In response to the action being sponsored by www.wolf-pac.com, I wrote this to my State Senator:
I am relatively a new constituent, having moved here with Marci, my wife of 40 years, two days before Thanksgiving this past November. Our home very happily reminds me of the one I grew up in, which is good because I spend a lot of time here. I am disabled and homebound now.
The purpose of this communication is serious enough to warrant some length. I fear the United States Congress may be out of the reach of the middle-class remnant and the working classes of the nation. This letter presents an argument in full regarding the need to amend the Constitution of the United States without being able to engage Congressional participation.
1. Liberal Viewpoint
I am a liberal in this fight. My email box fills daily with petitions to sign and actions to take on concerns ranging from the plight of the polar bears to human trafficking in South Sudan. Between those two dwells an array of abridged rights, bad case law, poor legislative decisions and uneven executive applications which has been eroding the rights of women, voters, labor, consumers, minorities, middle class families and the environment for the past 35 years. It has stolen our pensions, our savings and our homes. It has polluted whole water supplies. It has driven us into debt.
It encourages such excesses as militarized police waving assault rifles around like thugs in Kevlar camouflage. And it has given us the singular assault upon dark-skinned young men we heroically call the War on Drugs. All of these platforms are being used throughout the US today to attack the working classes—the middle class as we knew it is gone—and expand corporate profit and 1% gain at our expense.
2. A Piece of the Middle Class Remnant
On a personal note, my wife, an RN, has been at the same women’s health clinic for 22 years. When she started, she was salaried. There was no punch clock. If a patient kept a nurse late, she could take comp time another day.
Then they put in a clock, which, they said, was for measurement only. And then, with no notice to the nursing staff, they began paying by the clock. Nurses are docked for coming in late but not compensated at all if they must stay over shift to deal with a complicated patient. And comp time is long gone.
Discretionary time—sick days, personal days and vacation days—was granted in full at the beginning of the year. Now it must be accrued throughout the year. So a nurse cannot get all her days until the very end of the year.
Except now, if she uses all her discretionary time to take three weeks off at the end of the year, her accrual year doesn’t start until she returns to work. So the clinic has gone from giving 3 weeks off every 52 weeks to giving 3 weeks every 55 weeks.
The morale of the clinic has dwindled. There used to be Christmas parties. No more. The staff used to be taken to lunch once a year. Now it’s hoagies at the nurse’s station. There was a free health insurance option. That’s long gone. We are paying more for less coverage and higher deductibles. There is no short-term disability, so, when my wife’s fractured arm surgery required 3 months’ recuperation this past winter, we went into debt. And pay raises have not matched inflation.
All of this has taken place while the clinic practice is busier than ever. So, 22 years later, my wife is working harder for less purchasing power and fewer benefits while being squeezed for every penny by the organization which owns the clinic while it is turning more profit than ever.
This story is now typical of the anemic remnants of the middle class which consider their status so tenuous and themselves so lucky to be clinging to it that they will make no waves about it. I, for instance, would never write this to the clinic administrator while Marci still works there. But once she retires. . .
3. What Ties These Together
My email box and the continuing degradation of the nurses are linked by their primary cause: unrestricted amounts of corporate capital in politics due to the permissions we’ve given the 1% to buy our government from under us.
It’s not that environmentalists, labor activists, women’s leaders and middle-class apologists haven’t lobbied to maintain protections and stop the reversal of the New Deal. Corporations have purchased the permission to tax and enslave the working classes despite often massive protests. Populist efforts have simply failed.
These earnest failures are due to The Great Wall of Wealth, now massive thanks to the SCOTUS’ imprimatur, muffling populist voices with a sound baffle comprising billions of dollars of dulling weight upon the gears of government. And that same baffle, used on the flip side, serves as a tympanic membrane to bang the messages of the corporate elite and 1% directly into the ears and coffers of the folks we have elected to Congress. It’s time for this to stop.
Bills proposing amendments to The Constitution banning big money from politics have been faithfully submitted for a number of years. I have come to believe the opinion of people who think a limited convention called by the states to deal with the matter is the best way to approach the issue of sweeping big money out of politics in today’s political world.
By this time, you’ve understood that I would respectfully request that you initiate such a process in our State Legislature.
I am most pleased to be living in your district, and I am most interested in hearing your thoughts on getting a government of the working classes back again.
Sincerely,