WASHINGTON ¨C A week ago Monday, defending his plan to raise taxes on the rich to pay for job creation, President Barack Obama said: ¡°This is not class warfare, it¡¯s math.¡±
No, Mr. President, this is class warfare. Corporate interests and the rich started it and, right now, they¡¯re winning. Progressives and the middle class must fight back, and the president should be clear whose side he¡¯s on.
The class war began in 1971. That year, soon-to-be Supreme Court justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote a confidential memorandum to a friend at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce about the ¡°Attack on the American Free Enterprise System.¡± In the mid-20th century ¡ª from the New Deal to Social Security to environmental and civil rights laws ¡ª the government had cut into corporate profits while creating middle-class prosperity.
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