Monday, April 13, 2015

Dem party seems at best to want to hang on to the paltry past


Dem party seems at best to want to hang on to the paltry past:
Obamacare that leaves tens of millions out -- too expensive for too many;
General support for some kind of minimum wage hike (min now several dollars below 1968 -- double per capita income later!)
Hang on to SS, Medicare, Medicaid;
Hang on to
Dodd-Frank;
Nothing to do about the defining economic -- and political -- pathology of de-unionization.

Nothing to wake voters out of their deep sleep and rouse them to the polls.

How about selling:
$15 an hour min wage (45% of workforce gets raise -- only 3.5% shift of GDP);
Push some version of single-payer -- or perhaps just the intention to work out or at least work on some version of single-payer like Obama worked on Ocare (squeezed most out of political lemon: told industries they are either at the table or the meal; promised more business to pay for lower costs);
Face up to core task of re-unionization in concrete way -- how about sicking RICO on union busters: arguable; and while the arguments go on in court, hopefully, the busters will run for the hills, not wanting to pile up anymore liabilities while waiting for rulings to come down, while we organize the country out from under them, too late for them whatever the rulings. Just one idea. Where are the others? Must do in any case: centralized bargaining (one labor contract with different similar firms) the only way to end the race-to-the-bottom, unionized or not.

Need a (non-paltry) party that can actually get our lives back.

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