Democrats Step Up

The Democrats and the President need to step up to the plate and back the workers and unions in this class warfare. If Democrats can’t arrest the downward spiral of America’s economical lives of the 99 percent, maybe a new party is needed. The workers’ need is more than the minimum wage increase of $15 to $18 an hour. We need to restore workers’ collective bargaining in pay, benefits and hours. To do this we need stronger labor laws that protect us, the workers, and plug the holes in the existing laws that have been decimated in the last 40 years. The government should also re-establish the link between economic growth and Americans’ incomes. There is a way to tie economic growth to wages, which would be a shared prosperity for all. It’s been done before. We need a strong labor leader like President Franklin Roosevelt. When he was at Madison Square Garden; he singled out business and financial monopoly speculation and reckless banking as enemies of a social peace. Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob. Roosevelt said, “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me and I welcome their hatred.” Look at what Roosevelt accomplished when he stopped worrying about Wall Street and the greedy-union-hating oligarchies thought about him. President Obama is hated by the same kind of people. Today the GOP Tea Party hates Obama, in Roosevelt’s day it was the Liberty League who relentlessly attacked him. Roosevelt said bring it on. This is exactly what President Obama and all the Democrats need to do, get tough and mean and fight for the 99 percent and those who got them elected to office, and let the Have Nots know who their friends are. Our Democratic president has not taken a true stand for labor in trade laws or labor laws in which workers could join unions without the fear of being fired, and our employment is nothing to boast about. In 2012, 44 percent of college graduates with huge student loans were employed in jobs that didn’t require a college degree. We need free education up to at least a bachelor’s degree, and change the laws to prohibit temporary jobs or at least enact laws so that the workers can form a union. There is lots of work for the Democrats to do if they want to remain the party for the 99 percent, but will they? More and more Democrats are going the way of the GOP, selling their souls to the corporations, filling their pockets instead of looking out for us, the “little people.”