If one would subscribe to the commentary presented by Fox News, the unions personify this greedy, ‘we want it all’ mentality. Everyone knows that the wealthy create the jobs in this country. Since they create opportunity, they should get the lion’s share of the fruits of prosperity.
This is the scenario that the conservative politicians and their wealthy backers would have everyone believe. Is this really true? Have we become so unreasonable that we should forfeit the rights that trade unions and progressives have fought for these many decades? Have the working people of this country become evil enough to merit the downright scorn of the ruling elite? I for one, do not think that at all. My mother was a ‘child of the Depression.’ She told me stories about life in those days; about having nothing to eat but biscuits and thin gravy for weeks on end; about having dresses made out of flour sacks; wearing shoes with holes patched by cardboard; about wearing clothes until they literally became rags; about Christmas presents consisting of pieces of fruit. She left home with her older sister to work in an ammunition plant in Jacksonville, Arkansas at the age of sixteen; finishing high school by day and working in the ammo plant at night. They sent money home to their parents to help out. She and her sister were part of that ‘Greatest Generation’ we hear so much about these days; doing their part to win the war and preserve the American way of life.
That woman raised me and when my grandparents died, she continued the job alone. She refused public assistance of any kind, even the ‘commodities’ that served as ‘aid to the poor’ in those days, saying, “That’s for poor folks.” She worked at the local five and dime store for 75 cents an hour, putting in at least 44 hours a week; even longer at Christmas time. At the age of twelve, I worked odd jobs to help out. By the age of fourteen, I was working after school and summers taking any job I could… car hop, farm hand, grocery bagger, you name it. We were poor but Mom always said that we would work for what we got; nobody had to ‘give’ us a damned thing. I grew up and entered the military since that was the only avenue open to me to get free job training and even get paid while learning. A few years later, I married and had a family. I left the military and entered the work force. My first job out of the service was as a painter in a casket factory for $2.00 an hour. Later on, I began working for the water utility in my home town and progressed in the trade; finally finishing my career as Director of Utilities in a medium sized Arkansas town.
In all those years, I drew perhaps two unemployment checks. I am now retired on Social Security and a pension from the Arkansas Public Employees Retirement System. Combining the two, I make less than half what I made working full-time. If one listens to the rhetoric, that pension and Social Security check are more than I deserve. I should be grateful for having the opportunity to have had a job at all. It’s my fault for not having the foresight to establish my own retirement fund; my fault for settling for a public service sector job instead of creating my own business and growing wealthy in the process. My fault for believing that all work is honorable and that public sector jobs contribute to the common good. (Rich people take baths, too, you know.) Delivering clean water and taking away dirty water is pretty much essential in our modern society.
Protecting their property from theft by criminals and damage by fire has a price, but when it gets too high the people who provide those services become greedy leeches, not dedicated public servants who deserve respect and dignity. When the cost of educating our children becomes too high, rather than raise revenues to cover rising costs, our leaders look for the easiest route; the route of cutting funding for facilities; lowering teachers’ pay and denigrating them in the process. They say we don’t want the ‘best and the brightest’, we want the place holders biding time until they can find something better. They say we don’t want our children to learn, we want them out of our hair. They say we don’t want to build a future, they say we want that boat, new car or vacations to Disney World.
Any fool knows that a house cannot be built without a foundation. A good education is the foundation for a prosperous society. A well educated worker is more productive and more dedicated. Paraphrasing a Bible proverb; ‘Have you beheld a man [woman] good at their work? Before kings they will station themselves.’ Just as a builder would not think of building a house without a firm foundation, a society should not dream of prosperity without the best education system attainable.
In Arkansas, the state is raising standards and requiring school districts to comply. In many cases, these school districts have been forced to raise property taxes to fund their compliance with these standards. Republicans would have us believe that the American people are weary of taxes and would rather gut social programs, education and public services rather than pay for them through tax hikes. If that were so, you would think Arkansas voters would be defeating school tax issues left and right, forcing schools to consolidate in order to meet these requirements. I don’t know what the percentages are, but the majority of school districts in Arkansas are being successful in getting voter approval for those tax increases.
At the same time, Arkansas has become so conservative that Republican candidates in 2010 swept long serving Democrats out of office and took over everything but the governorship. Yet, even in a poor, rural state like Arkansas these tax increases put on the ballot are passed with large margins.
Republican dominated state legislatures and the federal congress are busy cutting taxes for the wealthy, cutting services for the poor, demanding public sector workers absorb wage and benefit cuts and justifying these actions by claiming that this is what the American people want. Yet in poll after poll, the American people seem to want just the opposite. The polls reflect that the American people want economic justice rather than free rides for anybody, including the wealthy.
Republican politicians claim to be ‘hearing the voice of the American people.’ I don’t know from whence those voices they hear come, but I have serious doubts they come from the ‘American people’ I know.
Is the news media reporting on these polls and pointing out the apparent disconnect between what Americans are saying and what Republican politicians say they are saying? No, they are not. They continually parade before us both sides and expect us to make the distinction between truth and falsehood. Rather than dig deeper into the argument and present both sides of a complicated issue; examining the facts and presenting an objective review, we get sound bites and the latest rants of a deranged actor. Or worse, we get seemingly endless discussions of the role the US should assume in the emerging human rights battle in the Arab countries.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m interested in global affairs; I’m interested in stopping an Arab dictator’s attacks on his own people. But, frankly, I’m much more interested in following the ‘Peoples’ Uprising’ in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, New Jersey and Idaho than I am in a situation in which I have no personal or economic interest. If one watched the network and cable news shows exclusively and did not farm the internet for news of the largest protests since the Vietnam War, one would think that those protests are by a bunch of people who are just a nuisance and will soon fade away and all things will be as they were before.
I began this diary with the title ‘All I Want,’ well it’s time to tie this whole thing up by answering that question.
I don’t want ‘bread and circuses.’ All I want is dignity and respect. I want to be able to feed my family. I want to be able to educate my family. I want to be able to live out my remaining years with decent health care; with a decent level of income to prevent me from having to rely on ‘the poor folks’ handouts. I don’t want, as Pete Seeger sings, their diamond rings, their yachts, their mountain cabins, their fancy cars. I don’t want to live like the ‘little dogs’ of Jesus’ parable, waiting for the scraps to fall from the ‘tables of their masters.’
I don’t think that the workers in Wisconsin and Ohio want more than they deserve. I think they want to be treated with respect and dignity. I don’t think they want ‘Masters’, I think they want Leaders who have the best interests of the People at heart. I don’t think they are protesting because they are ‘selfish whiners,’ I think they are protesting because they are a free people who deserve a seat at the table and this is the only way they can have their voices heard.
This is the scenario that the conservative politicians and their wealthy backers would have everyone believe. Is this really true? Have we become so unreasonable that we should forfeit the rights that trade unions and progressives have fought for these many decades? Have the working people of this country become evil enough to merit the downright scorn of the ruling elite? I for one, do not think that at all. My mother was a ‘child of the Depression.’ She told me stories about life in those days; about having nothing to eat but biscuits and thin gravy for weeks on end; about having dresses made out of flour sacks; wearing shoes with holes patched by cardboard; about wearing clothes until they literally became rags; about Christmas presents consisting of pieces of fruit. She left home with her older sister to work in an ammunition plant in Jacksonville, Arkansas at the age of sixteen; finishing high school by day and working in the ammo plant at night. They sent money home to their parents to help out. She and her sister were part of that ‘Greatest Generation’ we hear so much about these days; doing their part to win the war and preserve the American way of life.
That woman raised me and when my grandparents died, she continued the job alone. She refused public assistance of any kind, even the ‘commodities’ that served as ‘aid to the poor’ in those days, saying, “That’s for poor folks.” She worked at the local five and dime store for 75 cents an hour, putting in at least 44 hours a week; even longer at Christmas time. At the age of twelve, I worked odd jobs to help out. By the age of fourteen, I was working after school and summers taking any job I could… car hop, farm hand, grocery bagger, you name it. We were poor but Mom always said that we would work for what we got; nobody had to ‘give’ us a damned thing. I grew up and entered the military since that was the only avenue open to me to get free job training and even get paid while learning. A few years later, I married and had a family. I left the military and entered the work force. My first job out of the service was as a painter in a casket factory for $2.00 an hour. Later on, I began working for the water utility in my home town and progressed in the trade; finally finishing my career as Director of Utilities in a medium sized Arkansas town.
In all those years, I drew perhaps two unemployment checks. I am now retired on Social Security and a pension from the Arkansas Public Employees Retirement System. Combining the two, I make less than half what I made working full-time. If one listens to the rhetoric, that pension and Social Security check are more than I deserve. I should be grateful for having the opportunity to have had a job at all. It’s my fault for not having the foresight to establish my own retirement fund; my fault for settling for a public service sector job instead of creating my own business and growing wealthy in the process. My fault for believing that all work is honorable and that public sector jobs contribute to the common good. (Rich people take baths, too, you know.) Delivering clean water and taking away dirty water is pretty much essential in our modern society.
Protecting their property from theft by criminals and damage by fire has a price, but when it gets too high the people who provide those services become greedy leeches, not dedicated public servants who deserve respect and dignity. When the cost of educating our children becomes too high, rather than raise revenues to cover rising costs, our leaders look for the easiest route; the route of cutting funding for facilities; lowering teachers’ pay and denigrating them in the process. They say we don’t want the ‘best and the brightest’, we want the place holders biding time until they can find something better. They say we don’t want our children to learn, we want them out of our hair. They say we don’t want to build a future, they say we want that boat, new car or vacations to Disney World.
Any fool knows that a house cannot be built without a foundation. A good education is the foundation for a prosperous society. A well educated worker is more productive and more dedicated. Paraphrasing a Bible proverb; ‘Have you beheld a man [woman] good at their work? Before kings they will station themselves.’ Just as a builder would not think of building a house without a firm foundation, a society should not dream of prosperity without the best education system attainable.
In Arkansas, the state is raising standards and requiring school districts to comply. In many cases, these school districts have been forced to raise property taxes to fund their compliance with these standards. Republicans would have us believe that the American people are weary of taxes and would rather gut social programs, education and public services rather than pay for them through tax hikes. If that were so, you would think Arkansas voters would be defeating school tax issues left and right, forcing schools to consolidate in order to meet these requirements. I don’t know what the percentages are, but the majority of school districts in Arkansas are being successful in getting voter approval for those tax increases.
At the same time, Arkansas has become so conservative that Republican candidates in 2010 swept long serving Democrats out of office and took over everything but the governorship. Yet, even in a poor, rural state like Arkansas these tax increases put on the ballot are passed with large margins.
Republican dominated state legislatures and the federal congress are busy cutting taxes for the wealthy, cutting services for the poor, demanding public sector workers absorb wage and benefit cuts and justifying these actions by claiming that this is what the American people want. Yet in poll after poll, the American people seem to want just the opposite. The polls reflect that the American people want economic justice rather than free rides for anybody, including the wealthy.
Republican politicians claim to be ‘hearing the voice of the American people.’ I don’t know from whence those voices they hear come, but I have serious doubts they come from the ‘American people’ I know.
Is the news media reporting on these polls and pointing out the apparent disconnect between what Americans are saying and what Republican politicians say they are saying? No, they are not. They continually parade before us both sides and expect us to make the distinction between truth and falsehood. Rather than dig deeper into the argument and present both sides of a complicated issue; examining the facts and presenting an objective review, we get sound bites and the latest rants of a deranged actor. Or worse, we get seemingly endless discussions of the role the US should assume in the emerging human rights battle in the Arab countries.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m interested in global affairs; I’m interested in stopping an Arab dictator’s attacks on his own people. But, frankly, I’m much more interested in following the ‘Peoples’ Uprising’ in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, New Jersey and Idaho than I am in a situation in which I have no personal or economic interest. If one watched the network and cable news shows exclusively and did not farm the internet for news of the largest protests since the Vietnam War, one would think that those protests are by a bunch of people who are just a nuisance and will soon fade away and all things will be as they were before.
I began this diary with the title ‘All I Want,’ well it’s time to tie this whole thing up by answering that question.
I don’t want ‘bread and circuses.’ All I want is dignity and respect. I want to be able to feed my family. I want to be able to educate my family. I want to be able to live out my remaining years with decent health care; with a decent level of income to prevent me from having to rely on ‘the poor folks’ handouts. I don’t want, as Pete Seeger sings, their diamond rings, their yachts, their mountain cabins, their fancy cars. I don’t want to live like the ‘little dogs’ of Jesus’ parable, waiting for the scraps to fall from the ‘tables of their masters.’
I don’t think that the workers in Wisconsin and Ohio want more than they deserve. I think they want to be treated with respect and dignity. I don’t think they want ‘Masters’, I think they want Leaders who have the best interests of the People at heart. I don’t think they are protesting because they are ‘selfish whiners,’ I think they are protesting because they are a free people who deserve a seat at the table and this is the only way they can have their voices heard.
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