By Steve Hynd
Bernie Sanders isn't a Democrat, even though he caucuses with them - he's a democractic socialist. Despite the febrile and reflexive twitchings of the Right's noise machine, the two are not the same and most of them know it just fine.
Go read this - after you do, you may well wish there were more real and independent socialists in Congress, the Senate and, dare we say, the White House. Maybe then we'd see some spine in the Dems.
With the middle class collapsing and the rich getting much richer, the United States now has, by far, the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on earth.
...The very rich want more, more and more and they are prepared to dismantle the existing political and social order to get it. During the last campaign, as a result of the (Republican) Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, billionaires were able to pour hundreds of millions of dollars of secret money into the campaign -- helping to elect dozens of members of Congress. Now, having made their investment, they want their congressional employees to produce.
Republicans in Congress, needless to say, are all on board. The key question is whether a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate go along to get along, or whether they draw a clear line at protecting the interests of the middle class and vulnerable populations of our country while tackling our economic and budgetary problems in earnest.
In the next month, despite all their loud rhetoric about the "deficit crisis," the Republicans want to add $700 billion to the national debt over the next 10 years by extending Bush's tax breaks for the top 2 percent. Families who earn $1 million a year or more would receive, on average, a tax break of $100,000 a year. The Republicans also want to eliminate or significantly reduce the estate tax, which has existed since 1916. Its elimination would add, over 10 years, about $1 trillion to our national debt and all of the benefits would go to the top 0.3 percent. Over 99.7 percent of American families would not gain a nickel. The Walton family of WalMart would receive an estimated tax break of more than $30 billion by repealing the estate tax.
That's just the start.
The billionaires and their supporters in Congress are hell-bent on taking us back to the 1920s, and eliminating all traces of social legislation designed to protect working families, the elderly, children and the disabled. No "social contract" for them. They want it all.
...The time is late. The stakes are extraordinary. While it is true that the billionaires and their supporters are "fired up and ready to go," there is another more important truth. And that is that there are a lot more of us than there are of them. Now is the time for us to stand together, educate and organize. Now is the time to roll back this orgy of greed.
Ever though of running for President, Bernie?
"The billionaires and their supporters in Congress are hell-bent on taking us back to the 1920s..."
ReplyDeleteAnd after that they'll have us ALL go back to the Jim Crow South where we'll all be sharecropping "freed" slaves. Thanks a lot first black president.
Amen.
ReplyDelete'Standing directly behind General Motors CEO Dan Akerson as he rang the opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday morning was United Auto Workers President Bob King. As trading on GM stock began, the UAW leader could be seen enthusiastically applauding and exchanging congratulations with investment bankers and corporate board members assembled on a large stage adorned with GM logos."
ReplyDelete"The event was a small but telling demonstration of the character of the UAW�an organization completely hostile to the interests of the workers. No leader of a workers� organization could have taken part in such an event, or even contemplated it. After all, the assembled crowd was salivating over GM�s profits, which have been attained chiefly through a brutal assault on jobs and living standards...."
"....King�s Wall Street extravaganza underscores the fact that the UAW is not accountable to its members in any shape or form. It exposes all of those�including the pseudo-lefts and phony �union dissidents��who claim that the UAW can be reformed through pressure from below."
"Auto workers can only begin to conduct a struggle to defend their jobs and living standards by breaking once and for all from this rotten organization. New organizations of struggle�rank-and-file committees democratically controlled by the workers themselves�must be set up independently of and in opposition to the UAW. These struggles must be guided by a new perspective that relies on the unity and initiative of the working class and rejects the UAW�s alliance with the Democrats, its economic nationalism and its undying defense of the capitalist system." - Jerry White
http://wsws.org/articles/2010/nov2010/uaws-n19.shtml
I would like to thank the electorate of Vermont for giving us Bernie, thank you, thank you, thank you.
ReplyDelete