Robert Reich’s trenchant column about the Mad-as-Hellers on Salon.com today seemed to require some response for 99% of Americans – since we are, I suppose, populists of that stripe more or less.

So I exercised my right to freedom of speech to join Salon.com in the movement’s name (I hope no one will begrude the movement’s founder this liberty) and post the following letter to the editor announcing our existence. I invite other members to do the same.

Won’t you join us Robert?

I guess I must be a mad-as-heller – because I’m mad enough to try starting a new political movement, the 99% of Americans movement, at http://99americans.org/

The movement’s fundamental principle: No American’s income should exceed that of 99% of other Americans.

First on our agenda: Tax the rich – households in the top 1% of income, making over $400,000 a year, who currently siphon off over 20% of all income earned in America. Use that money to improve the lot of the 99% of don’t make so much, and don’t even really want to make that much – agreeing to take such a salary would just be unfair to everyone else who has to make do with so much less.

I think that can be a constructive movement, Robert – more so if thoughtful people like you and fellow readers of Salon.com join it. We need to develop an agenda based on this principle, and do so through the most democratic process we can muster – ideally, though hard-won consensus.

But I think you’re wrong about one thing, Robert. It’s only naive populists misled by hypocritical right-wing tools into positions at odds with their own self-interest who think “big government” is bad.

Big government is bad only when it taxes the 99% of us at the bottom to give handouts to big business, Wall Street, and the overpaid heads of large nonprofit organizations – and colludes with them to keep the rest of us down.

Big government is good when it claws back the top 1%’s windfall profits and ill-gotten gains to make life better for the rest of us – instead of letting them squander it on lifestyles of the rich and famous.

Perhaps by focusing on this single fundamental principle – restoring some moderate measure of equity to the income scale – a truly progressive populism can emerge from the anger 99% of us feel at big government, big business, and big finance today.

—99% of Americans