Playing the race card
Republicans once again are seeking to expand the wedge between working-class
whites and minorities with the Civil Rights Act of 1997, which would bar
the federal government from using race or gender preferences in hiring,
contracting or government programs. "The system of race and gender
preferences stands as a massive impediment to a united America in which
all Americans are treated as individuals who are equal in the eyes of the
law," said Rep. Charles T. Canady (R-Fla.), who introduced the bill
in the House. Senate sponsors include Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.)
and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah).
Those sentiments are fine until you consider that, 33 years after the passage
of the Civil Rights Act (and 122 years after passage of the original Civil
Rights Act), black, Hispanic and female workers continue to earn less, on
average, than comparable white men. Minorities are underrepresented in management,
professions, the media and university enrollments. Black people continue
to have twice the unemployment rate of white people. Schools in predominantly
black and Hispanic communities are chronically underfunded in comparison
with schools in white neighborhoods, which undermines the opportunities
of black and Hispanic students. Yet there is an outcry among white men that
they are discriminated against?
The anti-affirmative action debate is nothing more than an attempt to distract
that white working class from the impact of other economic forces. As Molly
Ivins has pointed out, the main sources of job loss among white workers
have to do not with affirmative action, but with factory relocations and
labor contracting outside the United States, computerization and automation,
and corporate downsizing.
In higher education, although the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1996
struck down racial preferences for admission to universities and professional
schools, it allowed other non-racial discrimination, such as preference
for the children of alumni, which still tends to favor upper-class whites.
Working-class whites who work their way through community college and a
less-prestigious university, as plaintiff Cheryl Hopwood did, only to be
denied admission to the University of Texas Law School, will not fare appreciably
better as a result of the Hopwood decision, whether or not black
or Hispanic students are admitted.
We believe, as the University of Texas unsuccessfully argued, that having
a diversity of students improves the school and is a worthy goal. Most importantly,
those minority students, once admitted, made their grades. As long as admitting
a black student -- or a rich white student with an influential daddy --
denies Cheryl Hopwood a seat in the law school, the system is broken. But
it seems to us the only way to ensure equal opportunity without taking away
from working-class whites is to increase opportunities for all. That would
require something like a new Marshall plan for the United States, something
neither the Republicans nor conservative Democrats are prepared to undertake.
It's a lot cheaper to play the race card.
Tax reform: Guess who wins?
Tax breaks being drawn in Congress would overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy
at the expense of the poor, according to the Center for Budget and Policy
Priorities. That comes as no great surprise to observers of tax policymakers,
although it contradicts the the House Ways and Means apologists who claim
that most of the tax breaks would benefit the middle class -- families with
incomes between $20,000 and $75,000. But the Republicans were only scoring
the first few years of the tax plan, when the middle class was getting the
$500 child credits and deductions for higher education.
The investor class will gladly concede those baubles to the middle class
in exchange for capital gains and inheritance tax breaks. After those high-dollar
tax breaks are phased in, the after-tax income of the richest 1 percent
of Americans -- those with incomes above $300,000 a year -- would increase
by an average of $27,000 a year.
Overall, 50 percent of the benefits would end up going to the richest 5
percent of taxpayers. Families with incomes below $20,000 would end up losing
money because not only would they get little or no tax relief, but they
would lose government benefits that are cut back from other programs such
as food stamps, Medicaid and child health care. And Senate Republicans are
talking about cutting back on Medicare coverage for the elderly and disabled.
The GOP plans would further widen a gap between the richest and the poorest
families that has been growing for the past 20 years.
A Democratic alternative proposed by Rep. Charles Rangel of New York would
have earmarked 70 percent of the tax cuts for the middle class, compared
with 21 percent in the Ways and Means plan, the budget center found. The
Rangel plan would give 15 percent of the tax breaks to the top 20 percent
of the population, while the Ways and Means plan would provide 80 percent
of its tax cut benefits to the wealthiest one-fifth, those who make more
than $94,500 a year for a family of four.
And the whole Rangel plan -- with a price tag of $20 billion a year -- would
cost less than half as much as the Ways and Means proposal would give away
in capital gains and estate tax cuts to the wealthy.
So why are President Clinton and the Republicans in Congress catering to
the Wall Street investors? How about the $6 billion spent on the 1996 election
campaign. Gifts that keep on giving.
As Chuck Hassebrook notes in the Center for Rural Affairs newsletter for
June, "A well-designed estate tax can preserve economic opportunity
for people of modest means by preventing excessive concentration of land
and wealth." Estate taxes, which now exempt $600,000 for each spouse,
should be simplified so that couples automatically qualify for the $1.2
million estate tax exemption that now requires an attorney to jump through
"Combined with the special use valuation available to family farms,
that would typically exempt an estate with $1.5 million of farmland and
$200,000 worth of cash or other investments," Hassebrook writes. "That
would exempt 95 percent of farm estates. Some larger family farms would
still pay estate taxes, but not at levels that would force the heirs to
sell the farm."
[Yes, city dwellers, a small farm on choice land could easily be worth $1.5
million. That's why it is important to keep farming families on the land
-- because young would-be farmers cannot be expected to come up with that
kind of money.]
"But the tax would cut into the ability of the heirs of large farms
to use the earnings on their inheritance to buy more land. That would level
the playing field, to at least some degree, between those born into wealthy
families and those who are not. Opportunity should not depend on being born
Reform starts at home
The power players in Washington are avoiding action on campaign finance
reform, but William Greider notes in the June 26 Rolling Stone that
"clean elections" proposals similar to Maine's new law, which
basically provides public financing for candidates who swear off private
contributions, are active in at least 14 states. A "clean money"
bill narrowly failed in the Connecticut Assembly in May. Greider attributes
the congressional inaction on campaign finance reform to a perception that
except for reform agitators nobody really cares about the corruption influence
of campaign money. "I have a hunch that the insiders are wrong this
time," he wrote, "that public revulsion will deepen as we hear
more about the fund-raising scandal swamping Bill Clinton and the Republicans.
The real barrier to reform, I suspect, is the public's sense of utter resignation
about politics accomplishing anything worthwhile for it."
Greider reminds us, "it's important to remember this bit of history:
All of the great American reform movements -- from civil rights to child-labor
laws -- started far from Washington, D.C. In state legislatures and town
halls, activists first pushed their bold experiments locally. Their energy
and momentum eventually led to legislative action at the national level."
Another reform was adopted in Arkansas last fall, to provide a $50 tax credit
to reimburse individuals who contribute to political campaigns, which is
supposed to help people of modest means create their own PACs and support
their own candidates and agendas. Greider proposed a similar, if broader,
tax credit in his 1992 book, Who Will Tell the People.
De-militarize the border
The U.S. House of Representatives moved to make a bad situation worse on
June 20 when it voted 269-119 to station up to 10,000 U.S. troops along
the border with Mexico to halt immigration and drug smuggling. The military
already is supporting drug detection operations with AWACS surveillance
planes and a relatively small task force operating out of Fort Bliss. A
Marine from that force apparently shot and killed a local teen-ager May
20 in an incident that has raised questions about the militarization of
Military officials said the 18-year-old youth, a local rancher, fired his
.22 caliber rifle at least twice at a military surveillance team, which
returned fire after the second shot. But state officials investigating the
incident point out discrepancies in the military's version of events, such
as whether the boy was aiming at the Marines or shooting at some other target
and why it took 22 minutes from the time the boy was shot until an ambulance
was called after Border Patrol agents and a sheriff's deputy arrived on
The shooting illustrates why the military is not interchangeable with trained
law enforcement officers. Despite the "War on Drugs" rhetoric,
there is no military threat along the Mexican border. It is wrong-headed
to put soldiers there who are trained for entirely different sorts of tasks
and expect them to behave like police officers.
-- Jim Cullen
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