January 15, 2014 --

The inauguration of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio prompted The New York Times to write, January 1, that the city has become a laboratory for "populist theories of government."

The Times article did not discuss those theories other than to suggest that the new mayor will increase taxes on the rich. LPR regards "tax-the-rich" programs as, wealth reform, not populism. The 1892 platform of the People's Party included a call for a "graduated income tax," with the aim of easing the tax burden on the country's domestic industries.

LPR has a hunch that it is not Mayor de Blasio's intent to increase taxes on wealthy people so as to lower taxes on the business community. The People's Party platform also included calls for nationalizing the railroads, and telegraph and telephone companies, a shorter workday with an 8 hour day for government work, fair elections by secret ballot, the initiiiative and referendum, and one term for president and vice president.

LPR wonders how Democrats, today -- calling for extension of unemployment benefits -- would regard the platform's second point , that might have been taken from an 1874 Grange declaration:
"Wealth belong to him who creates it, and every dollar taken from industry without an equivalent is robbery. 'If any will not work, neither shall he eat.' The interests of rural and civil labor are the same; their enemies are identical."

The Random House Webster's College Dictionary offers the following as its second definition of populism: "an egalitarian political philosophy or movement that promotes the interests of the common people." LPR prefers the first half of Federalist No. 57, attributed to James Madison, as a populist credo and believes that the Framers of the Constitution established populism as our founding legacy. No. 57 opens by referring to an elite that lacks "sympathy with the mass of the people, and seeks the "ambitious sacrifice of the many to the aggrandizement of the few." No. 57 next declares that the goal of a "political Constitution" should be the election of officials who will "pursue the common good of the society" and remain "virtuous."

No. 57 then points out that under the Constitution presented to the states for ratification, the voters for members of the House of Representatives are:

"Not the rich more than the poor; not the learned more than the ignorant, not the haughty heirs of distinguished names, more than the humble sons of obscure and unpropitious fortune. The electors are to be the great body of the people of the United States."

Who are to be the candidates for election? "Every citizen whose merit may recommend him to the esteem and confidence of his country. No qualification of wealth, of birth, of religious faith, or of civil professions, is permitted to fetter the judgment or disappoint the inclination of the people."

No. 57 goes on to warn that tyranny is inevitable if officials grow distant from the people, or is likely if the people tolerate a Congress that exempts itself from the laws it imposes on the people.

LPR regards the first half of Federalist Paper No. 57 to be a credo of pure populism, summarized by Lincoln, at the end of the Gettysburg Address, as "government of the people, by the people, for the people...." There is nothing in this statement of populism that demands wealth reform or defends demagoguery.

If New York City is now to be a political laboratory, what the City Hall test tubes are brewing might be called: "de Blasio-ism."