A week ago Monday, defending his plan to raise taxes on the rich to pay for job creation, President Barack Obama said: "This is not class warfare, it's math."
No, Mr. President, this is class warfare. Corporate interests and the rich started it and, right now, they're winning. Progressives and the middle class must fight back, and the president should be clear whose side he's on.
The class war began in 1971. That year, soon-to-be Supreme Court justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote a confidential memorandum to a friend at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce about the "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System." In the mid-20th century — from the New Deal to Social Security to environmental and civil rights laws — the government had cut into corporate profits while creating middle-class prosperity.