So... is it all about race - or class?
Aside from being a fine actor, and supplying voice-over narration for just about every documentary needing a touch of world-weary raspiness, Peter Coyote writes a blog for the SF Gate - taking on all issues great and small. Early last month, in an insightful series of ruminations on hate crime legislation he proposed:
It seems that we either have to take the position that every life is sacred and protected with the full weight of the law or that they're not. If they're not, the protected categories could shift with political winds in the same way that Affirmative Action protections have been altered and weakened by white people who have no idea of the extent to which their ticket was punched at birth and feel that they're behind the eight ball.
Beginning in the 1960s, affirmative action intiatives sought to correct race-based discrimination in education and employment in this country, establishing quotas and set-asides to make sure once-spurned minorities had a chance at the American economic mainstream consistently denied them. But almost as soon as they were instituted, these programs were challenged in court; these disputes targeted the very idea of mandating that opportunities prefigure minority percentages, alleging quotas based on race are themselves pro forma racism. These challenges now constitute a decades-long history of judicial pruning - from Allan Bakke seeking to overturn his admission denial at Harvard Medical School in the '70s, to the New Haven firehouse case this year;
(The New Haven case has recently been in the news, since the Supreme Court has heard an appeal and could issue a decision that would overrule one made earlier by President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, when she was an appellate judge.)
Counter-argument here is effective, holding that since minorities have been isolated from power, and ongoing white racism has effectively crippled their abilities to correct the system themselves, only white people can be afflicted with racism. In fact, according to this interpretation, minorities are automatically underprivileged, just by living in white-dominated society. Given the history of this country, it's difficult to dispute that summary.
This was more clear, say, decades ago, when minorities, especially African-Americans, were barred from access to white society by formal legislation. Today, racism is a bit more amorphous, even metaphorical. The term was coined by German physician and sex researcher Magnus Hirschfeld, and specifically targeted and defined European supremacist ideologies of the 19th and 20th century, notably Nazism. A definition in the Oxford English Dictionary that racism "consists in intentional practices and unintended processes or consequences of attitudes towards the ethnic 'other'" seems suitable in broad context, but neglects the American phenomenon's political aspect.
Racism as pure social mechanism was up-front and personal back in the day when Jim Crow laws stifled African-American life in the south, when legions of Klansmen and lynching were, at least in our current disposition, as commonplace as cherry pies cooling on window sills. Far from the magnolias and night-riders, the rest of America lived a "gentlemen's agreement" dreamworld, with community convenants barring minorites from most-desirable neighborhoods, and the best jobs were left to employers' personal, often bigoted, discretion. But, eventually, with the bloody tumult of the '50s and '60s, that social and political racism gave way to the institutional racism programs like affirmative action were meant to correct.
Today, Coyote's line about whites unaware of their racist "birthright" best sums up its current guise - white "privilege". In this framework, whites grant themselves social advantages they universally deny minorities. This proposition not only legitimizes programs like affirmative action and explains the durability of this country's ever-broiling racial dynamic, but "privilege" also answers troublesome questions about consistent socio-economic struggle among segments of the American population: Personal stalemate is more palatable if someone else automatically is to blame.
But broadening the framework of racism with such confusingly blobby terms as "privilege" means the definition of racism itself is diluted, and its power as accusative impaired. If racism means anything white, then it's just another term for white - and its ability to initimidate, source of much guilt-fueled leverage in the past, is lost.
And there is the matter of degree this privilege visits on its beneficiaries. The New Haven firemen - and even long-ago Allan Bakke - can't be characterized as economically privileged, certainly. It must be easy for high-minded liberals like Coyote, himself from a wealthy New York background, to assail white privilege as universal - by virture of his high caste, it has been so for him. Wealthy Americans simply spend their way into good educations, and their social standing allows them connections to the best jobs, advice and counsel. If intellect and intiative were essentials to attain higher education in the best schools, how did George W. Bush get into Yale? And afterwards, in his "career" life, onto board after directors' board until his vast personal deficits led him to an unfortunate career in politics?
This is an issue that never touches upper-income folk - white or black. Favoring "fairness" measures that may be costly to unseen "others" makes for useful banter, to legitmate moral presentation, and nothing more. It's an enormous factor, however, for lower-income whites, whose access to loftier heights is handicapped by lack of money and influence - and, for decades, quotas based on everything that is not them.
Money is tight now, and these considerations are even more urgent. Are working-class, blue-collar white Americans to be this nation's "soft Kulaks", scapegoats for all the deficiencies and abuses of our common past? Will they suffer the price for centuries of oppression and grievance - even though they weren't the ones who benefited from such brute capitalism? Economist Robert Reich, long on globalization and short on considering paycheck Americans as anything more than cogs, apparently favors cutting white workers out of the much-promised, shovel-ready stimulus projects.
That the matter is grist for right-wing shock-jocks is not the issue - although their participation makes the discussion easier to dismiss. Too often, American liberals have shut down conversation about affirmative action's win-lose equation with accusation of... yes... racism. But today, in the reality that melts down around us, the issue has become too important: If we are to become one country, one day, why must me always designate new losers - those who won't be allowed, through social manipulation and legislative sanctions, to share in the future's bounty?
And how long will it take before this set-up is disputed? ...By any means necessary?
Curt I read this three times. I get so confused when the concept of Affirmative action surfaces.
By the way Peter Coyote is a favorite of mine. I will read his article. He has done a lot in the area of getting our country off of the racist dime.
So here are some thoughts:
1. If I am put in charge of a local police department, say in some part of LA I know it is important to have African American Police, Hispanic Police and Asian Police. I mean there is gang warfare going on there. The police department should reflect the community in general.I have not researched this issue lately but I am sure that those in charge of decisions relating to the police learned in the '60's how important this 'reflection' was.
2. We must underline the fact that white affirmative action has been in force for two hundred years--make that four hundred years. w would not have gotten into Harvard or Yale with the grades and the SAT scores he had.
3. Conservatives in this country, I mean the ones who hold real power (not the radio racist pricks who are at least more honest in their sensibilities if nothing else) realized that they needed to be more clever with regard to their propaganda. I think that is why repubs are backing away from this labeling of Judge Sotomayor as a racist. The family values clubs and the other conservative funded organizations attempt to sound more reasonable but seek the same result. SHUT OUT THE MINORITIES.
4. Shelby Dade Foote, Jr really espoused this covenant you write about--the gentlemen's agreement. I saw a 3 hour interview with him on CSPAN taped in the '90's. I was astounded. He was actually angry because he felt that agreement had been broken by certain factions in the north. He even admitted he would have fought for the south.
I mean here was a great historian with these types of views. Pat Buchanan will still spout these views about a happy segregated DC. But these people are dying off...
5. Once you find yourself in one of our upper classes, the problem does disappear. Its gone.
The Supreme Court was about to toss out Affirmative action at the time of Sandra Day O'Conner's decision. It was a terrible decision that watered down AA and gave it little meaning.
I am a liberal and I have no answers. Except that we still need Affirmative action.
June 3, 2009 1:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
If I get a few minutes to dig, I'll try to find a couple articles which suggested that racism and the conflict over Affirmative Action are often used as a smokescreen to obscure the larger issues of class.
Dick, a question, meant somewhat critically(hopefully in the sense of critical thinking).
Insofar as police recruitment/staffing is concerned - which do you think is more important - recruiting from the ethnicities that make up a given community?
Or recruiting from within the ethnic enclaves(for lack of better words) of the communities themselves?
I do hope the distinction I'm trying to make in those questions is clear - I'd expect a Irish-American kid from NYC to have as much difficulty as a police officer in rural Appalachia as I would an African-American from rural Alabama working for LAPD.
June 3, 2009 2:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Important distinction Kenga. I would prefer to see recruits FROM THE AREA THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO POLICE.
Those police would have a better idea of the problems of that community.
June 3, 2009 2:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Racism and its attendant conflicts are real, kenga. Solutions proffered, however, may not be. Whatever we do, it's going to default favoring those with money and power. I don't see any way around this, regardless of whatever superficial label we call our regimes. I'm suspicious of the way the discussion has been cropped and crippled; subjects cannot be discussed, and some segments cannot partake because of this or that inexperience with this or that experience... blah, blah, blah. If I was a Mighty Tyrant, I'd design "free and open exchanges of ideas" just that way.
June 3, 2009 3:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Racism and its attendant conflicts are real, kenga.
There is no doubt in my mind about that, and I didn't intend to suggest they aren't - only that they can be used to distract from other conflicts. And in the process separate those who have common cause in class conflicts into opposing camps due to race.
Which I could have communicated had I written and thought more clearly when I was typing.
Emphasizing the one shouldn't necessitate pooh-poohing the other.
Right?
June 15, 2009 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is an exceptionally challenging issue. I do have an opinion, and a "solution" of sorts... One that indireclty approaches the problem.
I am of the opinion that race and gender are blanket discrimination factors. I am also of the opinion that the overriding discriminatory factor is class. But class is more than income... Much much more. The system of education is the base factory that produces cogs. Education instills:
Language (specifically jargon, which is the "secret handshake" of class)
Class-specific culture
Clique-specific uniforms
Standardized exams that promote class-specific modes of thinking
Labor-specific time management
Spacial considerations (distance of neighborhood to school)
Race and gender, stats and quotas, these are hammer solutions to a problem that is not a nail. Nevertheless, affirmative action can not be removed until a new appararus is in place.
If I... Were the King... Of the Forest... This is how I would approach the perpetual class divide:
1. Critical thinking courses from the very beginning of public education. These courses would place an emphasis on non-competitive analytic and synthetic thought. Children can learn the basics of logic, object comparison, and ethics. Pre-teens can learn media analysis, conformity/authority paradox, and theory of knowledge. Teens can then be prepared to cope with structural and post-structural analytics. The fact is that advertisers, authority structures, and most educators understand cognitive devlopment... And manipulate it. Children are prepared to question their environment at a startlingly young age, yet our cultural structure is designed to crush natural inquisitiveness and replace it with conventional wisdom and apathy.
2. Set up a scholarship fund for completion of the lifelong critical thinking coursework combined with volunteering or apprenticeship. At the end of their volunteer or apprentice period (1-3 years), the scholarship would pay for college (tuition, books, room, and a stipend for board) without the general education requirement... Thereby making undergraduate a 2 year timetable. Offer tax breaks for businesses that provide bonuses for newly hired graduates... Up to and including an actual draft for socially important careers (can you imagine a draft for engineers?).
3. English language prep with courses in career and class jargon, with Summer immersion courses where students have to attend, for example, shareholder meetings and speak only
boardroom English.
3. Financial management classes combined with a federal level reform of the credit rating. Remove the copywright on the Fair Isaac credit computations for national security reasons and teach a course to understand and maximize your consumer rating. Financial management should span a child's entire education.
4. Volunteer carpooling with tax incentives for stay-at-home parents to support bussing for students. Combine this with universal choice so that any student can attend any school in their county of residence.
I can keep going. The idea would be to institute these liberal reforms with conservative tactics and phase out affirmative action over ten years based on improvements in the overall meritocracy. Finally, increase federal and state budgets for public cleaning, rennovation, and environmental assistance. This would help create a social safety net that promotes valuable work and a living wage.
IMO, a lot of class problems come from the very real fear of being impoverished. I think that many people would be perfectly fine with earning a living wage with health benefits so long as the work was satisfying and the risk of poverty was minimized.
At this point, I am rambling... But social engineering is a fact. We have to take this power away from cost/benefit elites that are only interested in their portfolio.
June 3, 2009 1:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is impressive - you've thought a lot about this. I especially favor the first item on your list, since there's nothing more important in life than critical thinking. If we instilled that discipline in our young, very early in their lives, we could guarantee a citizenry that could think for itself, that would not be easily confused by compelling con games - especially those political - and could pick out gems from our relentlessly presented slough. We would not be so blinkered by fairy-tale baubles like "9/11 Hologram Conspiracies," nor the travails of Jon 'n' Kate and their (admittedly cute) eight. What a world.
June 3, 2009 1:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
9/11 hologram conspiracies?
You are forcing me to google.
But yes, critical thinking is the foundation. The most important class and teacher was theory of knowledge with Mr. Icardo. I had no idea how stupid I was until that course. Now I allow myself a few harmless superstitions and eccentricities, but I put all information through my bullshit detector... The single most important apparatus in life.
I want fo recc your post a dozen times. Identity politics needs to be discussed lest we lose ground to irrational middle class white person superstition that big government is giving their livelihood to minorities. I am convinced that Reagan rode to power by stoking this superstition by linking AA to communism and distracting the white voter from the peccadilloes of big business.
"Look over there! It's a black man with your job!"
June 3, 2009 2:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Are you saying that conspiracy theories are part of a spectacle that maintains the status quo?
June 3, 2009 4:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have an addiction problem, and I am not speaking of my taste for cheap whiskey during the first days of the month.
Morning Joke with Jughead in the morning. I cannot stop it. I try...
Jughead Scarborough will opine from time to time that since he lived in South Carolina and attended public school with real minorities in his class room that the entire problem of race has gone away.
Just evaporated. He will make this statement once a week sometimes. I get so angry when I hear this, I vow never to watch him again. But I cannot stomach Fox and I need to know what the enemy is thinking.
Suffice it to say that 30% of America does not give one goddamn about race or minority rights. That is my opinion.
So maybe I show too much deference to anybody who shows even the mildest concerns. How many gang wars--battles--do you see recounted on the news? Maybe there is better coverage in Detroit or LA, I do not know.
I do know that statistics tell us thousands die every year which means there are three to five times that number who are wounded, permanently. I mean there is a war going on out there that really makes Iraq look like a peace zone.
The real propaganda network, tv drama has come a long, long way. I mean I am old enough to remember when I Spy came on the tellie. I remember when the south went nuts because Nat King Cole kissed a white woman on national tv.
SO THERE HAS BEEN CHANGE.
My all white school as a child cherished Lincoln and taught cross cultural values. Not as well as they did in college, but better than they were doing in Mississippi or Alabama.
You point to changes in the educational system. I think it is already there.
We have defacto segregation now. Not de jure. Of course when you install racist fascists as department heads of government like w did, well, enforcement becomes a problem. a real problem.
And when you have no enforcement, you have de jure segregation and you are to some extent where you were fifty years ago.
Yeah, I am a socialist. The entire problem here is class. It is pure economics.
We need distribution of wealth.
But propaganda. I think our propaganda network in this country is working pretty well.
Without redistribution of wealth (to the lower classes not the kind of redistribution that has occurred since that fascist reagan was in office with everything going to the pigs), there is no answer.
As far as I can see. Sorry to rant here but this stuff really pisses me off.
June 3, 2009 3:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
The ability to improve our lives - and livelihoods - is crucial to the American Dream. The idea that we are not born into an ecomomic lockbox, that we can improve our lives and those of our families, is indelible to any free, democratic nation - because we, Americans, defined it so. Affirmative action sought to guarantee that dream would be extended to those historically left out of the picture.
DD, everything you wrote is absolutely, but nothing more so than this:
But it is from that class that our social models spring; it is the only class that can, on its own, initiate or veto future action to improve this nation for the common good, or for a restricted - privileged - segment... their own.
It is human nature that egalitarian sacrifice not begin at home.
June 3, 2009 1:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Line should read,
DD, everything you wrote is absolutely true...
And this is meant as a response to dickday, above.
June 3, 2009 1:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have a question. What issue specifically never touches upper-income folk - white or black??
I am asking because I don't want to misunderstand what you trying to say.
June 3, 2009 2:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Job qualifications, college entrance requirements, specialized graduate school requirements, grade test scores, entry-level schools for their children, housing or rental recommendations, loan application guidelines, military service eligibility...
There are more. But you get the idea. Tell me, what did you think the post was about?
June 3, 2009 3:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
I honestly thought this post was about how being upper class and black somehow provides immunity from the ills of prejudice and racism in all aspects of our society.
I think zipperupus says it best"
"Look over there! It's a black man with your job!"
As if that black man or woman still didn't get up and earn and earn to keep his or her position.
June 3, 2009 5:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't want to insult you here, but your response seems tailored to another post, not this one. Also, it's a reliable, stock answer every time a suggestion is made that the white working class has vital, understandable concerns about affirmative action's effects on them. Whether or not African-Americans earn their affluence is not a legitimage question, since no one gets a free ride in this country, and because they deserve their rewards, like all successful people.
Our attempts to alleviate centuries of oppression impacts most negatively a segment of white America that had the least part in the abuses, and are the least able to rescue themselves from the predicament. I'm not suggesting I have an answer; I'm throwing this out for discussion.
June 3, 2009 5:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Racism still is up-front and personal.
You misunderstand the term "white privilege." It is not merely "social" advantages.
Perhaps this will help.
There are more entries that detail exactly what "white privilege" is by the experts who study it.
It is more "convenient" for you to package class in with racism so as to minimize the racism aspect. That way you can safely say (so you think) that classism affects everyone, and "racism we used to know it" no longer exists. The use of the disguise of "classism" coincides with the spread of the notion one can be "color-blind" to race. Wrong, it just means one is just as racist as before, merely pretending to ignore the inconvenient fact that color-bound racism still exists and thrives.
One need only look at the reaction to Judge Sotomayor, and other acts of racist behavior to prove the point. You can pretend it doesn't exist, but that is akin to playing ostrich with head shoved firmly in the sand.
Finally, it is ludicrous to think that rich black people, however comforted by the trapping of wealth do not experience racism. They do.
June 3, 2009 5:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jade:
What is called white privilege is also called the patriarchy. I call it the BIP (Black Iron Prison). Yes, the system effects all minorities more than poor whites. Yes, the system effects women moreso than men. Yes their are builtin advantages to being a white male that are de facto.
This does not mean that the system is not fundamentally rooted in class... And that the system has prejudicial mechanisms that transcend race. Manners, dialect, fashion, aesthetics... The list of these mechanisms is long and rigid.
Just because minorities form the bottom of a totem pole does not mean that there is no totem pole. Do you think a black door-gunner is less privileged than the Iraqi he just turned into pink mist?
A larger perspective must be taken. I don't want you coming into a thread and blasting it with the old grenades. I would like it if you offered your ideas and vision.
I mean hell, Jade, Amiri Baraka called Ralph Ellison an Uncle Tom. I love them both. There is room in the discussion for all races to discuss privilege or lack thereof and seek a postracial solution in an incredibly racial and tribal world. Otherwise, the Navajo will kill the Vietnamese in Hue, the Mexican child will unwrap a Happy Meal toy made by a Chinese child, and the lion will never lay with lamb.
June 3, 2009 5:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
By that, I assume you mean "non-Asian minorities". In this country, ethnic East Asians have done very well for themselves, white privilege or no.
June 3, 2009 6:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jade:
I also wanted to say that you have a valid point. Upper income minoroties still deal with racism every day. Wealth isn't a race-erasing magic wand.
So I agree with the substance of your post. I would just like to read your ideas on how to solve the social problem of institutional privilege.
June 3, 2009 6:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don't tell me what I think - it's pompous and annoying. Obviously, Jade, the racism of white people is so durable and indelible that there's no real reason to think of it in any other terms except those which you set forth. And by this I mean practical terms, tangible terms that we can trace and weigh in real life are moot, since this vicious scourge is measured not in act, not even in behavior, but in immeasurable facets locked inside us - the toxins of our souls.
Sorry. As a white person, I would smother under self-condemnation that relentless. Here's my alternative: I'll try to the best of my ability not to sabotage the life of anyone else on the basis of their skin color. That's about all I can do.
As far as "privilege" is concerned, what's your answer there? How does that wither away? It seems "privilege" is much more accessible by its effects on those underprivileged, than definable as a quality or trait. We know what it does, evidently, but darned if we know how it sustains itself. That won't do. A shortcoming is either correctible, or it's no shortcoming, at all.
June 3, 2009 5:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Also, it's a reliable, stock answer every time a suggestion is made that the white working class has vital, understandable concerns about affirmative action's effects on them.
No more stock then when there is economic trouble the first attack is on Affirmative Action or at so-called illegal aliens--even Asian Americans--as the root of the problem. It is so tried and true anyone can set their watch to it.
White privilege is having the prerogative at any moment decide what is or isn't fair and forcing the political agenda and apparatus to respond to what might seem unfair.
White Privilege--no scratch that!--White Male Privilege is so prevalent, for example that people of color and women have hardly been heard in the debate about the nomination of the potential Supreme Court Justice. I do believe that Supreme Court has an impact on all our lives but you--not you personally--can hardly tell because the argument is framed by white men and how it ONLY effects white men. The sound is deafening.
June 3, 2009 8:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is actually more than that. It is that the system of American justice is at risk unless it is dispensed by austere white male minds untramelled by feelings and life experience.
Nevertheless, I do find your message a tad overwrought. Your assertion about white male privilege isn't necessarily true given the fact that Affirmative Action is law. So white males can not simply set the agenda and tone as they see fit. They try every living moment, but success is not guaranteed.
Like I wrote on this thread, I believe there is a viable and nationwide approach that can ultimately reduce or even eliminate the need for AA over time. Once more, the political arguments of the day are limited to a 1960s bandwidth. Same old culture war/class war tropes. What is needed are ideas.
June 3, 2009 9:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good comment, but I'm not sure I agree with this. By the same token, how valid is the proposition that justice dispensed by white men is from austere "minds untramelled by feelings and life experience"? Certainly, that can't apply to late Chief Justice Earl Warren, who rose from working-class roots to become, arguably, the most influential jurist since John Marshall. We are establishing the artifice that white participation in the history and present of this country is remote, absentee, that our involvement is confined to malign manipulation as detached, invisible puppeteers. Not all of us grew up on the set of a Shirley Temple film. Inasmuch as this country's saga is ugly and demented, it's also rich and varied. As unforgivably horrible as it is to point out: Some things we've done right.
June 4, 2009 9:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't want to be misinterpreted. I am not saying that white justices are inherently ivory tower dwellers of pure objectivity... I am saying that the current debate over Sotomayor is that her ethnicity and ovaries somehow eliminate her objectivity and make her a sap for the plebs.
The alternative they present is the justice of Pure Mind, where law is configured like Cartesian coordinates for the good of all.
It is a matter of spin. History always puts the lie to spin, because nuance informs history.
June 4, 2009 11:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
I know this is a little off the wall, but I have long thought that we need to do away with congressional elections. Use a universal draft system. All citizens are registered and at the prescribed age you become part of the pool. If you are drafted, you serve in the House or Senate for one term (or whatever is deemed practical). We pay you whatever we're paying the current crop and we pass a law that guarantees your job when your term is over. Representation would be based on population as it is now. But...we would get rid of all the lawyers, we would get rid of corporate contributions and gerrymandering would become moot. One term (or reasonable period) would also reduce the opportunities for back-door alliances and revolving door jobs.
And I would appreciate it if at least one person would tell me that I'm not entirely nuts.
June 4, 2009 8:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
OK, TJ: You're not entirely nuts.
June 4, 2009 9:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
You're not entirely nuts. It's what people like Jefferson and Paine had in mind with an enlightened citizenry that was also still connected to the soil. But you need everybody highly trained for this in grammar and high school which shouldn't be too hard. Plus you need all kinds of social systems like guaranteed and substantial old age pensions. Tom Paine suggested an inheritance tax. With that tax everybody got a stipend at age 18 and also a pension at 50, he thought. Oh and health care, of course. Oh, and no standing army.
We strayed a bit from Paine.
June 4, 2009 10:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
I heartily recommend Jeff Faux's "The Global Class War". I'm halfway through and just finished "Alan, Larry, and Bob Save the Privileged". It's the chapter on how Greenspan, Summers and Rubin saved their pals in the Mexican financial bailout in the 1990s.
He shows how there is a global upper class. They are the "Party of Davos". They are a club. There are kings, premiers, presidents, emperors, CEOs...
They come in all colors, although more white in the last 1000 years. Their allegiance is to no country but only to each other. So an auto executive will not insist on national health care even though it would help his company because it would be betraying his pals in insurance. A steel executive will vote for Reagan even though Reagan's policies destroyed his company because "he cut my taxes". Every once in awhile they agree to throw some company under the bus as long as they have their golden parachutes. Because the corporation always survives, an individual company sometimes has to bite the dust for the good of this class.
So....um....workers of the world unite? I think I get that phrase now.
June 4, 2009 11:24 AM | Reply | Permalink