Monday, December 26, 2011

The Mason Missile, December 26, 2011

Greetings, brothers and sisters! I wish everyone a happy holiday, whichever one you do-Hanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Years. Have a blast, celebrate ALL of them!
I am heartily SICK of the whines coming from the rightist contingent about the "war on Christmas," acting like Christians are being repressed and oppressed. (I continue to greet everybody “Happy holidays” - ALL of them.)
This whining comes from a political Christianist movement that has campaigned against Islamic Sharia law being implemented by the law courts in this country, and which demands ALL Muslim Americans, good law-abiding folk, be placed under surveillance; the same damn movement that demands prayer in public schools and who uses their alleged religious beliefs as an excuse to discriminate against lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender people, to prohibit same-sex marriage, and to prohibit LGBT people from military service, based on THEIR version of what they interpret as “Christianity.” Authoritarian/fascist movements, like this one, and like ALL bullies, tend to play the victim and the oppressed party when someone finally stands up to them.
Many of them have found a home in the Republican Party. In the debates of their presidential candidates, they cheered at the idea of an innocent person being executed, and of a person dying from lack of decent health care; and booed a young man in military service (which they supposedly love) serving in Iraq (which they still think was a good idea) simply because he was gay, as he asked the candidates if they would restore the stupid "don't and, don't tell" rule.
What a cliffhanger we’ve been through-with the extension of the payroll tax cut and of unemployment compensation. The House Republicans, Tea Party types, all of a sudden oppose tax cuts-but it was for working people, not for their corporate paymasters funding their campaigns. Do we have to keep going through this, a political movement dedicated entirely to keeping Obama looking bad so he doesn’t get reelected? The main thing is JOBS for working people, so they don’t have to go on welfare and be the scapegoat for federal budget deficits created by no taxes on corporations and unnecessary wars.
I’m still pleased with the Occupy movement; they have taken the media thunder out of the Tea Parties, simply by their organizing, coming together to express outrage at corporate dominance of our politics. The commercial media constantly errs to the right politically, so as not to offend corporate executives or long accepted conventional wisdom; thus the media made such a big deal of the Tea Parties, hyping them as a popular uprising, and not as the Astroturf corporate-sponsored event it has always been. The Occupy movement, however, was brought up over alternative media sites, about two weeks before the mainstream media found it. While we must work to find our way into the media to get our message across, we find we can do without it, using our own networks.
Let’s celebrate the New Year, so we’ll be rested up to fight for the people. Bye!

Thursday, November 24, 2011

The Mason Missile, November 24, 2011

Greetings, freedom fighters! I hope we have all voted in the last election. In the words of my late beloved mentor Harry Hyde Jr., "Vote as you please, but please vote."
A lot of people agree there isn't a lot to vote for, with both parities comprised of the same political class, sometimes jumping from one party to the other, as in the case of Arlen Spector, who was a Democrat before running as a Republican for Senator; then, when the religious-right element took over the party in Pennsylvania, he ran as a Democrat again. Same with Karen Brown, who was a Democrat while running for City Council in Philadelphia, then was tapped by the Republican party leaders to run on their slate for Mayor of Philadelphia.
Do political "parties" mean anything, of are they just bureaucracies trying to get their people into power? I again advocate a LABOR party, of, by, and for workers. My idea is, get Obama reelected, because none of the Republican candidates would be ANY good for working- and low-income people, but in the meantime get to work on organizing a labor-social democratic-socialist party for America, and maybe take some of the Democratic party bodies into it.
The political system can work for us, on occasion. I was delighted with the defeat of the referendum in Ohio that would have taken away collective bargaining rights from teachers; the plan is to demonize ONE class of people, like teachers, civil service employees, and welfare recipients, and make THOSE people, as opposed to everyone else, the scapegoat for the problems caused by capitalism. But the workers, through their unions and reaching out to the rest of the community, defeated the damn thing.
There is also the defeat, defying the expectations of the "left-liberal slanted" news media, of the referendum in Mississippi (!) that would have granted citizenship rights to fetuses, embryos, and zygotes, as a way of stopping abortions. Plus, the citizens of Arizona recalled Russell Pearce, the president of their state senate, advocate for that state's draconian immigration policies, in an election. The citizens of Wisconsin are starting a movement to recall their own governor, who is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Koch brothers.
Mike Check! How delighted I am with the Occupy movement, which started at Wall Street and has spread to cities throughout the world. This is not the same as the “tea party” thing, which is an Astroturf “movement” manufactured by corporations. I am especially pleased that a lot of military veterans are taking the side of the Occupy groups, protecting them from police and other negative elements-even some cops are on their side! The power elite in this country must be in hysterics over the defection of their enforcers.
Although “Occupy” is the name of the movement, it is not at all different from the demonstrations in Wisconsin and other states against anti-worker, anti-people governors and state legislators, and the plutocrats paying for them, as well as the “Arab Spring” in the Middle East. I know the Occupy movement won’t last forever, those camps have to come down some time; but the participants have gained a great political education and valuable networks to draw upon. The tents will go down, but not the movement.
I have to bring up the people who are trying to become the Republican candidate for President, so bear with me. Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, are, for a start, trying to be the ideologically pure one against Mitt Romney. All through the year, the news media got into entertainment mode, putting up candidates as a Baskin-Robbins flavor of the month; first Sarah Palin, who quit her non-campaign in the middle, just as she quit as governor of Alaska, deciding to focus on shilling her books and her Discovery channel self-infomercial.
Then we had Donald Trump and his hair-don’t; he had a bit of a boom, getting into the long-repudiated “birther” thing, stating that President Obama wasn’t born in this country. Trump also talked about invading Middle-Eastern countries explicitly for their oil.
Michelle Bachmann was up for a while, a darling of the religious-rightists, particularly the ones around the New Apostolic Reformation movement, which seeks to turn the United States into their idea of theocracy. Her husband Marcus runs this clinic, even though he has no medical background, that is supposed to convert gays into heterosexuals-a discredited practice which brings in for the Bachmanns about $150,000.00 in federal and state funds, including the evil Medicare, one of Michelle’s favorite targets.
Rick Perry has had his ups and down, depending on whether he opens his mouth, looking naturally foolish during debates, bickering with Romney, and acting goofy before the conservative group in New Hampshire. Even more dangerous than a nutcase in the White House (I’m thinking now of Richard Nixon) is the history of Texas sate government under Perry; Molly Ivins had fun mocking their state legislature, but under “Goodhair” Perry it has sunk to a new low of corruption-whole state agencies sold to the corporations charged with monitoring them, in exchange for campaign contributions. You can read Matt Taibbi article in Rolling Stone at www.rollingstone.com. As Taibbi points out, Perry, like Bachmann, also has hooked up with the New Apostolic Reformation movement.
Herman Cain-His campaign manager babbling slogans while smoking; the sexual harassment (verging on assault) charges; his proud allegiance to the Koch brothers; his proud ignorance about the world outside our borders-enough said.
AND Newt Gingrich, crawling out of the crypt, still passing himself off as an intellectual titan and moral arbiter, while on his third marriage, his infidelities forgiven.
What a difference a year makes. At the start of this year, it was all about Ayn Rand, the “virtue of selfishness” lady, cranker-out of crappy novels and a philosophy to match, all extolling wealthy twits as the master race of all, her works extolled by the tea parties and their plutocratic masters. But the film version of her literary crap-bag Atlas Shrugged failed in its first week of release. I have seen the clips of the rich bastards sitting on the balcony sipping their cocktails watching the proletarians of the Occupy Wall Street movement, wondering what was on their minds-Are they gonna turn on us? Is this the revolution we’ve been afraid of?
Ever since the end of the Second World War, our economic policy has centered around the corporations, making sure they’re protected from the just wrath of the public, seeing they always have a new avenue for more profits, including from social programs. The idea promulgated by both parties was that these “job creators” must be allowed to do what they want, through the miraculous “free market”, and to not tax or regulate them “too much.” But these spoiled darlings have relocate their factories AND their jobs to impoverished countries where the minimum wage is pocket change, the working hours are an eternity, the factories are purgatories, and the companies, with the help of the local government, smash all attempts for workers to organize. (Might they want the same conditions, and the same kind of government, in THIS country?)
In Ayn Rand’s illusion Atlas Shrugged, the billionaire John Galt gathers all the other billionaires to his estate and they go on strike, proclaiming themselves the creative geniuses of the world as opposed to “Moochers” and “barefoot bums,” and they demand their way. I would LOVE for these plutocrats to be placed on an island or some other isolated spot, and let them know we can do quite well without them, thank you very much! Without the workers who make their stuff, the capitalists would be nothing, and we can make them aware of that. On that note, bye!

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

The Mason Missile, September 6, 2011

Greetings, fellow freedom fighters! I hope everyone has enjoyed Labor Day, the day honoring the American worker and the institution he/she has formed, the Trade Union movement, for the empowerment of workers and other low-income people. I am also active in the movement to revitalize May Day as a workers' holiday in this country. We can have both May Day AND Labor Day, we deserve it!
There are efforts by Republican state governors in to keep unfavorable voters from voting. Wisconsin's chief idiot Scott Walker signed a voter ID bill prohibiting people who don't have state ID cards or driver's licenses from voting--and VERY conveniently closed ten Department of Motor Vehicles offices where people could get their IDs. This is a deliberate attempt to prevent African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, college students, and seniors from voting, or making it inconvenient to apply for a form of ID. Similar laws have been introduced in Ohio, Kansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Colorado, Montana, and Texas; there has also been cases of "voter caging," where voting officials challenge a voter's qualification to vote, thus intimidating the potential voter.
All this has been done in the name of "voter integrity" and "fair elections;" this, from the party of 2000, the party of voter fraud in Florida, of voters who would have voted against George DUH Bush purged from the rolls, where voters were intimidated by police, where the votes of the Supreme Court mattered-voter integrity, indeed! The idea is to prevent low-income, poor and working people-the same people-from voting and seeking their empowerment, thus skewing the state in favor of the wealthy and corporations.
The cat popped out of the bag when conservative writer Matthew Vadum wrote, "Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote?...Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery." And here's the kicker-"Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals...It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country-- which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote. ... Encouraging those who burden society to participate in elections isn't about helping the poor. It's about helping the poor to help themselves to others' money."
SO--Wealthy people and corporations, that allowed this economic catastrophe to occur due to their ignorance and greed, that get trillions of dollars of federal money because they're "too big to fail", are productive, while working and low-income people, who work for money and spend it at local stores, thus boosting the economy, and leeches? Wonderful logic! And it's worded so that the villain is "some one else, not you nice people".
In the ‘seventies, the New Right movement, through the direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie, concocted the line of “producers,” working people and corporations, as opposed to “non-producers,” government, universities, welfare recipients, etc., to give a “populist” look to the movement; fascist movements in Europe also tried to look “revolutionary,” to appeal to the masses. Now the “populist” facade has fallen off the plutocratic edifice that is contemporary conservativism. If the conservatives are such populists, why are they trying to keep people from voting?
Forty years ago, President Richard Nixon declared a "war on drugs," mainly as a way of fighting the cultural changes of the 'sixties, like the anti-war and civil rights movements, and the general realization that the nation's political and economic elite is NOT perfect, that we don't have to look up to them. (Anyway...) Nixon's formed a commission, headed by former Pennsylvania Governor Raymond Shafer, to look into the effects of marijuana and other drugs, and the appropriate measures to take towards them. The commission, after serious research, told Nixon what he did not want to hear -- "No significant physical, biochemical, or mental abnormalities could be attributed solely to their marihuana smoking," and, "No verification is found of a causal relationship between marihuana use and subsequent heroin use." Thus, "The Commission feels that the criminalization of possession of marihuana for personal [use] is socially self-defeating as a means of achieving this objective . . ." The commission, obviously, did not want to encourage marijuana or drug use, but neither did they want to make it a crime.
But Nixon wanted to create a scare among the American people about minorities and anti-war activists, and he rejected his own commission's report. Forty years-the War on Drugs goes on. A war that lasts forty years? What are the casualties and the costs? As a propaganda move, Nixon must have thought this was a stroke of genius--have an enemy that has no nationality, no physical form, that is an abstraction, like drugs; and history shows that when you have a war, anyone who doesn't go along with the "war" is a traitor or a coward, and thus can be smacked down, either by public opinion or police terror.
(By the way, I recommend the biography of Nixon, The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon, by Anthony Summers, which goes through Nixon's own issues with drugs and alcohol; was Nixon projecting his own addictions on others, so that he didn't have to face his own? He would neither be the firstor the last person to do so.)
A forty year war; and the drugs keep coming into the country, and people still keep taking them, after all the arrests and propaganda. What's wrong with this picture? Is the government serious about stopping drugs? Are officials taking bribes to let the drugs in? Doesn't this remind us about the "noble experiment of Prohibition, where liquor was banned from legal sale, so criminal cartels made money from illegally selling the stuff, abetted by paid-off public officials? People's hypocrisy added to this, taking the booze while opposing repeal of Prohibition, because that was what nice respectable people believed.
Back in 2009, the "tea party movement"--founded with corporate money, in the manner of an "Astroturf" movement founded by public relations firms--made its debut by sitting in the front rows at congressional town hall meetings and threatening congress-members over the debate on health insurance; typical of totalitarian thugs, which the right-wing has degenerated into!
Now, the tables are turned; the Republican congress-members elected through the tea parties have faced criticism from constituents for their attempts to end such popular programs as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and the failure to create jobs--the preposterous political game playing about the raising of the debt ceiling, I‘m sure, didn‘t help things. Paul Ryan (Wisconsin), Ben Quayle (Arizona), and Chip Cravaack (Minnesota) had to hold meeting that people paid to see them; Jim Renacci and Steve Chabot of Ohio prevented cameras at their own town meetings; Dan Lungren of California was criticized for supporting the Bush tax cuts for the rich; Dan Webster of Florida threatened to kick out a constituent for calling for tax increases on corporations, and has put out a “watch list“ of activists who would DARE to question their elected officials; and Herrera Beutler of Washington had NO town meetings at all.
Whether or not the Democratic party leadership, from the President on down, is willing to take on the Republican-corporate-conservative onslaught is another matter; are WE willing to do so? That’s the key, and I believe we’re starting to do so. Let’s keep up our fight, and we’ll keep on winning, and we’ll have the confidence in ourselves to fight for our freedom. Bye!

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

The Mason Missile, August 2, 2011

Greetings, freedom fighters! Happy (belated) birthday to me! I thank EVERY body for their good birthday wishes.
Recently, I felt this pain in my abdomen, and I thought it was something I ate. I finally got sick of the pain enough to check myself into the emergency room of Thomas Jefferson Hospital, 1100 Chestnut Street, and I thought I would get a laxative or something; I had acute appendicitis (it didn’t feel too cute!) and I had a laparoscopic appendectomy, and I was out the next afternoon. I am grateful to the staff of Jefferson for their skill and friendliness.
This bring up two points:
The need for a national health insurance system in this country. Health care is a right and a necessity, like education-not a luxury.
The importance of joining a union. I showed the clerk my health insurance card, paid for through my union. But I urge you to not just join for the benefits, to treat the union like a "vending machine," you put money in a pull the lever and get something; get involved, take part in meetings, join a committee-you'll find within you confidence and skills you didn't know you had, and you'll have an extra family.
Are you as disgusted as I am with the stupid political game-playing in Washington over raising the debt ceiling? Boehner, Cantor, et al demanded cuts in such programs as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--no mention of cutting the defense budget. Well, the deal is made, and the cuts in domestic spending are set.
Or ARE they? The "news" media has not discussed the effects of cuts on such programs as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, only how NOT raising the debt ceiling would effect the federal government's ability to make payments, and of the government's bond rating with Standard and Poor. (Who are our officials most answerable to, We the people or stockbrokers and bond-traders?) Nor was there ANY discussion, in Washington or the media, about raising taxes on upper-income people, the top one-tenth of the top one percent of the population, or of cutting military spending-such as cutting back on our losing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. It was all an excuse to take down the aforementioned programs that benefit people who have worked for a long time.
AND-Jon Kyl, in his reply to President Obama's address Saturday, kept up the idea that taxes would scare away businesses from setting up; a rehash of the supply-side theory that Ronald Reagan brought into Washington.
Where were these deficit militants in the GOP when Ronald Reagan ran up deficits, adding up to the deficits of all the other presidents combined? Or when George W. Bush, after Bill Clinton's budget surplus (due to a slight tax increase on higher incomes, but we had a great economic run in spite of the supply-side doom-saying) ran up a deficit due to upper-income tax cuts and two wars we can't win? No; it is just an excuse to target social programs, programs that benefit people, but are scapegoated as the cause of all economic ills.
(Of course, low-income and working people don’t have thousand-dollar an hour lobbyists wining and dining congress-members, and writing down the language in the bills with them.)
It does NOT have to be like this. We CAN and MUST drive out the Tea-Party types from the House; but not just replace them with “Democrats,” but with people dedicated to the public interest, preferably trade unionists who know what it’s like to have to try to decide, “Do I pay for the heating oil now, or concentrate on the gas bill, and how much can I pay for the orthodontist for the kids?”
Also-Some deep intellects in some state legislatures have pushed through laws against establishing Sharia (Islamic law) into state law. These are the same types who insist the US of A is a "Christian" nation, and all law should reflect that. Do these dimwit legislators really feel people will go along with this? But when you think about it, who votes these jokers in? The assaults on our Muslim fellow citizens is a new version of the old "Red Scare," and we must resist it.
Laws have been passed in Ohio, Wisconsin, and other states with Republican controlled legislatures and governors that try to limit voting rights for minorities, seniors, and college students, piously raising the specter of “voter fraud”. I look forward to court challenges to these bills, challenging their constitutionality, but with the Supreme Court the way it is, and memories of Citizens United, It's cause to worry. I have other memories, of how African-American voters in Florida in 2000 were either purged from the rolls, or intimidated by police from going to the polls, and then we had the eight lost years of George DUH Bush.
On the bright side, I’m enjoying the decline and (hopefully) fall of the Murdoch media empire. That empire lost one of its provinces, the British tabloid News Of The World, over such dubious journalistic practices as tapping into cell phone accounts of a missing girl. One other province of the Murdoch empire is Fox News in the US of A, which is merely a privatized propaganda ministry of the right, a disseminator of misinformation. For thirty years, Rupert Murdoch has bought up newspapers, magazines, and radio and TV stations, peddling junk excuses for “journalism” and causing politicians to give into him so he doesn’t smear them. This shows the need for an independent and alternative media in this country and all over the world.
The forces of reaction, my friends, must not and DO NOT have the final word-WE do. Let us enjoy our time off from the job and at the beach, so we’ll be rested and stronger for the fight. Bye!

Saturday, July 2, 2011

The Mason Missile, July 2, 2011

Greetings, freedom fighters!
I hope you all voted in the last election and in every other election. Nothing freaks me out worse than people not voting, a right people died for. I recall mile-long lines of people voting in South Africa, after the fall of the apartheid regime. In this past election, I heard election workers say that the possibility of rain kept some people from voting. For the right to vote, people were shot at, sprayed with fire hoses, mauled by attack dogs, firebombed, and other things. On the other hand, the quality of candidates for office can be pretty low.
As you noticed, I had to change my e-mail server to Comcast, since I was having billing problems with Verizon. To me, one capitalist corporation is just as bad as the next.
I tip my hat to Navy Seal Team Six, for their work in taking out Osama bin Laden. Of course, this does not end all terrorism -- there are several groups naming themselves Al-Qaeda, and they’re not organized in the classical military chain of command, squads, platoons, companies, etc.
What gets me is how Fox “News” and the rest of the rightist propaganda community act like George DUH Bush, who is NOT in office, had something to do with bin Laden’s demise. Bush had the opportunity to capture bin Laden in Afghanistan, but he declared war on Iraq instead. I don’t think Bush had ANY intention to get bin Laden, just use him as a boogieman to scare us when Bush’s poll numbers dipped; also there are connection between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family and other wealthy Saudi families, including the bin Ladens. This has been written about in the book by Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud.
This raises another question -- since bin Laden is dead, do our forces have to remain in Afghanistan? I originally supported the military action, and I thought it would lead to a better day for the Afghans. But Afghanistan’s “government” is corrupt to the gills, thus fueling the Taliban.
Plus--the Pakistani government is supposed to be our ally in the Afghanistan conflict, but the ties between the Pakistani military and intelligence apparatus to al Qaeda is still strong; how could they not know bin Laden lived in that mansion next to a military academy, in a city populated with military retirees? Pardon the cliché, but we have some rethinking of strategy to do.
Please forgive me that I take so much time in preparing the Missiles, I want to get my facts straight, now be like Rush Limbaugh popping off the first line of BS that pops into his wasteland of a mind.
The Republicans in Congress have made such a big thing lately of cutting government spending and closing the deficit. That’s been the line for over thirty years. However, that has just been proven to cut into such social programs as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, programs that have benefited people struggling to get by -- like yours truly.
Under the leadership of Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, chair of the House Budget Committee, the Republicans have voted to cut Medicare and continue tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, while the “middle class” -- euphemism-speak for those not of the highest faction of the highest one percent of the population -- those of us not wealthy enough to buy a senator -- have the entire tax burden placed on us. It’s like the old premise of “supply side economics,” give the corporations everything they ask for, and the economy will blossom.
Where were these Republican budget balancers during the Bush II era, when a surplus was turned into a deficit, and when we’re fighting wars, at least one of which was based on fraud and manipulation of our citizen’s anger and fear? Like I said, it’s NOT AT ALL about deficit, it’s all about satisfying the corporate elite. But the public has gotten its message out, and saying NO to all this.
Paul Ryan once said he got into public life because of the teachings and writings of Ayn Rand, the prophetess of the “Virtue of Selfishness,” whose fantasies were of heroic entrepreneurs at war with government bureaucrats and “the mob.” (Rather odd -- Ryan goes into public life, where the issues of people are collectively addressed, due to Ayn Rand and her “individualistic” ideas.) Now we see a revival of Rand’s books, and the film version of Atlas Shrugged released, which did terrible box office the weekend it came out. This is the fantasy world the right-wing and its minions live in, not at all connected with reality. In spite of the “individualistic” rap of Rand and her disciples, this is a form of (Yes, I WILL say it) Fascism, where the Great Leader and his Elite Vanguard Party rule over us, due to their very superiority, and we cheer them.
Alas, I shall have to say a few things about the Anthony Weiner thing, so here I go:
He was pretty damn stupid to put his tweeter out on Twitter.
The Democratic party leadership wimped out on him, while a Republican in a similar situation--say, David Vitter after his diaper fetish, or Rush Limbaugh with his drug addiction -- retained support.
Weiner’s constituents backed him up, showing greater leadership than the Democratic party leadership.
The commercial news media’s idea of “news” is a lot of soft porn and scandal, rather than intelligent discussion of what really touches on people, like unemployment and the economy.
The same commercial media, the so called “left-liberal slanted” news media, gives in readily to the right-wing movement, whether it’s conceding the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush, who got the lesser number of votes,, thus caving to Fox “News”; going along with Andrew Breitbart’s super-doctored video of Shirley Sherrod, the Agriculture Department official, to “prove” she hated discriminated against white farmers; and James O’Keefe, Breitbart’s pet boy, who played the pimp daddy to destroy ACORN (can you say "racial stereotype" and "secret fantasy"?), and the media and courts went along with it, even though the video was SO a fraud.
We in this country are still “shocked, shocked, I tell you” that people engage in Sex, and members of Congress, being human beings, are no exception; but the Republican Right keeps harping on traditional family values, while engaging in the very Sex acts they condemn; reference again David Vitter, Larry Craig, Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggart, and Jim Bakker.
I am SO disgusted with the spinelessness of our political and media establishment, constantly deferring to their “superiors” on the right-wing of the political spectrum, a movement hell-bent on restoring a plutocratic regime in this country. They would take us back to those ways of yesteryear, when children went to the mines rather then school for their education as to their place in society; when work days could be sixteen hours long, giving you time enough to drag yourself home and back to work again the next day, not spending time with your family or friends or your own mind; when at the work site you breathed more coal dust, chemical fumes, or textile lint then oxygen, killing you before you reached forty; where one ethnic or racial group was pitted against the other, this being encouraged by the bosses to prevent working-class solidarity and finding out who the REAL enemy is; where women had next to NO options for advancement.
I was delighted when Rich Trumka, President of the national AFL-CIO, proclaimed the Labor movement’s independence from the Democratic party, stating at the meeting of National Nurses United, “For too long, we have been left after Election Day holding a canceled check waving it about, (saying) ‘Remember us? Remember us?’--asking someone to pay a little attention to us...I had a snootful of this shit!”
Me too! The Democratic party has prided itself as the party of the New Deal and Great Society, government programs that strove to benefit working and poor people for a change as opposed to the corporate elite -- even as the party copped out on us, cutting deals with the Republicans to cut down, or out, these programs; and the Democratic party still tells us to vote for them, or we’ll hand the government over to the Republicans. No more of that, I say. I continue to advocate an independent and viable Labor-Socialist-Social Democratic party in the US of A, and take some of the Democratic party system with us to form it, from the humblest ward leaders and committee members to state organizations.
This is the food for thought for now, and more WILL come. Bye!