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All of those people with their large backsides resting comfortably in office chairs, the governors, the members of Congress and others who say that decent pensions are far too much for ordinary workers to get should cut their own pay and pensions. Let them go first. Why is it "reasonable" for one person to make 14 million dollars a year and unreasonable for the next one hundred people to make 45,000? What happened to America that we no longer accept the idea, even a small notion, of fairness?
Congressmen and women have one of the best pension deals anywhere short of a CEO for a Fortune 500 company. They get a much better salary than most people and except the job of running for reelection, the work is part time. The work week in Washington, DC, has been reduced to part of Tuesdays, all of Wednesdays and part of Thursdays for three out of every four weeks. Who set up this schedule? The new Republican leadership of the House. The working rule these days is that you must show your distaste for the "ways of Washington" by not living there and commuting home to wife and family after every two and a half arduous days of legislating. So, they fly in and fly back out, as fast as they can. Many members of congress probably spend more time in the air every year than they do with the business of the House.
As for those made chronically unemployed by the recession, I feel for people who find themselves on a dead end street with no real prospects of getting out. This is the American way. Workers are disposable items to be used and discarded at will. It happens every recession. Indeed, it happens between recessions, too, as corporations pursue downsizing and exporting jobs with religious zeal.
One lesson of the recession, however, is that no one is safe. Everyone should, at least every year or so, be thinking about where their next job might be and what to do if they lose the one they have suddenly. Being experienced and trained in doing one thing, like driving a truck, is a trap. So is getting a PhD and overspecializing. In fact, the highly educated are often the most difficult people to place in new jobs, because there aren’t that many demanding their particular skills. No one is beyond losing their job at any time.
The consumer society has taught most of us to buy and buy when we are making money as if we will always have it coming in. So, we get the biggest house, the biggest car, the best of everything we can afford, until we can sudden no longer afford them or anything. We put ourselves on a collision course by buying the goods that keep the consumer society moving up, until it falls. Why do so many accept this so unquestioningly?
As for the union busting efforts of state governors, we need to rise up and fight back. Only because the voice of the people has been weakened would they even dare. Only because the super rich right was able to undermine the Obama presidency would they even show this ugly campaign to daylight. Only because the right was able to take back control of the House, through hundreds of thousands of campaign commercials and many backroom tricks, would they attempt to take on the hard won rights of workers to negotiate. Only, further, during a recession where people are suffering would they seek to turn workers against each other, seeking, ultimately, to create new advantages for the wealthy and the super wealthy as they further seek to limit taxation for any purpose.
Our democracy is being chopped to bits. No one rose up and demanded that unions be taken down. If the Republican, far right dream is allowed to mature, no worker in America will have any right to do anything except show up for work on time and accept whatever is offered as compensation. But, make no mistake, the people of America are watching the revolutions now occurring in the middle east and north Africa and also seeing the demonstrations taking place in Europe. How long will voters be content to operate as the minority voice in democracy? How long will they accept that their role is being reduced by corporate contributions and an iron lock arrangement between the rich and their servants in government positions? How long?
Our Democracy cannot survive if it cannot reflect popular will to a greater degree, if what people need and want is systematically taken away. Our system was in need of updating to create more opportunity for citizens' voices to be heard before we entered the new quagmire of massive money married to right wing radio, cable news, sophisticated propaganda and the stresses of recession.
We, unlike elsewhere, have the means of peaceful revolution in our hands. Those means were given to us by our founders and the opportunity they represent has been strengthened by communications, rapid transportation and education. It is time to act while still we have those means available and before citizens, workers and the middle class lose what they have left.
Doug Terry, 2.26.11
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