Bush, Bush, and Regan against America

E.T.I. 2009
Don't forget to got to click on this link HTTP://UnionMaine.Informe.com everyone is invited to a wide open discussion of all types of topics. You want your blood to boil, listen to what some people are calling you. You want to be proud, listen to and participate in the debate as a proud Union member.

I still bet America wins. One Regan and two Bushes is not a poker hand I would bet on.

I won’t use fancy economics. Clinton’s economy had Surplus money and balanced budgets. Bush and Regan gave us monster deficits.

Between 1979 and 2003 the average income of the richest Americans more than doubled in real dollars, while that of middle-class Americans increased by only around 15 percent. By some measures actual wages have been going backwards for six years.

In thirty years mortgage foreclosures have increased five hundred percent.

It not “just” 49,000,000 Americans without health care, in the next two years at least 80 million adults and children, 85 percent of them working or the kids of working parents will go for some time without any protection against ruinous health costs that insurance offers.

Defined-benefit pensions that provided a predetermined monthly benefit for the remainder of a worker's life used to be the norm, a reward for a lifetime of loyalty. The old reliable pension has been nearly destroyed by a mix of corporate greed and paid for politicians, destroyed with the willing help of Regan, and two Bushes. Corporations were released from pension obligations while paying top executives hundreds of millions in bonuses.

Our government and our largest corporations have partnered to increase costs to American families. This has all been done in the name of “Personal Responsibility”.

They say we have to cut costs to compete.

The average factory wage in much of China is thirty one cents an hour. Wal-Mart in China pays thirteen cents and hour. Do we need to work for 31 cents an hour to compete? Do we need to cut our pay to 12 cents an hour to compete with Chinese Wal-Mart factories?

The Republicans are selling their take aways as personal responsibility.

So what is wrong with Personal Responsibility?

Your employer will be more profitable and competitive if they don’t have to pay your health care. They will pay you more because their profits will be greater. Akk, Kaff, Wheeze, (Forgive me, I am choking on that statement). You will be careful it is your money. You will be careful not to send your kids to the doctor too often because it is your responsibility. Make sure little Sally really needs an emergency room after that fall off her bike. If you go broke, you should have worked harder, saved more. Anyway, your Sally might still live, even without that expensive treatment.

The lie about personal savings to cover health care and retirement is that the corporations want to get rid of the benefits but not raise wages to make the savings possible. If it is too expensive for them to provide the benefits, it is too expensive for them to pay you enough to pay for them. You won't have any personal savings.

The Republicans proudly admit they want to get rid of the New Deal programs. What is still here from the New Deal of so many years ago? Social Security, which G. Bush tried to dismantle and give to the stock market to play with. Thank the voting geezers and the Unions for saving that. They vote. I vote too. We still have Medicare and Medicaid, which Republicans think both just waste money on the poor. George and friends still want to take Social security, company pensions, medical care, and children’s medical care and put it all on the individual with no safety net for unemployment or catastrophic health problems.

The number of employers offering health coverage to their workers keeps falling. The cost to the employees in real dollars and as a percentage of costs continues to go up and up. The number of employers paying full coverage is rapidly disappearing regardless of the profitability of the company. The Bush propaganda machine has spent years painting any employee receiving benefits as lazy, greedy or even worse a Union member. Talk shows talk about Union thugs and forgive millionaire drug addicts like Rush Limbaugh.

How long can government and Union employees hold on? Ask the UAW. We must build our political strength with politicians if we want to keep our benefits and our retirement. They are going to come after us with the argument that private sector employees are taking on more and more of their own costs and we need to share the costs.

As Union members, we must reach out to non union Americans and tell them who we are and what we want them to have. We must take the focus off the Republican attack. They are painting us as the devil so that no one will look at the $200,000.00 a year mercenaries in Iraq, Don’t look at private contractors feeding our troops and overcharging. Blame the Unions. Let us try to get the word out that we want all Americans to have security, health care, and a good retirement. The Republicans that don’t care how many people lose their benefits, they don’t ask that the benefits be restored, no, they look at government and Union employee benefits and demand that you have less.

On a note of hope. The Republicans wouldn't bother hating us so much unless they were afraid. We vote. We vote in the highest percentages of any group. As a Union member your vote and your families votes frighten them.

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -Benjamin Franklin

E.T.I. 2009

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