Make way for the working class to have a say…

This enormous economic mess we are now experiencing, along with the heavy debt the bankers and the politicians of both major political parties have saddled us with, can be summed up very simply: The capitalists have taken all the profits and left the working class with all the problems.

There are only two sources of wealth: Labor and Mother Nature.

Anyone with an ounce of common sense understands that if you allow labor to be continually exploited and Mother Nature to be repeatedly abused and raped there will be severe consequences.

We are now reaping the consequences for allowing this parasitical monster of state-monopoly capitalism to have spun its web of corruption in the form of a cannibalistic military-financial-industrial complex which now threatens to consume and destroy our families, our communities, our State and our Nation while wreaking havoc in other lands.

Enough!

The time has come to put the needs of people before corporate profits.

There is only one alternative; for working people to come together to build a new society on the foundation created by the socialists of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party.

We need to fight and struggle to re-establish the liberal, democratic and progressive socialist traditions for which Minnesota is known around the world.

We have complex problems before us… but, any country which can spend trillions of dollars on wars to steal the oil of other nations, and trillions of dollars bailing out corporations and bankers looking for using socialism to solve the problems of their own creation as they have sought to prop up their rotten capitalist system--- which they have touted to the world as being the best--- at our expense… This Nation can now come up with the resources to use socialism to solve the problems for the rest of us, too.

What is good for the goose is, in this case, is even better for the gander.

Let Barack Obama and John McCain volunteer to go off exploring the caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan looking for Osama Bin Laden; we have better things to do.

Our first priority is to end these dirty wars for oil and redeploy those funds--- as we bring home the troops--- to creating a world class socialized health care system which will create millions of new jobs; five messes the money-grubbing Wall Street coupon clippers and their bought and paid for politicians created, all solved at the same time by ending these dirty imperialist wars for oil and regional domination--- we get health care not warfare, and we begin to solve the problem of unemployment--- and when we put people to work in this way we begin to create a new--- functioning--- people oriented, cooperative, socialist economy where democracy will flourish because it will require the full participation and involvement of all people working together in order to succeed.

Second, without further delay, we need to establish the State Bank of Minnesota to accomplish for our State what the State Bank of North Dakota was set up, by workers and farmers, to do--- fund enterprises to keep people working.

Third, we need a minimum wage which is a real living wage arrived at by the calculations of the United States Department of Labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics in cooperation with the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development--- based upon the real figures relating to the real cost of living and this minimum wage should be required by legislation to be updated quarterly right along with the release of all economic indicators to assure a quality life and decent standard of living for all working people and their families.

We have finally come to the point where even the parasitic bankers and the exploiting industrialists now concede that only socialism can bail them out of this horrible mess and solve their problems... capitalism has reached the end of the line and the only thing now to be had from the system is unending human misery.

At the point where society has to pay to clean up the corrupt mess these parasitic predatory lenders and financial institutions have created, this is the time to say:

Enough!

What tax-payers finance, tax-payers must own.

If Warren Buffett and Goldman Sachs do not like these terms, these greedy pigs should make the trip to their off-shore banks in the Cayman Islands and make withdrawals from their accounts to pay to solve their own problems.

The time has come to roll up our sleeves, come together, and get to work quickly before this entire rotten system collapses---like the I35-W Bridge--- and crushes us all while leaving our children and grandchildren with the clean-up and the bills.

I firmly believe working people can run our country and our state better than any of the big-business politicians being funded by the corporate lobbyists.

Effectively using the tools of public ownership and nationalization combined with modern, scientific planning for the common good, we can put people to work in decent jobs at real living wages... we hear it all the time just before Election Day: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs... but we never see the jobs, and if we do, these jobs are poverty wage jobs no one can live on.

I intend to run for Governor of Minnesota in 2010.

I invite all working people who think that it is possible to create something better than the mess we are now in, to come together and work from where socialist Governors Floyd B. Olson and Elmer A. Benson left off in trying to create a just and decent society where people live and work in harmony with Mother Nature, to join with me, in establishing the Minnesota Party to give the bankers, the mining, forestry and power generating industries along with the industrialists and big-agribusiness a real run for their money.

Let’s run these parasites that have been living off of our labor and destroying Mother Nature right out of our state. We can get along just fine--- even better--- without them.

Alan L. Maki

Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

and

Candidate for Governor of Minnesota

Former member: Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party State Central Committee

New Signs Of A Middle-Class Collapse

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2008083315/new-signs-middle-class-collapse#comment-7518


By Isaiah J. Poole

August 15th, 2008 - 6:24am ET

A hearing in late July on the middle-class squeeze by the congressional Joint Economic Committee did not get much attention at the time, but a warning at that hearing by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., that what's happening to the middle class is not just a squeeze but a "collapse" is resonating in the wake of this week's bad economic news.

Sanders is arguing for "bold and aggressive" measures to address that collapse in an interview on "Meet the Bloggers," the weekly Brave New Foundation program which will stream live at 1 p.m. today. I will be featured on the program with Amanda Logan at the Center for American Progress.

Thursday's reports on consumer inflation and unemployment claims reveal the latest blows delivered to working-class families by the current economic downturn. Consumer prices going up at an annual rate of 5.6 percent last month, far above the 3.1 percent average increase in income. At the same time, the number of people receiving unemployment claims is 3.42 million, the highest level in almost five years.

With these trends, the legacy of Bushonomics is poised to add one more item to its legacy: "stagflation," the combination of a stagnant economy and rising unemployment that had conservatives in the late 1970s indicting President Jimmy Carter and Democrats in Congress as failures on the economy.

The difference between the 1970s and today is that families earning five-figure salaries enter this dangerous economic period facing record economic disparity.

"I do think this is one of the most underreported issues of the past 10 years," Sanders told the Joint Economic Committee on July 24. "The reality is that in many respects the middle class of this country is collapsing. The vast majority of our people have seen a decline in their standard of living," while those at the top of the income ladder are beneficiaries of a wealth gap between the very rich and the middle class that has not been seen since the late 1920s.

One of the witnesses at the hearing, Elizabeth Warren, a Leo Gottlieb professor of law at Harvard Law School, said that while inflation-adjusted median household income has declined by $1,175 since 2000, basic expenses for average families have increased by more than $4,600.

"Seven years of flat or declining wages, seven years of increasing costs, and seven year of mounting debts have placed unprecedented stress on the ordinary families. By every critical financial measure, these families are losing ground. Without changes in critical economic policies, the strong middle class that has been the backbone of the American economy and the American democracy is in jeopardy," she testified.

The case keeps getting stronger for a new, bold change in economic policy explicitly designed to help working-class families regain their footing. Sanders will outline his ideas on the Meet the Bloggers program, which will be available for on-demand viewing after the live streaming.

My response:


Let's get something straight...

By Alan Maki | August 17th, 2008 - 1:32pm GMT

Are we talking about the "middle class" or the "working class?

These are two different classes.

You seem to insinuate that "working class" people reach "middle class" status when their incomes rise to a certain level. This simply is not true.

However, for the sake of argument, giving you the benefit of doubt, what is the dollar figure at which a "working class" family becomes "middle class" based upon actual "cost of living factors" because this is what determines "standard of living," not some very abstract claim to being "middle class."

I think you are evading a very important and fundamental concept here... what is at issue is what kind of income does it take for working class families to live above the poverty line... in other words, are only some working class families entitled to be able to afford the necessities of life while others are not; and, thus, we consider those working class families with incomes to provide the necessities of life, "middle class?"

This is a no win argument about "saving the middle class."

The fight needing to be waged is for a minimum wage that is truly a real living wage where one person in a four-person household can work 40 hours a week and the family has the necessities of life... as should be scientifically defined by the United States Department of Labor and Bureau of Labor Statistics in league with the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This pitting worker against worker has got to end; it is a no win situation for the entire working class because under this rotten economic system of capitalism the majority of the working class is always living in poverty; and the tendency will always be towards dragging all workers' standard of living down.

In the final analysis we are talking about: the "Standard of Living" of the working class; and rising the entire working class up from poverty.

This makes it absolutely essential that progressives fight for a minimum wage that is based on the scientific calculations of what is a real living annual income.

Depending on the performance of the economy considering ALL cost of living factors which can now be scientifically calculated, according to Alan Greenspan, on a weekly basis, the minimum wage should be legislatively tied to these factors--- all workers should be brought up from poverty; and, as progressives, we should only be concerned with bringing those on the bottom up first... not in maintaining some kind of undefined "middle class" status for anyone.

Workers create all wealth with some substantial help from Mother Nature--- who isn't doing much better than the working class, which no one should find surprising given the greedy corporate drive for maximum profits ... after over two-hundred years of capitalist accumulation of this wealth I think it is time to change things.

Casino workers need two jobs; one job going in debt trying to support a family; another job to pay for gas to get to the first job... I imagine if the facts be told, this is the same situation most working class folks find themselves in... and this is what has to change.

Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council