Sir;...I get the feeling that Mr. Brooks was a coddled child who would stomp his feet and pout till he got is way... But; he is not right, and it is good of you to point that fact out...Every society that was not in decline has manged to support all its members without throwing people overboard.. We throw a lot of people over board in one way or another...We all know it is good for profits and overhead to lay off workers, and use machines to produce goods... Does anyone consider what becomes of the society that does that on a vast scale???Where is your economy when everyone is living on the corn dole???Twenty percent of our economy involves actual production of goods, and eighty percent is service related...Does anyone know how far such an economy could fall- filled with so much emptyness???Mr. Brooks may be correct, that we are not a land rife with class antagonisms... That does not mean that class warfare does not go on apace... Every time the rich cut themselves a sweetheart deal on taxes it is class warfare...When the Supreme Court ruled against every effective tool of organized labor, there was class warfare...Pollution is class warfare... Junk consumer goods are class warfare... Health insurance is class warfare... There are a lot of methods made to divide working people... There are a lot of methods to chain working people to debt, and make them slaves as the price of progress, property, or education... Does Mr. Brooks think the rich have created the wealth they want to keep unchallenged???If so, let them depart this land poor to some devil's island where they can create all the wealth they need, and a living paradise on earth... They cannot... The rich man's gain is the poor man's loss; and we are not the problem, and our support is not the problem; but the fact that we have too few working at productive employment to support the rich in the manor to which they have become accustomed...They took too much... They have made an issue of our insecurity and our poverty... Again, this society, as every society before -must support all its members... If that means the rich being a little more poor, then fine; because the poor cannot be made any more poor without being made dead...We like our rich people... We have always admired them, and identified with them, and dreamed of being them... But we cannot be them, and we cannot afford their support...They have run capitalism to its ultimate conclusion, and now the fun will begin... But Mr. Brooks should not stomp and pout... The people are the law no matter how much they choose to not act the part... When action is forced upon them it will be different here, to put it mildly...The people are the law...Thanks...Sweeney

Well said Jim and Mr. Sweeney. Private for profit "Health insurance is class warfare" as we do it. Let us not however mistake what Obama has in mind for us for anything other than what it is. It appears that he proposes nothing but a massive subsidy to the predatory, benefit denying, inefficient, resource sucking, self enriching private insurance scavengers. Think of a stinking vulture with its' featherless head dripping with offal. HR 676 single payer is the only sane and compassionate plan with the possibility of real efficiency that we have and the powers that be have dismissed it out of hand.
They'd rather see another version of the awful Medicare prescription give away to big Pharma this time taking care of another of their elite friends.

Agree wholeheartedly! Something Mr. Brooks and his ilk seem to have missed is the story of the golden goose. "The rest of us" are that goose. To mix metaphors (ouch!), you can't get blood from a dead goose.

Since the 1980's, class war has been central to public policy and social changes in the US. Even our otherwise-progressive community is oblivious to the impact of welfare "reform", not only on individuals in poverty, but on our entire legal and economic system. Where are the editorials condemning those policies that actually eliminate a number of fundamental legal rights and protections solely on the basis of one's economic status? Where is the ACLU? Who could have imagined just 30 years ago that we would see a day when people were prohibited by law from feeding the homeless? And where are all the opinion pieces questioning the morality of arresting people for not being able to afford a room? Nowhere, because we are, indeed, in the midst of a class war.

Conservatives do not see a class struggle simply because they only acknowledge one class, the weathy, their friends. So long as their class is well off all is well with the world. Need health care? go buy a doctor.

If every citizen earning $15 an hour disappeared from this earth, watch the empires crumble.
When many companies do well, the management gets bonuses, the investors get dividends and the workers get paid at the same flat wage that buys less and less.
People are not commodities.
If a person does well at providing a service then they should get a decent wage.
On December 3, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln told Congress that, "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

What do you expect from a guy who could so piously (and sadly) proclaim the invasion of Iraq to be a "noble cause", and who now seems to feel absolutely no obligation to acknowledge what an utter failure his contribution to that debate was? He may be sad, but he sure has no conscience.

Wall Sreat has forgotten the Kentucky miners wars in the 1930s against the minowners and the government,the food riots in Kansas and Okalhoma during the depression years and Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath. Wake up America , how much do you think Americans will stand for.