Tea Party Leaves More Republicans Behind

Extremists Losing Conscientious Conservatives

“This is an impressive crowd: the Haves and Have-mores. Some people call you the elites. I call you my base.” – George W. Bush.

One of the nice things about dealing with extremists is that the more extreme they get, the fewer people go along with them.

I was delighted to read in my local paper on April 6th that at least one conservative, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas, had found a line in the sand that even he wouldn’t cross. Here’s how he started his column:

“During the 2008 presidential campaign, when candidate Barack Obama told ‘Joe the Plumber’ that he wanted to ‘spread the wealth around,’ it sounded to a lot of conservatives like socialism: ‘From each according to his ability to each according to his need,’ in the words of Karl Marx.

“There is a kind of wealth spreading, however, that ought to meet the political litmus test of conservative Republicans, liberal Democrats and radical Independents.”

Mr. Thomas went on to say that when there is so much unemployment and so few new jobs, “it is disheartening to see so many CEOs having recovered enough from their personal recession to pay themselves salaries and benefits that would have shamed the super-rich in America’s Gilded Age.”

Wow! When Cal Thomas starts sounding like Bernie Sanders, things must be getting bad!

He went on to quote USA Today as reporting that median CEO pay increased 27 percent last year and that the average CEO received compensation of $9 million. He cited as an example a report last year in the Baltimore Sun that the tool company Stanley-Black and Decker, in Towson, MD, planned to lay off 4,000 of its 38,000 employees. A year later, apparently as a reward for saving the company so much in salary expenses, we find the company’s CEO, John Lundgren, got 253.1% more salary in 2010 – he took home over $32 million.

Even Thomas thinks this is obscene, but not enough to demand government action. His solution? Read these three jaw-dropping paragraphs:

“If I were a CEO being paid such astronomical amounts and people were being laid off, or struggling in a recession, at least in part due to the lack of pay increases, I would feel morally obligated to take less money.

“I would ask the chief financial officer of my company to share some of my wealth with loyal employees so that they could continue caring for their families.

“One doesn’t have to be a liberal who believes in income redistribution to see the unfairness in disproportionate pay.”

So Thomas calls on CEOs to do the honorable thing, and let their pay scales sag a bit for the greater good. He also suggests that President Obama should be “shaming those companies that lay off workers while paying their top management such exorbitant salaries and benefits.”

I’m glad Mr. Thomas finds the situation distressing, but his response is laughably ineffective. If there is one thing we have learned in the last four years it is that there is no shame on the top floors of the big U.S. corporations.

I’m not for redistribution of wealth (and that is not what candidate Obama meant, either). I believe we can continue to have a capitalistic economic system as long as it is kept under control by reasonable regulation. What I am for is a total overhaul of the U.S. tax code. I think we should leave everyone whose income is at or below the poverty rate alone, and I think that anyone who makes $32 million a year ought to pay a hefty percentage of it to support the government.

The extremists on the right, who have taken over the House of Representatives and think they now run the entire country, want to cut back all the programs that help those with lower incomes eke out a living, but they’re unanimous in opposing any tax increase whatever for the fat cats who make millions. Most of them, of course, are indebted to those very same fat cats for their political existence.

So it’s nice to see a crack in the dam. Cal Thomas is a hard-shelled conservative, and it’s encouraging to see that even his sensibilities are offended by the current economic inequality. Here’s how he ends his column:

“Making money is a noble American objective; making a living is a nobler one.

“Corporations ought to have enough decency and compassion to make sure no worker is let go solely to increase the bottom line or pad the boss’s pockets with more money than he (or she) can ever hope to spend in a lifetime.”

I couldn’t have said it better, but we can’t depend on the decency or compassion or even shame of our big corporations for anything. If the problem is to be fixed, the government will have to do it. I mean the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, not the one of the corporations, by the profiteers, for the money.