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What we work for
This Labor Day, remember what the nation should be striving for — the American dream
Monday, Sept. 7, 2009 | 2:07 a.m.
As the recession drags on, Labor Day is bittersweet. It celebrates the labor movement’s efforts to improve working conditions for Americans, from the minimum wage to the 40-hour workweek. However, this holiday there are millions of Americans out of work.
Politicians have been fighting over how to best right the economy and, unfortunately, the debate has been dragged down by the Republicans. The party that presided over the downturn, in an attempt to turn public opinion against President Barack Obama, has criticized the president’s major initiatives to stimulate the economy.
In just seven months, the president has mounted an incredible effort to turn around the economy and the country, showing more vigor and imagination than his predecessor showed over eight years.
Particularly of concern to the president is the middle class, and it is the focus of the stimulus package, including construction projects that will create jobs and aid for the unemployed.
Republicans on the other hand have spent the summer trying to rally their political base, cut down the president with mindless rhetoric and revive failed policies. For example, while the Republicans criticize the president’s economic policy, and hypocritically fret about the national debt they helped send to record levels, they offer nothing of substance. Their answer is trickle-down economics and tax breaks for huge corporations — many of which got this country into the current mess.
Protecting the big insurance companies, they have stood in the way of any movement toward changing the nation’s health care system to bring insurance coverage to those who lack it.
All of the Republican fear-mongering and political maneuvering has left the middle class out in the cold and, in the depths of the recession, the American dream can seem unrealistic.
When Congress returns to Washington after Labor Day, Republicans should put away their tea bags and start working with Democrats to focus on what is really important: restoring vitality to the economy and hope to the American people.
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More like the American dream according to Greenspun. Where's my Obama clown face poster?
Yes, I agree. Turn the banks over to Barny Frank and Chris Dodd, that worked out well. Turn the tax collections to Rangle and Geithner. Turn the health care over to Maxine Waters and Ms. Lee.
We need to find someone else to make all the green jobs pop up as they lost Van Jones but don't worry, they appointed a manufacturing czar the same day.
Turn over immigration control to , ah forget it, open the border.
There are many other items the democrats can help us with but this might keep them busy for a week or two.
yeh keep letting the big corporations tear away at workers rites,were getting back 2 serf labor again
Nice spin.
Check out what Nobel winning economist James Buccanan has to say about Obama's economic policies and actions to date:
"Barack Obama is committing the same mistakes made by policymakers during the Great Depression, according to a new study endorsed by Nobel laureate James Buchanan."
"
History repeating itself? President Obama has been accused by some economists of making the same mistakes policymakers in the US made in the Great Depression, which followed the Wall Street crash of 1929, pictured Photo: AP
His policies even have the potential to consign the US to a similar fate as Argentina, which suffered a painful and humiliating slide from first to Third World status last century, the paper says.
There are "troubling similarities" between the US President's actions since taking office and those which in the 1930s sent the US and much of the world spiralling into the worst economic collapse in recorded history.."
From the UK Telegraph today issue.
We currently have in EXCESS of $448k in debt per househould in this country when the total national debt is divided up.
Think about that. Almost a half million dollars of public obligations for every single household in America.
Chew on that.
Big labor extortionists have driven most manufacturing out of this country & with the help of incompetent, weak management using band-aid corporate financial planning, bankrupted GM & Chrysler (Ford will be next, watch).
What happened to the independent spirit in Nevada? All the editorials are written by propagandists at the Sun.
Limousine Liberals like the Greenspuns make me laugh.
Two months ago, the Dems were declaring the Republican Party as a corpse, inconsequential, without life. Dems will dominate the U.S. political landscape for at least 20 years because the Republicans are in shambles -- that's what they were saying.
Now, suddenly, the Repubs are not only alive, they're somehow omnipotent and all-powerful enough to control the entire media and town-hall meetings. They're able to hire thousands of soccer moms and blue-haired grandmothers to become "evil mongers" at town-hall meetings, and rally a vast right-wing media conspiracy to bring down Obama.
The Dems can't get anything done and they've found a convenient scapegoat -- a Repub Party that they said was dead only two months ago.
Which is it, Dems? I thought the Repubs were dead. Or maybe you're just looking for a reason why Obama can't even control his own party, let alone bring along any Repubs.