ANSWERING KENNEDY’S CALL
What would it mean for Kamala Harris to be our first female President? It’s a
historical turning point that affirms women have finally attained equal
political rights to men, and American citizens s confirm they want greater
personal rights—to expanded health care, abortion, and environment protection
that has been held back by a dominant male culture until now.
Should Harris and the Democrats win it would also signal the end of the
Second Gilded Age, an age characterized by record income inequality that began
in earnest when President Ronald Reagan’s supply-side economic policies began to
transfer massive amounts of wealth from working adults (small business and
salaried) to the owners of wealth (capital assets) in the 1980s.
It would give President-Elect Harris a mandate to begin to reverse the tax
structures that were the major cause of the record inequality by raising
corporate and personal tax rates back to Reagan-era levels, and thus begin to
reduce the massive budget deficits that resulted.
President Reagan and Republicans cut the maximum personal tax rate for the
wealthiest from 50 percent to 28 percent and reduced corporate taxes from 34 to
28 percent to initiate what economists call the Second Gilded Age, which
resulted in our first massive deficit–$400 billion—by the end of his
administration.
The massive deficits continued to grow under successive Republican
administration tax cuts that resulted in curtailing our social safety net. GW
Bush’s deficit grew to $1 trillion, and the Trump administration’s to more than
$5 trillion.
A Harris Presidency could also mean an end to our ongoing civil war, a war
originally between the industrial North vs. slave-holding South that never
really ended with General Lee’s surrender at the Appomattox Courthouse in
1865.
Though slave-owning was banned with the Emancipation Proclamation and Abraham
Lincoln’s north winning the civil war, southern states found ways to continue to
impoverish former slaves by terrorizing them under Jim Crow laws that even the
civil rights acts of the 1960s couldn’t completely eradicate.
Today’s manifestation of our civil war has morphed into a battle between red
states controlled by Republicans with a white male/Oligarchic culture continuing
to impoverish their own citizens vs. more prosperous blue states with a dominant
female/minority majority.
Kamala Harris has promised in her platform and speeches that she would be a
President for all Americans. That would mean policies benefiting red state
citizens as well, such as raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 that was
last raised in 2009.
Currently 14 states haven’t raised their minimum wage since then, or at all.
Five red states have not even adopted a state minimum wage: Alabama, Louisiana,
Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee. Two states, Georgia and Wyoming, have
a minimum wage below $7.25 per hour, so that in all seven of these states, the
federal minimum wage guarantees at least a $7.25 per hour wage. New Hampshire
and Pennsylvania are the only blue states still with the federal minimum
wage.
There are other ways the red states have kept workers’ salaries lower that
Harris should remedy: lobby to repeal so-called right-to-work laws in 26 states
that say members of a union aren’t required to pay union dues even though they
enjoy the benefits. The result is that membership in unions has declined, along
with workers’ rights to bargain collectively. And those 26 states now have a
Supreme Court majority to enforce those state laws.
Democratic majorities have always found ways to benefit more Americans since
the New Deal. President Obama was able to pass Obamacare, or the Affordable Care
Act, the first universal health insurance that meant insurance companies
couldn’t ban clients with existing conditions.
Climate change has become a clear and present danger causing more hurricanes,
floods, wildfires threatening Americans that Donald Trump has called a hoax, and
would rather “Drill baby drill” for more fossil fuels.
The Biden administration has already begun work on reducing global warming
with the Inflation Reduction Act subsidizing alternative energy sources that
don’t increase global warming but that the Republican Party vociferously opposes
to protect its fossil fuel constituents.
We have lived through a Gilded Age before. The first Gilded Age came in the
late 1800s, when the Industrial Revolution made Robber Barons such as railroad
titan Cornelius Vanderbilt, banking titan JP Morgan, and Standard Oil’s John D
Rockefeller the richest men in their time.
It ended with the death of President William McKinley in 1901, and
revelations of rampant corruption followed by Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive
Party and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal that created government institutions
such as the Federal Reserve to regulate banking and social security, as well as
empowering labor unions to level the playing field for workers.
If elected, Kamala Harris and Democrats should be able to continue the new
New Deal legislation that President Biden’s Bidenomics’ policies have initiated
with more than $5 trillion invested in keeping America great and creating 16
million jobs that have benefited all of our citizens, not just Oligarchs such an
Elon Musk.
Musk warned, after all, what would happen if he became the efficiency czar
Trump says he wants him to be and cuts $2 trillion from the $6.75 trillion
federal budget. There would be no money left for social programs, the military,
and drastic cuts in social security and Medicare benefits, say economists such
as Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman.
It would also mean Husband Doug Emhoff would become the first, First
Gentleman, which wouldn’t diminish the historical record of great First Ladies.
Men should take heart that women have equaled men in all ways, not just in
intelligence and courage, but have shown a heart large enough to create a United
States, not a Divided States of America, when Kamala Harris becomes our new
President.
Harlan Green © 2024
Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen
