Rush Limbaugh, the permanent welfare recipient, no friend of working people

left: Limbaugh, mouthpiece of the corporations

Rush Limbaugh, the former drug addict and multi-millionaire has a few things to say about Ted Kennedy on the news of his death. “…he took money from people who worked, used the government to do it, and gave the money to people who don’t work..” Limbaugh commented. Now I am no friend of Ted kennedy, or should I say, like Limbaugh, Kennedy was no friend of working people which makes them enemies of mine. But Limbaugh, like most conservatives, tap in to what working people hate about liberals, their hypocrisy. But make no mistake, Kennedy and Limbaugh are on the same team when it comes to the fundamentals.

The target of Limbaugh’s ire is not kennedy, it is working people. It is the hundreds of thousands who have been laid off. It is the millions of people in this country who have no health care or who have fallen on hard times, some have never escaped hard times. It is the hundreds of thousands of veterans who will be forced on to the streets and in to the jails, damaged as they have been and will continue to be by an experience Limbaugh, like myself, was fortunate enough to avoid.

Limbaugh is a man of privilege, from an upper middle class family full of lawyers and judges. The people that put workers in jails and issue injunctions on strikers, or call the national guard out on them while they protect the privileges of the rich. He was born in to a comfortable nest.

Limbaugh’s people who don’t work are those of us who are unemployed or who can’t find work that pays enough for us to live a decent life. It is those of us who have been cast aside by their precious market or who have gotten sick or suffered some misfortune. It is the victims of racism or other forms of discrimination who have found themselves for centuries excluded from the benefits that their labor has created.

Absent from the list of Limbaugh’s shirkers are those in the financial industry whose activities have brought about perhaps the greatest transfer of wealth from US workers and the middle class to the rich in the nation’s history. This is not really an industry at all, but an “economic activity”; it is a whole section of society that makes money without working; it does not create wealth, merely distributes it from our hands to theirs. Even the old established industrial bourgeois, thieves that they are, play a role in the production of commodities in that they own the means of production. In the 1940’s the financial sector created less than 6% of corporate profits, under 10% in the 1960’s, but 30% in 2004. * I don’t need to go in to too much detail as we have written much on this blog about the parasitic nature of capitalism in this period. But all sorts of schemes for making money without working were developed including derivatives, speculative vehicles like the $56 trillion in unregulated CDO’s (Credit default Swaps).

The bankers, speculators and other social parasites like Limbaugh who blame working people and the poor for society’s ills, have been feasting at the trough. The banking industry and other financial institutions bribed President Clinton and the politicians in to repealing the depression era Glass Steagall act in 1999 that created fertile ground for the massive credit and speculative bubble that followed. Edward Kennedy went along too. Lawrence Summers and other important Obama administration figures hailed the repeal, “With this bill,” Summers, who was Treasury Secretary at the time said, “the American financial system takes a major step forward toward the 21st Century — one that will benefit American consumers, business and the national economy.” Could any worker imagine themselves being in such an influential position in society as Summers is now after being so wrong, after making such a catastrophic f^&%$ up?

As Schwarzenegger savages worker's living standards in California, banks that received $175 billion in taxpayer money paid out $33 billion in bonuses to dealers in money, to coupon clippers; an amount that would have covered the state’s deficit with money to spare.

Business Week points out that despite the crisis, CEO’s are raking in the dough. CEO of Conoco Phillips, James Mulva (Doesn’t he have a sister on the Seinfeld show?) who cut 4% of the workforce, earned $29 million in 2008 and $100 million the previous two years. Hewlett-Packard CEO, Mark Hurd earned $42.5 million in 2008, he layed off 6,000 employees a few months ago and cut wages from 5 to 15%. At American Airlines, workers had up to 50% cuts in pay. The “internal slogan” used as a cheer leading tool for the cuts according to Business Week was, “Share the Pain, Share the Gain.” C'mon, were not idiots.**

The capitalists are still on a strike of capital. They are not willing to play the game and are “socking away cash” as business publications have put it. Investors have fled to treasuries and other government debt as a safe haven for their money. It is far less risky to lend money to the US government, money the taxpayer will have to pay back with interest, than to throw it in to the marketplace where it might not return

According to the United nations the richest 2% of the world’s people own 51% of the world’s assets and Dean Baker, an economist with the Center For Economic and Policy Research argues that “….maintaining the rate of productivity growth of goods and services enjoyed between 1943 and 1975 would enable reducing the average workweek to 21 hours or adding 24 weeks of vacation while still having the same real income in 2030 as we have today.” ***

We have pointed out on this blog that the capitalist class has forfeited its right to rule. The blatant flaunting of their wealth as workers fall deeper and deeper in to an unsustainable existence is reaching its limits, only prolonged by the failure of the leaders of the trade Unions to lead.

The productive power of labor and the wealth in society that is its product can transform the way we live and offer a decent future for all humanity. As long as working people take control of it, put an end to the anarchy of the market and build a democratic socialist alternative.

* Anna Manzo: America Smitten With Financial Sector Must Build New Wealth New Haven Register http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/29-5
** Business Week, 9-7-2009
*** America Smitten