My brother Dick just sent me excerpts from Sands of Time, the history of beach volleyball. I picked out this piece about the guy I think was the greatest player of all time, Gene Selznick. Selz was a magician, and could do anything conceivable with a volleyball. The 1965 Manhattan Open which Selznick won with Ronnie Lang against Mike Bright and Mike O'Hara was one of the greatest matches I've ever seen. Cramping toward the end of the match, Selz was still able to set Lang from an almost supine position. Because of political difficulties with certain people in the USVBA, Selznick was not chosen for either the '64 Tokyo Olympics or the '68 Mexico Olympics. A terrible situation, but he lived with it. I was an All-American on UCLA's first national championship team in 1965, along with Olympians Ernie Suwara and Larry Rundle. Keith Erickson was also on the team. I had grown up with the game in Manhattan Beach and my dad Jack was a good beach player in those early days of the game. He used to hold court at 8th St. all day, every weekend for many years. My brother Dick played as well, and won some tournaments on the beach.

Beach volleyball is now an Olympic sport and Karch Kiraly became the dominant player in the 80s and 90s. It is a vigorous action-surge of a game, and I am glad to be part of its history.

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"SANDS OF TIME" THE HISTORY OF BEACH VOLLEYBALL On sale now Volume #1: 1895-1969  Volume #2: 1970-1989  Volume #3: 1990-2004 Click Here To Order "SANDS OF TIME" is a complete history of Men's and Women’s beach volleyball, including its roots that began with the indoor game.

The following is a selection taken from the book: "THE SANDS OF TIME"   SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA  1950's On and off the court, in 1956, Gene Selznick gave it his "All" In the above photo, Selznick (right) lets-loose with an impromptu dance session. Photo courtesy of Holyoke Volleyball Hall of Fame Gene Selznick first began to play volleyball on the beach in Hermosa Beach. After beating some of the better teams in Hermosa Beach, Selznick was looking to play in the "big games" at Santa Monica’s State Beach. Selznick’s first State Beach experience was against the Shargo Brothers, Sam and Nat. Selznick played with his friend Jim McFarland and they were taught a lesson, as the Shargo’s defeated the young upstarts by a score of 8-0. (in those days if a team was behind by a score of 8-0, they had to get off the court). Selznick and McFarland went back to Hermosa Beach to practice some more. The second time that Selznick went to State Beach, he and McFarland challenged Paul Siano and Glen Keller to a match. Keller and Siano , in a repeat performance of the Shargo brothers, defeated Selznick and McFarland 8-0. Keller said: "When we beat Selznick, on that day, his game was not quite so polished, but this victory could not be duplicated a few months later when Gene's skills were much improved." (In 1999, Glen was 81 years of age, and still playing an occasional game of doubles beach volleyball, in Newport Beach California). The above photo shows Don McMahon spiking the ball while Gene Selznick is ready on defense. Action took place during the 1950’s. Photo courtesy of Holyoke Volleyball Hall of Fame Selznick and McFarland went back to Hermosa Beach and McFarland decided that he did not want to go back to Santa Monica. The next time Selznick went to Santa Monica, he went with Howard Walker, to play in the Sorrento "A" tournament, which they won. Most of the top Santa Monica, State Beach players were at the tournament, not playing, just to watch. After the tournament Manny Saenz invited Selznick to come back to State Beach and play. Selznick went to State Beach and played some games on the "B" court and eventually challenged Saenz and his partner Bernie Holtzman on the "main court." Normally this was against the local court etiquette, it just was not supposed to be done! The normally tolerant Holtzman was unimpressed with this young skinny kid as he and the other State Beach locals did not take victories at another beach very seriously. But, since he was invited to State Beach by Saenz and the fact that on this day there were not a lot of players on the beach, they decided to teach this kid another lesson. They envisioned duplicating the two prior 8-0 shutouts. The locals sneered: "If you can get a partner, we’ll play you." Selznick was able to coerce another to play with him, but the game went much differently than the locals planned. Selznick displayed quickness and agility that far surpassed anything that they had ever seen. The game was eventually won by Saenz and Holtzman by a score of 15-13, much different than the anticipated 8-0 shutout. Saenz and Holtzman were shocked, but still managed to display sportsmen like conduct as they congratulated Selznick for his performance. After this game, Selznick was invited back to play again and inevitably became the best player on the beach at State Beach, or any other beach that tendered the game of volleyball. Gene Selznick spikes a set from Bernie Holtzman. Don McMahon is ready on defense. Selznick and Holtzman paired-up together after McMahon and Selznick split-up when Selznick bragged that he could win with McMahon or anybody else on the beach. He was right! Photo courtesy of Holyoke Volleyball Hall of Fame Selznick was not known for spending all of his time as a volleyball fanatic, he liked to dance and party. His ability to party was legendary. Gene was not a big drinker but he was known to stay-up until all hours of the night and he would not wait until Saturday nights to party, he partied almost every night. No matter how much he partied he could still play the next day. On the beach, Selznick was truly innovative with his game of volleyball. He was always experimenting with different strategies. Selznick is credited with bringing the "Spike" to the beach game. Although other players used to spike the ball occasionally on the beach, Gene was the first to use it as his main weapon. He was also capable of receiving the serve and turning it into a set for his partner so that the second contact would be a hitter jumping at the net for a spike, or the player could elect to set the ball, if a block was up. Selznick is considered the architect of today's game, he had ideas before anyone else even dreamed of them. As an example of how far ahead of his time that Gene Selznick was, long after his playing career was over, he was asked to coach the first U.S.A. team ever selected to play beach volleyball, in the Olympics. During their preparation for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta Georgia, the all-time career open beach volleyball tournament winner, Sinjin Smith (139 career open beach volleyball tournament championships, in 1999 Karch Kiraly surpassed Sinjin with 141), and his Olympic teammate, Carl Henkel, both thought enough of Gene's experience and knowledge of beach volleyball, to ask him to coach them at this inaugural of beach volleyball in the Olympic Games. In 1999 and 2000 Gene and his son Dane, were both involved with players trying to qualify for the 2000 Olympics in Sidney Australia. Gene managed to help the new women’s beach volleyball team of Misty May and Holly McPeak qualify for the 2000 Olympiad in Sydney Australia. It is felt by many that Gene Selznick never got the recognition that he deserved because of his political enemies in volleyball. The above photo shows the crowd at Bondi Stadium, the site of the 2000 Olympiad, in Sydney Australia. Dane Selznick (left) and Gene Selznick (right) were in the stadium together, as coaches, each coaching different teams. Photo courtesy of Dane Selznick By the end of the summer in 1950, Ev Keller, one of the best beach and indoor players in the country, saw Selznick play. Ev asked Selznick to play with him in the next tournament. It was the last tournament of the 1950 season and the first ever "AAA" tournament. Selznick was at the top of the sport very quickly! He continued to play in tournaments with Ev Keller until 1952 when he went to Okinawa for a tour of duty in the military. When Selznick came back, in 1953, he paired-up with Don McMahon. Selznick became a regular at State Beach, but he was anything but "regular" when it came to his status there. The other regulars would show-up early, to sign-up for games. Selznick did not have to go through this formality, when Selznick showed-up to play, it seems that someone would always offer to let him take their place on the court. Selznick would normally accept, as his entourage of friends escorted him to the court, as if he were a movie star! Selznick had the ability to start playing without delay. He did not even need to warm-up for play. Selznick dominated both the court and the beach. His confidence and mastery of the sport were so far ahead of everybody else. He is a colorful and charismatic person that is not hesitant to share his opinions with others. If Gene said something, it was passed up and down the beach for all to hear.   from The Sands of Time: The History of Beach Volleyball

Alan Frances, a psychiatrist who worked on Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM 4) asks us to take a look at the monopoly psychiatry has had in the field of mental health diagnostics. I practiced counseling at various levels in New Mexico and was never enamored of the DSM, though there were always avid supporters of its uses. It does allow a specific diagnosis and consequent treatment; however, the actual condition of mental illness is often a more ambiguous situation, and the scientific categorizing of ailments often seemed to me overly tightly drawn.

Frances agrees with a broadening look at the field, and suggests another overseeing body to examine all the examinations that come out of DSM. A welcome argument, I think.

Psychiatric diagnosis was a professional embarrassment and cultural backwater until D.S.M.-3 was published in 1980. Before that, it was heavily influenced by psychoanalysis, psychiatrists could rarely agree on diagnoses and nobody much cared anyway.

D.S.M.-3 stirred great professional and public excitement by providing specific criteria for each disorder. Having everyone work from the same playbook facilitated treatment planning and revolutionized research in psychiatry and neuroscience.

Surprisingly, D.S.M.-3 also caught on with the general public and became a runaway best seller, with more than a million copies sold, many more than were needed for professional use. Psychiatric diagnosis crossed over from the consulting room to the cocktail party. People who previously chatted about the meaning of their latest dreams began to ponder where they best fit among D.S.M.’s intriguing categories.

The fourth edition of the manual, released in 1994, tried to contain the diagnostic inflation that followed earlier editions. It succeeded on the adult side, but failed to anticipate or control the faddish over-diagnosis of autism, attention deficit disorders and bipolar disorder in children that has since occurred.

Indeed, the D.S.M. is the victim of its own success and is accorded the authority of a bible in areas well beyond its competence. It has become the arbiter of who is ill and who is not — and often the primary determinant of treatment decisions, insurance eligibility, disability payments and who gets special school services. D.S.M. drives the direction of research and the approval of new drugs. It is widely used (and misused) in the courts.

Until now, the American Psychiatric Association seemed the entity best equipped to monitor the diagnostic system. Unfortunately, this is no longer true. D.S.M.-5 promises to be a disaster — even after the changes approved this week, it will introduce many new and unproven diagnoses that will medicalize normality and result in a glut of unnecessary and harmful drug prescription. The association has been largely deaf to the widespread criticism of D.S.M.-5, stubbornly refusing to subject the proposals to independent scientific review.

Many critics assume unfairly that D.S.M.-5 is shilling for drug companies. This is not true. The mistakes are rather the result of an intellectual conflict of interest; experts always overvalue their pet area and want to expand its purview, until the point that everyday problems come to be mislabeled as mental disorders. Arrogance, secretiveness, passive governance and administrative disorganization have also played a role.

New diagnoses in psychiatry can be far more dangerous than new drugs. We need some equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration to mind the store and control diagnostic exuberance. No existing organization is ready to replace the American Psychiatric Association. The most obvious candidate, the National Institute of Mental Health, is too research-oriented and insensitive to the vicissitudes of clinical practice. A new structure will be needed, probably best placed under the auspices of the Department of Health and Human Services, the Institute of Medicine or the World Health Organization.

All mental-health disciplines need representation — not just psychiatrists but alsopsychologists, counselors, social workers and nurses. The broader consequences of changes should be vetted by epidemiologists, health economists and public-policy and forensic experts. Primary care doctors prescribe the majority of psychotropic medication, often carelessly, and need to contribute to the diagnostic system if they are to use it correctly. Consumers should play an important role in the review process, and field testing should occur in real life settings, not just academic centers.

Psychiatric diagnosis is simply too important to be left exclusively in the hands of psychiatrists. They will always be an essential part of the mix but should no longer be permitted to call all the shots.

Allen Frances, a former chairman of the psychiatry department at Duke University School of Medicine, led the task force that produced D.S.M.-4.

A response from a writer to a piece on Romney's constant campaign rhetoric about getting government out of the way in WaPo from a blogger seems to me more the case than not. This whole argument is belied by the fact that Romney has been in government and not done well with it. The government's role in Clinton's and Obama's good fortunes are here applauded; the 'government off our backs' made a good sound bite for Reagan, but what came of it again and again? Recession. Austerity has rarely worked either in these kinds of economic conditions.

adifferentpointofview:

So Romney's plan for creating jobs is to get government out of the way. It makes a good sound bite, but when Bush got government out of the way, we had the Enron scandal and the current recession. When Reagan got government out of the way, we had two recessions, one in each term. When Bush, Sr. got government out of the way, we had a recession. When Clinton got government "in the way" we had 8 years of uninterrupted economic growth and 22 million jobs created. When President Obama got government "in the way" by bailing out the banks and auto companies, enacting the stimulus, and regulating banks to make sure they were sound, we ended the recession, lowered unemployment, and have economic growth. When Romney got government out of the way in MA, it ranked 47 out of 50 in job creation. If we care about facts and not just sound bites, it sounds like the Democratic approach is better than the Republican approach. After all, corporations are greedy and don't care about workers. So getting government out of the way just lets corporate greed run wild. Is that what you want?

Paul Krugman in a NY Times Editorial offers some suggestions as to how the tiny minority of billionaires have hijacked the Republican Party and essentially the current US economy. It is a sobering analysis, and leads one to think the battle taking place politically may just be one of the great ones of the modern era.

So how did that happen? For the past century, political polarization has closely tracked income inequality, and there’s every reason to believe that the relationship is causal. Specifically, money buys power, and the increasing wealth of a tiny minority has effectively bought the allegiance of one of our two major political parties, in the process destroying any prospect for cooperation.

And the takeover of half our political spectrum by the 0.01 percent is, I’d argue, also responsible for the degradation of our economic discourse, which has made any sensible discussion of what we should be doing impossible.

Disputes in economics used to be bounded by a shared understanding of the evidence, creating a broad range of agreement about economic policy. To take the most prominent example, Milton Friedman may have opposed fiscal activism, but he very much supported monetary activism to fight deep economic slumps, to an extent that would have put him well to the left of center in many current debates.

Now, however, the Republican Party is dominated by doctrines formerly on the political fringe. Friedman called for monetary flexibility; today, much of the G.O.P. is fanatically devoted to the gold standard. N. Gregory Mankiw of Harvard University, a Romney economic adviser, once dismissed those claiming that tax cuts pay for themselves as “charlatans and cranks”; today, that notion is very close to being official Republican doctrine.

As it happens, these doctrines have overwhelmingly failed in practice. For example, conservative goldbugs have been predicting vast inflation and soaring interest rates for three years, and have been wrong every step of the way. But this failure has done nothing to dent their influence on a party that, as Mr. Mann and Mr. Ornstein note, is “unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science.”

And why is the G.O.P. so devoted to these doctrines regardless of facts and evidence? It surely has a lot to do with the fact that billionaires have always loved the doctrines in question, which offer a rationale for policies that serve their interests. Indeed, support from billionaires has always been the main thing keeping those charlatans and cranks in business. And now the same people effectively own a whole political party.

Which brings us to the question of what it will take to end this depression we’re in.

Many pundits assert that the U.S. economy has big structural problems that will prevent any quick recovery. All the evidence, however, points to a simple lack of demand, which could and should be cured very quickly through a combination of fiscal and monetary stimulus.

No, the real structural problem is in our political system, which has been warped and paralyzed by the power of a small, wealthy minority. And the key to economic recovery lies in finding a way to get past that minority’s malign influence.

Paul Krugman

NY Times Editorial 5-4-2012

Ted Nugent at the NRA conference and Allen West, Tea Party apostle let fly some of the weirdest and ugliest rhetoric yet on the Obama presidency and what should be done remove them varmints from our nation, etc. Interesting that the now shamed Secret Service had a visit with Nugent. West and his Marxists in Congress rant is bogus garbage, but these guys don't have any shame. They throw red meat to their base and stir up hatred that apparently sells to this crowd.

Nugent, who delivered his foaming-at-the-mouth peroration at a National Rifle Association convention, earned a visit from the Secret Service with his promise that “if Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”

That might or might not constitute an actual threat to the president of the United States. More chilling, to me, was the way his audience of gun enthusiasts applauded in agreement as Nugent compared the Obama administration to a bunch of “coyotes in your living room” who deserve to be shot. Nugent ended by exhorting his listeners: “We are Braveheart. We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November. Am I — any questions?”

No, I think he made himself quite clear.

Violent metaphors aside, the nub of Nugent’s argument — and I use the word advisedly — was this: “If you can’t go home and get everybody in your lives to clean house in this vile, evil, America-hating administration, I don’t even know what you’re made of.”

Vile? Evil? America-hating? Nugent doesn’t just characterize those with different political views as misguided or wrong. He seeks to paint them as alien and anti-American — as enemies of this nation, rather than citizens with whom he disagrees. In a subsequent interview, Nugent called Nancy Pelosi a “sub-human scoundrel” and referred to liberals as cockroaches to “stomp” in November.

This is what distinguishes the flame-throwers of the far right from those of the far left. Nugent and his ilk seek to deny their political opponents the very right to believe in a different philosophy. Agree with me, he says, or be stomped.

It would be one thing if this sort of vicious intolerance came only from aging rockers whose brains may have been scrambled by all those high-decibel performances. But it comes, too, from an elected member of the House of Representatives.

At a town hall meeting last week in Palm City, Fla., West was asked how many Marxists there are in Congress. He replied, “I believe there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party who are members of the Communist Party.” That is, of course, a bald-faced lie. There are no communists in Congress. What makes the lie even worse is West’s subsequent declaration that he stands by his words because he was referring to the 80-member Congressional Progressive Caucus, which West considers a branch of the Comin­tern.

“There is a very thin line between communism, progressivism, Marxism, socialism,” West claimed this week. “It’s about nationalizing production. It’s about creating and expanding the welfare state. It’s about this idea of social and economic justice. You hear that being played out now with fairness, fair share, economic equality.”

West can’t really believe this nonsense. What he’s trying to do is delegitimize the entire stream of progressive thought that has run wide and deep through American history since the nation’s founding. Disagree with his views, West insists, and you’re not just a political opponent, you’re a godless Marxist.

There is no symmetry here. The far left may hurl insults at the right but doesn’t scream “fascism” whenever a Republican proposes privatizing Medicare.

So this is what I want to know: Mitt Romney, do you agree with your prominent endorser Ted Nugent that the Obama administration is evil and hates America? House Speaker John Boehner, do you agree with your star freshman West that “78 to 81” of your colleagues are card-carrying communists?

Speak up, gentlemen; I didn’t hear you.

Eugene Robinson, WaPo 5-20-2012

Strange world this. Another round of political nonsense, and arguments flying left and right. The war in Syria continues to be a bloodbath, but nothing to be done. Like a Beckett play run amok. Like the world and its ultimately multilayered insistence has us all undone. Better maybe to just hide, get a cover for it all. Hope the next election passes without a war on drugs or privilege or taxing the rich. Get up and fight for your particulars. Why not strive to be all you can be, harness your hopes to a star, give up on retaliation, live within your means. I suppose one could simply resurrect a currency, a pride and hope for the best. Find a good woman and settle down. Find work, find self, find and keep.

Just when things seem alien, get a ghost-writer and that memoir that has not yet been written. I have a sneaking suspicion I have had all I can hope for, and yet I hope for more. I live in Mexico on very little money, so I have a certain freedom from want. No food stamps. No outcry against the system that undoes every poor street person. I love sometimes the way we just keep on, not knowing if there is any purpose to it all. There may be: all this coming and going, passages of time, suffering and palaver may have at its core some semblance of value. What do I know. I gave up on ideology long ago. I am a perturbed Christian, a disturbed Buddhist, a former All-American. Too much has gone wrong, too many people have died. Just learned my childhood friend, Jerry Stephenson, died at 66. In the summer of '67, after my first marriage to a beautiful Boston girl, Jerry got us tickets to one of the Red Sox final games where he was stationed at Fenway. We later went out to a bar he liked; I told him about acid and how much it meant to our rallying anti-Vietnam communal forces in New Mexico. Jerry, a pitcher, and a good fastballer, began speculating about an 'acid ball' and he said he was on it before next season. A good laugh amid the beer and sandwiches at the pub.

So be it. So much time we have here. Make the best of it. Make do. Make up what you are here for. Old friends sagging into oblivious mental states. Young folks coming up, looking innocently to a life. Let us all find that intrinsic innocence that moves us forward. Another day, after so many before. Time is reckless, it sometimes seems. We want to find our way. We want some understanding, some peace, some position that marvels beyond expectation at this spectacle of light and darkness.

--Bill Pearlman

Tycoon Rick Scott's (CPR) campaign against Obama's Affordable Care Act gets a look here from Quackwatch, a good site for news about health scams. Scott, a health insurance exec and Conservative hotshot, has been spending lots of $ blasting any kind of public health policy that goes against the revered 'market.' But Quackwatch here notes that Medicare, for example, delivers its services in a much more efficient and ecnomical way than the private plans. But the people who compose these attack ads just keep it up, scaring people into thinking the goverment is going to run you down, and ruin your health.

from the Quackwatch site on insurance:

If Congress establishes a public plan and forces all insurance companies to accept anyone who applies for coverage, the marketplace will change drastically because all Americans will be eligible for insurance. Private insurance companies have been profitable because to maximize profits, they systematically exclude as many high-risk and chronically ill people as they can. That's one reason why health reform is desperately needed [15].

Misleading Message #4: "Squeeze" Some of Congress's health care plans could squeeze you four ways. It could raise taxes by 600 billion dollars, even taxing soda. It could add a trillion to the federal deficit. New rules could hike your health insurance premiums 95%. You still might end up on their government-run health plan.. Tell Congress you've been squeezed enough. Say no to a government-run health plan.

FactCheck.org has noted that the 95% decrease in message #4 refers to only 5% of Americans who have health insurance and buy it on their own. The claim comes from an analysis by a group that advocates for insurance carriers that sell policies in the individual market. That analysis also doesn’t take into consideration that forcing everyone to be insurance tend to drive average premium costs downward. FactCheck.org also notes that no measures approved so far by any Congressional committee would add "a trillion to the federal deficit." FactCheck.org states that the Senate bill would add roughly $597 billion over 10 years, and the House bill that was approved by the Ways and Means Committee in mid-July would add $239 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office [16]. Moreover, for many people, higher taxes will be offset by lower insurance cost.

Regardless of the amount of added cost, there's no historical reason to believe that private plans can be run more cheaply than nonprofit government plans. Simple comparison will show that private insurance premiums are much higher than Medicare premiums for the same coverage. Individuals who paid into Medicare (current rate is 1.45% of taxable wages) while working get Medicare Part A free of charge after age 65 and can add part B for about $2,000 a year. Comparable private insurance would cost at least twice as much. I agree with President Obama's statement that a public plan is "an important way to discipline insurance companies" because those who fail to provide adequate services at reasonable cost will lose their customers.

Misleading Message #5: "Doctor's Office" Today you make the medical decisions that are best for you without government interference. But if Congress passes a government-run health plan, you could end up with government bureaucrats taking away your choices, getting in between you and your doctor and your personal medical decisions. It's not too late to put patients first. Tell Congress to put patients first and say no to a government health plan.

Message #5 is a simple scare tactic that is unsupportable. Insurance plans do not pay for treatments they consider unnecessary, ineffective, or "investigational." They may also have policies that restrict or penalize the use of brand-name drugs if generics (or less expensive) drugs are available. These policies are beneficial because they reduce unnecessary cost. I have seen no evidence that Medicare is more restrictive than nongovernment programs, and I see no reason to believe that any future government plan will be unnecessarily restrictive.

CPR also suggests that federal health plans will reduce free choice of doctors. There's no historical evidence for that either. A small percentage of doctors do not accept Medicare, but there's no reason to believe that an expanded public plan will have less acceptance. Tens of millions of uninsured and underinsured people now have little or no choice of provider because they have no way to pay for needed services. A public plan should enable them to access what they need.

Stephen Barrett, M.D

Quackwatch.com

Interesting that the right keeps calling Obama the instrument of 'class warfare' when in reality any examination of the record (as Meyerson does in this WaPo editorial) will only lead to the conclusion that the hogs of Wall Street have increased their share of the country's profits enormously. And unfortunately, Obama, though earnestly condemning the Ryan budget, still has not really gone after this scheming money-grubbing oligarchy that runs the corporate world. Meyerson:

 

...But there’s more to this anti-Obama animus than mere hedge-hoggery. What leaps out from the bankers’ indictments of the president, even more than their affronted amour propre, is their insularity, their complete cluelessness about how their fellow Americans see them and their effect on the U.S. economy. Who besides Wall Street’s more benighted denizens is affronted by legal action against what looks to be securities fraud? Who besides the very rich and Republican political candidates thinks the very rich don’t have enough political clout? Who believes that making Warren Buffett pay taxes at rates as high as his secretary’s constitutes defecating on the rich? (Buffett certainly doesn’t.)

As for class warfare — no one has waged it with the skill and relentlessness of Wall Street. Consider these outcomes of our real class war: From 1960 to 1984, Wall Street’s share of total U.S. corporate profits averaged 17 percent, according to economist Sameer Khatiwada of the International Institute for Labor Studies, but from 1985 to 2008, its share rose to an average of 30 percent. From 1970 to 2007, the percentage of all wages and salaries paid in the United States that went to the richest 1 percent rose from 5.1 percent to 12.4 percent. And in 2010, University of California economist Emmanuel Saez reported last month, the share of pretax income going to the wealthiest 0.01 percent reached its highest level since the IRS began recording incomes in 1913.

These transformations didn’t happen by accident. They’re the result of decades-long campaigns by Wall Street and corporate leaders to lower their tax rates; to craft a pay structure for executives that caused their incomes to soar, often at the expense of shareholders; to weaken domestic manufacturing; and to create ever more ingenious ways to market credit, which ultimately enriched bankers and nobody else. The ascent of the 1 percent was also fueled by its war on unions, which has lowered the living standards of working-class Americans while increasing their employers’ profits.

Wall Street has decimated the middle class and calls it a meritocracy. Obama won’t acknowledge that charade (at least, not sufficiently). Romney accepts it wholeheartedly. Wall Street leaders’ shift from Obama to Romney isn’t just about preserving their tax breaks and, by repealing the Dodd-Frank financial reform, bringing back high-yield deals that may imperil the broader economy. It’s also about having a president who won’t challenge the lies they tell about — and to — themselves.

Harold Meyerson

WaPo 4-5-2010