Excellent "how we got here" history and, hopefully, hints for "what not to do" in response

Guest op-ed by sociology professor Isaac Martin @ NYTimes.com, Dec. 18

[....] The original American populists were the men and women of the Populist Party who demanded open government and income taxes on the rich; this tax bill is exactly the sort of thing that made them howl in outrage.

But the Republican tax strategy has roots in the American populist tradition, too. That strategy is to disregard experts and rile up the base with tax policy arguments that would not survive professional scrutiny.

Populists did this on behalf of the poor. But the man who first put this strategy to work for rich people was Andrew Mellon, the millionaire who became secretary of the Treasury after World War I. Poor veterans of the war were clamoring for expensive public benefits. Rich men wanted their income taxes rolled back.

Mellon squared the circle by inventing a supply-side argument [....] To sell his tax plan, Mellon copied the rhetoric and tactics of the original populist movement. He took the supply-side argument to the people with a mass-market book called “Taxation: The People’s Business.” The subtitle ripped off a Populist slogan [....]