Trickle-down arrogance

YOU HAVE to hand it to the Wall Street Journal. When a dose of blind privilege and contemptuous ranting is called for, the Journal delivers the goods.

Following the March 4 Day of Action to defend public education, the Journal's literary bullhorn was handed to Peter Robinson. In an article called "The Golden State's Me Generation," Peter scoffed at the "self-pleading" March 4 activists who "demonstrated the entitlement mentality and self-absorption that has come to dominate much of higher education."

This coming from a man who wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan.

I once met a Ronald Reagan at a pancake breakfast fundraiser for an elementary school. His t-shirt said, "I'm not that Ronald Reagan."

So Peter Robinson was a speechwriter for which Ronald Reagan, you may ask? You know--that Ronald Reagan. The Ronald Reagan who was living in the White House when the top marginal tax rate paid by the wealthiest individuals in the U.S. on income over $161,500 fell from 70 percent to 28 percent.

Unlike the March 4 activists, these millionaires and billionaires didn't need to make their demands known with protest signs and a march down Pennsylvania Avenue. That's what privilege gets you. You just talk to the man who lives in the White House over steak and red wine at a fundraiser dinner or standing at the 9th hole during golf.

Yet I don't remember a Reagan speech that denounced the "self-pleading" millionaires and billionaires who "demonstrated the entitlement mentality and self-absorption that has come to dominate much of the American ruling class." Maybe Peter wrote that speech. Maybe he crafted the words with care only to watch Reagan toss the masterpiece in the trash can.

I also don't remember a Reagan speech explaining why his administration wouldn't support an increase in the minimum wage.

So someone who earned $10 million in Reagan's last year in the Oval Office had more than $4 million extra to stash in their savings accounts or invest in the stock market than they would have had at the beginning of his eight years. Yet one nickel--the same nickel that kicked off the first minimum wage increase in 1938-1939--was too much to ask for someone, let's say a janitor, earning $3.10 an hour. Maybe Peter noted that in another tossed speech.

Or maybe there's something to this theory of trickle-down economics. Since ream after ream of documentation has shown that, in fact, the money didn't trickle down from the millionaires to the janitors, let's at least admit that the money trickled down somewhere. It trickled down from the millionaires to the sons and daughters of the millionaires. And the nickels that the janitors never got never trickled down to their sons and daughters.

For the trickled-upon sons and daughters, the 30 percent tuition hikes in the University of California higher education system would be pocket change--while the untrickled-upon sons and daughters don't stand a nickel's chance in the land of Hades of being able to afford such an increase.

PETER ROBINSON might have written some great speeches we never heard. Speeches that denounced the entitlement mentality of the military-industrial complex, which received a funding increase of 276 percent for strategic nuclear weapons in Reagan's first five years in the White House.

Two-hundred-and-seventy-six percent? You can say many things about Peter Robinson's boss, but you can't say that he didn't have priorities. The 276 percent increase didn't prioritize vibrant ecosystems; fully-funded education; preventative and holistic health care based on citizen health, not corporate profit; farm policies supporting small farmers and sustainable growing practices; living wages keeping families out of poverty; clean water to drink; clean rivers in which to swim; work schedules that support parental involvement in the community, schools and relaxing with family and friends--you know, all those things that make life meaningful.

Not that Ronald Reagan. That Ronald Reagan prioritized a 276 percent increase in weapons of mass destruction.

I've been trying to increase my overcrowded bookcases by buying 276 percent more books, just to get a visual of what such an increase would look like, but I ran out of money. So how did Reagan pay for such an increase to the entitlement mentality of the military-industrial complex? Did the money come from the self-pleading millionaires? It couldn't have been--not with the drop in taxes they paid.

Maybe Peter forgot to write this down, but the money didn't come from the privileged. It came from the poor. It came from a 14 percent cut in food stamps, a 28 percent cut in child nutrition programs, an 11 percent cut in low-income energy assistance programs, a 33 percent cut in health services, a 39 percent cut in general job-training programs, and a 16 percent cut in financial aid for needy students--also known as untrickled-upon students.

And let us not forget the elderly because, hopefully, we'll all be one of them someday. Yet Peter Robinson's boss pushed for Social Security reform that would have enacted a 40 percent benefit reduction for early retirees, a one-third reduction in disability benefits, and a 20 percent cut in the overall program. (The Senate, thankfully, voted 96-0 against this plan.)

REAGAN INSISTED on referring to these cuts as "savings." Now, if a child nutrition program or a Social Security benefit office was staying busy stacking taxpayer money in a big pile, only to set it on fire in a patriotic blaze of glory and finish off the day by hosting a S'mores campfire, then I think most folks would be in agreement: Whew! Thank you, Ronald Reagan, for "saving" all that money from being burned!

But, of course, the money wasn't being burned. It was being used to benefit citizens facing the impossible task of meeting their basic needs on $3.10 an hour--until the Reagan administration cut the funding and "saved" it.

I can't find a single Reagan speech that uses anything other than "savings" to describe the cuts that devastated citizens who didn't have the privilege of starting off the 1980s with hundreds of thousands, if not millions or billions, in domestic and offshore bank accounts.

Maybe Peter wrote those speeches. Maybe Reagan burned them to satisfy a S'mores craving. Or to dampen suspicions. After all, people might have started questioning why 50 percent of the "savings" fell on families with annual incomes of less than $10,000 a year, and 70 percent fell on families making less than $20,000. But for families with incomes in excess of $80,000 a year, just 1 percent of the "savings" affected them.

And this was just in Reagan's first term. By the end of that first term, according to U.S. Census data, U.S. income distribution was more unequal than it had been since data was first collected in 1947--and it only got worse from there.

People might have suspected that Reagan, in the face of skyrocketing millions for the millionaires and billionaires, had declared an unspoken war on moms, dads and children living in poverty by eliminating the very social programs that kept them alive when abysmal wages and disappearing jobs to overseas factories could not provide the basic necessities.

Maybe Peter knew that you just can't tell people that sort of truth.

Perhaps Peter Robinson's masterpieces ended up in a trash can. Or maybe he's a privileged fellow, propped up in a haze of academia and completely disconnected from the realities that ordinary people face. My untrickled nickel's on the latter.