Hugh J. Campbell of the United Steelworkers (USW) sends us "The Corporate Class War’s Smoking Gun." 

The Powell Memo: A Call-to-Arms for Corporations, the companion article to Moyers & Company’s The One Percent Court, tells how the response to business getting its clock cleaned was the mobilization for political combat. Four decades later, the middle class has had its clock cleaned as a result of the undeclared class war that began in 1971.

The knee-jerk response by the political right to the plight of the middle class is, “there you go again, trying to start a class war;” when in fact, the Powell Memo laid out the blueprint for the ensuing 40-plus-year war to enhance corporate economic and political power. The economic and political power gained by the multinational corporations as a result of disproportionate tax cuts and deregulation has also fueled the trade war, which the political right also denies exists.

In the book Who Stole the American Dream?, Hedrick Smith attributes the split fortunes of CEOs from the fate of their employees, the Wall Street split from Main Street, the destinies of the two Americas parting company and the cause of middle-class stagnation to wedge economics practiced by corporate America. The primary enabler for executing the corporate strategy of wedge economics is public policy going to the highest bidders. The Powell Memo achieved its desired result: the supremacy of capital market participants, but communist and socialist countries are beating America in the economic Olympics.

It’s not surprising that those most responsible for the class and trade wars continue to deny they are already realities.