Bill Moyers, Doubleday

 Then I draw a line to the statistics that show real wages
lagging behind prices, the compensation of corporate barons soaring to heights
unequaled anywhere among industrialized democracies, the relentless
cheeseparing of federal funds devoted to public schools, to retraining for
workers whose jobs have been exported, and to programs of food assistance and
health care for poor children, all of which snatch away the ladder by which
Americans with scant means but willing hands and hearts could work and save
their way upward to middle-class independence. And I connect those numbers to
our triumphant reactionaries' campaigns against labor unions and higher minimum
wages, and to their success in reframing the tax codes so as to strip them of
their progressive character, laying the burdens of Atlas on a shrinking middle
class awash in credit card debt as wage earners struggle to keep up with rising
costs for health care, for college tuitions, for affordable housing -- while
huge inheritances go untouched, tax shelters abroad are legalized, rates on
capital gains are slashed, and the rich get richer and with each increase in
their wealth are able to buy themselves more influence over those who make and
those who carry out the laws.