The Importance of this Election

If the wage slaves and retirees lose this election these are some of the things that will happen: 1) we will lose Social Security and Medicare as we know it; 2) more people will lose their rights to vote and there will be restrictions on free speech; 3) there will be an unprecedented attack on labor unions, such as the right to form unions and the right to bargain for healthcare, pensions and wages. They will also try to finish off the rest of the states with ‘right to work’ legislation, which means that if there is a union the members do not have to pay dues, which makes the union worth nothing to its members; 4) they will take away the minimum wage, which means that the corporations could pay whatever they want and work you as long as they want without over time; 5) the oligarchies will get rid of all worker safety rules, which means that now your body is expendable to them, and if you get injured on the job they would not be liable for your injuries and there won’t be any Social Security/disability insurance; 6) who will be left to pay taxes? It will be the wage slaves making whatever pittance the corporations pay and the people who were lucky enough to retire with a good union pension, but the 1% oligarchies will not be paying for these pensions, their money will be out of the country where they have no taxes. If we don’t like these things what can we do? If we sue we will just waste our time and money for the GOP now controls the court of last resort, the U.S. Supreme Court. What are our options? 1) is to make sure we win this election for Obama and get control of the Supreme Court; 2) start forming more unions and having more OWS across the U.S. – OWS’s that aren’t infiltrated with corporate shills who cause violence and Ron Paul trolls; 3) educate our wage slaves in our labor history (and our actual national history) for we must know ourselves in order to win and point out that ‘we the people’ are the good workers who drive the economy. We just need a little gas in our tanks, and you would think the oligarchies would understand this and let us make a living wage with vacation, healthcare and pensions, but they don’t think that way anymore so we will just have to take it because at this point most of the wage slaves have nothing to lose and this is where I think the oligarchies are making a huge mistake. They should not underestimate the desperation of wage slaves when they have no food, housing or a way to take care of their families. Then people get angry and do desperate things. How can we stop the bad and support the good? It is simply up to each and every one of us, retired and union workers, or nonunion working people? We must vote and give as much money or time as we can to elect Obama and true Democrats to office. If we win then we must hold his feet to the ground to do the things for the wage slaves that he wasn’t able to do with the do-nothing Congress. In his first term, though he did do a lot that doesn’t get recognition, Obama has accomplished more than 100 things of significance, bedsides taking out Osama Bin Laden, he signed the an act to revitalized and empowered the EPA, OSHA and the SEC to protect workers and consumers by regulating business practices; allocated funding to states and the Department of Homeland Security to save thousands of police or firefighter jobs from being cut during the recession; allocated special funding to the Labor Department to provide green job training to veterans; empowered states that legalized medical marijuana to regulate themselves; designated $1.5 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program to fund programs at local housing finance agencies in the states hardest hit by the housing crisis: California, Florida, Nevada, Arizona and Michigan; signed the Veterans Health Care Budget Reform and Transparency Act authorizing advance appropriations for the Department of Veterans Affairs by providing two-fiscal year budget authority thus enabling better medical care for veterans; signed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act to protect Americans from unfair and deceptive credit card practices; signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, restoring basic protections against pay discrimination for women and other workers; and launched Recovery.gov to track spending from the Recovery Act, an unprecedented step to provide transparency and accountability through technology; among many other accomplishments. We, the 99%, must start thinking about Plan B. We must not get blindsided by this election. It saddens me to think about a loss, but we should have a contingency plan and I hope our labor leaders have one for it will be the fight of the century and we have to win one or the other and the election is our best chance so vote and work. We are up against big corporate money, greed and ignorance on the part of the average American. Perhaps John Steinbeck summed up this dilemma best when he said, “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”