I (with a little help from my friends) am in the process of writing what could only be described as the petition to end all petitions.  This petition will go out to Congress, The Senate and The President,  and it will put the blame for our current economic situation squarely where it belongs, in both houses of Congress and the Executive branch of government where, over the years, they have put the interests of corporations and the top 1% above our interests.  This document will differ from most of the other petitions that our electeds receive in that it will not be asking them to do something, it will be giving them an ultimatum - EITHER YOU DO WHAT WE OUTLINE IN THE PETITION OR WE WILL PRIMARY YOU! Hey, if it worked for Norquist on the Republican side of the fence, it can work for us on the Democratic side.  Besides, Democrats should have been working for the bottom 99% all along.

At this point, you might be curious about what we will asking for in the petition. Hint, read some of my articles here and think about some of the ways our electeds wrecked the American dream for the bottom 99%.  The ONLY way to get our country on the right track is to reverse what amounts to 30 years of political malpractice by our electeds.  Many of those corporate owned politicians and their smug sycophantic supporters will say that it's too late, the horse is already out of the barn, don't believe it!  This may be our last chance to reverse 30 years of corporate ownership of our country and many of its electeds.

As we progress, your input will be very welcome.  We can do this!!! Stay tuned because I want to make this website a launching pad for all sorts of political activism.

In light of the issue mentioned in the previous post that is apparently just another legacy of the Reagan administration, I decided to delay the Buy Strikes for a couple of postings.  That will allow us to use another activist tool that could remedy part of Reagan's 30 yr. siege on the 99%. I'm going to post one heck of a petition here in the next few days!!  

Last Sunday, I was watching the 60 Minutes interview of Grover Norquist.  That interview triggered a flood of questions in my mind.  Let's put the obvious question aside about how those Republican electeds could even think about signing any pledge that apparently takes the decision making power on an issue away from them and by extension, most of the voters they represent and puts it in the hands of an unelected individual or organization! 

Let's write off the Republicans as a lost cause and take a close look at the Democrats.  For over twenty years, Republicans have been signing Grover Norquist's pledge to not raise taxes. ostensibly even if it puts government functions at risk!  For over twenty years, Democrats have been "compromising" with the Republicans who took positions on issues that I'm almost certain the Democrats knew were driven by this pledge.  You would think that the Democrats would have a responsibility to the people who voted for them that expect them to vigorously protect and defend programs and issues that help the bottom 99%. The Democrats should own NO allegiance to Republican ideology, especially if it's driven by a loyalty oath administered to Republicans by a person who is a lobbyist!

If I were a Democratic elected, I would wave that pledge in the face of every Republican who tries to obstruct my initiatives because of it!  I would shout that pledge from the rooftops every time a Republican tries to protect the top 1% from tax increases!  By their actions, it's as if most Democratic electeds have signed that pledge by default because compromise is complicity! 

I have an important bit of information to get to you now, so I'll be putting up more about Buy Strikes and actions that we can take without waiting for 2012 in the next post.  

The Republicans may not realize it, but they just tipped their hand and let us have a look at their 2012 Presidential campaign strategy!  During the last Republican debate, amid all their usual nonsense and stupidity, several Republican Presidential "hopefuls" debated the issue of U.S.  trade imbalances with China.  What became clear is that believe it or not, the Republicans are going to use China and "free" trade as the magic carpet that they hope will give them a repeat of 2010 and possibly put a Republican in the White House.

If my instincts are right about what I saw in that debate, the Republican candidate for President and, for that matter, the Republican party will conveniently forget about their history of supporting "free" trade and  sacrificing America's manufacturing infrastructure and American jobs on the altar of Globalization.  They will start to endorse slapping trade tariffs on Chinese imports, forgetting that their idol, Ronald Reagan reduced and eliminated a number of those tariffs.  They will finally admit that America's vast trade imbalance with China is one of the main causes of our current high level of unemployment.  

Now hear me out because the best is yet to come.  They will position themselves as the patriots who will bring manufacturing back to the USA by doing what, in reality they hate the most, passing regulations and trade tariffs that will force corporations to manufacture here.  Middle America, with the aid of some brainwashing campaign ads could fall for the conjured up image of Republicans as defenders of working people.  If you think that the above scenario is far-fetched, think about how teabagers were stirred up by corporate interests and pushed the Republican agenda over to the far right in 2010 or how their propaganda got many people so stirred up that the President caved under its pressure and watered down the healthcare bill to something that still leaves 50 million people without healthcare.

The main reason that the Republicans could get away with billing themselves as populist fighters for the bottom 99 %, protecting American jobs from offshoring to China is because President Obama, who just signed three job killing "free" trade agreements, followed in the tradition of Bill Clinton who violated a campaign pledge and gave China Most Favored Nation trading status .  Who knew that supposedly pro-union Democrats could betray working people like that?  The Republicans, that's who!

Apologists for Obama and the Democrats like to blame the 2010 loss of Congressional seats on a low Progressive turnout at the polls because the Opologists are in blissful state of denial!  They couldn't understand that every time Obama and the Democrats compromised (caved) on issues that were essential to the bottom 99%, they were blurring the line that differentiated them from the Republicans!  THAT'S the reason for 2010 and THAT'S why they could be vulnerable to a Republican faux populist anti job offshoring propaganda campaign in 2012.  

Obama apologists are fond of saying that anyone who votes in 2012 for a progressive third party Presidential candidate instead of Obama is helping to put a Republican in the White House.
If the Republicans use the aforementioned faux anti job offshoring strategy, our support of a third party progressive candidate might be the only way to keep a Republican out of the White House, not the other way around as the Obama apologists would have you believe!

My last post and show discussed using BUY STRIKES to empower the bottom 99% as a concept.  Let's make the use of BUY STRIKES a reality.  From this moment on, The Jack Wade Show isn't just about union issues, it's about restoring political clout to the bottom 99%.  I intend to use my show and this website to empower the bottom 99%.  We will go over the heads of corporate owned politicians who believe in a "free" market and trickle down economics and let their corporate owners know that our weapon of choice is the demand half of the law of supply and demand.  We will use our collective purchasing power to right many of the wrongs that our electeds are unwilling to correct.

Over the next few weeks, I will be putting up many tools of consumer empowerment on this web site.  Some of the tools will involve the use of BUY STRIKES that should give us the same good results that many people got when they decided to move their money from mega banks to small local banks and credit unions.  We will also utilize petitions to address certain issues that involve obstinate electeds who seem to only listen to us when they are running for office.  

The Occupy people are out on the streets fighting for the rights of the bottom 99%.  Now you have an an additional way to take direct action and right a few wrongs without waiting for 2012!

Many of the big banks wanted to thank us for bailing them out by adding a monthly fee for using our debit cards.  We answered them by moving our money to credit unions and smaller banks.  We won, the banks dropped their fees and had to spend a ton of money for damage control advertising.  We voted with our dollars and it worked!

In the old days, people would call what we did a boycott.  Boycotts never used to work because they had limited participation.  In the spirit of the Occupy movement, let's call this very effective financial/political weapon what it really is and use it for other things, it's a - - BUY STRIKE!!  Are greedy speculators driving up the prices on a particular food item?  We can institute a buy strike against any supermarket that raises the price of that item, they will get the message!  We can BUY STRIKE any company that manufactures overseas if they have a competitor that manufactures here, they will get the message!

You can find out how to control the corporations that control our electeds by visiting my Listen Here! page.

Mega corporations and big commercial banks answer to and protect the interests of their stockholders! Our government should only answer to and protect the interests of  "We The People!"  Guess which is really "too big to fail?"  Let's hope the new, independent people we elect in 2012 realize that!

As promised, here is the little opus that I posted in the Feature Articles section of this website.  Do not read The Pendulum if you can't handle the truth!

I guess that you've noticed that things have been very quiet on my website. That's because many things that I can't discuss at the present time are in the works.  In addition, I have been working on a very interesting article that I will be posting late tomorrow afternoon in the Feature Articles section of this website. See you then.

For just about our whole lives, we've been conditioned to think in terms of us vs. them. If it wasn't for those nasty people in THAT country, life would be a dream. If it wasn't for those people not practicing the one TRUE religion, the world would be a better place. If it wasn't for those poor people sponging off the rest of us hard-working taxpayers, taxes would be lower. If it wasn't for those bolshevik socialists who support “big” government and it's regulations, “free” enterprise would flourish and provide jobs for all of us.

As you can see, us vs. them reduces our life experiences and prejudices to unrealistic abstractions. Us vs. them is most deceptive when it refers to BOTH political parties in our “two” party system. After all, we've been conditioned to believe that the Republican party is the party of the rich, but the Democratic party is the working person's party. If that were really the case:

• The Taft-Hartley Act that severely weakened unions and enabled “Right To Work States” would have never passed with votes from BOTH parties in the 1947.
  
• Working people would be protected by strong unions backed by an Employee Free Choice Act.
  
• Electeds from BOTH parties, including Bill Clinton and President Obama wouldn't support job killing “free” trade agreements.
  
• Democratic electeds would have given FDR's New Deal to the bottom 99% instead of Wall Street and the Banks.
  
• President Obama wouldn't have appointed job offshoring GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt to head the Council On Jobs and Competitiveness. I guess Obama really believes in trickle down economics.
  

As you can see, the “two” party system is little more than a de facto game of good cop/bad cop.
As members and supporters of the Occupy movement, we have two choices, we can squander our efforts and dedication on an existing party or we can have REAL change by starting our own party, let's make the right choice.