Tune in to my show on The Working Family Radio Network live stream at 3:05 PM when author/blogger, The Reverend Manny joins me for an announcement that could be the beginning of a movement to empower the bottom 98%.  Then, come back to this site around 9:00 PM EDT for further details.

Now that the 2008 Obama campaign's promise of change that became the politics of compromise is on its way to becoming the shame of capitulation, many of us “we told you so” people are still being harangued by the cult known as the O-pologists!  These people hang out on various social media waiting to swoop down and try to stifle the free speech of anyone who expresses anything that differs from their constant droning, unconditional worship of the President.  They take exception to ANYONE who dares to say that Obama has become the President of compromise rather than of change or that he is not acting in the best interests of working people, the retired and the poor.

One of their favorite rants is that “you progressives stayed home in 2010 and let the Republicans win in many places” which gave the Republicans the edge.  Personally, I didn't stay home, I let myself get suckered into the same old lesser of two evils ploy and reluctantly voted along party lines, knowing that Obama and a party made dysfunctional by it's Blue Dogs didn't deliver on many of his and its campaign promises.  Those who decided to stay home, even after I urged them on the air to get out and vote did so because they felt betrayed.  I could understand that because I also felt betrayed!  Many of the reasons why lots of us felt betrayed are found in numerous articles on this website, so I won't go into them here.

O-pologists, let's get one thing straight, the people who didn't vote stayed home because they felt that they had to choose between toxic Republicans and compromising Democrats who are Republican enablers.  They didn't cause the problems we have today, the President's failure to fight for the middle class, working people, seniors and the poor caused the voter apathy.  Let's give All Americans a reason to get out and vote in 2012 by giving them someone worth electing from a party that truly represents working people, a Labor Party.  We must support its candidate with the same zeal that we supported President Obama in 2008!  Hey, I wonder if Bernie Sanders is available?

Many of our electeds love to preach "austerity" and "shared" sacrifice.  They infer that we, the people did something wrong that caused the deficit.  That's like saying that a rape victim caused her rape because she wore "suggestive" clothes.  Make no mistake about it, as members of the bottom 98%, we were the victims of a mass economic rape.  As a matter of fact, we were gang banged by our electeds and the upper 2% who own them.

I'm going to use the family budget analogy to explain how our electeds destroyed our economy and how there is only one way to fix it.  When you sit down at the kitchen table to hash out the family budget, you take out your paycheck, and divvy it up  to cover your bills and expenses.  If you lose that paycheck or have a reduction in income, you have to get it back or practice fiscal triage and sacrifice some expense items.  Maintaining your income will allow you to keep some of life's luxury items like food and shelter.

Now that we're clear that increasing income or revenue is always preferable to making draconian cuts in expenses or in the case of government, infrastructure and safety net spending.  Let's see how that applies to and what is the real cause of the deficit.  Our troubles started when Ronald Reagan decided that it was more important for America's corporations to have a source of cheap labor than for America  to have a manufacturing infrastructure and for American workers to have the kind of manufacturing jobs that made the American dream possible.  He did that by lowering many trade tariffs on imports which started corporate America's outsourcing frenzy.  Ever since then, globalization and job outsourcing continued as a given through every administration and was escalated by Bill Clinton's “free” trade policies that featured job killing NAFTA.

We are now at the point where America has become a country without a product.  Our corporatons have become order takers that have their products manufactured overseas in contracted factories, under questionable working conditions for low wages then have their trademark slapped on the product. This process has not only caused unemployment in many industries, but has destroyed America's manufacturing infrastructure.  The U.S. corporations that comprise the high tech sector, who pride themselves on their design capabilities and, in some cases boast that their products are designed in the U.S.A. are actually giving American technology to China when they have their products made there.  That American technology wouldn't have been possible without all the taxpayer financed research that took place under NASA's space program.

With diminished employment possibilities and stagnant salaries, the Bush administration had a novel approach to the problem of a middle class that was rapidly becoming impoverished, he gave them the illusion of prosperity by encouraging them to borrow.  Heck, they were still part of the middle class as long as they could tap their credit cards and take out secondary mortgages on their homes to make up for wages that didn't cover their expenses.  The next paragraph ties it all together.

By encouraging "free" trade, our government has allowed Americas corporations to use the third world as it's hiring hall.  As our citizens lose their jobs, or take low paying jobs, our government loses tax revenue.  Instead of doing the right and patriotic thing for America and the American people by passing legislation that discourages imports and encourages manufacturing here, our electeds from BOTH parties have let America run up a negative balance of trade tab with China.  That's why China has invested so heavily in U.S. Treasury notes, to protect THEIR interests.  Translation, the American government is borrowing due to a diminishing income, just like the middle class did under Bush.

So now we have the spectre of President Obama endorsing three NAFTA like "free" trade agreements as job creators instead of the job killers they are when the real, honest  solution to unemployment, the deficit and most of our economic problems is exactly the opposite.  To balance America's budget, our electeds must not hack away at America's safety net and infrastructure, they must increase America's tax revenue by passing legislation that undoes the damage that they did to our country over the past thirty years.  Legislation that discourages U.S. corporate offshore manufacturing in the strongest possible way, by reversing every bit of pro "free" trade legislation that was passed since the Reagan regime and by re-instituting each and every tariff on imports.

Let's bring back the American dream and restore America's economy by bringing every bit of manufacturing back to the U.S.A.  That can't be done when the President endorses "free" trade agreements and cuts to Social Security as the solution.   If it takes a third party, a Labor Party to fix America's problems than so be it.

The Reverend Manny is my guest on this week's show on the Working Family Radio Network.  You can hear a mini version by visiting my Listen Here! page.

Dear President Obama,
When you ran for office, you said that you represent “Change We Can Believe In.”
At this point in time, as a card carrying member of organized labor and a member of what is becoming the former middle class, I'd like a definition of your concept of “change.”   From my perspective, your version of “change” seems to consist of a variation of Republican style trickle down economics that combines the worst features of capitalism with the worst features of socialism.   The rich investors get the risky bets that they call “investments” insured with the immediate use of taxpayer dollars to cover losses because they are “too big to fail.”  While the rest of us get to lose our jobs, homes and have our safety nets cut by the very people that we elected to protect us, presumably because we are too small to matter.

After years of enduring the slings and arrows of the Bush and other Republican administrations that put the interests of corporate America first, the working people who comprise the middle class looked to you and the Democratic Party to level the playing field.   After years of stagnant wages, seeing our jobs outsourced to places like China and India and being convinced by the Bush administration that running up tabs on our credit cards is the same as getting the pay raises we had in more equitable times, we hoped that, in the interest of fairness, you would push the pendulum in the other direction.   Instead, you keep using the word bipartisan which translates to compromising our interests.  I say that you can't compromise with members of the Party that helped to create the disparity of wealth that is commonly called the top 2% without embracing their “values!”

As the core group that supported you and helped to get you elected, many of us now have a few questions:

1. Why has so little been done about The Employee Free Choice Act, a law that would help working people unionize their workplace?  Action speaks louder than words, sincere people don’t just pay lip-service to unions, they firmly support legislation that helps them.
2. Why are you supporting three “free” trade agreements that are nothing more that NAFTA style job killers?  Even George Bush couldn't get the South Korea US Free Trade Agreement passed into law.   In these tough times, why are you supporting legislation that helps corporations outsource American jobs?  Perhaps you are doing that at the behest of “too big to fail corporations?”  All of this sounds like a replay of Bill Clinton's empty NAFTA promises to me, we all know how that worked out.
   
3. Even though you would have had to buck the corporate backed right wing lie machine and their main stream media henchmen, why didn't you support single payer health care?  With so many people losing their jobs, there is NO justification for any elected official putting corporate interests before the health and safety of ALL Americans!  Almost every industrialized country has some form of national healthcare.   In our country, if you can't pay the corporate ransom, your health is your problem! 
   
4. Finally, why are you talking about putting Social Security and Medicare on the negotiating table? NEED I SAY MORE?
   

I'm not telling you how to do your job, but if I were in your position, the first thing that I would do is to reinstate every single tariff on imports that existed prior to the Reagan administration and have truth in labeling legislation introduced that identifies U.S. brand name products that are really imports in disguise with a cigarette style warning label.  Then I would go for the repeal of Taft-Hartley to help America's unions restore prosperity to the Middle-Class.   Those moves would cost the American taxpayer nothing, but will create enough tax revenue to fix the deficit, because job offshoring and the resulting lopsided balance of trade is the primary cause of the deficit in the first place!  Corporations got richer, but it destroyed the middle class and made America a country without a product!

Now about Social Security which is actually a form of insurance that was funded, in good faith by America's hard working people.   Our electeds from BOTH parties have systematically raided the Social Security Trust fund to finance general government spending.   Anyway you look at the situation, that's FRAUD because none of it was paid back!  Any cuts to Social Security will be seen by everybody who paid into the fund, not as a cut to just another so called “entitlement” but as out and out robbery of a portion of our life savings!

In closing, let me say that most middle class Americans would probably agree with me when I say that the change that we've seen so far has been symbolic change, not substantive change a.k.a. SMALL CHANGE.  Keeping 2012 in mind and in light of that I say, Mr. President, keep the change, we just want our lives and our dignity back!

Respectfully Yours,
Jack Wesley Wade

It looks like the big holiday weekend "story" that the main stream media is trying to foist on an unsuspecting public is a Harvard University "study" that concludes that children who go to patriotic Fourth Of July celebrations at a young age are likely to grow up to become Republicans.
To hear what I have to say about that, visit my Listen Here! page.

The real cause of the economic decline of the middle class and the sharp drop in union membership is a "two" party system that puts corporate interests before that of working people and the poor!  If you are one of those "don't confuse me with the facts" party loyalists, you're not going to want to visit my Listen Here! page.

As a working person and proud union member, I'm sick and tired of the condescending, “I know better than you” breed of Democrat.   All it takes to draw them out of the woodwork on any form of social media is to say that most Democrats, including the President haven't lived up to their campaign promises.   If you add that most Democrats have joined their Republican “pals” in supporting things that can and do hurt unions and America's middle class, you are guaranteed to get at least one obnoxious Kool Aid drinker who takes on the demeanor of a second grade teacher reprimanding an errant seven year old.  Saying that we need a third party, a true labor party will bring his or her orgy of condescension to a crescendo and guarantee an immediate and snotty “If you vote for a third party, you help the Republicans win”.

We know that the middle class will die a quick death under the Republicans and WE don't want them to get elected to ANY office.   However, the middle class have been dying a slow death under Democrats who let Republicans set government's agenda and meekly comply!   That complicity is akin to a crooked boxer who is paid to throw the match by gamblers.   The gamblers, in this case being many of America's corporations, Wall Street and the rich whose lobbyists control BOTH parties!

The bottom line is that America's Middle Class shouldn't choose a quick death by electing Republicans, an intellectual death by supporting the Tea Party or an agonizing slow death by voting for Democrats.
Rather, they should choose life by electing pro-union candidates from a brand new labor party!

The new motto of America's middle class should be, “GIVE US HONESTY, DON'T GIVE US DEATH!”

Jim and I did another show for the Working Family Radio Network. We also did a no holds barred mini show for The Jack Wade Show website.  You can listen to the festivities by visiting the Listen Here! page.

With many Democratic politicians distancing themselves from Anthony Weiner and Nancy Pelosi calling for an “Ethics Committee investigation” in the wake of his internet dalliance, we have further proof that we need a third party.   Compared to most of our electeds, Anthony Weiner has a fairly decent voting record.   As a matter of fact, except for his support of certain “free” trade agreements, he stands for traditional Democratic values, in the FDR sense.   He puts his his compatriots, including Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, with their lack of anything but verbal support of union issues to shame!

Hey Democrats, if you are more concerned about adverse publicity and what the Republicans are going to say about Anthony Weiner than doing the right thing, many Americans will be looking for a party that is truly democratic, with a small "d".  Working Americans need a third party that truly represents their interests, not that of corporate America.   Perhaps Anthony Weiner can be a part of that third party if he reconsiders his support of “free” trade agreements.