Posted on 11/21/2006 12:14:53 PM PST by presidio9
Everyone wants Virginia's Senator-elect Jim Webb to talk about Iraq, but the man The Weekly Standard recently called a "blood-and-soil conservative" wants to talk about something else: economic inequality.
The day after he accepted George Allen's concession, Webb barely let his NPR interviewer get a word in edgewise before jumping in to correct the misperception that his bid for office was motivated solely by opposition to the war. "I decided to run because of my concern ... with the economic breakdown that's happened in this country along class lines."
Class lines? Mr. Webb is a man who has railed against the "collectivist taming" of American culture by Marxists and has served in the Reagan administration. So why is he talking like Eugene Debs? "There are huge income inequalities ... that we haven't seen since the 1880s," he said on NPR. "And wages and salaries ... are at an all-time low as a percentage of wealth."
As idiosyncratic as he is, Webb is not an anomaly. He's part of a broader trend that has been obscured by the fast-congealing conventional wisdom that the election results were driven chiefly by the ongoing disaster in Iraq.
If you drill down a little into those results, it's clear that Iraq and Republican scandal can't account for all the Democratic victory. Consider the Democrats' success at the state level. The party picked up six governors, nine legislative chambers and more than 300 state legislative seats, none of which can plausibly be ascribed to discontent over Iraq.
As Webb suggests, the hidden story of the election was the appeal of economic populism in a country whose middle class is increasingly feeling the squeeze. Coast to coast, Democrats running for local and national office campaigned on raising the minimum wage, repealing welfare for Big Oil and opposing trade deals lacking protection for workers and the environment, and their message resonated with an electorate anxious about the economy.
Half of all voters rated the economy not good or poor, and a full 69 percent said their family's economic situation had either gotten worse or stayed the same since the last election. Democrats won both these groups by wide margins.
Ironically, in the weeks leading up to the midterm election, the Republican Party stole a page from the Democrats' playbook and attempted to shift the focus toward the economy and away from the manifestly unpopular Iraq war.
The thinking was that the years of relatively strong GDP growth coupled with relatively low unemployment would redound to the ruling party's benefit, perhaps canceling out the anger over Iraq and corruption.
The GOP's strategy both worked and backfired. Voters did focus on the economy, but they didn't reward Republicans. Exit polls showed that 39 percent of voters rated the economy as "extremely important" (roughly the same percentage as those who said the same about Iraq and corruption), but Democrats won those voters by 20 points. This shouldn't be surprising. Despite relatively strong growth, manageable inflation, high corporate profits and a bullish stock market, real wages continue to stagnate, productivity gains continue to be captured by the wealthiest 1 percent, income inequality has continued to get worse and, as Jacob Hacker argues persuasively in "The Great Risk Shift," America's middle class finds itself living with far more risk and income volatility than it did a generation ago.
None of these trends are new, but over the past six years the problems have grown so noticeable that even the neoliberal economists who crafted the much-celebrated Clinton economic agenda have begun to focus on correcting the perversely inequitable distribution of the fruits of economic success.
After years of reading the likes of David Sirota and Thomas Frank urging Democrats to embrace their inner populists, Dems finally started getting the message: Aside from opposition to the war, the Democrats focused on attacking subsidies to Big Oil, blasting the corruption endemic to a system in which corporate special interests call the shots and advocating for "fair trade" over the so-called "free trade" agreements that benefit capital over labor.
Even the Democratic Leadership Council, the most outspoken opponent of economic populism, has begun to come around. In 1995, Roll Call reported that "DLC officials think that, if Clinton calls for a minimum-wage increase in the State of the Union ... it could wreak the same political damage as his 1993 vow to veto any healthcare bill that did not provide universal coverage." By this election, the DLC was firmly behind an increase in the minimum wage.
In fact, the minimum wage just might have been Tuesday night's most underreported story. Not only has the Democratic Congress pledged to raise the minimum wage within the first 100 hours but in the six states that featured ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage above the national — Ohio, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Arizona and Colorado — every one passed. In Montana it took 73 percent of the vote, and in Missouri 76 percent.
Consider that the much-publicized stem-cell-research initiative passed in Missouri by only a few percentage points. That means hundreds of thousands pulled the lever for an increased minimum wage and against funding for stem-cell research.
"One of the interesting facts about this campaign is it has been able to bring together people across many political lines," the Rev. Paul Sherry, national organizer for the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign, told me. "I do a lot of speaking around the country, and when I say that a person working at $5.15 an hour full time makes $10,710 a year, you can see people's eyes light up as they begin to think of their own circumstances."
(Not only did the minimum-wage initiatives run a clean sweep but their conservative counterparts fared poorly. Three states — Maine, Nebraska and Oregon — featured ballot referendums modeled on the Grover Norquist-backed Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which severely limits the growth in state government taxing and spending levels. All of them lost.)
At the national level, cable pundits almost immediately focused on a handful of winning Democrats with conservative stances on social issues — Jon Tester's A rating from the NRA, Bob Casey's opposition to choice and, obsessively, former NFL quarterback Heath Shuler, who defeated incumbent Charles Taylor in North Carolina's 11th District while opposing abortion, gay rights and a guest-worker program for immigrants.
But what the pundits didn't mention was the role in Shuler's victory of the district's opposition to "free trade" deals. The area's textile industry has been gutted by NAFTA, so when it came time to vote on CAFTA, Taylor was caught between his district, which wanted him to vote no, and the GOP House leadership, which wanted him to vote yes. So he skipped the vote altogether and CAFTA passed by one vote.
During the campaign, Shuler hammered Taylor for "selling out American families," and he wasn't alone in using trade as a wedge issue. A post-election analysis by Public Citizen found that campaigns cut 25 ads attacking free-trade deals, and that trade played a significant role in more than a dozen House races won by Democrats. In the entire election, Public Citizen noted, "no incumbent fair trader was beaten by a 'free trader.' "
"Democrats have coalesced in favor of trade policy reform over the past decade as President Bill Clinton's NAFTA, WTO and China trade deals not only failed to deliver the promised benefits but caused real damage," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch division.
To get a sense of just how far the consensus on trade in the Democratic Party has come, consider that Shuler was recruited to run for office by none other than Rahm Emanuel, the man charged with ramming NAFTA through a skeptical Democratic Congress in 1993.
Indeed, back when Emanuel was the NAFTA enforcer, he met some of his stiffest resistance from a young freshman Congressman from Ohio named Sherrod Brown, whose 12-point victory over incumbent Senator Mike DeWine was one of election night's highlights.
In a column a few weeks before the election, David Brooks called Brown's Senate contest "the most important political race in the country," because as a "full-bore economic populist" Brown represented the most "vibrant strain" of the Democratic Party.
Brown is an across-the-board progressive: a supporter of gay rights, abortion rights and civil rights who voted against the Iraq war and the Patriot Act (though, disappointingly, for the Military Commissions Act during the campaign). In 2005 National Journal ranked him as more liberal than 86 percent of House members. But he managed to avoid being sliced apart by wedge issues or tarred and feathered as an out-of-touch liberal by focusing with Terminator-like persistence on a simple economic populist message: "fighting for the middle class," as his campaign manager John Ryan put it to me.
Ryan says that even when DeWine attempted to change the topic or attack Brown, the campaign spent 50 percent of its airtime in TV ads responding to the charge "and 50 percent of Sherrod looking onscreen with a working-class message and a middle-class message."
In some ways, Ohio's a special case, having been particularly hard hit by globalization and with 83 percent of voters saying the economy was extremely or very important. The race came down to the have-nots outnumbering the haves: 37 percent of voters rated the economy excellent or good, and DeWine won their vote by 44 points. But 62 percent rated the economy not good or poor, and Brown won those voters by almost 50 points.
I asked Ryan if, given Ohio's particularities, he thought Brown's message would be applicable in other parts of the country.
"Take Columbus," Ryan said. "Columbus is so much like the rest of the country, demographically, that companies from all over the country conduct focus groups there. There's not a lot of factories, and it might be the one part of the state that might have gained some jobs with NAFTA. We went down to Columbus and we tested [Brown's trade message] to see if it would work. The difference was that in Dayton people would say, I lost two jobs because of NAFTA, and in Columbus people said, I know someone who lost a job. It was one half-step away, but people got it — people understood that the government was not on our side."
In addition, Ryan pointed to Brown's success in southern Ohio, which is by far the most conservative part of the state. In three southern counties, Brown's support exceeded the number of registered Democrats by at least 20,000 votes.
Brown's successful populism and that of other Democrats hasn't gone unnoticed. Commentators have raised the specter of the rise of a "Lou Dobbs"-like wing of the party whose economic arguments are inextricably linked to a racialized nationalism, the kind of populism that's equally comfortable bashing corporations that outsource jobs and "illegal aliens" who take away Americans' jobs here at home, and whose opposition to the Iraq war, like Pat Buchanan's, is rooted in an America-first isolationism.
To be sure, economic populism has a dark side. It's a fine line between railing against corporate-written trade deals because they hurt workers the world over, and scapegoating the brown-skinned other who is stealing our jobs.
Democrats haven't always walked this line carefully: There was more than a whiff of demagoguery in John Kerry's nomination acceptance speech about "closing firehouses in America" while opening them in Baghdad. (Why shouldn't Iraqis have firehouses?)
That subtext ran through many Democrats' ads in this past cycle, as they rushed to declare their opposition to "amnesty," a word as racially loaded today as "quotas" was in the 1980s. Heath Shuler's ads attacking his opponent for "selling out our families" also ridiculed him for voting to set up a scholarship for Russian students (the horror!), while pledging that he would "put American families first." Even Sherrod Brown talked in television ads about the need for "tighter borders."
It's the left's perennial dilemma: Populism is a fundamentally majoritarian mode of politics — the have-nots versus the haves, the many versus the few — but a central part of the left's most noble tradition is protecting the rights and interests of minorities.
Yet if there's going to be a center-left majority in this country, its electoral strength is going to rest on a coalition bound by a shared interest in economic justice. The Democrats face several obstacles to making that coalition stick.
First, the infusion of corporate cash that's about to flow into the now-majority party will provide a disincentive to go after corporate power in ways that voters clearly want. In the past, when caught between the interests of their donors and of their constituents, too often Democrats have advocated for the former: Just look at the vote on the bankruptcy bill.
Second, the Democrats' continued growth rests on a burgeoning Latino population, as well as on young people, who are more socially liberal than the population at large. So whose interests are going to get top priority?
Though difficult, it's not an impossible situation to navigate. With the power to control the agenda, Democrats can leverage the electoral strength of economic populism to protect minority interests by making sure that socially conservative members never get the chance to cast a vote in support of things like a marriage amendment or a "partial birth" abortion ban.
But that strategy will work only if the Democrats can enforce real party discipline and prevent socially conservative Dems from defecting on key issues such as stem-cell funding, choice, abstinence education and immigration.
In the short term, Nancy Pelosi's strategy seems to focus on the economic issues with the broadest range of support. Her agenda for the first 100 hours of her term as Speaker of the House is a package of mainstream, popular, progressive bills that would benefit a variety of the Democrats' constituencies: a raise in the minimum wage, which would greatly benefit blacks, Latinos and single women; a cut in interest rates for student loans, which would benefit young voters; and bulk negotiation of Medicare prescription drugs, which would benefit the elderly.
"The Republicans are here to concentrate the wealth of our country in the top 1 percent, and all the power that comes with that is at the expense of the middle class and those striving to be in the middle class — and that's just plain wrong," Pelosi said in a conference call the day after the election. "That's why we need to get a progressive economic agenda out there. As long as I get my caucus organized around that, that's more important to me than having a checklist."
Flat tax is the best option because its fair and it can cut administration costs.
Can't say they aren't trying...
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=5491
'A fairer tax system would focus on total wealth as well as income. An important study made in 1997 by Professor Edward N. Wolff of New York University, called "Top Heavy," points out that 11 European countries (including Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland) have a combination wealth-and-income tax. Taxpayers must declare not only their income each year, but their total wealth, which is then taxed at comparatively low levels--at 1 percent to 3 percent of total assets.
If the same system were installed in the United States at the levels prevalent in Europe, but applied only to the top 1 percent of households, the federal government could easily increase its revenues by over $100 billion to $300 billion per year (1 percent to 3 percent of $9.8 trillion). There would be no need for an estate tax since total wealth is being taxed on a continuous basis.
The federal Constitution prohibits a direct tax on individuals. Article I, Section 9 reads: "No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the Census." It took the 13th Amendment to authorize a direct income tax. Seemingly, therefore, Congress cannot directly tax individuals based on their wealth. (The estate tax was upheld by the courts on the grounds that the government was not taxing a person's wealth as such but focusing on a specific event, namely the death of the individual, as the basis for the tax.)
However, we could, consistent with the Constitution, tax gains in the value of property before it is sold. For example, we could take 1990 as a benchmark year and require persons with a net worth over $3.3 million in 2000 to pay income taxes on their increase in wealth between 1990 and the taxable year at issue. If a person owns a private business or stocks or bonds worth $1 million in 1990 but worth $30 million in 2000, he or she has realized an increase in wealth of $29 million. He or she could be required to pay income taxes on that increase whether or not the increase has been converted into cash through sale of the property. People in the market whose stock increases by $1 million in a year are not required to pay taxes on that gain unless and until they sell the stock. But the tax code already requires that certain kinds of securities be "marked to market" and taxed even if not sold. We could extend this theory and treat "paper gains" as real gains, at least with respect to the very rich, and tax them accordingly.
There may well be some political capital in taxing the top 1 percent based on their wealth. If there were a levy of "1 percent on the top 1 percent," such a tax would generate large revenues, reduce the national debt, shore up Social Security and Medicare, allow for significant tax decreases for the middle class, and eliminate the need for an estate tax. Congress would be hard pressed to reject a tax plan that affects only the people on the very top, who have been the chief beneficiaries of recent tax policies and the current boom. If any Americans can afford to pay taxes, they can. Let the Republicans say otherwise. ¤
*snicker*
Free Traders are always fond of saying "Those manufacturing jobs are gone forever, they're not coming back."
They're being repaid for their arrogance.
FYI, I write an internationally-syndicated radio service that requires me to read news from around the world for up to 12 hours a day. I'm also a third-generation rock-ribbed Republican whose relatives have actually worked in the party at high levels and a member of Free Republic since the '90s, so I'm hardly a liberal troll.
And to the snotty guy who asked "what planet I live on," I live on the Planet Texas, which is run by Republicans, in the galaxy USA, also until recently run by Republicans, and where my income has dropped, my electric bill doubled in one month, my gas bill nearly doubled, my credit card payments doubled, my mortgage payment rose from $1080 to $1530 in four years, my property taxes are outrageous, and my gasoline cost nearly $3 a gallon for much of the past year, largely because of oil futures speculators that the White House did nothing to discourage. If you live on a planet where those conditions do not prevail, then please send me a starmap so I can move there.
To all the people on this thread arguing that the economy is great for working people and those us who disagree are are just too stupid or brainwashed to realize it, I sincerely apologize. You're right. I must be deluded. That's why the Republicans just got reelected in a huge landslide.
Oh, wait...
I would oppose a wealth tax on the top 1%.
That's unfair.
A 1% tax on EVERYBODY'S wealth is fair, and it would completely replace all other forms of taxation.
If we can't do that, then we should tax all accretions to wealth, from whatever source derived. In other words, unrealized capital gains should be taxed as income, and so should inheritances and large gifts.
Of course, in such case the overll income tax rates should be dropped, and the estate tax scrapped completely (because the estate would be taxed as income to the recipient).
But none of these things is going to happen. The Federal Tax Code is the most lobbied-over piece of law in the Federal register. Individual workers have the least lobbying power, and so they are the group that does NOT get to deduct their own costs of human capital (education costs, for instance, or housing, food, etc.). They also get hit with the no-deductions flat tax (Social Security and Medicare). But we've been around this mulberry bush before, and I don't expect another trip will be very edifying.
I don't see how you can blame the republicans for most of that. Who's fault it is you that didn't take out a fixed rate mortgage? Who's fault is it that you don't pay your credit cards off on time. I don't see how you can blame republicans for rising property taxes. It is flippers and idiot neighbors that don't fight city hall to keep taxes down, etc..
The industrial base is a matter of national security.
Yes, it IS more expensive to make steel in the US, and batteries and mechanical components - you name it - than it is to make it overseas. But if you DON'T make it in the US, then you are dependent on foreigners for your national defense. Not just oil - everybody frets about oil dependency, and they're RIGHT too - but for everything else.
There are folks positively gleeful to see jobs exported.. They are of two flavors.
One flavor is MINE. Somebody up thread mentioned Kelo, and my very cynical approval of the decision back when it came out. Why would I support a thing like that? Because it is very, very good for high finance and big businesses, and that is where MY bread is buttered. So, you see, if some company that manufactures widgets out in Akron is in the financial markets, well, that's a potential source of income for ME. What do I want? I want to MAXIMIZE profits, for me and the folks I work for. And dealing with OSHA and unions and Workmen's Comp and insurance and lawsuits, all of the snares to keep workers protected from having the hell exploited out of them - all of this cuts into MY bottom line. So, of course I want to have Chinese slaves, or Indonesian workers, whatever age - 10 years old, what the hell do I care? I don't see them - do the job. Stick the plant over there - deduct the full cost of it from American taxes as a cost of capital, ship the jobs out, and get rid of those expensive Americans. If the Indonesians want more? Screw 'em. Let 'em eat cake. Move the factory to Honduras and deduct the cost of THAT move from my federal taxes again. Etc. Let the US worker subsidize my capital moves; after all, we employ him, so he should just be happy he's got a damned job at all still and shut up, pay his taxes. Me? Well, dividends aren't taxed anymore, you know. And options? Gosh, the capital gains in all that stock is taxed at a real low rate too. American workers pay a lot more taxes on their wages than capital class pay on their dividends and stock appreciation (oh, and executed stock options? They're really compensation, but, see, they're not called "wages", and therefore there's no social security, no medicare, no NOTHIN' on them.) Kelo was great, from a business perspective, because it allowed valuable land to be freed up from little people who might stand in the way of big corporations who have better, more profitable things to do with that land. And those little people? They should just shut up and be happy that they have a JOB, because the big corporation that tossed them makes that possible.
The other type who like to see the jobs go aren't making money. They just hate unions and are fools.
Let me try to simplify this for all of you: You can sit around and argue the arcane points of economics all day long, but before you can do anything about it, you HAVE TO GET ELECTED!!!!!!!!!! And declaring war on the working classes and calling them a bunch of stupid, irresponsible whiners when they complain that they can't afford to keep a roof over their heads anymore is NOT the key to accomplish that. It's not a lie, a commie plot, or state secret. As I mentioned, my brother worked in the RNC and had been sending them dire warnings of what was coming in emails cc'ed to me for two years, and they just kept having a beach party while the shadow of the tsunami was growing across their beach blankets. But by all means, continue telling the voters that they are too stupid to appreciate all the great things we were doing for them. I'm sure that'll sweep us back into power in '08.
I guess I am out of touch. I rent a shoebox about a mile from work. Our electricity bills are suppose to go up 40% in Jan, but it really won't effect me that much. If I had a 3000 square foot home, I'd be howlin too..
Yes, you are delusional.
Self-delusional.
And all you can do is cite this antedoctal evidence of a lousy economy, which in reality aint worth the effort it took for you to write it.
Because statistics released by the CBO (Congressional Budget Office), the Labor Dept., the Housing Dept, and almost every other department clearly shows rising wages, a strong economy, the best labor market in the world, low CPI (consumer price index), record high home ownership, even among African Americans and other so-called minorities, record high stock/equity ownership, etc etc.
Oh, but wait. They all must be wrong because this guy in Texas cant seem to get his economic act together.
Please, cut me a break.
There is also rising bankruptcies.
Gee, now lets think.... Why would that be???
Maybe because the MORE people start companies, the more bankruptcies will occur.
But at the same time, the MORE SUCCESSFUL COMPANIES will occur.
In fact, your assertion is one of those phony mis-direction plays always used by disgruntled nare-do-wells.
The more people that BUY HOUSES, the MORE FORECLOSURES will occur, just as there will be more successful ownerships.
Can you understand this logic??
For example, lets say that last year, 100 people bought homes .... and 20-percent faced forclosure. (that means 20 people had foreclosure, right).
THIS year, 300 people bought homes but only 10-percent faced foreclosure. (THAT MEANS 30 people faced foreclosure).
Well, people like yourself go around screaming "Foreclosures are UP, foreclosures are UP, all because there were 30 foreclosures THIS year and only 20 foreclosures last year!
Well, guess what? LAST year, 80 people were successful homeowners.
But THIS YEAR 270 people are successful homeowners!!!!
Kinda ruins your whole "rising foreclosure" argument, dont it?
But the GOP candidates in all of the districts in play in Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania and the industrial parts of Connecticut got creamed. The Democrats ran the board.
Folks in the Midwest are hurting.
They're not making it up.
It's true.
And it's up to the President and Congress to do something about it, because it's their policies that are making them hurt.
The President and Congress, instead, have your attitude: "Everything's great!"
But it's not.
The Midwest is the most closely divided region in America.
Everywhere else votes practically as a block: the Northeast, the South, the Mountain states, the West Coast, but in the Midwest, it's mixed bag of blue and red states, and a bunch of elections that go one way or the other by close margins.
The Midwest is where the Presidential election will be decided again. Last time, the election was decided in Ohio. Replay 2004, but flip Ohio, and the Democrat wins.
The best ticket the Democrats could run in order to win the Presidency hands down would be Evan Bayh and John Breaux. Bayh would carry Indiana.
Breaux would carry Louisiana.
And that would be all she wrote.
Of course, they'll probably run Hillary, but the Republicans have to run somebody against her.
Who?
McCain, perhaps?
Probably, even.
Anyway, if you don't like Democrat policies, then you've got to think of something to get the Midwest. I've already told you what I think, and so has the fellow you're mocking. James Webb hit the ball out of the park on identifying the problem and being completely rational in doing so.
He used to be a Republican too, but the GOP LOST HIM because of the economic issue.
They lost Webb, and now they're losing the Midwest too.
And it ain't going to get any better unless they change course.
I would like us to change course.
You want to throw us off the bus.
If my view prevails, we have a chance.
If yours does, well, we all go down together I guess.
Pity.
Me too.
Because the Democrats are made up of these radical groups, like the homosexual bunghole lobby and the "save the minnow" lobby and/or the 'protect the illegal immigrant' lobby or the "slave reparation" lobby -- which always expects or DEMANDS results.
And Democraps, being the phonies that they are, only pay lip service to these issues.
They NEVER really do anything.
And THAT means that a certain percentage of the Dem base will quickly become dissillusioned, I believe, and refuse to go to the polls in '08.
Oh yes, a good percentage of wacky Dems are True Believers, willing to back the lib-weenies regardless of the results. (African Americans for example).
But this '06 election was unusual in that many people enthusiastically voted straight Democrat --- mainly because it had been so long since Dems were in control, and thus their supporters forgot just how inept and impotent they really are.
The GOP has got to STOP being such 'gentlemen wimps' and really begin sticking it to this lib caucus.
After all, the Dems have been so barbaric and anti-patriotic these past three years that I now will encourage, and will DEMAND, that the Republicans return similar fire -- just to show these loser libs what it's like to play in a world of political hell.
Yes, but see, the GOP put the old leadership back on top.
There was George Bush out there with a blue tie, making a point to Nancy Pelosi.
What gives you reason to believe that the Republicans are going to fight?
Fight for WHAT? You've got James Baker up there saying we can't win in Iraq without cosying up to Iran and Syria.
Bush will sign amnesty...so long as you don't call it that.
What is the issue on which the same Republicans who wouldn't fight a month ago are going to fight so hard?
>>we have decided to skew the tax code by privileging wealth over work
Managing one's investments isn't work? It seems like work to me. The idea that "wealth" and "work" are oppositional is naive, and is also anti-capitalist. "Unearned income" is simply an American euphemism for European socialist ranting against the "rentier class".
A direct wealth tax would be impossible to administer. People would simply convert their assets into nonproductive assets, such as gold and silver bullion, that are untraceable. People would find a way to increase wealth surreptitiously.
Because of this, many classical liberal economists favor a retail sales tax (and ending the income tax), which is equivalent to a one-time tax on all wealth, and which would preference savings and investment over consumption. It could be collected at point-of-sale- much less painful than the tyrannical system that would be needed to assess "wealth" and collect tax on it.
This is the exact bias (production preferenced over consumption) that should exist in a capitalist economy.
What do you think the White House should have done to discourage "oil futures speculators"?
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