Progressive Era

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

Ronald Leave a comment

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!

Corporate Threats On Employees And Politics: 1896 And 2010! Back To The 19th Century! :(

Ronald Leave a comment

More than a century ago, corporations were dominating our politics and corrupting it in what was called “The Gilded Age”!

Many corporations pressured employees to vote for the Republican party as the party of big business and its belief in laissez faire capitalism. So when William Jennings Bryan was nominated by the Democrats in 1896, corporations became intimately involved in working to defeat him, depicting him as a socialist, a Marxist, a radical, and an extremist. Many corporations warned their workers that if Bryan was elected, the companies would be firing workers and eventually shutting down!

The tactic worked, and conservative William McKinley won the Presidency, continuing GOP and big business dominance of American politics. Only with his tragic assassination in 1901 did the nation gain Theodore Roosevelt, who represented the beginning of progressive change, including some of the ideas and visions of William Jennings Bryan!

Now, more than a century later, and thanks to the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case in January of this year, corporations are again running amuck in their determination to defeat the Democrats, and reverse the reforms brought about by President Barack Obama! They are spending inordinate amounts of money, and promoting distorted commercials to scare and intimidate voters, either not to vote, or to vote out of fear and trepidation of what Barack Obama represents, a very typical depiction similar to that used against William Jennings Bryan more than a century ago!

But even more outrageous is what one franchise owner of a McDonald’s in Ohio has done–to warn workers that if the Republicans do not win the political races in the state, that their measly pay will be lowered and benefits will be lost! 🙁

This is just one example of how corporations are intimidating their employees and trying to fix the election results, and it is evidence of how labor rights hard won over the past century are now endangered by newly gained corporate powers that make us realize that the Supreme Court is setting the nation backward, before the reforms of the Progressive Era, to the traditional corporate dominance and abuses of the Gilded Age!

Are Americans going to sit back and allow a century of political, social and economic reform to be wiped out by the reactionary desires of corporate America, which caused the Great Depression and the Great Recession? 🙁

Will the Supreme Court be allowed to take us back to the 19th century Gilded Age, and repeal the 20th century? 🙁

One thing is clear: no matter what happens on November 2, the struggle for progressive political, social and economic reform, which many had thought had been won under Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Barack Obama, will have to continue!

We may have to redo old battles for reforms we thought were permanent, and the division that exists in this country may become greater than ever, as progressives cannot allow the return of the 19th century and the Gilded Age without continuing to fight for change!

Progressive Era Reforms Under Assault By Supreme Court!

Ronald Leave a comment

During the Progressive Era (1900-1920), reforms were initiated to restore government back to the people.

The Gilded Age (1868-1896) had seen the growth in power of corporations who had used the Supreme Court promotion of monopoly capitalism to corrupt local and state governments, and particularly the US Senate. So we saw legislation pass in the time of Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson to limit corporate power over campaign spending; we had municipal and state reform; we had muckraker exposure of corporate giants; and we witnessed the need for a constitutional amendment to democratize the United States Senate and take away the ability of corporations to “own” Senators, causing the accomplishment of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, giving the people direct popular vote for the upper chamber.

Now a lot of that progress is subject to threat by the Supreme Court decision to allow unlimited spending by corporations on political campaigns under the guise that corporations are “people”. So we could have Wall Street senators, Oil industry senators, Banking senators, Health Insurance senators, Computer industry senators, Walmart senators, etc.

Is this what we want, that our Senate, our House of Representatives, and our state legislatures and city councils are “owned” by corporate interests instead of the American people? 🙁 The answer is a resounding “NO!”

There is urgency to do something legislatively to fight this outrageous Supreme Court decision, so that it does not distort the whole political system in 2010 and 2012 This is, in fact, a priority, or else we may lose the country totally to the “special interests”! 🙁