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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe GOP And The Final Economic Solution - Extinction Of The Middle Class
My posts probably seem very extreme to some posters here. I realize I say some very harsh things in some very harsh ways.
I hold nothing more contemptible on the planet right now than Republicans and the GOP. Big business is next on my list. Were I able to show everyone what I see through the lens that I see, they would stunned, shocked and horrified.
It is not that I know everything. It is that I have studied events for the last 35 years while at DOL with such intensity that I know what is in store for the American worker long term unless were dramatically change direction of our labor and employment policy as dictated by big business (the multinational corporations) and the GOP. The GOP has just economically raped and raped and raped and their greed is still insatiable. The GOP has politically and economically raped our soldiers, it has raped the women, it has raped the children, the elderly, the poor and anyone else who does not bend down to its ideology. THEY ARE A TOTALITARIAN PARTY AND HAVE OPENLY SAID SO. Just ask Karl Rove.
Election fraud is natural to them. Voter suppression and intimidation is natural to them. Lying is natural to them. Sadism is natural to them. Hate is natural to them. Racism is natural to them. Bigotry is natural to them. Evil itself is natural to them.
If the electorate were truly informed and of clear mind and understood things as they really are even most Republicans would abandon that party. What the GOP is up to is no good for decent human beings, little furry things nor the planet itself. The GOP really should be extinct as a political party. If you add up everything they want imagine how devastating it would be. Instead of delivering us from evil the GOP WILL DELIVER US TO EVIL.
When Reagan trashed the social contract with workers he betrayed all the future generations of workers in America. He sold out to the communist Chinese our entire economy and started the process of globalization. The most likely fatal blow was the air traffic controllers strikers being fired and replaced. His decision signaled the first shot directly into the heart of the middle class. Reagan was the devil in the three piece suit. And American has been fooled all along.
I spent 24 years at the Department Of Labor watching the employment contract between worker and employer being dismantled. I have heard enough stories and suffering in those 24 years to last 10 lifetimes. Reagan and the GOP precipitated a "Twin Tower" event in this country economically in 1980. We saw the final result in 2008. The economy under the GOP was never really very good. It just looked that way. They want to finish the job permanently if they win in 2012. They are earnestly want to smash what little is left.
The GOP's psychopathic thirst for power and domineering is insatiable and unquenchable. They will stop at NOTHING to achieve their goal. And they will completely destroy this country if that is what it takes for them to gain political, economic and cultural supremacy.
Remember when a Republican of any stripe or any level opens his or her mouth they lie.
Old and In the Way
(37,540 posts)We all have our perspectives on the state of politics....I've been voting since 72 and I know this is not the same Party of the 60's and 70's. Back then, we did progressive things by putting coalitions of Democrats and Republicans together. There were liberals and moderates to balance out the loony conservatives in both Parties. Today, the Party is rigidly monolythic in its thinking. No compromise, just ideology. The RW has made "liberal" to be an evil word...now they are trying to do that with the moderates. They act and vote much like the Communist Party. The only thing the Communists have that the Republicans don't is a constitutional franchise to be the only acceptable Party. The republicans are morally bankrupt and they have no solutions to fix things. All they care about is controlling the power. That's all folks!
provis99
(13,062 posts)the rise of the middle class was what destroyed feudalism in the first place; get rid of the middle class, and you get a pretty easy return to feudalism, with its capitalist barons, indentured serfs, and decaying society. Imagine the antebellum South (though admittedly without chattel slavery, so far) spread to every state in the union, and you will get a sense of what Republicans dream about.
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)LiberalEsto
(22,845 posts)Great post. Thank you.
Do you have thoughts on what should be done to restore the middle class?
TheMastersNemesis
(10,602 posts)In order to restore the middle class we have to have collective bargaining and unions. We have to have a stronger Fair Labor Standards Act. And we need to end outsourcing and punish employers for doing so. We have to restrict independent contract labor practices. And we have to put wage equalization tariffs on foreign goods where wages are too low compared to ours. And we have to get out of NAFTA and GATT if fair trade practices aren't established.
The public must demand a Second Economic Bill Of Rights as originally brought up by Teddy Roosevelt in 1912 and refined and proposed by FDR in January 1944. You can find these speeches under Teddy Roosevelt Industrial And Social Justice or FDR Second Bill Of Rights on youtube. These are the minimum demands that must be met to have a healthy middle class. Some will call that socialism. Too bad tough "S".
A worker has an absolute RIGHT to a fair share of the wealth they create for business through decent wages and benefits. Make the Second Economic Bill Of Rights a mantra and throw them into the face of the GOP and conservatives and force them to accept or denounce them.
LiberalEsto
(22,845 posts)and I agree.
Unfortunately it may be that the only way to get these put into practice is to give the powers-that-be a choice -- between outright communism or the economic rights that you recommend.
bvar22
(39,909 posts)In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for allregardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
*The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
*The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
*The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
*The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
*The right of every family to a decent home;
*The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
*The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
*The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
America's own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for all our citizens." ---FDR
God, I miss THAT Democratic Party.
---bvar22
A Mainstream Center FDR/LBJ DEMOCRAT,
now an unwelcome denizen of the Fringe Left Wing.
I haven't changed.
You will know them by their WORKS,
not by their excuses.
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LiberalEsto
(22,845 posts)TheMastersNemesis
(10,602 posts)Thanks for posting the text of the speech. We need to repeat that speech as a thread until people get it. And they start yelling that mantra at every politician endlessly. Wave it at the GOP and business. Pass it out on the streets. Make it the mantra of a resurrected OWS in the spring. Workers have to invade and occupy Congress until they pass it.
I can tell you without a doubt we will NOT have a decent country unless we demand with no excuses and get a Second Economic Bill Of Rights. Where we are going now and where the GOP wants to violently force the country to go will be the very bitter end of the USA. Now one of those GOP jerks has proposed legislation eliminating lunch breaks because some companies were fined for stealing from workers by taking their lunch breaks.
We have to challenge the CEO's for their criminal activities. NO CEO IS WORTH THE MONEY THEY STEAL. They are the biggest thieves on the planet.
The politicians will have to be forced to pass this or be gone.
The billionaires and millionaires do not have a right to the kind of wealth they have stolen. And they have stolen virtually all the money in the last 30 years even when they have destroyed the companies and multitudes of lies. . And I watched them do it while at DOL for 24 years before I retired and they have doubled down the 14 years I have been retired.
The billionaires and the GOP are going to force millions of Americans to work for dirt. And people will be eating dirt by the time the GOP is done. Look at everything they are doing. They are stealing votes, they are stealing freedom and they are stealing truth.
LongTomH
(8,636 posts)pampango
(24,692 posts)reached a high by 1929 (only to be surpassed in the last few years as our income inequality hit new record highs).
Fordney-McCumber Act, 1922 with its "scientific tariff" tied to the wages in the country of export
http://www.johndclare.net/America3.htm
"Woodrow Wilson believed in low tariffs. He had reduced tariffs in 1913, and refused to increase them."
Woodrow Wilson, speaking in March 1921. Wilson had just vetoed the Emergency Tariff Bill, just before he handed over the Presidency to Harding.
As soon as he became President, Warren Harding passed an Emergency Tariff (May 1921) to increase duties on food imports, and in 1922 Congress passed the Fordney-McCumber Tariff. This had two principles:
a. 'Scientific tariff': this linked tariffs to the wages in the country of export. If wages in, say Italy, were very low, then Italian goods were given a proportionately higher tariff. This negated the effect of lower wages in competitor countries.
b. 'American Selling Price': this linked tariffs to the price of American goods, not to the cost of production. A German company might be able to produce, say, a certain chemical for $60, but if the selling price in America was $80, and the US tariff was 50%, the tariff would be $40. This meant that foreign imports were ALWAYS more expensive than American-produced goods, however cheaply they had been made.
The Fordney-McCumber Act established the highest tariffs in history, with some duties up to 400% and an average of 40%."
The Democrats have always been the party of relatively low tariffs. Wilson kept them low. Harding and Hoover raised them in 1922 and 1930. FDR lowered them in the 1930's, then promoted GATT to keep high tariffs from coming back.
Kingofalldems
(38,458 posts)hifiguy
(33,688 posts)Great post.