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Somewhere after the Rainbow: "Homeporting the U.S.S. Missouri: 2 SOCIALIST ACTION SEPTEMBER 1988 About 450 years ago, John Heywood wrote a comedy called "The Four P's." As some of you might remember from literature class, the play's title referred to four liars and scoundrels, each of whom practiced a trade beginning with the letter "P."

Now "The Four P's" have returned. Each one of the modern "P's" is a liar, a scoundrel —and a PROLETARIAN!

That's right. The Fab Four rave about their proletarian roots. Michael Dukakis (the AFL-CIO's favorite) sings ballads to his immigrant father, teenage love, grocery shopping, and mowing the lawn on a summer's day. Meanwhile, George Bush salivates over pork rinds and country music.

Bush recollects how he packed his two kids and "everything we had" into the family Studebaker and headed west for the Texas plains. There he says, they "lived the dream-Little League, you know, football on Friday night." Very touching.

Even Dan Quayle and Lloyd Bentsen have carried their blue-collar rhetoric to wherever workers congregate—labor meetWith this issue, Michael Schreiber begins a regular monthly column.

Chicago:

Do working people have a choice in the 88 elections ?"

Speaker: Adam Shils

Fri., Sept 16, 7: 30 p.m.

Resurrection Lutheran Church, 3309 N. Seminary. Donation: $2 For info call: 327-5752 ings, county fairs, and union picnics. Speaking before the United Food and Commercial Workers convention, Bentsen drawled that the theme of his campaign was "a good job and good wages."

The Democrats charge that the Republican administration has "treated the working men and women of America with disdain." But the Republicans are not to be undone. In their party platform, they profess that "the bosses of the Democratic Party have thrown in the towel and abandoned the American worker."

As Jimmy Durante said: "Everybody wants to get in on the act!" Each one of our "Four P's" wants to be the friend of the worker. But, given their record, the Republocrats will find it tough making friends.

Under the recent administrations of both Republicans and Democrats, poverty has increased. In 1973, 11 percent of the population lived under the poverty line. Now poverty is officially around 15 percent. Over 30 million people are listed as "POOR," another dreaded "P" word.

How much are they "worth?"

At this point, another kind of capital "P" comes to mind. Lest any X-rated words leap out at you, let me tell you what "P" really stands for.

Each one of our "Four P's" is a PLUTOCRAT. Rather than describing a Mickey Mouse character, a plutocrat is defined by the dictionary as "a member of a wealthy ruling class." Most of us, dear reader, will probably never have the opportunity to shake the hand of a plutocrat in our lives, even if we should wish to. We just don't move in the same circles.

Generally, what a plutocrat has that we seem to lack is money. Newsweek, in its Aug. 29 issue, lists the assets of the presidential hopefuls. Spendthrift Dukakis seems to be the poor man of the lot. He is San Francisco:

What are the conseguences?"

Speaker, Joseph Ryan, S.A candidate for Board of Supervisors Others to be announced Fri., Sept. 23, 8 p.m. 3435 Army St., Rm. 308 Donation: $3, $1.50 stud/unemp.

For info call 821-0458 only "worth" $464,365 but stands to inherit another $1 million after his mom's death.

It appears, furthermore, that George Bush—after packing the kids into the old Studebaker-went on to earn a bundle in the Texas oilfields. He is worth $2.6 million, according to Newsweek.

When fellow Texan Lloyd Bentsen entered politics, he stepped down from the corporate boards of Lockheed, Continental Oil, and several other banks and corporations. But he happily still retains his ranch, a farm, a $1 million townhouse, and investments for a total of at least $10 million in assets.

Meanwhile, J. Danforth Quayle hangs in with $50 million to his name-though Quayle admits he sometimes requires a CARE package from his family (with assets of from $600 million to over $1 billion, according to most accounts).

The ruling class Thus our "Four Ps" rank within the wealthiest 0.1 percent of the population. This small sector, not coincidentally, owns close to 30 percent of all privately owned wealth in this country.

Of course, none of the candidates, with the possible exception of Quayle, is quite in the category of the Mellons, Morgans, and Rockefellers-families that control fortunes equal to the assets of many countries. But as members of the same economic class, the candidates' interests are intimately linked with those of the top leaders of American capitalism.

A review of the hefty contributions that the capitalist class makes to the political campaigns of the Democratic Party may raise suspicions that the party's agenda does not exactly coincide with the theme of "a good job and good wages" for working people.

Lloyd Bentsen's contributors, for example, include airline tycoon and union-buster Frank Lorenzo, ultraright tabloid owner and fellow union-buster Rupert Murdoch, chicken magnate Frank Purdue (employer of thousands of underpaid Black women), and corporation buyout artist Henry Kravis-who is also a member of George Bush's national finance committee. (Left Business Observer, Aug. 2, 1988)

Greasy palms and sticky fingers The way that the capitalists and their political representatives grease each other's palms may be glimpsed in the case of Lloyd Bentsen and Temple-Inland, a Texas holding company As Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Bentsen helped engineer a "technical corrections" tax bill by which Temple-Inland will hold on to a $3-million tax break that had been disqualified in 1986. Bentsen will now help guide the act through the Senate.

Meanwhile, a subsidiary of TempleInland contributed $10,000 to Bentsen's Senate campaign. Members of the Temple family pitched in another $2875. But that's not all. In addition, Bentsen now admits that he owns as much as $50,000 worth of stock in Temple-Inland.

Of course, $10,000 or $50,000 is small potatoes on the table of the capitalist class. But every corporation that plunks $10,000 into a campaign chest does so with the assurance that the candidate, once elected, will vote in its favor—or in that of the capitalist class as a whole.

This kind of shady dealing goes on every day in the White House and the halls of Congress. And who pays for such politicsas-usual? (As if you couldn't guess.) Now I know the word that best describes the four candidates. It's PICKPOCKET.

ACTiON Closing date: Aug. 28, 1988 Editor: ALAN BENJAMIN Asst.Editors: MICHAEL SCHREIBER JOE RYAN Staff: Paul Colvin, May May Gong, David Kirschner, Hayden Perry, Kwame M.A. Somburu, Sylvia Weinstein.

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