The unspoken casualty of the current U.S. depre... er, I mean recession is the dignity of the American worker and the respect that corporations and by extension, the politicians they own have for workers and their families.
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On this Labor Day weekend, in the midst of the highest unemployment levels since the great depression, record amounts of underemployment and corporations that use invidious hiring standards like pre-employment credit checks that make the hiring process seem like a reality show, we have to take stock and determine the real causes of our problems then fix them.  We have to ask ourselves several questions: How could conservatives and the Tea Party, with corporate financial backing  brainwash working people into going against their own best interests and oppose a national health care plan?  How could they get working people to support politicians that are in favor of globalization and "free" trade when that is the real cause of our current unemployment problems? How can working people be conned into thinking that unions are a bad thing? Their weapon of mass disinformation is - -  P A T R I O T I S M!

The conservative/Republican/Tea Party brand of patriotism usually involves the invocation of a few chants of "family values" plus some references to God and our founding fathers.  They throw in some innuendos that being pro-health care reform is "socialist", union people are "thugs" and that the unemployed who collect unemployment insurance are living off the rest of us.  To top it off, they say that retired people who collect their Social Security benefits are sapping the life blood of future generations.

For people who profess their "patriotism", they support some decidedly unpatriotic things like globalization and "free" trade agreements which have decimated our country's manufacturing capabilities, sent countless jobs overseas and have built up the manufacturing capabilities of China. The last time I looked, China was a Communist country. How is it patriotic to encourage manufacturing and create jobs over there when it causes reduced manufacturing capabilities and unemployment here?   What kind of "family values" starve families out by opposing Unemployment Insurance payments and abuse retirees by trying to reduce Social Security payments, privatize it or raise the retirement age?  The answer of course is UN-AMERICAN, AMORAL and UNETHICAL, corporate family values, because corporate cash finances that brand of "patriotism".

We ask ordinary American citizens to do some extraordinary things for our country. We ask our brave military personnel, our sons and daughters to give up their lives under the most horrifying circumstances, if need be.  As Americans, we expect American corporations to do THEIR patriotic duty by bringing manufacturing back to the USA.  We also ask them to stop using their cash to finance sock puppet special interest groups who buy propaganda ads that interfere with our electoral process.  One last thing, we insist that they stop buying our elected officials via their lobbyists.

Happy labor day! Solidarity Forever!