S. businesses grow and profit. That’s why taxing the rich to pay for investments that benefit all is a great deal for both the middle class and the rich.

So let’s give a break to the true job creators. Let’s tax the rich like we once did and use that money to spur growth by putting purchasing power back in the hands of the middle class. And let’s remember that capitalists without customers are out of business.

***

(Nick Hanauer is a founder of Second Avenue Partners, a venture capital company in Seattle specializing in early state startups and emerging technology. He has helped launch more than 20 companies, including aQuantive Inc. and Amazon.com, and is the co-author of two books, “The True Patriot” and “The Gardens of Democracy.” The opinions expressed are his own.)

a modest proposal for preventing the children of the poor from being a burden to their parents (or their country) . . .

. . .  and for making them beneficial to the public[i]

---

Note: My apologies to Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), author and satirist, famous for Gulliver's Travels (1726) and A Modest Proposal (1729). This proposal, where he suggests that the Irish eat their own children, is one of his most drastic pieces. He devoted much of his writing to the struggle for Ireland against the English hegemony.

It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great country, when they see the streets, the roads, and public parks crowded with beggars, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passer-by for a hand-out. These parents, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time standing at freeway on-ramps or in busy intersections to beg sustenance for their helpless infants: who as they grow up either turn to crime for want of work or carry on street-begging as a way of life.

I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of “poor” children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of our society a very great additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, useful members of the republic, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.

According to one who would dearly love to have such a statue of himself erected anywhere in America (Newt Gingrich), it has been suggested that child labor laws are "Truly stupid."  Mr. Gingrich has suggested that younger children should at least work as janitors in schools and housing projects, though this week attempted to soften his child work proposal by referring to the effort as an "apprenticeship" plan, possibly a la his close buddy and would-be cohort and financial supporter and/or beneficiary, Donald Trump.

Mr. Gingrich – once a staunch support of turning such children over to State-run orphanages - wrapped his child work proposal around a claim that parents, mostly single mothers, living with their children in housing projects, don't provide a model for hard work.

But perhaps – just maybe - Mr. Gingrich’s intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the children of professed beggars; perhaps his ideas are of a much greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of infants at a certain age who are born of parents in effect as little able to support them as those who demand our charity in the streets.

It is well known that Mr. Gingrich has turned his thoughts for many years upon this important subject, and has maturely weighed the several schemes of other projectors.  It is true, a child just dropped from its “dam” may be supported by her milk for a solar year, with little other nourishment; at most not above the value of a few dollars, which the mother may certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her lawful occupation of begging (or, in Mr. Gingrich’s vocabulary, the use of Food Stamps).  That said, it is exactly at one year old that Mr. Gingrich might propose to provide for them in such a manner as, instead of being a charge upon their parents or the government [or the 1%], or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, they shall on the contrary contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing, of many thousands.

During interviews, Mr. Gingrich has talked about babies in dumpsters.  Abandoned children.  And a  "little four-year-old who was thrown off a balcony in Chicago [who] would have been a heck of a lot better off at Boys Town."  In light of this, there is likewise another great advantage in the following scheme which may be of great interest to Mr. Gingrich:  that it will prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children, alas! too frequent among us! sacrificing the poor innocent babes (likely more to avoid the expense than the shame), which would move tears and pity in the most savage and inhuman breast.

The number of souls in America being reckoned at 308,745,538 in the last census, of these there may be about 35-40% of couples whose wives are breeders; it has been estimated that 60.8 million Americans remain dependent on the government for their daily housing, food, and health care. Even if adjustments are made for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year, there still remains a large number of children of poor parents annually born. The question therefore is, how this number shall be reared and provided for?  In accordance with the “truly stupid” child labor laws currently in effect in this country,  we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture; we can neither employ them in construction nor in the cultivation of land.

Under our current child labor laws a boy or a girl before fourteen years old is basically a drag on society, and even then said laws prevent them from really ‘contributing’ to that society until they are sixteen; and even when they come to this age they will not yield above $4.25 an hour for the first three months of ‘work’, and only $7.25 an hour past that, which cannot repay either to the parents or the government the cost of their upkeep - nutriment and rags being at least four times that value, not to mention the cost of handheld mobile devices.

It shall now, therefore, be humbly proposed to Mr. Gingrich and his ilk the following solution, which no doubt  will not be liable to the least objection.

It is widely known among natives of the Amazon jungles and in the rainforests of un-named, remote South Pacific islands that a young healthy child well-nursed is, at a year old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled, and no doubt it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.

Perhaps Mr. Gingrich might therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that, of the children already computed, some few thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one-fourth part need be males (which is more than we allow to sheep, cattle or swine) the reasoning being that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage (a circumstance, according to most conservative, god-fearing repiglickins, not much regarded by the poor and undereducated) therefore one male should be sufficient to serve four females (Mr. Mitt Romney will no doubt be able to corroborate this as fact as he must be personally acquainted with members of his own sect who can attest to this). The remaining several thousand children may, at a year old, be offered in sale to persons of quality and fortune through the 1% - always advising, of course, that the mother allow them to suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.

A child just born will weigh about 8-10 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, should increase to 25 pounds, or about the size of a Thanksgiving turkey.  Of course this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for CEOs, lobbyists, bankers, and any other gentlemen of fortune in our society who have any refinement in taste who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.  And the resulting cash flow will circulate among ourselves! -  the goods being entirely of our own growth and manufacture.

Mr. Gingrich, in the sincerity of his heart, surely has not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work for his own monetary benefit (unless, of course, he writes a book about it), having no other motive than the public good of his country - by creating jobs, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some small pleasure to the wealthy 1% (in return for their financial backing). At present Mr. Gingrich has young no children by which he can propose to get a single penny, and (unknown mistresses notwithstanding) his current wife is past child-bearing age.  

 I think.