One of my favorite old sayings is “Anything worth having is worth fighting for.”  In my book, that goes double when it comes to things like America's manufacturing infrastructure, decent paying jobs, America's social safety nets and most of all, fair representation of the bottom 98% in Washington!  When we elected President Obama in 2008, I was under the impression that he would fight for OUR interests, guess I was wrong.  Apparently, politics being what it is, he has other priorities like looking out for the interests of wealthy campaign supporters, something he has in common with his Republican compatriots.

Within weeks of the President's taking office, many of us began to see disturbing signs that he used us to get into office and was starting to turn his back on us.  One disturbing sign was when he stated that “he's everyone's President, not just the President of those who voted for him.”  Well everyone encompasses people like teabaggers and Republicans who hold views that are irreconcilable with Obama's campaign promises and his Madison Avenue slogan of “Change We Can Believe In.”  While it is true that any president is “everyone's President”, that doesn't mean that he has to embrace or even consider things that are repugnant to the very working people who put him in office or differ from his own stated campaign platform.  In this case, being “everyone's President" says “thanks for your vote, I owe you nothing, now get lost” to working people and Progressives. 

As the months passed, the President made it clear that he was NOT going to fight for the things that we consider important:

• He abandoned the healthcare public option. 
  
• He caved on tax breaks for the rich.
  
• He abandoned the Employee Free Choice Act.
  
• He appointed a job offshoring GE CEO to chair a council that was supposed to generate jobs.
  
•  The majority of his advisors and appointees come from corporate and Wall Street circles.
  
•  He has the audacity to support three job killing free trade agreements.
  
•  He is willing to compromise Americas social safety net to appease the Republicans.
  

I could go on for pages but I won't. What I will say is that this kind of compromise is almost as toxic to working people as the Republican/Tea Party agenda. As a matter of fact it's downright insideous because supporting the President in 2012 keeps us from electing someone who can and will actually help working people. Many of the President's current die hard supporters are on various social media acting as the unofficial Democratic truth police by scaring people with the old “lesser of two evils” baloney. If you run into one of those clowns, please tell them that they will only be able to see the truth if the stop burying their heads in the President's rear end.

We need to elect a truly worthy candidate in 2012, someone like Bernie Sanders.
Congratulations, you can now consider yourself aware and awakened!

By now, it's probably become obvious to all but the most brainwashed from both political parties that our electeds support economic policies which put the full burden of recovery from this recession squarely on the backs of the bottom 98%.   They want us to forget that most of the top 2% and their speculative ways, with the help of Wall St. and the banks, created the bubbles that always trigger downturns when they burst.  They want us to forget that the top 2% reaped the rewards of each bubble they created while our income remained stagnant or dropped.  To add insult to injury, they keep babbling about “shared sacrifice” even though almost ALL of their proposals actually protect the interests of the top 2% in various ways and give us the sacrifice by cutting our safety nets and cutting America's infrastructure!


One particularly perverse manifestation of our electeds' intentionally twisted perception of America's plight is a national policy that purposely ignores the true cause of our country’s economic woes. America's shaky economic situation sits on a crumbling foundation of thirty years of corporate shortcuts that boosted their quarterly bottom lines at our country's expense!  Much of it started when Ronald Reagan lowered trade tariffs on many imports which made it tempting for corps to send manufacturing overseas.  His firing of union air traffic controllers sent a wink and nod signal to America's corporations that it's OK to bust unions.  Sadly, subsequent Presidents from BOTH parties have, at best treated the above situations as givens or, at worst promoted “free” trade agreements that exacerbated the situation.

Because of the above, America has lost its manufacturing infrastructure and is essentially a country without a product!  As more and more jobs flew overseas, more of us became unemployed.   These good people, through NO fault of their own, both lost their purchasing power and became former taxpayers.  Offshoring jobs actually costs our country precious tax revenue!  That self-induced case of the shorts caused our bloodsucking electeds to whine about “shared sacrifice” instead of taxing the rich.  They are the ones who caused the problem in the first place, by giving corporations and the rich carte blanche.  They would rather try to get blood from a stone than upset wealthy and corporate contributors.


At this point in time, we are stuck with electeds who would rather come up with bogus economic solutions than address any of the real underlying problems.  The reason is obvious, corporations pay the freight for their campaigns and promise them cushy soft landing jobs after they complete their terms in office.  As I mentioned before, we can level the playing field by forming a voting bloc organization that uses our ballots to offset corporate bucks.  The choice is yours, sit on the sidelines and vote for “the lesser of two evils” in 2012 or actively seek change we can really believe in. If you choose the latter and want to take part, email me.  

Listen to Ray Sherven's pro labor/middle class music video and it's message.  Please pass this strong song of solidarity along to your friends!

Tune in to The Working Family Radio Network to hear my interview with New York Attorney and Twitter guru, Ray Beckerman.  It's all happening Thursday, Aug. 11 at 3:05 PM EDT.

Most of our electeds, including the President are climbing onto the exporting = jobs bandwagon.  The main reason being that they need a few convenient token gestures such as exporting and “green” jobs to show that they are actually doing something about the unemployment problem that they caused years ago by setting up a favorable climate for job offshoring.   The President is currently pushing three NAFTA style job killing “free” trade agreements, ostensibly to create exporting jobs.   Though these agreements couldn't get passed under the Bush administration, in the current, “let's give away the store” atmosphere of the current administration, they become “job creators.”  While exports may create a few jobs for American workers, they will not offset the vast job loss caused by the above and earlier “free” trade agreements.

The insidious thing about making exporting the almighty cure for unemployment is that it does the opposite, in the long run, it creates unemployment.   When a corporation gets into the habit of finding its customers overseas, instead of here, it no longer has ANY use for Americans.   The corporations will eventually succumb to the urge to move those “exporting” jobs overseas to save foreign customers any product shipping costs and to take advantage of lower local labor prices.   At that point, the few American workers who got those exporting jobs will join their fellow workers who are already unemployed due to the job loss caused by those “free” trade agreements on the unemployment line.

Once a corporation realizes that virtually ALL of its income comes from exporting, it has no further use for Americans.  That corporation isn't going to worry about upsetting people who are now unemployed and are no longer potential customers.  Translation we won't be their customers, nor employees, we'll  just live here.   The only thing that we will be exporting under those circumstances will be our jobs.

This is a lose/lose proposition, American workers lose jobs and America loses precious tax revenue. Hey, you can't tax people who aren't drawing a paycheck.   The only winners are the unpatriotic corporations that only care about their bottom lines, no matter who it hurts and the corrupt politicians who are owned by said corporations.   The only way we can restore prosperity to America and Americans is to contact our electeds and insist that they pass legislation that restores each and every one of the pre Reagan tariffs on imports!

Let's bring back the American dream by Building It Here and Buying It Here!