I think that if we had more decent jobs in this country we’d see far fewer young people risk their lives by joining the military which might bring back a draft or push more of our military onto the private for profit mercenary corp’s which to me is very dangerous because while I do not know for certain but only suspect that they would not be under the control of our Commander In Chief aka the US President.
This, I believe is one of many reasons they continue to suppress higher wages and decent jobs in this country, some of which I believe is just a positive side effect of the right wing corporate policies that they have now come to rely on.
Senator Bernie Sanders has been so blocked from our media in my opinion largely due to his speaking truth to power and calling out the televised media for caving into the powerful all for more profits when they know they are failing in their Constitutional duty to keep the public well informed. And why he’s so trashed in many of our major print medias as well because they don’t want people to know the truth. When Bernie says that we want to “take our country back” he means back to the good times when we had a strong middle class brought about by strong unions. Jobs were plentiful in the 1960’s and 70’s and they paid a decent, living wage while providing good benefits and a safe place to work. I never paid a cent for healthcare until the late 90’s when I was in my mid 50’s and then never more than $50.00 per month mainly because my family was raised by then. That was due to the fact that our health care system was non profit until Nixon decided, along with the insurance industry that a for profit system would work better for them, although obviously not for the rest of us. Our hospitals were largely owned by the public not a church or a corporation.
Then, enter the spokes person for the elites Ronald Reagan in 1980 and his message to the country that the scariest thing we could ever hear was “I am from the government and I’m here to help.” and “Government is not the solution to the problem. Government is the problem.” The Republican party has worked tirelessly to make that a true statement ever since by first making government ineffective by slashing budgets or hampering their ability to enforce or even make rules. Then they declare it broken and seek public opinion to do away with this agency or that policy because it’s full of waste and fraud or doesn’t work anymore. The GOP has been very effective in convincing many in the middle class to eliminate themselves by voting against their own economic self interests. They can accomplish this by constantly stirring up hot button issues such as “religious freedom”, 2nd Amendment gun rights”, “gay rights”, racist, slamming women, immigrants, abortions and on and on they go. They will talk about anything and everything EXCEPT what anything of actual benefit to the people or this country.
Then there’s Reagan’s failed “trickle down”, supply side economics that was supposed to be so wonderful for all of us. We were told that if we just cut the tax rate for the corporations that they would do all these wonderful things for us and create more jobs with better pay which by now we should know what a line of BS that was and it stretches around the Globe. He mimicked Thatcher’s policies in the UK and the people in that country hated her. Many GOP controlled states have now applied this economic theory with devastating results such as Governor Brownbeck in KS, Scott Walker in WI, to name a few.
Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, a Democratic President Bill Clinton bought into the “free trade” myth that supposedly would be good for the country and provide jobs, blah, blah. These were implemented about half way through his Presidency so the full effects were not felt for at least a decade by which time he was long gone from the White House. He capped that off at the end of his time in the White House with again buying into the lie that Wall Street could self regulate that was sold to him in part by Alan Greenspan who admitted to Congress in 2009 after the crash that he was wrong. Of course he’s since walked back that statement. His Telecommunications Act bill didn’t help matters either allowing all the media mergers that have destroy any accountability with our media these days. So while Bill Clinton did some good things he also created the circumstances that set us up to fail in many ways.
We voted for Obama in 2008 because he promised to renegotiate NAFTA and CAFTA and instead he negotiated yet more “free” trade deals and now wants to pass the worst of them all the Trans Pacific Partnership or TPP and pushed through “Fast Track” another trick by Nixon to bypass the 2/3 Senate majorities required for treaties. They just renamed them trade deals when they have less to do with trade then with treaties.
In 1993 when NAFTA was being negotiated with Canada and Mexico we enjoyed a trade surplus of $2.6 billion. We were told by the US International Trade Commission that this “free trade” deal would grow our trade benefit to $10 billion. In just 2015 alone we had a trade deficit of $15 billion. I wonder if they actually thought so many corporations would move their manufacturing out of the US when they originally made that statement. Then look at China in 2000 who we had a $113 billion deficit with and were told that current negotiations with them would not increase our deficit to more then $120 billion but by 2015 it has grown to over $300 billion, but then is it me or why would we want to negotiate anything in the first place that would increase, not decrease a trade deficit? Trade deficits equate to lost jobs here in the US. Then there's the Korea trade deal of 2011 when again we’re promised the good times and that our trade deficit of $5.8 billion would be cut in half with that deal yet it grew to $16 billion in just 4 years. And they wonder why this new, much larger TPP is so wildly unpopular with the people? Yet, they want to push it through anyway? This is a corporate coup, not a trade deal and not only here in the US but the entire planet.They will own our government. Well be blocked from passing any regulations or laws that a corporation deems harmful to their profits. Already we’re being sued which is insane. Both RNC and DNC need to take heed. This is why the people of both parties have rejected establishment candidates for outsiders like Trump and Bernie.
So all of this brings me full circle to my topic regarding taking our country back….to what? My belief is that this statement has a very different meaning dependent on one’s political ideology and varies again depending on whether or not one is the politician espousing the message or the voter base hearing it. I’ve not heard anyone ever really explain what it means to them or to what era they would have us go back to. Some do say back to founding principles, other’s perhaps to the late 1800’s and the age of the Robber barons which set off the progressive movement of Teddy Roosevelt in the early 1900’s. I think some are referring to the 1950’s when women were treated even worse then today and black people could entertain in Las Vegas but not allowed to stay at their hotels. I do know to which era Bernie Sander’s supporters want to return this country and that’s to the post WWII up to the 1980’s when the middle class allowed a family to not only survive but to flourish with only one wage earner. Our healthcare was free, our work places safe and jobs were plentiful. I realize that when I say this, I am saying this as a white person, but also as a woman who’s grown up in a man’s world. Wasn’t so great for those not male or white so that’s the one thing we’d change when we return to the policies of the past.