I think it's been well over two generations since the labor disputes of the last century. You'd think that what has been accomplished would be an ingrained part of America. Everybody passes by those posters at work but does anyone bother to read them. Much like the picture of dogs playing poker on the wall of a barber shop it's more like "oh yeah that thing". Brought to you as a requirement of the federal government but more importantly brought to you by the efforts of organized labor. Say what you will about skimming, kick backs and back room deals of the upper workings of the labor unions, I'd bet that type of stuff goes on all the time in corporate meetings with not a peep to the news media. Wouldn't want to downgrade the stock value now would they. But that little placard that's gotten bigger over the years was fought for literally with the blood sweat and tears of average Joes like you and me who were tired of working like indentured servants and wanted a piece of the pie.
With rising fuel and food prices and now governors wanting concessions just how do they expect anyone to survive? It's estimated that the average earning power over the last ten years dropped by $2000 for the working class. School teachers faced the unfunded mandates of the republican party. That began with Reagan and was followed up with Bush and his Every Child Left Behind Act. Universities are just about out of reach for all but the well off and now the assault continues on the middle class. The top one percent may tout how they built this country and it may be true that they provided the finance for much of what has been built but if you look at any building, bridge, park or monument it was constructed with the hands of labor. There were no Armani suits swinging hammers there.
It's time to take back our country and not in phony Teabagger terms either.
6 comments:
I remember "This Land is Your Land" from grade school. I had no idea there was anything political about it; it was just one of those things, like the Pledge of Allegiance, that we all had to recite/sing.
I had no idea that decades later, those words would strike fury into the hearts of rightwing rednecks.
Land, Labour, Capital. All three in various forms and iterations are necessary ingredients in production. And checks and balances are essentially to keep them in some kind of operative harmony. The Communist system failed because it lacked checks and balances. The Party was all. If money becomes all, that system too will fail.
This land IS your land.
The entire Republican goal is to destroy what they call the countries biggest enemies "Democrats"
Their entire goal is to destroy FDR's legacy and everything Democrats have accomplished over the years. They are just beginning and this is terrible!
Of course history is repeating itself, haven't you noticed that the queers (they call themselves gays) are greater numbers and making more noise all the time? A sure sign of a failing civilization.
About three inches of fresh snow here, the slick kind, lots of wrecks and one death so far. More expected overnight, I don't give a shit, I'm staying home and warm.
It's time to take back our country
Any ideas on how to do that? Oh hell, never mind, we have the country we deserve.
Demeur, I have been thinking about this since I first read this blog post. I ran into Kevin Drum's article about the demise of union power over the past 50 years.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-labor-union-decline .
If you are going to get your country back, it may well require the kind of bloody street battles that raged over the hundred years or so previous. And the Left will lose because the Right has the guns and the hatred to go with it.
And in the name of law and order, you will get one hell of an extreme Right totalitarian government. it won't be pretty.
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