Arthur Alpert Pic2The Independent’s daily coverage of the Legislature’s struggles to balance the budget reminds me that the world is vertical.

In my first comment for the Independent back on June 13, 2008, I noted we routinely locate political views along an imaginary, horizontal bar. This provides “relative position, but erases content,” emptying the word conservative, for example, of meaning. That was then.

My point today is that horizontal thinking obscures hierarchy, the way we distribute power. This delights those atop the ladder, whose power persists so long as we on the lower rungs don’t look up. Usually, we’re too busy squabbling among ourselves.

That’s the context for parsing Matthew Reichbach’s report here Oct. 19 that “Republican gubernatorial candidate Allen Weh praised lawmakers on Monday for taking tax increases off the table during the special session.”

“‘Many New Mexico lawmakers are doing the right thing by looking first at budget cuts instead of opting to put the government’s hand even deeper into the pockets of New Mexico taxpayers,’” Weh said.

Notice how Weh refers to “New Mexico taxpayers.” This is a technique folks at the apex employ to hide the ladder, to pretend they worry about us and to intimate that we’re all – rich taxpayers, middle and poor – in the same boat!

(Yes, I know that “rich taxpayer” often is oxymoronic. With Swiss banking giant UBS naming names, thousands of Americans have admitted they cheated their fellow citizens and the nation. Patriotism, like taxes, is for the little people.)

Back in Santa Fe, a few Democrats (not most) are resisting efforts to balance Santa Fe’s books on the backs of those who need government services, including school children.

Sen. Dede Feldman, the dynamite North Valley Democrat, said in Albuquerque Journal Op Ed published Oct. 18 that we can trim spending a bit more but should raise new revenue, too. “Cutting state spending, which is integral to the state’s economy, is the worst thing to do during a recession.”

Herbert Hoover and New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation would not agree.

As part of the balancing act, Feldman advocates rolling back “the tax cuts given to the wealthiest New Mexicans or instituting a personal income surtax of three percent on the highest income earners.” She would erase certain targeted tax breaks and require out-of-state corporations to pay “their fair share.” Democrats Gerald Ortiz y Pino, Eric Griego and Cisco McSorley of Albuquerque, and Peter Wirth of Santa Fe generally agree.

They’re right, but I would cut some state jobs, too – at the top. The savings may be small, but I am offended that Santa Fe deploys more public relations professionals than Big PhRMA. (Forgive the hyperbole.) The legislators should empty corporate suites at the University of New Mexico, too. Where’s Billy Sparks, anyway?

Neither will happen, of course. As Abu Ghraib so brilliantly demonstrated, hierarchy protects the elite guilty by sacrificing bottom-dwellers.

The power ladder is so profound that, with the right glasses, you can detect it everywhere. Business, the military, doctors, lawyers, educators and such aren’t unitary; they’re all hierarchies in which those high up and low down have different interests.

Thus, under duress, the Bush and Obama administrations rescued big corporations that broke the economy but not the unemployed. Where are the jobs programs?

Hierarchy, in fact, structures our economic system – socialism for the rich and corporate, free enterprise for everybody else.

And despite rampant criminality by the financial elite, income inequality worsens. The gap between the wealthiest Americans and the rest is widening, New York Times conservative Ross Douthat reported Oct. 4.

And that is the way it will be, until we recognize that our world is vertical and grapple with it.