Fifty-five years ago President Johnson declared his war on poverty. At this time there are 47 million Americans living beneath the poverty level. Does that number sound familiar, think Mitt Romney and his infamous talk with some of the 1 percent during his failed campaign for president.
Billionaire Warren Buffet said there is a class warfare all right, but it’s my class that is winning. He is calling for higher taxes on the rich and the money to be spent on our crumbling infrastructure, free education, and higher wages.
The tax on the rich under Johnson was 91 percent. It is now 39.6 percent for those who pay, but most of the rich pay nothing, in fact. There are many corporations that the poor end up paying for their subsidies and who do you think makes up the difference in these tax rate that is less than half of what it used to be?
We also voted in GOP people who retooled our war on poverty to a cynical war on crime and privatized a lot of our prisons. The term criminal came to mean poor people, usually a person of color. If you are a low-wage slave working at a fast food place or corporation, like Walmart, then you are not only poor, you now are the enemy of the rich.
This is not only going on in one of the riches countries in the world, it is going on I many other countries, like South America, Europe, and of course the Philippines and most of Asia, and the Middle East So if there are 47 million in the U.S. just imagine how many other wage slaves are in the rest of the world who are fighting for a better standard of living or for that matter just to make it day-to-day. The rich have enough. They must be made to pay their fair share and the governments in the world must become proactive instead of reactive. Example of when people should have been proactive are ISSI/ISIL and the Ebola disease comes to mind, when we’re not proactive we disenfranchise a whole mass of people and they take matters into their own hands.
We need more leaders like the people of Occupy, who just paid off $4 million in student debt. This after helping poor people pay off their healthcare debt; and Anonymous who also does good work for the toilers, like when it releases incriminating documents of corrupt corporations and political figures.
If we can keep the peace between our unions and get our Democrats to stand up for our workers, like the $15 to $18 an hour minimum wage, we can start having hope and start winning the war by winning some of the battles. Politicians in cities across the nation only have to look in the windows of businesses for a decal supporting the federal minimum wage hike of $10.10 and “Good for business, customers and our economy.” The stickers let people/customers know that a business supports the federal minimum wage increase. Any politician worth your vote better take heed of this display it’s an indication of who their constituents are and what we can do when we stand together.
Unions’ long game is to get all union contracts to expire on the same day nationwide. The United Auto Workers combines contracts ends on April 28, 2028. This could then result in a mass national strike starting on May Day beeginning that year. This could then put enormous pressure on employers, but also on lawmakers. It’s the muscle and sweat of the workers that keeps this country great, not the individual company or corporations. This May Day strike would be the time to change the workers’ world for the better by negotiating for a 32-hour week with the same pay, and the U.S. adopts a healthcare for all with no out of pocket costs. This would also help the employers as they would no longer have to provide healthcare. By striking, the UAW won same pay for new workers, all UAW contracts will end on the same date, a 25-percent pay increase, a cost of living adjustments, a guaranteed right to strike over potential plant closures, and also the right to vote to unionize through the card che
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