Gilded Age

The Assault On Organized Labor And The Working Class

Ronald 1 Comment

The year 2011 is seeing a frontal assault on the hard earned rights of organized labor and the working class, gained over the past century with the aid of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, George H W Bush, and Bill Clinton.

Collective bargaining is about to disappear in many states controlled by Republican Governors, and the Supreme Court has been actively restricting labor rights and promoting the rights and privileges of corporations.

We are rapidly descending back into the Gilded Age and 1920s mentality, including the possibility of National Guard actions against workers in Wisconsin, and who know where else eventually! 🙁

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate threatens to create a permanent underclass, and employers are making things only worse.

The white population has an unemployment rate of about 8 percent; the African American population rate is 16 percent; the Hispanic rate is 12 percent; and the Asian American rate is about 7 percent. Add to this the growing number of disabled and handicapped workers as well, and then add to the mix the news that employers more than ever are refusing to consider anyone for employment who is at this point without a job.

If this strategy continues, which would seem to be against the civil rights laws on race, ethnicity and the disabled and handicapped, then we are on the way to a permanent underclass of people who will be unable to find work, and will be denied or thrown off unemployment compensation (which is only temporary in any case)!

This sets up a situation of social dynamite, which could lead to bloodshed and violence, including use of the National Guard against the American population, by bully governors who decide to use force against people marching and demonstrating and demanding a change in attitude and policy to give this underclass hope and confidence that there is a future for them.

This whole evolving situation is extremely scary and troubling! 🙁

Wisconsin Rises Against Scott Walker’s Threat Of National Guard Intervention Over Public Workers Losing Labor Rights

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Wisconsin, the home of progressivism and Robert La Follette, Sr. a century ago, came through today in a proud tradition of backing labor rights and public employees, with thousands of people descending on the state capital, Madison, in peaceful protests against Governor Scott Walker’s threat of employing the National Guard, as he works to force through the loss of workers’ rights and heavy cuts in pay for state workers to cover health care and pension benefits guaranteed by contract! 🙁

High school and college students joined their teachers and professors, and other state employees, including firefighters, paramedics, police officers, prison guards and others joined them in a massive protest against the strong arm tactics being utilized by Governor Walker.

This may be the equivalent of an American “Egypt”, a beginning of public protest against a Republican Party on the state and national level attempting to destroy everything that has been gained since the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal! 🙁

If Wisconsin is able to move ahead and destroy workers’ rights, then it will happen in Ohio, New Jersey, Florida and everywhere. This reminds those of us who remember what it was like in the 1960s when the American people marched for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam.

The quality of public service, and particularly of education of the future generation, will rapidly decline if the attack on workers’ rights by GOP governors is allowed to stand.

This is a battle for the future, while the GOP only is concerned about the elite upper class and the corporations! The country will never be the same if the right wing wins this struggle to return to the past of the 1920s and the Gilded Age! 🙁

The Destruction Of Public Employees Labor Unions: An Assault On The Middle Class And 80 Years Of American History! :(

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As the nation faces the toughest economic times since the Great Depression, we are witnessing an assault on public employees and their labor unions, wiping out eighty years of hard gained rights since the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and in so doing, further eroding the middle class!

It was labor unions, which came to full development and success beginning in the 1930s, which helped to create decent working conditions for millions of Americans, both in the public and private sector.

Now Republican Governors, and backed by the Republican leadership in Congress, are salivating over the loss of pension and medical benefits, the end of collective bargaining, and the return of employers, including state governments, dictating conditions of work to employees, as if this was the Gilded Age or the 1920s revived! 🙁

In the process, the middle class is being wiped out, being added to the growing number of Americans who are falling into poverty, and yet the suggestion that raising taxes on the wealthy and business might lessen the assault on hard won labor rights is automatically dismissed.

If the states and the national government continue the Republican assault on the middle class, there is the real danger that people will not just sit by and take punch after punch, and allow their dignity and rights gained long ago to be taken away without a counter reaction.

We are entering very dangerous territory and conditions, and yet the Republican Party seems to be tone deaf and immune to the reality of human suffering, only concerning themselves with the comfort of the elite wealthy and corporations.

It may remind many of the arrogance of the elite in other societies, and how their short sightedness led to unfortunate tragedy!

Democrats and progressives must continue to speak up and oppose with all of their energy this great tragedy of the middle class being destroyed, without any concern as to the long range effect!

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 Reality Of Budget Cuts To Come In The 112th Congress: The Poor, The Young, The Retired To Suffer Greatly While The Rich And Privileged Suffer No Pain! :(

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We hear a lot these days about “cost cutting”, and “budget cuts” and “reckless spending” as code words for what the 112th Congress under House Speaker to be John Boehner will be addressing next year.

What it comes down to, though, is that the rich and privileged and the corporations will suffer no pain at all, and instead the poor, the young, and the retired (mostly elderly) Americans will bear the brunt of such a dramatic slashing of the budget!

It means that medical care will be denied, as it is, for instance, in Arizona to Medicaid recipients who need heart, lung, kidney and liver transplants, and instead will die, being given a “death panel” decision by Governor Jan Brewer! 🙁

It means that class sizes will be dramatically raised, making educational conditions in thousands of school districts across the country far worse than they already are!

It means that crime fighting and fire fighting will be impeded, which will affect poorer communities more than wealthier areas within the states!

It means many prisoners will be released because of overcrowding and budget cuts in state prisons, and that will add to the crime rate, particularly in poorer areas!

It means that college students in community colleges and state universities across the nation will, in many cases, be priced out of higher education, or go so deep into debt with rising tuition and housing costs, that they will be forced into bankruptcy in future years! 🙁

It means that dedicated civil service employees who have devoted their lives to serving the public in many capacities will now be cheated out of labor arrangements and retirement plans that they thought were legally binding!

It means that basic amenities such as parks, beaches, libraries, and other public services will be cut back dramatically, making the quality of life far worse!

It means that basic services to the elderly poor will be cut back, endangering many in their health and safety, and the whole concept of the “golden years”!

The more one thinks about this series of realities, the more the inequities of the situation scream out. So the rich and privileged will do just fine, while large portions of the population will suffer in an age of selfishness and greed, unparalleled since the 1920s and the previous Gilded Age (1865-1897), which one would think we would not repeat.

And now we will have a Republican leadership that does not apologize for this circumstance, and instead embraces it with impunity! 🙁

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! 🙁

The Boston Tea Party Anniversary: Time To Reflect On The Tea Party Extremists Who Want To Destroy The Constitution They Say They Revere! :(

Ronald 1 Comment

Today, December 16, 237 years ago (1773), the event revered since then, the Boston Tea Party, took place, and galvanized the American colonists into the eventual movement for independence.

But one must remember that it still took two and a half years before the “Founding Fathers” agreed to move toward independence, as the Boston Tea Party crowd were considered radicals who were reckless and uncontrollable and irrational by many.

It is ironic, therefore, that many intelligent, thoughtful people consider today’s so called Tea Party Movement to be similarly radical, reckless, uncontrollable and irrational, and for good reasons!

Tea Party spokesmen in the differing movements that call themselves that title have called for radical actions, while claiming they revere the Constitution. But advocacy of measures such as the following belie what they claim to be their beliefs and goals.

These extremist statements and views include the following:

1. Modifying the 14th Amendment guarantee of citizenship to all born in the United States or its territories.
2. Repealing of the 16th Amendment which provides for a progressive federal income tax.
3. Repealing of the 17th Amendment, which provides for direct election of the United States Senate by popular vote, and returning the election to the state legislatures.
4.Repealing of legislation long established by federal law as an entitlement, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Unemployment Compensation.
5. Elimination of the Departments of Education and Energy.
6. Wiping out of the legislation passed under the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
7. Elimination of the Federal Reserve System set up under the New Freedom of Woodrow Wilson.
8. Ending of the numerous reforms passed under the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson.
9. Termination of the agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, Consumer Product Safety Commission, and Occupational Safety and Health Administration signed into law by President Richard Nixon.
10. Promotion of “Nativism” by reviving fear of immigrants, and trying to ban immigration from “undesirable” parts of the world.
11. Promoting States Rights and Secession 150 years after Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War was supposed to have settled that issue for all time.
12. Advocating Christianity as a national religion, and a church and state alliance, while the Founding Fathers specifically avoided that idea, instead promoting separation of church and state.

The Tea Party Movement is not a reform group designed to improve this nation, but instead to take it back to the reactionary realities of the past, which were overcome by a growth in power and influence by the national government, including the Presidency, the Congress, and the Supreme Court, to make the country truly a nation “of, by, and for the people”.

The Tea Party Movement does not offer “change”, but rather negativism and a return to the Gilded Age and the 19th century, before this nation became the great country that it is, a beacon of freedom, progress, and opportunity for the world!

Former Senator John Danforth, Senator Richard Lugar, And The Collapse Of The GOP As A Respectable Party! :(

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Former Republican Senator John Danforth of Missouri, a well respected moderate conservative, has denounced the turn of the GOP toward the extreme right Tea Party Movement, and has declared that the Republican Party of history may be lost forever!

Danforth is particularly scathing of the refusal of the Republicans in the Senate to cooperate on the ratification of the START Treaty with the Russian government, an action denounced also by the very respectable and acknowledged expert on foreign policy, Indiana Senator Richard Lugar!

Lugar’s opposition to his own party on the START treaty, and to the Tea Party Movement, has led to a move to try to defeat him in 2012, a move that Danforth bitterly opposes as the end of rational policy and principle by the party that he sees rapidly deteriorating! 🙁

Danforth and Lugar are a few of the rare remnants of the Republican Party which once was a respectable mainstream party, but is rapidly descending into darkness as an extreme right wing, regressive party that is trying to return America to the era of the 1920s or the Gilded Age! 🙁

If Richard Lugar is in trouble, the country is the loser! 🙁

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

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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!

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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”! 🙁