At the Campaign for America's Future, Dave Johnson writes
America Waking Up To Value Of Unions:
As Abraham Lincoln famously said, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time." When you put enough dots in front of people sooner or later they will connect the dots. And Americans are connecting the dots.
Dots: Trade deals close factories, outsource jobs and pit workers against each other, then wages decline and unemployment is really high, while all the money goes to a few at the top. Then calls to cut the wages and benefits of the rest.
Dots: Unions squashed, then pensions disappear, then calls to get rid of public-employee unions because they have pensions.
Dots: Tax cuts for the rich, then panic over resulting deficits, then calls for cuts in the things government does for We, the People.
People are connecting the dots: Unions mean better wages, benefits and working conditions.
There is a joke circulating that goes like this:
A unionized public employee, a member of the Tea Party and a Big Corp CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table there is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across and takes 11 cookies, looks at the tea partier and says, "Look out for that union guy, he wants a piece of your cookie."
...
Wage stagnation resulted: (note boost in Clinton years, undoing some of the Reagan damage.)
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2005:
Polls show widespread skepticism of Bush's proposal for creating individual Social Security investment accounts for younger workers, and Democratic lawmakers have voiced nearly uniform opposition. The Washington Post reported over the weekend that some allies of the president are focused on possible split-the-difference deals that would significantly scale back Bush's proposal, yet enable him to claim an incremental victory.
Re the polls: and how. Things are looking quite bleak for Bush, as a new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll out today shows only 38% of Americans feel "major changes must be made to Social Security within the next two years", a long way down from the 49% last January, and that substantially more people trust the Democrats to make those changes than trust Republicans.
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In case you're looking for a good diary to read, here is one by Avenging Angel