The world of the worker remains stark, as each month a quarter million jobs are lost and nearly that many new foreclosures are filed against homeowners. The unemployment rate, at 9.8 percent, is expected to rise, even as six people compete for every current job opening. By contrast, Wall Street is booming. Banks bailed out a year ago with federal tax dollars are reporting huge profits, spending millions to lobby Congress not to regulate them and paying out big bonuses again. What should be done to turn around Main Street America?

 

 

 

 

Punish Corporations that Flee Overseas

“Trickle Down” has been a total failure for two decades.  Instead of handouts to save banks and corporations, the government should be looking into creating jobs through public works projects (it worked before) and other means of putting money into the hands of working class people.  When average Americans have enough money to do more than just pay the monthly bills – housing, food, utilities, etc. – they will then be able to start saving and investing.  A successful economy involves millions of people saving and investing – not millionaire getting more millions.

Labor needs to start running our own candidates at all levels.  There needs to be more Sherrod Brown and Barney Frank-type legislators.  These people understand that the American version of capitalism is a total failure.  It perpetuates greed at the expense of the public and the nation.  We need our friends in Congress to start introducing legislation that penalizes corporations that flee to the southern states (just to save on labor costs) or leave to foreign production sites. 

Former USW President George Becker told me once that he was a true believer in the old Mineworker adage – “There are no neutrals here – you’re on our side or you’re on the wrong side.” We should start challenging elected officials that can’t seem to get off the fence – even if it means electing a Republican or losing currently-held seats.  We have been fighting a “rear guard” action for over 25 years.  It’s time to go on the offensive – from school, park and library boards, to aldermen and mayors, to state legislators and all the way to the top.  Perhaps with Rich Trumka leading the AFL-CIO we may see some of this come to pass.

Gary Gaines
Granite City, Ill. 
SOAR 7-34-2 Rapid Response Coordinator

 

Limit CEO Pay

Federal law should prohibit total CEO compensation, including bonuses, to exceed four times the highest worker’s pay.

Richard A. Bolster
Northbrook, Ill. 

 

More Regulation Essential

I believe that legislation should be passed to tightly regulate the financial institutions, insurance companies and corporations so they do not have an adverse impact on the economy.
The economy will struggle to recover as long as these institutions continue to maximize their profits at the expense of consumers and workers. Congress should revisit their credit card legislation and limit interest rates. Rates being charged used to be usury. Credit card holders faced with high rates that have no relationship to those that corporations pay are preventing consumers from buying extras or even essentials – purchases that could be stimulating the economy.
I also believe that more must be done by the U.S. Congress to stimulate job creation as President Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression. Congress approved billions of dollars for the Iraq war which helped create an enormous deficit and now they are so “fiscally responsible” that stimulating job growth or taxing the very rich is abhorrent to them.
Unions should be at the forefront in promoting new congressional members that are not beholden to corporate lobbyist. The 2010 Congressional elections will be more important to this country than the next presidential election in 2012.

Vincent Guadagnino,
Lake Forest, Calif. 

 

Tax the Wealthy

Our lawmakers and President should create laws taxing the wealthy, everyone making more than $500,000 a year, 75% or more, for the next 20 years.  The wealthy owe us this because they’ve been stealing from us for the past 30 years.  Our leaders must also pass the Employee Free Choice Act. 

 Theresa Duperon, Esq.
Los Angeles, Calif.

 

Start a Strong Economy with Citizens

We workers have turned our back on Main Street and have fallen for the bigger-is-better (and cheaper) mentality of the Wal-Marts and Home Depots.  And we have accepted the “global” shift as necessary as businesses take our jobs overseas but still expect us to be consumers to the world market.  We need to see a shift to a consumer development mentality by the business community.

We also need to rethink our economic “brewing” techniques. If you are a coffee drinker you will know what I’m saying.  As an economy we have fallen into the “dripalator,” trickle-down approach, while I still believe that a percolator makes a better cup of coffee because it starts from the bottom of the pot and develops the flavor from there. If we want to develop a strong “cup” of economic coffee, we need to start from the bottom of the pot (every day citizens) and let the flavor rise.

Terry Havener
Johnstown, Pa.

 

Jobs, jobs and more jobs

A major union matter now is jobs. FDR gave us the 3 Cs, the Civilian Conservation Corps. It worked. We need trains, new sources of energy, not dirty coal, not Saudi Arabian oil, not nuclear energy with the waste stored under Yucca Flats in Nevada. Jobs, jobs, and more jobs.

 Eugene Blank
Portland, Ore. 

 

To Turn Around Main Street America:

1. Stop the wars

2. Rebuild our infrastructure

3. Enable local communities through their schools to train residents for jobs and work skills 

4. If a corporation is too big to fail, it is too big to exist – stop the monopolization – retake anti-trust legislation.

John and Carolee Monroe
Retired teachers and former members of CTA/NEA
Claremont, Calif.

  

Bail Out Main Street

Wall Street has been bailed out, and we have been told that this benefits Main Street.

It’s time to bail out Main Street, which, by expanding the domestic market, will benefit Wall Street.

Apart from passing a health care reform with a strong public option, there are two critical actions that need to be taken.

First, there has to be real, not piddling, foreclosure relief. That would involve some combination of a 6-month nation-wide moratorium on all foreclosures involving mortgages under $500,000; a mandatory federal purchase at 50 cents to the dollar of all troubled mortgages, replacing them with low-interest, fixed-rate, pre-payable 30-year mortgages; and roll-back of interest rates of all mortgages under $500,000 from their current level to the their average level of the last 5 years.

Second, there has to be real change, real reform in the income tax code. Zero tax on the first $50,000 of income, 90% tax on income after $1,000,000, 95% tax on income after $10,000,000, regardless of deductions.

David Arnow
Brooklyn, N.Y.

  

Pay for Single-Payer with Tariffs

We need single-payer universal health care.  This will accomplish two things.  For one thing the middle class would not have to worry about paying for health care themselves.  For another thing it would take a burden off small businesses so that they could hire more workers and focus on doing what they do best. 

To pay for single-payer health care, we should reinstate tariffs on goods produced by cheap overseas labor.  This would discourage outsourcing, further bringing jobs here to the middle class who needs them.  In addition, we should also invest in the green economy, obtaining energy from sources like solar and wind, and we should focus on making hybrids, plug-in hybrids and electric cars as well as improving access to mass transit.  This will further add to the number of jobs.

Michael Karsh
Martinez, Calif.

 

Control Banks; Reinvest Locally

The number one item that should be done to turn around Main Street is capping  all executive salaries, bonuses, “golden parachutes,” including stock options, IRA’s, and the like.  No one, I repeat, no one, is worth more than a million dollars a year in salary. 

The second, and certainly not less important, item that should be done is reinvestment in local businesses — the “Mom and Pop” businesses that contribute a huge portion of tax revenue to individual communities.  This is money that stays within the communities and keeps them alive.  Likewise, these local businesses should look at the vast number of unemployed in their own backyards and hire those who need jobs desperately so they have disposable income to spend in their communities.  These are people who may be close enough to walk to work thus clearing the air and improving their own health.

Third, mortgage companies need to be put on notice; more needs to be done to not only correct but also punish predatory lenders.  The federal, state, and municipal governments should step in and not just require, but force lenders to totally disclose their accounts, employee salaries including retirement packages and bonuses.  Then, since We-the-People are now the owners of so many lending businesses, we should demand repayment of our loans with their profits, executive bonuses, and overpriced resort conference centers.  Stockholders should then be put in control of how much executives receive in salaries and bonuses, and the federal government should have more control of how banks spend money since We-the-People now own them.  

Bonnie K. Long
Goshen, Ind. 

 

Promote Unions to Improve Main Street

Enactment of the bill in Congress to make it easier for employees to form a union would be a big step.

Ronnie Young
Waynesville, N.C. 

 

Invest in Small Business and Worker Training

For years now, we have been on a trend to solidify and consolidate American businesses.

The result has been more big boxes, more big banks, and fewer industries, including the health care industries, that dictate our economic wealth. The bailout for working Americans should include more supplements to diversification and small business as well as a real nationwide infrastructure program and worker training programs in emerging technology and green jobs.  

Susan Maroko
International Staff Representative
USW-District 7, Sub-District 1
Bridgeview, Ill. 

  

Second Stimulus Needed

Progressive Democrats of America went on record in support of a second stimulus with its May 18 publication of my assessment of the financial and economic crisis and a plan to address it.  The idea was not original — I got it from Robert Reich. And Paul Krugman and James K. Galbraith also supported it — but it was hardly part of mainstream discussion, despite Reich’s calculation that a projected $350 billion in state budget cuts and tax hikes would predictably negate nearly half the impact of the $787 billion first federal stimulus. 

Over the summer, that snowball became at least a small avalanche:  On June 29, the Financial Times reported that Christina Romer, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said the administration would be open to further stimulus if needed, acknowledging that cutbacks by states facing budget crises would push in the opposite direction.  Laura Tyson of the president’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board came out in favor the following week.  Even the Financial Times called for a second stimulus, specifically targeting the states, on the condition that the money be spent quickly.

As the so-called “jobless” recovery proceeds, the White House has begun looking for ways to help Wall Street without calling its measures a second stimulus.  But something quite substantial is still critical as a holding action, to keep us from going over the cliff.  Obama should recognize and level with the public about the dimensions and severity of the problem, and return to Congress for a second stimulus to help the states maintain vital services and avoid tax increases. And Congress should heed the request.

Robert Roth
Eugene, Oregon,

 

Jobs for Main Street; Reform Wall Street

Wall and Main Streets are the two basic economic systems.  Wall Street is comprised of financial capitalist owners who hire technical personnel, e.g. administrators, lawyers, engineers, and statisticians, to run their enterprises.  Main Street is comprised of small businesses and farms, industrial capitalist, entrepreneurs, etc., who produce products that most people want or that people want most.  This system is controlled by the market; whereas, Wall Street, being concerned mainly with growth, has no controls, is unstable, and causes most of our economic crashes.  Nearly all inventions and innovations come from Main Street; whereas, Wall Street concerns itself with growth policies, e.g. planned obsolescence fins on fenders, two tone paint, etc.

Producing jobs for Main Street and reforming Wall Street are the keys to ending  economic collapse.  FDR’s 3 R’s — Relief, Recovery, and Reform — are applicable, including, respectively, CCC and WPA, PWA, and NRA and AAA.  Reinstituting the draft would get young people off the streets and prepare them for useful employment.  We do not have great dams (TVA, HOOVER), or bridges (Golden Gate), or highways (US 40) to build.  But we can repair our crumbling interstate highway system, maintain our highway bridges, rebuild our infrastructure, and make money available for Main Street businesses, etc., to lend and borrow.  And we can develop new industries in our country such as renewable energy, fast trains, and national health.  And if Detroit cannot produce an efficient automobile, then the Government can.  After all, we put a man on the Moon.

Recovery projects take more time to get positive results than Relief because specifications have to be developed, bids have to be made and awarded, and workers hired. The secondary effects of putting people to work does not happen immediately either, for hired workers who have been unemployed are reluctant to spend their pay until they get back on their feet.

Robert K. Leavitt
Upland, Calif. 

  

Make American Corporations Employ Americans

American corporations should be required to pay their U.S. taxes, and they should be required to have at least a majority of their employees working on U.S. soil.  If not, they shouldn’t have the privilege of operating as American corporations!

John Latta
Richland, Wash.

 

Follow President Roosevelt

The plan we should be following is the same one President Roosevelt did. Put people to work rebuilding the infrastructure, the parks, the cities and education. Abolish military Keynesianism and reintroduce Glass-Steagall legislation. End state corporatism.

Frank Cannonito
Retired mathematics professor
Irvine, Calif.

 

Worker Ownership

I think more of the corporations should be owned by the workers rather than a privileged class of stockholders.

When a company goes into bankruptcy or just closes, there should be a law and federal loans and guidance available so that the workers can buy the building and corporate assets at a fair price and then continue production with the workers as the owners and shareholders.  When people quit or leave, their shares would be bought back and given to new workers. The longer you work at such a place, the more shares you would have.

For example, that window manufacturing plant that closed in Illinois a while back where the workers staged a sit-in — there should be a federal legal procedure for the workers to buy the assets and continue manufacturing with the workers as owners.

Of course this would require simultaneous tariffs to protect the industries we choose to keep in the U S.  Tariffs worked great for a long time until the free trade corporate types started having us all drink the Kool Aid. There was no debate about free trade. It was just forced on us before we knew what was happening. 

The result is that the U.S. is manufacturing little anymore, throwing millions out of work and threatening our security. We cannot depend on other countries to manufacture our steel, airplanes, tanks, tires etc. That is a security threat as well as a loss of jobs here at home.

Diminish the corporate elite gradually by workers buying up plants that move to third world countries and then protecting them with by fair trade or tariffs. The results of that work.

Pat Flierl
Clovis, Calif.
 

Create New Businesses

The federal government can do some things like providing tax credits for businesses that create new jobs, and grants or other assistance for new businesses. The government can even provide ideas and motivation for some new businesses by mandating fuel economy, environmentally favorable architecture, conservation projects and other things.  Beyond that, we cannot and must not depend on the government to pull us out of the current quagmire.  There is room for each of us, drawing on our unique experiences, to enter the arena and find and implement innovative ideas that will help. 
 
In the marketplace today, money is in short supply for things like home maintenance and renovations.  So a handyman or an interior decorator, finding business a bit slow, might start a new line of service providing training and supervision so customers can do most of the work themselves.  Training groups of customers to do their own renovations can be as profitable as time spent doing the work for them.  It may even be more profitable, but it costs the customers less because they are sharing the costs.  And saving the cost of labor, by doing the work themselves, may enable people to afford renovations they could not otherwise afford. 
 
If you think you have a workable idea for a new business or a new approach to solving problems in the marketplace, you can find help if you need it.  If your idea entails starting a new business, the SBA (Small Business Administration), can help you start at this link: http://www.sba.gov/
 
And if you would like to come up with an idea but you don’t know where to begin, you might try visiting http://www.grants.gov/ where you can browse through listings of federal grants to see what products and services the government feels are needed.
 
I hope reading this inspires you to start thinking about how you can contribute to
the recovery, rather than waiting for the government to
throw you a bone.   Good hunting!        

 

Go To Six-Hour Work Day

 I propose two remedies for the skewed wealth in this country. First, we should win the six-hour day (with no loss in pay). It would put people to work since there would be four shifts per day instead of three. It would also give individuals more time to spend with their loved ones and to serve in the community. The wages would be paid by the corporations and their financiers, the banks. 

The second activity that would create jobs is supporting the development of Personal Rapid Transit (PRT). That transportation technology would put people to work building the rails, modules, elevators, etc., and working on the computers and maintenance. It is the only thing that can get people out of their cars, so it is a green technology. 

Margaret R. Beegle
Associate Member of the Steelworkers,
formerly AFSCME member
Golden Valley, Minn.

 

  

Yell at Congress

Pester Congress to stop these trade deals that import foreign goods that Americans can make. For instance, sheets, bedspreads, towels, clothes, were once made in North Carolina. I loved everything I ever bought that said MADE IN THE USA. I still have many of those items. They are still usable after 25 years!!! Yeah, 25 years. 

I’m a 79 year old widow, and I don’t buy much anymore. My best furniture was made in the hills of North Carolina. Today’s crap is fiberboard, back nailed or stapled on, not screwed, no dovetails or mortise. I have 55 year old furniture that is still beautiful. I have all leather American-made shoes that are gorgeous, beautiful shoes came from New England, not this crap from Brazil or where ever. The dye from foreign-made shoes bleeds all over your feet! They only make wides, and I have skinny feet!

I could go on and on. It is hopeless no matter who is President. Greed is the name of the game. Robber barons with 2-13 houses, 12 cars, millions in jewels, clothes and only God knows what else they have stashed someplace.  How many damn dresses can a woman wear or shoes or underwear? And how much can their kids own? How many cars do they need? No CEO should make more than 10-15x as much as the lowest paid worker in his business!

I am fed up with the mind set of management. They think of themselves and their families as GODS.  False gods, as Jesus would call them! If I were only younger and healthier, I would march and yell at Congress!

Gloria J. O’Reilly
Melbourne, Fla. 

 

Hold Our Money Hostage

We should all withdraw all of our money from every bank until they change their ways. We get no interest worth mentioning anyway.  We should start a real workers’ party, which will give us what we deserve: public option, honorable government, better control of Wall Street and banks.

 Elsa Lewin
Great Neck, N.Y.

  

Too Few People Have Too Much Money

 The problem is simple. Too few people have too much money. Here are some proposals.

We need to get health care reform passed immediately. We need a public option – or better, just let people or their employers buy their health insurance from Medicare. Private health insurance companies are robbing the public blind. They are planning to raise rates even without health care reform because 2010 is an election year and the health insurance industry needs money to bribe politicians. (Bi-partisan = buy-partisan.)

We need to proceed full speed to a green technology. You can read the articles on the Apollo Alliance website for details.

We need to restore all the regulations on the banking industry that the Reagan Administration eliminated. We need to abolish APR’s and permit only fixed-rate mortgages. The deregulated banking industry has simply created a casino economy.

We are fighting a war, but the rich are not paying the same tax rate they paid during World War II. We need to pass an emergency tax rate on the rich – 88 to 91% of their income. We can use that to balance the budget and to invest in green technology.

Conservatives like to claim that World War II really ended the Great Depression. But what they don’t tell us is that World War II involved massive government expenditures. The draft took care of the unemployment problem – which might be a good reason for expanding governmnet public work projects. Some government work projects should be designed to provide jobs for college graduates who have degrees but no jobs (and student loans to pay off.) We can lower the tax rate on the rich when everybody has decent jobs and when we’ve gotten rid of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

William Joseph Miller
Los Angeles, Calif.

 

Don’t Be Treated Like a Second-Class Citizen 

When our founding fathers founded this country, they did not give the vote to blacks, and women, and the Indians were not treated so well.  In the great bail-out, Congress is taking care of Wall Street. Wall Street has given members of Congress millions of dollars toward their campaigns, and it appears Congress has not forgotten by giving billions in bail-out.  We can not match the money Wall Street is giving, but we need not let ourselves be treated like second class citizens. Join unions and progressive groups such as those online.  Give what you can.  We must be heard.

Stan Rowe
Newport, Ore.

 

March on Washington

The answer is not in Washington, D.C. The only beneficiaries of the stimulus money so far have been the banks and Wall Street. Nothing much has changed. The world of the worker remains stark.

You remember the millions who marched for immigration reform across the country? Remember the millions who marched on Washington following MLK for civil rights? Those marches surprised everyone who didn’t expect the turnout. Scared the pants off Washington for a while.

Well, I think a million man/woman march on Washington by Main Street America demanding jobs, an end to foreclosures, and the rebuilding of America is the only “noise” Washington will pay attention to. As longs as we continue sending e-mails, donating money and doing those kinds of passive actions that Washington is used to, they will win in the end, and we will end up with a half a loaf, cut up and divided by the corporations.

Angel Rodriguez
A former copper miner from Morenci, Ariz.
Glendale, Ariz. 

 

Unions Matter to Main Street

It is important Unions do change the current union organization laws so there is a level playing field for organizing workers to promote Main Street. This will provide workers such as those at Wal-Mart, Target, Sears, motels, restaurant chains, high tech companies, with livable wages to raise a family.

Wal-Mart is now the largest employer in Pennsylvania, and there is no reason why they should not permit their employees to organize throughout the nation.

What people have to understand is that these businesses if they want to be part of the America Dream should not avoid a livable wage with benefits for our community employees. They will not be able to move overseas and abandon the very people they always say comes first.

Union pension funds have provided many Wall Street investment firms, community banks, and financial planners with good paying jobs on the dimes of the workers. Banks have benefited by investing such pension funds, and reinvesting the money into small businesses and innovative entrepreneurs.  

Unions do look out for their members first and foremost. One did not see union pension funds becoming victims of Madoff-type rip offs. My Union Plus credit card provides me with the lowest finance charge and is understanding when it comes to a late payment.

Small business owners, lawyers, doctors, bankers, dentists, real estate firms, restaurant owners, and all professions and local businesses prosper when union workers flourish within a community

The American union model must be expanded in America to encompass as many workers as possible and then adopted in the Global Economy in every nation on earth.

This is why Unions matter; it has been proven they provide a far fairer and equal work environment and benefit for everyone not just their own members. If you want to help Main Street, then back Union organizing because unions do not just protect Main Street they promote Main Street!

Joseph Janos
Aliquippa, Pa.

 

Go Green to Turn Around Main Street

Go for a “Green Economy,” expand solar power, wind power etc., refurbish infrastructure, clean up polluted waterways and land areas. There’s plenty of work to be done.

Guy D’Angelo
Center Moriches, N.Y.

  

Re-regulate the Markets

 In order to make a determination of what should be done to turn around Main Street America, we first must understand what brought about our current financial crisis. Wall Street’s investment bankers regularly utilized risky investments and engaged in predatory lending habits in an unconscionable effort to produce huge, short term profits. In doing so, they sheltered risk with public funds. These efforts ultimately led to dire consequences when those loans proved not payable. Additionally, they created, maintained and justified a housing bubble which eventually led to the worst economic conditions the United States has experienced since the Great Depression.

American citizens must demand accountability in order to not only maintain the integrity of the marketplace, but also to restore our democracy. Corporate officials acted with reckless abandon at the expense of stockholders and taxpayers. They should be prosecuted and sentenced for their ruthless behavior in much the same way that we hold common criminals and street thugs accountable for illegal activity. Theft is theft no matter the circumstances!

It is time for our legislators in Washington D.C. to intervene. Recent government intervention was necessary within the past year in order to save banks and insurance companies from financial collapse. By the same token it is also appropriate that the government intervene to ensure such institutions are held accountable.

Make no mistake about it, financial deregulation led directly to the economic meltdown in America. The post-Depression regulatory system instituted during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration has systematically been set aside, leaving only Wall Street’s “fox” to guard the proverbial henhouse.

Even today, Wall Street continues to defend the very same practices that resulted in the financial collapse. If Wall Street has its way, they will continue to remove public controls over their operations. We cannot and must not allow this travesty to continue. We must concentrate on returning to the days of strict regulations of the financial markets. That in turn will stimulate our economy by creating and maintaining high paying American jobs.

John Patrick
Assistant to the Director
USW, District 13
Baytown, Texas

 

Start a National Bank

The first thing that must be done is to rid ourselves of banking tyranny. We have to start our own national bank and put banking at the service of the people and not the other way around. What we have in this country is a massive system of fraud where the banks have used our tax dollars to steal billions of dollars with the active connivance of Geithner, Sommers and an inner circle of thieves and gangsters that inhabit the treasury system.

Paul Bennett
New York, N.Y. 

 

Create Public Jobs

Jobs, jobs, and more jobs.  Push Obama to update the Works Progress Administration WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps to create jobs for all the unemployed. They could rebuild the infrastructure using green standards, adding more trains, streetcars and bikeways. They could retrofit houses, produce renewable energy resources, rebuild New Orleans and surrounding areas, heal the people, educate kids, restore the commons.   Whatever needs doing for the people, they could get done.

Tax the very rich to pay for it.  They used the commons at a bargain price in their climb to wealth.  Now is the time for them to pay their share.

Wren Osborn
El Cajon, Calif. 

 

Inflate to Deflate to Confiscate

Having bought the government, exempted themselves from any legal or ethical restraint and XZ@&$*#&@ the peasants to the point where their lives are stressed and shortened by loss of jobs, community, homes, pensions, “investments,” savings and ability to obtain pricey corporate pill and procedure pushing that passes for health care and then, by God, maneuvered to insure the dead peasants so that they are worth more dead than alive  . . . they now turn to the next generation, who are “counseled” to take student loans that simple calculation would show to be likely too impoverishing to repay, never mind ruinous fine print late fees and interest penalties and the clever exempting of such loans from the relief of bankruptcy, to get college degrees to prepare for jobs that are gone to other peasants worldwide who have perhaps as little as the equivalent of eighth grade education in the school of hard knocks but who can do most remaining productive jobs passably but ephemerally.  

John Bland
Canandaigua, N.Y. 

 

Organize and Take Action

First get everyone to see Michael Moore’s latest on corporations, a love affair. Then get everyone to talk about it. Then get organized into groups to do something, anything.

Call the White House to tell them what you want, and don’t want: 202-456-1111.  It’s a free call. All members should have this number.

Now get organized to rally in protests wherever your group decides, at banks, at foreclosures, at plant layoffs. Have Photo-ops.

Think about joining independent parties, Greens, etc.  I am a Green and voted for Nader.

Call your representatives in Congress — also a free call:  202-224-3121.

Organize, organize.  That’s what unions do best.  We all know what is right, now make the President do that and not let them make us afraid.

Best to us all.  No one is going to save us but us.

Jean Snyder
Member, United Steel Workers
Greenbelt, Md.

 

Working Americans Unite

To turn around Main Street, working Americans must unite across racial, ethnic, religious, gender, political and social classes against the insidious concentration of wealth on Wall Street and the unprecedented takeover of our Democracy by multi-national corporate interests.

 We must be united in our recognition, support and encouragement of those true champions of working Americans such as labor leaders Leo Gerard and Richard Trumka; muckrakers Michael Moore and Jim Hightower; media personalities Thom Hartmann and Keith Olbermann; and progressive lawmakers Bernie Sanders, Alan Grayson and Sheldon Whitehouse.

Similarly we must be united in the identification, acknowledgment, resistance and condemnation of the true enemies and adversaries of working Americans who are the Wall Street billionaires; the multi-national corporate lobbyists; conservative and neo-liberal economic policies; privatization of government services; unfair and exploitive trade policies; bought and paid for corporate judges and politicians at the local, state and federal level; and plutocratic propagandists Rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdoch.

Finally we must be united in a tireless campaign to promote and establish collective bargaining units throughout our country and world at all levels of skill, education and social occupations.  And we must never, ever waste a single one of our precious votes on a candidate who holds the interests of capital superior to those of their hard working constituents.

John O’Connor
North Smithfield, R.I. 

 

Place High Tariffs on Imported Goods

The USA cannot economically re-industrialize without tariffs that are sufficiently high enough to prohibit most all imported products from entering the USA. We should impose extremely high import taxes so that these U.S. made products are always less expensive to the consumer than the same imported product. Without extremely high tariffs, U.S. workers must compete with foreign workers at very low foreign wage scales and degraded environmental conditions.

The US government should borrow U.S. dollars back from the industrial nations and use that money to build manufacturing plants to make various consumer products in sequence one product at a time, i.e. refrigerators, washing machines, clothing, TV’s, electronics, tires, auto parts, hand tools, power tools, machine tools, appliances, etc.  Eventually all of the consumer goods that we import could be made in the USA.

These plants should periodically be for sale based upon open public competitive bidding, but at a minimum sale price at least equal to as much as the government investment, and with terms of cash only without any creative financing.

The US government must also pass laws to prohibit the export of service jobs such as accounting, telemarketing, customer service, computer aided drafting, engineering, etc. that are now provided by workers overseas through the internet.

The management should know about making the products, not creative accounting and/or creative financing.

U.S. citizens must stop selling the U.S. national wealth that was created by previous generations of agriculture, mining and manufacturing sectors of our economy during and after World War II to pay for our non-producing but high consumptive lifestyle of today.

Paying people to rake leaves, pave roads, build infrastructure, plant trees, dig holes then refill the same holes, clean up the environment, write poems, paint pictures, bailout financial investment failures, etc. with U.S. dollars borrowed from industrialized nations is nice, but these jobs will not be useful or contribute anything to correcting the basic U.S. economic foundation problem which is borrowing U.S. dollars back from foreign industrialized nations to pay for the foreign trade deficit and the federal government spending deficit. 

Gerald R. Spencer, P.E., President
Spencer Engineers, Inc.
Houston, Texas