Reading the excellent diary about Obama's popularity, I was thinking of my expectations, my disappointments, my joys in these first hundred days.  

For the most part (sans Larry Summers) I am, if not overjoyed, basically happy with the Obama admins opening volley. Yes, I would love to see those who turned this country to the dark side in an oversold war on terror be dragged into the light of day, but I know I am in the minority, no matter how many shout on the left-wing blogosphere.

The country, the vast majorities are focused on if they will have a job in the next quarter, will their house value rebound (or will they have a home at all)...It's pocketbook issues, or as the Big Dog told us, It's the Economy, first and always, that we judge our Presidents on. Unless you're Abe Lincoln, it's what happens with the economy that seems to decide our Presidents fates?

And, that is a cruel reality for those who aspire to that lofty office.

Because, in truth, good or bad economies are not always under the control of the President?  For example, I believe Bill Clintons tax policies helped, but if there is a tip of the hat for those bright shining economic days, much of the credit should go to Robert Noyce of Intel and (yes, I know the techy-left scorns him) Bill Gates of Microsoft.

Of course, when you drive the economy into ground as Bush jr. finally did, even though he was simply completing the end-game of the deregulatory-palloza that Reagan birthed, you will end up somewhere down in the infamous company of Hoover and Harding.

But if I have a bright and shining hope for the Obama presidency (and, yes, I will always go to the mat for equality for all American in all things, equal justice for all) it's in what I myself view as the issue of Economic Justice?

So what does that really mean? And is that achievable under the American societal model?

We state optimistically in our founding documents, that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are our given rights, but it doesn't have a lot to say about rich, poor, and the gulf in-between.

I know what it means to me.  It does mean equal opportunities, an equal playing field.  And no corruption of the system to benefit the powerful, the legacy rich.

The makes me a lefty, almost by definition I would assume. I also think it probably makes me more a true Ayn Rand-ian then the Larry Kudlow MSNBC free market commando crowd?  I truly believe in meritocracy, they prefer a rigged game, socialism for the corporations.

Yet, I am not dewy eyed enough to know that class structures exist, that wealth perpetuates, that almost all societies have strata.   I know there will always be rich and poor to some extent in any society of man.

Still, if I could have a beer with my President (funny, that statement about Bush always makes me cringe, but I would dearly love to sit down with Barack Obama over a plate of barbeque and a cold microbrew on a fine Seattle Summer day), and have his ear for a short take on this average Americans desires for his historic presidency.

I believe the main failure of Reagnism was to allow two main changes in American Society, and if Obama can perhaps start us back in the other direction, then all my hopes for him will be justified.

These are my issues of Economic Justice, and would love to hear the rest of you weigh in on this subject.

1.    The American Workers need to have a voice, because the Reagan Revolution put the Corporations at the head of the table, and blocked out the rest of us.

When my father was part of the great American working core, things were different. That is simply a fact.  

He worked for a single company his whole career, and while that is probably not as likely, the main reason that seems no longer possible is the American worker has been turned into a disposable resource.  The FIRST things corporations do it seems in any economic downturn is lay-offs. NOT look at if Wall Street will accept a period of negative growth, no, today's CEOs, in most part because of how their compensation is structured, are completely obsessed with the short term profit margin and the stock price.

My company laid off 1/3 of the production workers, just to keep the profit margin the same. We are shipping less, but making almost as much profit. The cost was 50 or so people not making a wage.

In my fathers era, the President of the company DID NOT live in some lofty plane of existence, he didn't make 500 times or more what others in the corporation made.

The President of my company has two Porches, an Audi, and till the down-turn, was looking at a Gull Wing Mercedes. At least that was put on hold.

There hasn't been even a small COLA in the company since I got there.

The President of my fathers company got a pension rather then hundreds of millions in stock. But so did my father?  

There was an implied social contract in the business world that I think the Reagan revolution abandoned or at least, did not defend when it was selling the private sector as the solution to all problems.

Some companies put it back, I mentioned Intel above. In the period of its miracle growth, Bob Noyce had a simple idea.Everyone should benefit from the success of the company, because IF you benefit, you work for your own good AND the good of the corporation. I remember the first time I went to a large Intel facility and above the front desk was a stock ticker showing the Intel share price.

Because, at Intel, if you were Bob Noyce or Andy Groove, or the janitors that cleaned up at night, you got stock as part of your package.

That's still the model some places, but I haven't seen stock options for almost all the run of the mill tech companies in the last decade out here in the Silicon Forest. Yes, if you are the best and the brightest at Google, but the rest of us mortals?

Yet the corporations themselves have been allowed to achieve not only greater and greater anonymity from the tax code, but more and more power in directing our government policies.

The most glaring example staring us in the face was the almost complete capitulation to the Death Grenade that Phil Gramm rammed through congress, the dual headed Cerberus of the Financial Modernization Act and the Commodities Futures Act, which are the root cause of the financial melt-down of 2008.

Very few voices cried, this is going too far when Gramm basically dismantled all the checks and balances that the FDR administration post the Great Crash put into place. In fact, both the left and right, for the most part, were cheerleaders for this.

Yet, EVEN IF you think these bills had no downside, what did they do for the middle class, for the average worker? This was stuff of corporate dreams, aimed at making those in power MORE powerful, and the wealthier even more so.

That is what we were fed in the frenzy of 40 years of Reaganism.

The promise that de-regulation would benefit all, but the actuality that the benefits always favored those already at the top of the pile while the calamitous consequences were almost always passed on to those who never benefited from these policies. Didn't anyone remember the S&L crisis?   Wasn't this déjà vu all over again?

2.      Secondly, and I think intertwined, is the abomination that has happened to the US tax code AND to tax collection policies.

And, here, there is no more successful slight of hand been accomplished by the great Republican propaganda noise machine. Just look at the Tea-bagging phenomenon?  Have those folks looked at the growth in wages for the middle class versus the growth for the top 1%?  Are they serfs protesting a coming tax on their masters?

From horror stories of ruthless IRS agents, paraded in a fake show trial in front of Congress, which allowed them to essentially GUT the IRS...From the fiction of the family farmers loosing their legacy to the IRS, when in fact what has changed mostly the face of family farming is not the Inheritance Tax, but the rise of the Industrial Food Complex, the growth and political power of Agra-Business, the rise of Archer-Daniels Midlands. All encouraged by Reaganite policies, all accomplished with the help of Congress after Congress.

Of all the political books I have read over the last 20 years none struck me as hard as David Cay Johnston's book "Perfectly Legal"

http://www.amazon.com/Perfectly-Legal-Ca mpaign-Benefit-Everybody/dp/1591840198

In it, Johnston documents the absolute perversion, the gaming of our tax code to the benefit of the rich, the powerful, and the connected.

The loonies out Tea-bagging are wrong about most things, but what they are really wrong about is, the Republicans Are not their allies in the Tax Wars, unless they are in the upper 5% of the country.

From Reagan on out, as this great book details, only one group has succeeded through every administration, even to a large extent in Bill Clinton's, in the great tax wars.  It was under Bill Clinton's that hedge fund managers were allowed to only pay 15% on earnings, even though they can make billions. The game has been rigged, and the direction has only been towards the top.

So, what can President Obama do about this?

Frankly, my take is very little AND quite a bit.

First, for those that point fingers at him as the villain in this piece, in his defense I have been pointing out, his Democratic Congress is so far to the right of LBJ's it's almost a crime to call it Democratic. I would suggest that about ½ of the current Democratic Senators are closer in philosophy to Ronald Reagan then to Franklin Roosevelt.

We know where the right sits on this, and it is probably the only thing still uniting the two halves of the party, the RR and the WSJ clan. Obama simply returning the marginal rates to the Clinton era, not even to the Reagan era is tantamount to turning us into Red China.

And, my gut says, we will lose that simple battle in Congress not by the hands of the Republicans, but by the hands of the Bayhs and the Ben Nelsons.

And the rest of the corruption of the tax code?

There I also hold out very little hope.  Too many special interests, too much money still awash in congress.

Already the Farm Lobby has beaten back any possible change to their corporate welfare, and less anyone thinks this benefits masses of small farmers, think again. It's the Archer Daniels Midlands who benefit from the status quo.

No, I will be shocked if in the short run Obama can do much.

Still my hope is, he can just start to undo some of the damage in the longer run.

He can give some of the old voices, labor and the middle class a seat at the table.

So far, it does seem like a mixed bag. We have Hilda Solis, but we also have Larry Summers at that table.

But, at least, it's a start.

What are your wishes?  Is Economic Justice possible anymore, in corporate America? Did we really ever have it ever?

And, what does Economic Justice mean to you?