The ‘Trickle Down Theory’ Works,
Just Not The Way It Was Described

The Grand Old Party of the Republicans has been loudly touting the ‘Trickle Down Theory’ for years now, and even though the GOP continues to argue that the theory does in fact bring wealth downward from the top, the people who are in the middle or at the bottom of the pyramid rarely agree.

Not much in terms of jobs or increased wealth has ‘trickled down’ to middle-income and workingmen and women since the GOP gained control of Congress and the White House. Yet the GOP maintains that the theory works and is in fact successful; after all, they say, the stock market is strong. 

And perhaps it is, but the 'trickle down' is not trickling in the manner they publicized; that is, the GOP’s claim is that by giving tax breaks to those at the top, our nation will assure that the wealthy and the corporate managers will reinvest in a manner that creates jobs and expands the economy. Yet instead of that scenario, what seems to be occurring is a variation on the theme; i.e., give power to conservative people at the top, and their reactionary techniques trickle down to the state and local – city and town – level in a repressive fashion.

It isn’t a pretty spectacle.

An extreme level of partisanship is seeping downward from the GOP’s political top, and it is changing the face of state and local politics. It’s taken more than a decade for the reactionary ‘Trickling Down’ to be clearly apparent, but it’s everywhere now, in drips and drams and in some places streams and dark pools. 

In terms of modern history, it probably began during the presidential terms of Ronald Reagan, when traditional Republicanism was first pushed aside by conservative ideologues. It grew quietly under the first Bush presidency - George H.W. Bush was too much of a patrician to be quite comfortable with ideologues - where such political forces were tolerated more than accepted into the inner circles. 

But when Bush the elder lost to William J. Clinton, something remarkable happened; the anger and disappointment of the conservative ideologues burst forth in such a political and media based push that they captured the Congress, shouting about taxes and balanced budgets. Newt Gingrinch was the man of the hour. He was later overshadowed by the likes of Henry Hyde, Tom Delay, and Dennis Hastert, et al.

Eight years of increasingly hateful, viciously partisan politics during the Clinton Presidency set the stage for what is now trickling down. And it could be said that after three years of  GOP President George Bush, who unlike his father is clearly ideologically partisan,  combined with the continued GOP domination of both houses of Congress, the trickle is now becoming a fast moving stream.

Recently Republicans twisted and reshaped voting districts in Texas to partition off, eliminate where possible, and at the least minimize the role of elected Democrats. And other state GOP Committees have increasingly been meeting certain litmus tests regarding conservative orthodoxy in order to be assured of support from the national party. 

Republican governors have become more aggressive in pushing forward conservative candidates. Massachusetts is a good example of the latter, where Mitt Romney has become an activist in finding conservative candidates to run against centrist and liberal Democrats in various districts. (When on vacation, Mr. Romney often flies back to Utah to revitalize his conservative Mormon roots).

But one of the finest examples of the new GOP ‘Trickle Down’ politics took place in Maryland early this April. What happened there was a combination of conservative politics and protection for corporate interests, which of course are often synonymous.

Maryland, like Massachusetts and a number of other states, has a regulatory agency that oversees the power companies serving the state. But Maryland now has a Republican Governor, Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr., and when he took office he began a policy of removing Democrats from all state agencies, along with anyone else who, as The Washington Post observed, could be "considered incompatible with his agenda for a smaller, more business-friendly government."

Among the changes Gov. Ehrlich made was the appointment of Kenneth D. Schisler, a former GOP state delegate, as chairman of the five member Maryland Public Service Commission. And in mid-April Chairman Schisler made a clean sweep of long-time staff members, "just in advance of several critical rulings about electricity rates…"*

He fired the Public Service Commission’s chief engineer, the chief hearing examiner, the director of the accounting division, the chief public information officer, and the manager of external relations.

"They’ve taken the people who are most knowledgeable – career public servants who can best rebut the claims that utility and energy providers will make when they try to raise rates – and they fired them," declared Maryland State Sen. Brian E. Frosh, Democrat from Montgomery. He concluded: "The utilities are going to have a field day…and consumers are going to get hammered."*

The firings were accomplished after the Maryland General Assembly adjourned, which is indicative of how hard-right political tactics do trickle down, since Pres. George Bush has set an example in recent history by waiting until Congress is in recess to make judicial appointments of controversial, conservative, "Christian" judges.

Further, the Maryland firings were done as coldly and callously as possible. Public employees who had solid performance records were fired summarily and humiliated in front of their peers and subordinates.

Public Service Commissioner Gail C. McDonald, a Democrat, was one of the commissioners bypassed in the decision-making, but she was appalled and spoke out. "There were police all over the building, Commissioner McDonald states. "They posted their pictures in the lobby like they’re terrorists or something."* Armed security personnel escorted the fired senior staff members from the building.

"We have BGE and Pepco (the state’s largest power providers) coming in for rate cases for the first time in 10 years," Commissioner McDonald points out, adding: "You can imagine how this is going to look."*

One way it will look is more ‘business-friendly,’ as so many tax breaks and relaxing of rules relating to the environment for the oil and timber industries has appeared through the actions of the Bush Administration. The political ‘Trickle Down’ at work.

Public Service Commissioner J. Joseph Curran III, "the (Maryland) state’s attorney general and a Democratic appointee, said (the day after the firings) that he would not speculate about Schisler’s motives, but…he saw nothing in the work of the fired staffers that would have warranted dismissal. He said that, collectively, they had an extensive understanding of the state’s utility system and that the agency will suffer without them."*

So the ‘Trickle Down Theory’ is working, but not the way it’s been described. It’s working in how it is changing Republican politics from the party of Abraham Lincoln to the party of Martin Dies, Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Bible Belt religious affiliations and beliefs, coupled with reactionary conservatism, have become the standards by which the current Republican leaders judge everything and everyone; it is their litmus test.

This  GOP ‘Trickle Down' stream has been illustrated plainly, for all to see, in the recent primary election contest between incumbent Republican Sen. Arlen Specter and Republican  Congressman Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania.

In this contest, people everywhere have had a chance to glimpse the intent of the hard-right, although only those already following the right-wing’s domination crusade are likely to have perceived it because most of the national media gave it the safe and traditional surface coverage it gives all issues. In this manner, the national press cheated the nation of the insider knowledge that the journalists and their editors and publishers all share, but they don’t have to worry about defending their knowledge, since they haven’t imparted it.

But The Washington Post is an exception, and it not only covered the election more thoroughly than most other media, but columnist E J. Dionne, Jr., captured the heart of the issue when he stated, "Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be moderate Republicans. There’s not much room for them in this political world."**

By all reasonable standards, and certainly by any ‘liberal political’ standards, Arlen Specter has been and remains a traditional Republican. He would normally be considered a traditional conservative, that is if it was possible to turn the clock back twenty years. But now he is considered a moderate, and by some of the GOP’s new power brokers, a closet liberal. This is obviously an example of how far to the right America’s politics have been pushed, and the recent primary underscores this reality.

Specter recently emerged, by a very slim margin, victorious from an ugly GOP primary battle. Mr. Specter has served four terms in the U.S. Senate, and he has voted with the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU, zero percent of that time, yet he is considered too moderate, too liberal, by many ‘new conservatives,’ who are now using the Republican Party as their base of operations.

This was the thrust of the recent primary election challenge.

Rep. Toomey is, to use an outdated and by today’s standards a generalized term, an archconservative. He follows the outline of the hard-right wing and their associates in the Christian Coalition.

He very nearly defeated Sen. Specter in the recent GOP primary, but even though he failed, the hard-right conservatives perceive a victory. "Those conservatives gathered around the Club for Growth, a political action committee devoted to pushing moderate Republicans either to the right or out of office, can claim a tactical triumph for the nearly $2 million the group directed toward helping Toomey," reported E.J. Dionne.**

"Stephen Moore, the Club for Growth’s president, always saw the effort as having a double purpose: to replace Specter with a conservative if possible, but also to demonstrate how much anguish conservatives could create for Republican moderates who did not fall into line."**

Dionne, of the Washington Post, gets to the heart of the issue by talking to Mr. Moore and gaining this direct quote relating to the effort made by Moore’s group to back Toomey against Specter: "It serves notice to Chafee (of R.I.) and Snow (of Maine), and Voinovich (of Ohio) and others who have been problem children that they will be next."

How frightening is this? GOP officials who act according to their conscience and long-standing principles are "problem children?"

Even George Bush, who plays to this reactionary base all the time, backed Arlen Specter. He may have done so for the pragmatical reasons that Arlen Specter will have a better chance of retaining his seat against a Democratic challenger this fall, and thereby help assure the GOP majority in the Senate. Nonetheless he did support Sen. Specter. Perhaps he is also a bit afraid of the political serpent he has been riding upon.

Radicals have captured the GOP. This is the reality. The only simile that would seem appropriate is to assume that The Weathermen or the SDS had taken control of the Democratic Party, which of course they have not, and probably could never have hoped to achieve such a goal, despite their political dreams. In all events they are now non-existent in any political form, but the analogy or radicalism stands. In terms of the GOP, unfortunately, the comparable is real and tangible; reactionary ideologues are in in control and dictating policy.

In its earlier drive for power, the GOP leadership enveloped and adopted every conservative movement it saw, probably believing that  incumbent moderate leaders could control the various religious and political zealots they were wooing, and then use them as foils where and when necessary to counteract Democratic policies. But they’ve lost the gambit; the zealots have taken control.

The right-wing political 'Trickle Down' stream  is now becoming an actuality.

Hardball Republican politicos are now either pushing aside old school GOP stalwarts or dictating terms regarding how they must operate and function from now on. And they have put together a political propaganda operation that so far has confounded the press. Of course this isn't terribly hard to accomplish, given that much of the press is owned by Republications, and corporately is concerned with avoiding controversy. The latter is accomplished most often by simply quoting political figures from each side of a debate and waiting for issues to be raised,  rather than illustrate what the issues really mean and seek to define for their readers what is understood by the reporters and editors, and the publishers, about the intent of the power seekers involved.

A revolution is taking place, and the media is cowering.

* Washington Post, story by Matthew Mosk, Tuesday, April 20, 2004, page B01.

** Washington Post, E.J. Dionne, 4/30/04, page A29

5/4/04