Bamboozled working class can't see its true enemy

[dkf]

http://www.sunspot.net/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.tucker12jan12,0,7543794.story?coll=bal-oped-headlines

But Dr. Dean's tough talk about American business shouldn't be so easily turned against him. When he castigates business executives who have "enriched themselves by deceiving everyone else," he ought to be gaining votes in working-class America. After all, two years' worth of headlines and newscasts have revealed breathtaking corporate scandals in which high-ranking executives lined their own pockets by scamming their workers as well as their investors.
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Oddly, however, working-class America seems less than outraged by the antics of the rich and felonious. Despite the widespread evidence of a corporate class of thieves and con artists (an international class, it seems, from reports about misdeeds at the Italian company Parmalat), average Americans seem much more upset by illegal immigrants and impoverished single mothers than they are by shameless corporate fraud.
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Or there may be another explanation: the singular success of conservative efforts to kill off populist instincts. For 20 years, a network of right-wing pundits, including talk-show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, have decried the poor as lazy and irresponsible while lauding the rich as deserving and hardworking. The result? Even laid-off factory workers are prepared to support lavish tax cuts for the wealthy while denouncing critics of corporate excess as pandering to class warfare.
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There is a nefarious class warfare under way in the country, but it is directed against the poor and working classes. Just a few days ago, the Associated Press reported that the U.S. Labor Department is telling businesses how to dodge paying low-income workers the overtime for which they are expected to become eligible later this year. Among the suggestions was raising workers' salaries to a new $22,100 yearly threshold, which would make them ineligible for overtime, or cutting their hourly wages so that added overtime would keep their annual wages at the same rate.
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You can't blame Howard Dean for thinking working-class Americans would be upset about that.

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Dean brings up a whole lot of important subjects. His soundbites today will be the subject of newspaper columns and conversations tomorrow. That is why you need a candidate who is willing to say a few things...even if they may be risky.