“American Dream”

President Obama Comes Out Swinging: It’s About Time!

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Many liberals and progressives have been frustrated by President Obama’s desire to come across as moderate and to cooperate with the Republican Party opposition, despite their concerted campaign to oppose him in every possible way in the past two and a half years.

Obama’s willingness to compromise on the budget deal in December and again this month has made many wonder if Obama had the “cajones” to come out swinging against the GOP agenda to take us back to the 1920s, or even the Gilded Age of the late 19th century!

Obama’s speech this Wednesday resolved that issue, as the President came out in an assertive manner against the Paul Ryan plan to gut Medicare, and promote a ruthless cutting of the social safety and economic regulatory network that the Democrats set up under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society!

Obama declared that he will not allow the destruction of Medicare, in favor of a voucher system which would put senior citizens and disabled people back into poverty, as was the case before Johnson pushed through a way to promote dignity in old age by providing what every other industrial nation has, not only for older and disabled people, but all citizens in their nations!

Obama declared that he would not abandon the needs and security not only of senior citizens and the disabled, but also the young, the poor, and the average working man and woman, who is being victimized by a tax policy that has created more stratification of incomes than ever in American history, and greater than any other democratic nation in the world!

While there is a need for reforms within Medicare and Medicaid and other government programs, Obama said he would use a scalpel rather than a machete to deal with necessary changes.

He defended the rights of working people and the middle class, who have borne the burden of taxes, while the elite upper classes have been gaining tremendous tax breaks for the past decade, at the same time that the Bush Administration put us into tremendous national debt growth due to two unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a Prescription Drug Plan not paid for by taxpayers!

Obama emphasized the importance of investments in education, transportation infrastructure and energy research, and cuts in wasteful defense spending, of which there is much evidence, and the need to stop thinking of all defense expenditures as sacrosanct.

Obama also said what is going on is part of the perennial battle over the role and size of government, going back to the Founding Fathers (meaning the struggle between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson). We must understand, he declared, that this is a country which has a social compact to care about others, not just oneself, and that the concept of ME must be transformed to WE–that when some are victimized, the rest of us should be seen as lessened in our commitment to human dignity! The “American Dream” must be kept alive for future generations!

The Republican reaction was to say that Obama was overly “partisan”, as if they have not been such since Day One of the Obama Presidency!

The problem in reality is that Obama has not been partisan enough, and finally seems to have woken up to that fact, that this is a battle over the future of the country, and we cannot allow the extreme right wing of the GOP to win control of all branches of government!

We must fight back and give the Republican Party “hell” as Harry Truman did in 1948, and speak for real change as Franklin D. Roosevelt did with his New Deal in the 1930s and Lyndon Johnson did with his Great Society in the 1960s!

This is a battle to retain the political, social and economic reforms of the past hundred years, and to move into the future with optimism, and a belief that all citizens must play their role in the future of the nation, rather than the obsessive gathering of wealth at the expense of society at large!

So a salute to the President, and we look forward to a year and a half of active, aggressive campaigning by him as he seeks a second term in the White House, and a repudiation of the anti labor, anti women, anti children, anti elderly, anti poor, anti environment, anti science, anti health care, anti consumer regulation, anti financial regulation, anti education, anti Hispanic and Latino, anti African American, and ultimately anti middle class agenda of the Republican Party, and the Tea Party extremists within and outside the party establishment!

The Dangers Of Highly Educated Unemployed People In America!

Ronald 2 Comments

The United States is facing a major crisis in unemployment, with millions of young Americans going to college, expecting rewards in the form of job opportunities and career advancement after years of preparation, and instead being forced to take part time work, often outside their fields of preparation, and losing valuable years of career building experience.

After beginning to assert their independence from parents, many are forced to move back home, or live in poverty, with little hope of advancement, which would allow them to plan to marry, have children, and live the “American Dream”!

The danger of frustrations building up in these young college graduates is that it could lead to such disillusionment, that it leads to violence and bloodshed in the streets, not all that different than what happened in Egypt and other Middle East nations in the past two months.

The image of America as the “land of opportunity” is being damaged, and desperate people who see no future could rise in anger, and strike out against the society that promises them hope and opportunity, and then fails to follow through.

We have government leaders now in the states and in the House of Representatives, mostly Republicans, who seem to only care about the rich and the privileged, proving themselves to be uninterested in economic opportunity, but rather only in the perpetuation of what has become, in many respects, a plutocracy, rather than the democracy that is part of the political propaganda that students learn about in political science classes.

Failure to understand that educated unemployed people will only take so much abuse before striking back leads one to fear the future, and a possible return to the turmoil and riots of the 1960s. We could be facing the horrors of a civil war, of the unemployed masses and the discontented educated class against the plutocracy that never is satisfied in its maniacal seeking of fulfilling their greed and materialism!

Organized Labor: The Promoter And Protector Of The Middle Class!

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In the midst of the attack on organized labor going on in Republican governed state governments, many fail to understand how significant a role labor unions have played historically in promoting and protecting the middle class.

When unions flourished in the years after 1945 to 1980, the middle class grew dramatically in size and in prosperity. Labor supported civil rights, social security, medicare, and promotion of organizing rights for workers. They became the counterweight to corporations and Wall Street in the political battles that made America a nation in which gaps in income and wealth narrowed.

Since Ronald Reagan’s Presidency, union membership has declined from one third to about 7 percent, and with it, the working conditions of non union workers has worsened dramatically. What many people did not and do not understand is that when unions prosper, non union workers benefit as well, and when unions decline, all middle class workers lose out.

So we are seeing the middle class slipping in poverty, and with the decline of organized labor, the American Dream of a middle class life is fast disappearing!

This is why the labor battles in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, New Jersey and elsewhere are not just over state public service workers in those states. It is also the future of American workers who never have and never will be members of labor unions, but do not appreciate how much labor power did for them as they moved up the economic ladder, and now do not fully realize yet the growing power of the elite rich and corporations which care not a whit about their workers’ long term future decline, in their mad dash for maximum profits, minimal regulation, and insane passion for never ending concentration of wealth in their own hands!

The Collapse Of The American Dream: Back To The Gilded Age

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We are witnessing, in the present economic downturn, a reversal unmatched since the Great Depression.

And all of the cushions and safety net put into place since then, via the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson, is rapidly being lost.

Even the labor reforms that showed up in Wisconsin under Robert LaFollette, Sr. in the Progressive Era are now facing extinction in, of all places, Wisconsin, and the movement against labor unions is spreading to Indiana, Ohio, New Jersey, Florida and elsewhere.

We are seeing the return of “slave labor” in the sense that wages are stagnant, and more than ever, part time workers without benefits are becoming the norm in many areas of the economy.

And if one is unfortunate enough to be unemployed, many corporations and businesses are refusing to hire them, as if they are damaged goods.

The attack has begun on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, pension plans, health benefits, and other programs that made life better in America.

Powerful corporations, and wealthy people such as the Koch brothers, are managing to influence the Supreme Court, and are in league with the Republican Party, to set back a century of progress and reform.

This is a battle for survival for millions upon millions of middle class people who are rapidly falling into deprivation and poverty and despair.

The feeling is that there is no future, as life becomes more difficult for working families, but also for young people who have a gloomy view of the future, without an education, or even with a college education.

The Social Darwinist ethic of the late 19th century Gilded Age is returning, that of survival of the fittest, and it is creating an ugly atmosphere in America, as the middle class turns on itself and opposes what other middle class people have, and all this to the benefit of the wealthy and the corporations, who are sitting by and licking their chops as America turns on itself.

This is a very dangerous situation which could lead to a breakdown of law and order, a horrifying thought, as we face a daunting future where economic opportunity seems evasive and scattered.

The political divide in this country MUST be breached, or doom is ahead in more ways than one can imagine!

The GOP And Tea Party War On Cities And Quality Of Life In America! :(

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The Republican Party and the Tea Party Movement have declared war on American cities and the quality of life in America, with their insane call for massive cuts in spending, while continuing to promote a tax policy that will add to the already massive redistribution of wealth to the top two percent of the American people at the expense of everyone else! 🙁

When we are faced with loss of police, firefighters, sanitation workers, teachers, nurses, social workers, librarians, prison guards and other essential public service workers, and are ready and willing to add millions of people to the unemployment rolls, that is a crime against humanity, and particularly those living in cities!

When the cuts will endanger everyone and cheat the poor, the sick, the young, the elderly, and the quality of life for all of us on a daily basis, that is a crime against humanity!

When the bulk of the loss will be visited against the “blue” areas of America–with the biggest assault against New York City, Chicago, Washington, DC, Los Angeles and San Francisco, it is clear that this attack on the deficit is just a political assault by the Republican Party against Democratic strongholds!

If these and other cities and major metropolitan areas are to suffer losses that will impact everyone’s life in a massive way, then the country is not just losing temporarily, but is being fundamentally harmed for decades and generations long term!

What the GOP is trying to do, in league with the Tea Party Movement, is return America to the 19th century, to a time before this nation became an urban, modern society! The Gilded Age time of maldistribution of wealth and exploitation of minorities and immigrants is returning after decades of real progress toward social justice!

The government has been starved from tax revenue by policies of Republican Presidents and Congresses, who have been very willing to add to the national debt instead, rather than make those who have more to pay more as a part of the responsibility of success and opportunity that this country has offered them!

The “American Dream” is being destroyed by those who never have cared about the middle class, the poor, and the vulnerable in our society. They think mouthing about “Christian values” replaces real commitment to practice what one preaches.

This has all been done in the image of promoting religion but forgetting the basic teaching of Jesus Christ that we are our “brother’s keeper”.

The Ideological Struggle Of American History: Laissez Faire Vs. Progressivism!

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As we begin the year 2011, the old ideological struggle between laissez faire economics and the progressive tradition is again involved in a great struggle over the future of America.

Laizzez faire celebrates individuality and risk taking, while progressivism promotes the idea of a person’s right to a minimum standard of living and a safety net of protections for all citizens.

So we have the new constitutional debate over the health care law, whether everyone in the United States is entitled to health care coverage. Conservatives regard any expansion of government protections as a threat to capitalism and freedom of choice.

But this battle has raged for a century and more in different ways, such as the following:

1. The 16th Amendment, the federal income tax, which became part of the Constitution in 1913, was called an attack on individual freedom and a threat to the American experiment.

2. Social Security in 1935 was called a plan to make the United States a copy of the Soviet Union.

3. The minimum wage and mandated overtime pay in 1938 were considered steps toward Communism, Marxism, Fascism and Nazism.

4. After Brown V. Board of Education started the modern civil rights movement in 1954, many thought that it would destroy the nation, was an abuse of judicial power, and was unconstitutional.

5. When Medicare was passed in 1965, it was considered unAmerican and a socialist attack on the American economy.  It was denounced by Ronald Reagan as taking away the freedom of the American people.

So passionate opposition has always followed every expansion of the social safety net or promotion of civil rights, but when one looks back, it is obvious that the laissez faire and conservative attacks are just hysteria and promotion of fear by those who don’t wish to promote the ultimate “American dream”, that all of us are entitled to basic human rights, not just the rich and the privileged who just want to deny those rights because it might make it necessary that they part with some of their self centered view of what America is all about!

It is seen as likely that after many constitutional challenges over the next two years, the Supreme Court will uphold the Health Care legislation passed last year, by a 5-4 or 6-3 vote, and in future years, many will look back and wonder why such tumult developed over what will be seen as a basic human right, the right to medical care for everyone–rich, middle class or poor in this nation!

The Roberts Supreme Court: Back To The Gilded Age And The 1920s! :(

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New evidence is now available indicating that the Supreme Court headed by John Roberts, the 17th Chief Justice, since 2005, has become the most pro business Supreme Court since the 1920s and the earlier Gilded Age, both periods in which corporations were given license to run amuck over small business, labor, and consumers in their mad dash for maximum profits and exploitation! 🙁

The Citizens United case in January, allowing unlimited corporate contributions in political campaigns, upending a century of regulatory laws on that subject, is just the most obvious case.

But with a five member majority, with two appointments by Ronald Reagan, one by father George H W Bush and two by son George W. Bush, the Supreme Court now has demonstrated that 61 percent of the time, they favor big business, as compared to 46 percent in the last five years under Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and 42 percent in all the years since Earl Warren became Chief Justice in 1953.

The Chamber of Commerce and other business groups have been able to get a sympathetic ear from the Supreme Court in greater percentages as the years go by, and this is another troubling piece of evidence, shown by many legal scholarly analyses, that the concept of “an equal day in court” for everyone is really a myth! 🙁

What is emerging is the disturbing reality of a growing oligarchy which wins the day in the courts and in the Congress so often that the idea of a “land of opportunity” and the “American dream” is more than ever, for almost everyone, except a small elite, a total distortion of reality! 🙁

Sad Ending On DREAM Act: “The American Dream” Denied To Young Illegal Immigrants Who Wish To Contribute To The Only Nation They Know! :(

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A very sad development yesterday in the US Senate was the denial of an opportunity for young illegal immigrants who were brought to this country as babies or very young children, and never have done anything illegal, but are being denied the right to move toward citizenship by pursuing college or entering the military.

These children are not lawbreakers, even if their parents are, and they have no memory of their former homeland. They have been discriminated against, and just wished to pursue the “American dream” that we hear so much about, but the Republicans in the Senate, except for three courageous souls, refused to allow such an opportunity.

The only three Republicans who voted in favor of cloture to end the filibuster by their party on the proposed DREAM Act were Richard Lugar of Indiana, Robert Bennett of Utah, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

However, since the vote, with four Senators not present, was 55-41, we must also look at the five Democrats who voted against the DREAM Act–Kay Hagen of North Carolina, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and Jon Tester and Max Baucus of Montana. These five Senators did not show reasonable justification for their votes, and should rightfully be condemned for their vote.

With this defeat, and with the reality of GOP control of the House of Representatives for the next two years, and fewer Democrats in the Senate as well, it is unlikely that the DREAM Act or anything similar to it will have any fortune in the next few years.

But the battle for immigration reform, including giving opportunities to children who have done no wrong except being born to the “wrong” parents, will continue, and with the growing Latino population in this country, eventually human rights and civil rights will come to these deserving children of illegal immigrants!

Republicans Gone Mad: Jan Brewer And Mitt Romney Go Neanderthal! :(

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It is very obvious that the next two years of Republican control of the House of Representatives is going to be a literal “nightmare” for the country, and the attempt to promote “compromise” or “common ground” as Speaker to be John Boehner terms it, is almost certain to fail, and not because Barack Obama is causing it.

But it is not just Congress that will be a center of conflict. It is already showing up in other ways that are very alarming! 🙁

We have Arizona Governor Jan Brewer denying transplants to about 100 very sick people, and saying they should ask the federal government for more stimulus money, something the GOP has been totally against until now! 🙁

But the cost involved for these approximately 100 patients is only 5 million dollars! So Republican Governor Jan Brewer does not believe in the “right to life” for transplant candidates, but insists that every fetus must come to term! And this is the party of Sarah Palin who talked about Obama’s health care plan promoting “death panels”! And what is this going on in Arizona, and probably soon in other states? Have we lost all our humanity? 🙁

Then, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, seen by many intelligent, rational people as probably the best potential nominee for President in his party, including the author, suddenly starts to appeal to the extreme right wing of his party by proposing that unemployment compensation be privatized, a shocking idea that people should open up accounts for the threat of unemployment in the future, with their own investments in the stock market, similar to what George W. Bush proposed for Social Security in 2005, which if it had been done, would have totally destroyed Social Security in 2008 when the stock market crashed! 🙁

If Romney is trying to appeal to the hard right of his party, heaven help us! Who is there out there that we can call a sane, civilized candidate who this nation could live with? Has Mitt Romney gone mad in his quest to be President, that now he backs away from his own state health care plan in Massachusetts, and obviously will now promote privatizing of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid? How will he differentiate himself from the “loonies’ in his party if he is to adopt every demagogic concept they advocate? 🙁

This is not just being partisan, what Brewer and Romney are advocating, it is TOTAL INSANITY! 🙁

It is attempting to take all morality, all decency, out of American politics!

It is aiming to destroy the New Deal and Great Society which has humanized this nation over the past 75 years!

It is saying everyone is in this world just for himself, and to hell with anyone who is suffering from illness, unemployment, poverty, deprivation!

The message being sent is that this is a country of, by, and for the wealthy, and the “American dream” is to take as much as one can gain, no matter how it is acquired, as basic common decency no longer applies! To hell with those less fortunate or needy, as this is unadulterated laissez faire capitalism at its best! 🙁

The GOP is declaring war on common decency and morality and ethics, and the fight must begin to overcome this threat to our principles! The future of this nation as a beacon of freedom and opportunity is at stake! 🙁

47 Years After Kennedy Funeral, Has America Lost Its Idealism and Optimism About the Future?

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A half century ago, when John F. Kennedy was President, there was a sense of idealism and optimism, a sense of commitment to others, and a belief that challenges could be overcome and great things accomplished!

Today, there is little sense of these feelings in America, and we have become a very self centered, materialistic society, in which family life has deteriorated, and gloom and doom resonates! 🙁

There is cynicism, pessimism, fear, and hysteria present among a large portion of the population, and no longer do most people believe in the so called “American Dream” of happiness and success!

We are being told that we cannot sustain New Deal social programs, cannot promote a decent education system, deal with the energy crisis, create jobs for millions of unemployed Americans, and rebuild our infrastructure which is in desperate need of repair!

A nation that does not have dreams and goals, but instead practices the art of personal destruction of public figures in the name of partisanship, is a nation in a terminal state if we cannot revive faith in the future! 🙁

Could it be that 47 years ago, with the Kennedy funeral and burial in Arlington National Cemetery on this day,  our nation’s greatness had reached its peak?

Some would say absolutely YES, that the nation never has fully recovered from the horrors of the Kennedy Assassination, and that we are in a funk of our own making that will bring us down to a second rate power, unless we can restore the feelings and beliefs so prevalent when John F. Kennedy was President of the United States!