The American nation has an excellent opportunity to change the nature of politics in our country this year. We have a real chance to build lasting alliances that will re-define the political landscape at every level of government and permit us to take back our government by the average citizen.
For decades, the political power of the largest international corporations and the wealthiest of the Super Wealthy have been tightening their grasp on governments in America. They have effectively bought their way to power by giving billions in campaign donations and buying up the media. The effect has been passage of laws that undermine the power of average citizens to control their own economic futures, have an effective voice in government policies and to hear opposing political viewpoints.
It is no accident that most Americans think that their children will not have as high a standard of living as they currently experience. It was economic policy on the national and international levels that forced tens of millions of families to have both parents working to maintain a decent standard of living.
Your rights to sue corporations when they abuse you as a worker, investor or consumer are being stripped away by Republican politicians like George W. Bush, John McCain, Dick Cheney and your allegedly “moderate Republican” member of Congress. The same bunch of Republican politicians are and have been for decades falling all over themselves to pass legislation that ships high-paying jobs with healthcare benefits to Third World nations where the high pay and employer provided healthcare vanishes while corporate profits explode! Yes, Bush, McCain and Cheney love NAFTA, the WTO, CAFTA and the rest of these deals. They have been a goldmine of campaign cash for the Republican Right and the alleged “Republican moderates” in Congress.
By appointing corporate thinking federal judges and government regulators, American workers have seen their rights to form labor unions effectively undermined and often destroyed. The public fiction of “free elections” in the workplace is there for these deceitful Republicans to “defend.” However, in most workplaces, the reality is that these giant corporations make real free elections impossible by intentionally breaking the law (the penalties are a joke), firing pro-union workers, preventing union organizers from talking to workers or distributing material, issuing threats and the like.
The reality of these “free unionization elections” is that they are no more free and fair than the “free elections” in the former Soviet Union, communist China or the Germany of WWII! Still, the Republicans vehemently oppose passage of the Employee Free Choice Act which would return effective workplace democracy when it comes to unionization votes. The decline of labor unions has meant the decline of the American Middle Class both economically and politically and corporate forces know it!
An effective labor movement has meant real economic opportunity for tens of millions of working class and poor Americans. Labor unions have been the vehicle for millions of racial and ethnic minorities to join the mainstream, Middle Class majority in experiencing the American Dream. Corporate controlled politicians like Bush and McCain are simply killing that Dream. Will we let them?
The wealthiest of the Super Wealthy control our mainstream media but not our votes. We all should know that racism has an economic purpose. It is the tool most often used in America to get the working class whites and Middle Class majority to put in power politicians who vote against the economic interests of working class and Middle Class whites. Racism is the tool used to divide the non-economic elite majority so that all working class and Middle Class Americans do not demand government policies that provide real economic opportunity for the vast majority. Racism is a sucker bet for all poor, working class and Middle Class Americans!
If all poor, working class and Middle Class Americans vote in favor of their real economic interests, we all will have a very bright future. We can take control of our government. We can return manufacturing jobs to America. We can pass the Employee Free Choice Act and make the right to unionize a Constitutionally protected civil right.
We can have government guaranteed universal healthcare for our citizens like every other industrialized nation in the world. We can restore our rights as workers, investors and consumers. We can replace the corporate clowns, corrupt Republican partisans and right wing fanatics in our government bureaucracy and court system with honest, mainstream Americans.
We can preserve our basic freedoms from those seeking to undermine the Bill of Rights, legal due process and the U.S. Constitution. United as citizens, we can halt unjust political prosecutions like that of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and jail those responsible. We can expose and prosecute all illegal abuses of power by highly-placed, powerful government officials.
We can stop war-profiteers from getting us involved in more unnecessary aggressive wars that get our brave soldiers killed for the private profit of large international corporations. We can make sure that the American people are never lied to in order to launch a war that should never have been started in the first place. We must defeat politicians like John McCain who simply put love to threaten wars all over the world for little or no reason.
We can break the power of Big Oil to price-gouge us at their whim. We can create a real alternative energy economy that will not promote global warming. We can break up the media monopolies, restore the Fairness Doctrine in broadcasting and protect the Internet from corporate control.
We can make our American Democracy work for the little guy! All we have to do as individuals is to reach out to our neighbors and co-workers to educate them on issues and the importance of basic political involvement, like voting against those abusing them and for change in 2008.
