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The Working Class Has Spoken. Will Democrats Listen? |
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Massachusetts voters sent a strong signal to Washington lawmakers Tuesday that they want results—and aren’t seeing any. Not on health care reform, not on job creation and not on fixing the nation’s economy.
Voters also sent another powerful message for Democrats: Ignore the working class at your peril.
Some 79 percent of voters polled on election night said the most important issue for them was electing a candidate who will strengthen the economy and create more jobs. Controlling health care costs was next on their list, with 54 percent citing that issue as the main determinant of their vote.
The poll, conducted by Hart Research Associates among 810 voters for the AFL-CIO on the night of the election, also found that although voters without a college degree favored Barack Obama by 21 percentage points in the 2008 election, Democratic candidate Martha Coakley lost that same group by a 20-point margin.
And as AFL-CIO Richard Trumka has pointed out, Massachusetts voters have the same goals for reforming health care, creating good jobs and strengthening the economy as they did in November 2008—but President Obama and the Democrats have done too little.
Voters showed they don’t think Democrats have overreached—they think that the Democrats underreached.
In fact, voters were not worried about Democratic “overreach”—47 percent said their bigger concern about Democrats is that they haven’t succeeded in making needed change rather than tried to make too many changes too quickly (32 percent). Even voters for Scott Brown were more concerned about a lack of change (50 percent) than about trying to make too many changes too quickly (43 percent).
These results puts a lie to the corporate media spin that Democrats have gone “too far” in pushing a reform agenda.
Nor was the election result about health care reform. Brown actually lost among the 59 percent of voters who picked health care as one of their top two voting issues (50 percent for Coakley and 46 percent for Brown). Voters for Brown (55 percent ) were less likely to cite health care as a top issue than were voters for Coakley (66 percent).
The election also should be a wake-up call for those in Washington who support taxing working families’ health care. Voters who thought their health care would be taxed voted by 64 percent for Brown, while those who did not think their health care would be taxed voted by 54 percent to 40 percent for Coakley.
Our polling results show the election was not an endorsement of a Republican agenda or a call to abandon health care reform. Voters strongly disapprove of the job being done by congressional Republicans (26 percent approve and 58 percent disapprove), a much lower rating than they give to congressional Democrats (37 percent approve and 51 percent disapprove).
Other polls show the need for Democrats in Congress to take immediate action to create jobs, reform health care, stop catering to Wall Street and address the needs of America’s working class. As John Judis wrote, the election showed Democrats have lost ground primarily among white working and middle-class voters and senior citizens.
The Suffolk University poll in Massachusetts…singled out two white working-class towns, Gardner and Fitchburg, as bellwethers. Obama won Gardner, where Democrats hold a 3-1 registrations edge, by 59 percent to 31 percent in 2008. Brown won it by 56 percent to 42 percent. Obama won Fitchburg, with a similar Democratic edge, by 60 percent to 38 percent in 2008. Brown won it by 59 percent to 40 percent. That suggests a fairly dramatic shift among white working-class voters.
Summarizing the findings from election night polling conducted by Research 2000 Massachusetts Poll, MoveOn.org said the results show voters worry that Democrats in power “have not done enough to combat the policies of the Bush era.”
Both sets of voters wanted stronger, more progressive action on health care reform as well. In summary, the poll shows that the party who fights corporate interests—especially on making the economy work for most Americans—will win the confidence of the voters.
The working class has spoken. Will Democrats listen?
This is a cross-post from Firedoglake.
22 Comments
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I am really disappointed in Obama and the Democrats. There is money for a war in Afghanistan, but no money for genuine health care reform for working people.
I think we should start all over and fight for what we actually want — a single payer system like Canada’s — not what the insurance-industry-owned US Senate is willing to give us.
I also think it’s way past time for labor and its allies to start building toward a third party, a people’s party.
The Democrats threw the race.
Life’s so much simpler now: they don’t have to produce a Health Plan and they can blame the Republican filibuster threat. They are totally off the hook as regards their insurance fatcat backers and the working people who are the party base. They starved the Democratic candidate by withholding national money! Check it out.
I agree that the labor movement needs to mobilize US and fast!!
As union members — and union leaders — we need to be honest, for a change, about what happened in Massachusetts. Really looking at what happened and why, rather than coming up with a finding or spin which is more to our liking. According to the AFL-CIO own Hart poll on the election, Sen-elect Brown got more votes from union households than Coakley, 49 vs. 46 percent. Brown also got 20 percent more votes from non-college educated voters; a constituency that should belong to us. Yet, this fact is missing from the analysis on the election on the AFL-CIO website. We are not going to hope to learn the tough lessons of the election unless we swallow hard, and accept that we have to change our strategy and improve communications with the bulk of union members.
While not the one in that state voting, I would nevertheless hate to think as an IBEW member that the AFL CIO and affiliated unions held back supprt for Ms. Coakley due to the health care insurance issue (Cadillac Plans) that were resolved. If the Huntington Study just concluded reflects that the state’s union members did not turn out in force as did not the Black/African American and Hispanic voters who initially supported the President, then all Democrats have lost as the Republicans will do no better for the working man or woman except oppose union representation as they did with their fear of union rep for the TSA and the nominee.
As a VN vet and now permanently and totally disabled no one hates this war more than I do, but this country needs to come to the realization that we will never stop terrorism and certainly not by being present in another’s country. Finally, the president does need to be held accountable for jobs: But if small and large business will not hire or rehire and the banks will not lend money where will the jobs come from. And yes we cannot continue to pour billions into foreign countries while our own goes down their broken infrastructures. Why is not the AFL CIO more verbal nationally on the issues that cost the Ms. Coakely the election.
I think the AFL-CIO needs to take a page from the GOP and push purity. We are associated with the Democrats and they don’t always serve us well. We need to become a swing interest and publicly support Labor friendly candidates. By breaking our lockstep with the Democrats maybe they won’t take us for granted.
We also need to do a better job reminding everyone that free enterprise also means collective bargaining. As labor, our value isn’t decided by management, the GOP, or anyone else. It’s decided by us.
An open letter to President Obama. Please forward this to every person you can through private and public email lists. Thank you.
Dear President Obama
I want to tell you a true story which just happened a few days ago. I came into this world 4 years after World War II. When I grew up partly in New York City and Partly in Nassau Country New York, as a young boy I would watch Meet the Press. I watched this show as a boy of 6 or 7. I watched the people of the era talk about the issues. I also watched Mike Wallace’s You are there as well. I recall seeing other programs about famous people. I saw newsreels of a man who wore a white sheet. NO! not that kind of white sheet! Mohandas Gandhi, wore a white sheet of cotton. Why did Gandhi wear white sheets? He wanted to set an example for his people to make their own cloth and not buy goods from his oppressors who occupied his country.
He appeared a modern day Moses, but of another religion. I have a number of heroes like Gandhi. Most of them died, except for Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu. Considering myself a Jewish person, I find that good that people from other religions and other people’s can serve as examples for heroes as it tends to unite people of different backgrounds. Each of these heroes, Moses, Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, Nelson Mandela, Bishop Tutu eventually brought their oppressors down by not cooperating with their oppressors.
The other day, I spoke to the great grandson of Mohandas Gandhi. I had sought to speak to his father, the grandson of Mohandas Gandhi. I never expected to ever speak to anyone in this family of Gandhi. I told him that I thanked his great grandfather for his work and that he inspired me as I used to see newsreels of his great grandfather during the 1950’s and 1960’s and especially using boycotts to eventually uniting his people of India to eject their oppressors out of their country. I told Gandhi’s great grandson of my electronic PAMPHLET on the web and again thanked him and said good day.
Now, I say to you Mr. President, that I want a real populist President similar to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and I and other people will make you do it, just like FDR told his supporters to make him do what they wanted him to do.
So in the tradition and inspiration of Moses and Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu and their people I say to you again we will make you do it.
How? By boycotting the products of those of your friends in corporations who donated money to you, and donated money to Republicans and to conservatives in the Democratic party who have led this country down a path to the second great depression. The only reason that we have not descended further appears that we had citizens back about 77 years ago who made FDR do it and had good regulations in place today that the conservatives in both parties want to repeal. So from now on I will no longer donate money to the Democratic party although I remain a member. Again I will not buy products from major companies that donate money to conservatives in both parties and I will demand progressive legislation that really helps the poor and middle class people instead of the undeserving wealthy at this point of crisis in our country, of the CEOs that run those companies and until that happens they will lose business from me and many other people such that we will put pressure on those CEOs to help get us the legislation that we want.
I agreed with the bailout of the banks and the partial nationalization of GM and Ford but now it appears OUR turn such that we get a $10 an hour minimum wage, a passage of the employee free choice act, a passage of the women’s freedom of choice act, a passage of a compromise SINGLE PAYER PUBLIC OPTION paid for by general taxes which will allow private health insurance but in which those who choose this new single payer public option will have no premiums, no copayments, no yearly deductibles, no recisions, no rejection for preexisting conditions and cover everything: doctors visits, surgery, hospital stays, abortion, dentistry, eye care, nursing home and hospice care and home care and it will serve as a health insurance EXODUS so that the private health insurance companies will let our people go. We also need to end the war in Iraq and a way to end the war in Afghanistan but we need to help build Afghanistan up so the Taliban and Al Qaeda will no longer get the favor of some people in Afghanistan. We need other legislation that helps those less fortunate in our country.
Republicans only talk about freedom but they offer us no real solutions. These Republican corporate masters only offer us FIEFDOM and wage slavery and a kind of slavery to insurers where they exploit the economic conditions of those who don’t have enough money to pay for their insurance and not freedom. These Republican corporate masters offer their middle class and even poor supporters FREEDUMB organizing them in a rabble of misnamed fake populist Tea partiers for which those Boston patriots of a few centuries ago would probably say, hey these Republican FREEDUMB lovers HAVE REPRESENTATION, so what excuse do they have for disrupting government town halls that we helped to establish?
Really Mr. President, those present day so called tea partiers appear a perversion of those real patriots that helped liberate our country a few centuries ago. Do these false tea partiers stand for a living wage? No. Do these false tea partiers stand for unions? No. Do these false tea partiers stand for helping those less fortunate in our country? No.
These Recruited Republican FREEDUMB lovers claim that they appear PATRIOTs.
I say NAY, those Recruited Republican rabble appear as
stand PAT RIOTers
disrupting government who attempt to help the less fortunate in our country. How many times have I seen or heard this Republican rabble express their contempt for the poor and less fortunate in the middle class? I have seen and heard such contempt by these conservatives for decades blaming most of the poor and less fortunate middle class for their own problems as an excuse to shift blame away from many corporations who disadvantage such people and also as an excuse to have government dissolve in the area of social justice.
These Republican rabble stand PAT RIOTers want us to stand pat for their corporate masters to continue to profit on the suffering of people in many areas and not just health care. They want us to stand pat and yell no more higher taxes deliberately wanting the American people to not see the way corporate governors want to PRIVATELY TAX people with low pay aka Cheap labor aka wage theft not giving workers in many cases the worth of their work that they do and suppressing the organization of people in unions. These corporate governors also tax people privately with high prices in a cartel working with other corporate governors in fixing prices so even though you have a few companies in a sector of products you really have a polyopoly keeping PRIVATE TAXES high in a lot of product sectors. Yes high prices and low wages function as a PRIVATE TAXATION system run by private government which the Republicans support and come from and they have their stooges in the stand PAT RIOT movement to pose as as populists. NAY!
So next time Republicans criticize our party for taxation in their miscommunications at election time we Democrats will remind the people that the Republicans continue to tax us PRIVATELY and raise these PRIVATE TAXES through POLYOPOLY, DUOPOLY, MONOPOLY, cheap labor and high prices and that Republicans need to get relieved of their power in government which they deliberately sabotage social programs through deliberate deficit creation through oil wars, unjust tax breaks for the wealthy and cutting of social programs. This deliberate deficit creation has gone on for 30 years now started by Ronald Reagan the miscommunicator and it has to stop. The Republicans create a huge deficit so when they get relieved of power then the Democrat has to clean up the mess and cannot or will not continue on the path of social justice or water it down such that supporters of Democrats get angry as they did in Bill Clinton’s time and now yours!
So Mr. President, we will make you promote real social justice and not catering to corporations in the quest for social justice and eliminate these so called public private partnerships that these corporations take too much money from the poor and less fortunate that the Republicans have done in the past years and until this day and create regular government programs that do not allow these corporations to leech upon the public and profit to the detriment of middle class and poor people.
I have seen this in Medicare Part D and Medicare Disadvantage and now thanks to conservative Democrats we face this in the new health insurance and Pharmaceutical company enrichment act of 2010.
No more Mr. President. No More.
Help the middle class and the poor and until then, the Democratic party gets no money from me and in 2010 and 2012 I will go to the polls and only vote on referenda, meaning I will not vote for anyone for representative, senator and President. I will stay in the Democratic party and do what I can to rid us these conservatives in OUR party from power by peaceful means through boycotts of consumers products of their contributors that give them money and convince other Democrats to also boycott these contrbutors to conservatives in both parties and force these CEOs to go to congressional leaders and tell the leaders that hundreds of thousands of people will no longer buy from the CEOs companies until congress passes real progressive legislation that citizens want and have petitioned the CEOs for.
In the end, Mr. President we will get this done peacefully and we will do everything peaceful to make you help us.
In the tradition of Moses, Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmond Tutu, we will get this done for social Justice for the less fortunate in our country. I encourage other people reading this open letter to the President to organize and petition the government and the CEOs of corporations that aid meanspirited conservatives in both parties to go to my electric pamphlet at http://www.democratz.org and sign those petitions that you see best to accomplish social justice for the less fortunate in our country. Once you sign them, electronic letters will go out right away to congressional leaders and the Corporations that aid meanspirited conservatives. Do this for the less fortunate! Let our people grow and to meanspirited conservatives, let our people GO from your greed, high prices and wage slavery and private taxes and your religious oppression.
So let it get written so let it get done.
Sincerely,
http://www.democratz.org
Is it possible that the “activist left” has gone into dormancy, abandoned by Obama
and the Democrats? Is it possible that could be the problem in the Massachusetts Senate election, tomorrow? After all, the left jumped full force into getting Obama elected, in order to change the ruinous direction of America under Cheney/bush. Now after a year at the helm, we have Obama’s Democrats doing things
Cheney/bush Republicans would have done: the bank bailouts without conditions; an auto bailout bush would have done; Iraq withdrawal timeline was drafted under bush; the build-up in Afghanistan could have been authorized by bush; Quantanamo is still open; a health care bill has emerged that bush could easily
have signed to benefit the special corporate interests; there’s still no EFCA; the energy bill is being compromised and watered down by Democrats; an administration that, like Cheney/bush, still thinks ‘top-down” not “bottom-up.” Is it just me? We have a prevailing Conservative-Republican condition of pro Wall
Street and anti Main Street. We have some Congressional Democrats more conservative than the most conservative members of “the Party of No” and they’re all committee leaders. Is it just me or is it possible that the “activist left” is pissed and
has chosen to disengage? It seems to me that the interests of the people have been “back-burnered” by Democrats; a recipe to return quickly to minority status.
The revolt is against spending government money to create jobs. This is also the position of the AFL-CIO. What about the option of shortening the workweek – the idea that built the labor movement in the 19th century. Can’t you consider something like that?
Democrats, including the President, have ’sucker punched’ American workers and their unions and they have squandered an opportunity to help set this country back on its feet. They didn’t need 60 votes to bail-out Wall Street and its greedy CEO’s. They didn’t need 60 votes to bail-out banks that they should have let fail. And, they didn’t need 60 votes to fund Billions Dollars more for a war that can not be won.
But they sat on their Asses in Mass. and, after endorsing John McCain’s Tax on employee benefits, lost the Kenedy seat and any hope for Healthcare reform.
Next I expect we will hear from the DNC and AFL-CIO how we desperately need 101 votes in the Senate and 501 votes in the House to do anything for working men and women. And even then, the Democrats will still “screw it up”.
I am sick that I spent six weeks in Denver in 2008 General election, walking precincts for the “Yellow, Blue and Unworthy Dog” likes of a Udall. And in other states, where Labor helped the other “egg-sucking dog” Democrats who have so quickly abandon working men and women.
Guess what? We don’t need a “Filibuster Proof” Senate. Let the SOB’s stand in the Well of the Senate and read the phonebook. When the American public sees what they are doing there will be a real revolt. Rosevelt didn’t need 60 votes to pass the New Deal programs. Why does Harry Reid? Thank God, Nancy Pelosi is not bringing the Senate package before the Congress. No bill is better than the CRAP we are facing.
Senate Democrats SUCK EGGS !
We have one political party in the United Oligarchy of Amerika called the Money Party. Like a single coin it has two sides. One side called “Republican” and the other “Democrat”. Both serve the universal whore of man – Money! Labor needs to hit the streets. Stop these stupid little “rallies” I keep getting emails for and start the kind of street action workers conducted in the 1930’s. You have to disrupt the system and shut it down to get capitalism’s attention. Plus we need to start worker’s banks, worker’s hospitals, worker co-ops and begin to rely on ourselves and not on the bosses! Why isn’t every labor hall an unemployed worker center??? Why are the unemployed standing in Home Depot parking lots…organized labor is lazy and has no vision!
All the comments above are very thought provoking and we need to pay atention and learn from this experience. I am a simple blue collar working man, but I can even see how bad people have it out there today. There is no work for men and women out there today, if there is a job in the paper it pays nothing $8 or $10 an Hour. Construction work is just not there, not even any adds in paper. I have worked all my life working in construction what do we do? If you go on an interview they check your credit rating! How can you have a good credet rating when there are no jobs! Health Care, how can I have health care when I have not worked in almost a year. Now I support President Obama and Im a strong Democrat but maybe the voters of Massachusetts have had it, and would not stand for any more promises from the Democrats? I cant understand why or how someone could vote for a Repub-SCAB-lican and there empty promises. But some democtats are also SCABS? I believe in President Obama and President Trumka and I know we need JOBS good paying UNION JOBS. The Democrats and our UNION leaders have to start screaming for JOBS good paying jobs get on TV and start screaming start some Rallies some protests get some attention get people back to work. When I was a kid in the 70’s Union leaders and Politations buth had rallies and protests to bring attention to the communitys for the lack of jobs and gave families some hope. Union Leaders were on TV making speeches and creating attention to the lack of work. WHERE IS ALL THE ATTENTION WHERE IS THE SUPPORT WHERE IS THE HELP? We need our leaders to start something. I believe our Union leaders and Politations both Democrats and Repub- have to start some noise and we ( Labor ) should support the Politians, that make the most and stand up for us. Maybe this feeling of support was lacking in Mass? I am also sick and tired of reporters and political commontaries blaming President Obama. He has been in office for one year! Lets see what he can do!! Bush was in office for Eight years and did nothing but get he and his friends Rich. Now lets put some attention on creating JOBS!! Remember You have to Keep the Faith!!
I think myself, and most other correspondants in this forum agree, that President Obama and the Democrats in congress , as well as the leaders of our unions have forgot working class Americans, not just union workers. But, I don’t buy that would make them vote for a Republican. When they know very well that the Republicans have never done anything for working people except to make them go backwards. during my 40 some years of working life, I only ever lost money and benefits when Republicans were in power. We lost negotiated raises , and cost of living increases during the Nixon Ford years, but everything else still went up . And we lost big time when Reago was president. We lost wages vacations ,holidays and they changed the formula for cost of living ,so that it was almost impossible to get cost of living raises. It improved some during the Clinton years, but,not enough
We need jobs, and the economy straightened out We need real healthcare reform where there is a public plan that people can choose instead of insurance companies plans. There should not be any kind of tax what so ever on employees benefits. I hope our union leaders take note of that , and stand firm .
We also need to end these wars , and get our people back home safely. There has to be smarter and better ways to defeat these terrorists wherever they are, without invading countries. That only makes more people hate us, and work against us. I think we need to be clandestine like they are. I’m sure we have capable people.
People talk about labor and their allies forming another party to represent us, but I don’t think the numbers are in our favor. Unions don’t have all the members they used to have, and I’m not sure who they can count as allies. Where I live, companies , and the A.B.C. have brainwashed most non union workers that unions are no good and all the union companies here, but one are gone.
Thank you
[...] Coakley spent time raising money from insurance lobbyists in Washington instead of campaigning in Mattapan because that’s the way the system works. Obama listened to an MIT economist instead of us—about our own benefit plans—because that’s often the way the Democratic Party works. Neo-liberalism reigns, money flows from and to those with power, and extremist free market ideas have permeated every corner of public life. Many national Democrats will conclude this election was lost because Democrats were—you guessed it—“too left.” The AFL-CIO election night polling shows they are wrong. [...]
“The Working Class Has Spoken. Will Democrats Listen?” Obviously not! The Democrats and Obama are now the ruling party to further loot the treasury and working people. Everything “accomplished” in the last year has been to restore and expand the wealth of Wall Street, Big Business, the military-industrial complex with more wars for more profits, the “Health Care” corporations, etc.
All this “recovery” of the economy invariably further impoverishes working people.
The more important question that must be asked now is this:
” The Working Class Has Spoken. Will President Trumka Listen?”
President Trumka has refused to listen to the delegates to the AFL-CIO
in Pittsburgh in September that unanimously voted to support “single-payer” health care legislation. He also refused to listen to the 500 plus union locals that voted for “single payer” Medicare-for-All. Mr. Trumka continues to support Obama’s “Health Care Reform”, with all it’s obvious faults, often posted on this blog.
There are powerful steps that Mr. Trumka, the AFL-CIO leadership, and the leadership of organized labor could easily take, if they would just listen to the explicit demands of union members. Organized labor must listen to the painful outcries and demands of millions of un-organized working, including many “middle-class” workers, as they and their families are being impoverished and destroyed the Obama and the Democratic Party.
This is the “listen” but more importantly to act! Organized labor leadership must now SPEAK OUT NOW and to ORGANIZE NOW to promote the economic interests of all working people. In the process, the organized trade union movement membership will undoubtedly increase and trade unions will become the powerful instrument of working class power.
Here are ACTIONS that the trade unions need to make, after listening and understanding, based on the needs of the working class today:
1. Announce that the AFL-CIO no longer supports Obama’s “Health Care Reform” in any form, and is supporting the legislation for “Medicare for All”
single payer health care.
2. Announce that the AFL-CIO no longer supports either Republican or Democratic Parties, as both are consumed with corrupt corporate money and interests. Neither party represents the economic interests of working people, organized or unorganized. Both corporate controlled parties have betrayed the vital economic needs of all working people, organized and unorganized.
3. The AFL-CIO realizes now that simple trade unionism and the struggle for a contract with an employer is now an inadequate strategy to meeting the needs of organized workers.
4. The struggle for economic betterment of organized working people must now be greatly expanded into a political struggle. Sociali Security, Medicare, minimum wages, OSHA safety conditions, section 8 housing support, pensions, unfair working conditions, etc. are all now protected and secured
from government legislation at federal, state and local levels of government.
5. Therefore, the AFL-CIO, along with other union organizations, under these dire economic and political conditions, is announcing a call for a founding convention of a new political party dedicated to promoting the economic and social interests of all working people, organized and unorganized. The new party, refusing all corporate money and agendas, will involve millions of working people in democratic political struggle to secure the vital needs of the people.
6. The the economic and social needs of working people never find a voice or expression in the corporate owned mass media or even the corporate controlled public media such as NPR and PBS. Thus a new effort to secure a democratic media, with daily programing on weekdays and weekends, will be undertaken. Working people desperately need easily accessed information and education to overcome the complete corporate suppression of working class perspectives on current affairs.
7. These steps above will ultimately result in an upsurge in the organization and power of the existing trade union movement.
Brothers and sisters,working families need to decide what it is we really want and then we have to be willing to do the work to get it. Sure,we’re all dead tired after a hard shift at work—but look at what has happened to our unions and our country while we entertain ourselves to death! One hour a week won’t hurt any one of us if it will help keep working people’s issues alive and kicking. If we can’t educate, maybe we can agitate, and take our destiny into our own hands.
We need to be active in our unions, supportive of our brothers and sisters when they are under fire, and help the unorganized to get what we cherish—good paying jobs, affordable health care,retirement without poverty, and a strong middle class to build on. We need to rebuild a foundation that gives our children something besides a mountain of debt when they come out of school—jobs,jobs,jobs.
Every country with a real national health care system and not an insurance moneymaking scam has something we have not been allowed to have – one or more political parties which exist only to assure political representation for workers. None of these real health care systems has any restrictions on abortions or requires women seeking to terminate a pregnancy to pay for it out of their own pocket. Yet a significant group of congressional “democrats” saw the health care debate only as an opportunity to limit women’s rights to this legal and safe medical procedure. Instead of ostracizing them, Obama @ Co catered to them, just like they did with Lieberman and Nelson in the Senate. Anything but free health care for all paid for by taxing the rich is a complete sham. Life for American workers will continue to become ever more miserable unless and until we produce self-sacrificing, principled leaders unafraid to tell the truth and take this monster head on. The beaurocrats running (ruining?) our unions today are more concerned with preserving their cushy jobs than forcing public investment in our jobs. They have us helplessly tethered to our class enemy’s political parties like domesticated farm animals, leading to disappointment, demobilization and demoralization at the very time our ranks need to be called into militant mass action. Campare our hacks to real leaders like Nelson Mandela and MLK and you can’t help but see what is wrong. Real leaders go to jail, and suffer for their cause, like Eugene V. Debs, not ride around in limos, make statements and playing golf. Lead, or get out of the way. The longer the rising tide of discontent is contained, the more violent the tidal wave will be when it breaks through, and sooner or later it will.
When the deadbeat officers of our union “movement” finally decide they have more to fear from the greed and violence of the bosses than the militancy of their own members, they will give in and make the call for what is so desparately needed right now – a national workers march on Washington for jobs and against Wall Street’s greed and wars. That will be just the beginning, once the floodgates are opened.
You tell me — Why should Washington listen? If they don’t, what’ll the people do about it? Fire off some really angry emails full of caps and exclamation-points? Our parents knew it, our grandparents knew it — Washington will nothing nothing unless they are compelled to do it.
When you have two major parties with the same agenda, it really doesn’t matter a whole lot which one is in office, does it?
Universal Health Care
A poem by David G. Hurlburt 2007
Health care is our basic human right.
Now is the time to stand up and fight.
Put our money and our vote up on the line.
Get up on our feet and walk a picket line.
Dial a phone or write a letter,
Do it so every one will feel better.
Why should only the rich have medical care?
And the poor just die but republicans don’t care?
Get out of your chair and in to the street.
It is time for us all to vote with our feet.
Show and tell politicians, turn up the heat.
If we all fight together we can not be beat.
The Iraqis get universal health care,
The rules of war require that its there.
Prisoners in Git-mo get medical care.
But not all Americans that’s just not fair?
What about the hard working poor?
They need medical care for sure?
The system is broken it profits the greedy.
Let us fix the system to serve the needy.
While we are at it Health care for profit must go.
Single payer health care for all is the way to go.
Overhead and profit is just another poison pill.
We have had enough we have taken our fill.
Skyrocketing premiums, deductibles and co-pay,
Caused by advertising, profit and big CEO pay.
It must be stopped now and here is the fix.
There is a bill in the congress HR six seven six.
The recent supreme court decision on corporate campaign contributions should remove any illusions that American workers have any representation whatsoever. Unfortunately, most of us are not paying attention, and are content to let others do our thinking for us. The rich have us sitting in front of TVs day and night absorbing their reactionary world-view while we consume the poison – high fructose corn syrup, sugar and salt fried in transfat that we have been taught to call “food” and wash it down with sugar water or cheap goat piss that passes for beer.
At the same time, the deliberately underfunded schools dumb our kids down and prepare them for a lifetime of obesity and diabetes, while those we’ve been taught to look to for direction endlessly preach that America is the “greatest” country in the world. Of course, that is true, as long as you consider concentrating unheard of wealth in the hands of a tiny few, dismantling our industrial base, polluting the world, ignorance of science and math, gutting social services and conquering foreign lands for no other reason than plunder “greatness”.
Our union leaders either don’t know this, or refuse to tell it. Instead, they tell us that our future depends on electing Democrats who screw us at every opportunity. Our ranks are riddled with racists seeking to help the rich convince our class that Mexicans (and other immigrants) are the cause of our problems and not the boundless greed of the robber barons who are in complete control. I’ll take an immigrant worker, with or without papers, who understands what’s what and is ready to fight the bosses, over 1000 of these agents of racism within our ranks.
Eventually, we will be driven to such misery that we will actually turn off our TVs and internet porn and take action. The corporations have been set free to drive us back to the days when they sent Pinkertons to shoot and kill us at our strike rallies and picnics. When we finally fight back, they will seek to crush us swiftly and violently. They mean business, and unless we put forth a new generation of fighting leaders, we will be smashed. Workers revolt? – Ready when you are. See you in the camps.
as a retired union member, i also hope the the unions will listen to their members, do not vote for idiots like obama. obama is only using the unions to get their votes. otherwise obama could care less about unions
As the Philadelphia Progressive Examiner I once believed when we elected Obama we got Champagne. I’ve come to believe what we really got was Bush Lite. When I ran for Congress in 1998 I firmly came to believe that Unions needed to become an active Progressive Movement. We need to run Union candidates for political office. In this way we can actually use the idiotic Roberts Courts decision that says money is free speech and pump Union money into Union candidates. When we win anyone want to bet the Rich want campaign finance because Union money isn’t free speech only Corporate money.
We also need to take May Day 2010 and rally everyone in support of Employee Free Choice with the message being Democrats pass this or all of us will be staying home from the polls on election day.
We need to create new unions for the jobs like the one I have done on a Psychiatric unit for years for instance organizing residential psychiatric workers or child care workers or bank tellers or tech workers. Many of the workers in today’s workforce have a hard time figuring out how it works for them to join the Steelworkers even though I do.
Then we rebuild the manufacturing base. Demand real health care reform and climate change legislation and repeal of NAFTA,GATT, and the WTO and the rest of the globaloney.
I have been a lifelong Democrat but Obama has convinced me that as a working person I can’t depend on Democrats to protect my interests any more than Greedpublicans. Its time to let the misleaders of our nation know the barbarians are at the gates with pitchforks and we are coming for them.