Elizabeth Warren was Fired for Being Pregnant

It was common practice to punish women for being mothers while holding a job. It still is.

Photo by Ryan Franco on Unsplash

Because we’re the only gender with wombs, women hold an odd place, even in modern-day culture. We’re expected, if not required, to bring children into the world above all else, even when pregnancy isn’t wanted, is inconvenient, or is dangerous. But once we’re pregnant, or mothers — or even women of child-bearing age — we become suspect in the workplace.

Suppose we have children whose needs might come first? What then? How does that jibe in a profit-motivated system where worker bees are required to work their asses off in order for their employers to make buckets full of money? What has to come first, the job or the kid? In this system, it’s the job. It’s always been the job.

I have no idea if Elizabeth Warren planned her pregnancy way back when she was a teacher, but I do know for a fact that she could be fired once her pregnancy began to show. I also know for a fact the reason for the firing would never be listed on paper as “pregnancy”.

The ignorance of those GOP “fact-checkers” looking for a record of Sen. Warren’s claims — that she was fired for having a child — is astounding. There is no record. Of course there is no record.

When I was a kid in school in the 1940s and 1950s, our female teachers were always known as “Miss”. If they were married, we couldn’t know it. If they became pregnant, we couldn’t know it. Why not? Because, while male teachers could have families and could even talk about them, female teachers had to appear asexual. No one wanted impressionable children to be thinking about female teachers having sex.

They had dress codes. They were walking, talking text books with no life outside the classroom. When one of them suddenly disappeared in the middle of a semester, we weren’t told they were on maternity leave, we were simply told a new teacher would be taking their place.

When I was in high school in the early 1950s, two of our teachers were married to each other. That was so unheard of we never stopped talking about it. To us it was kind of…delicious. And subversive.

But it wasn’t just teachers. Women with children were discriminated against in every work place. Women with children were a liability. Their loyalties would never lie with their jobs as long as there were children at home. Children get sick, they need care, they need nurturing. They are a distraction when the clock is ticking, the work piles up, and their employer makes demands that require a Hobson’s choice.

It’s never easy for mothers to put their best into outside jobs. Women with good paying jobs can afford good child care. Women with crap jobs paying too little aren’t so lucky. But every mother faces those days when their jobs demand their attention but their children need them even more.

Women need to be mothers first. That’s a fact. It’s also the excuse employers make to keep women down. Women have always been behind men in work pay, and the reason, often spoken out loud, is because women can’t devote as much time or attention to their jobs. Never mind that not all women are mothers, or that not all women still have children at home. They’re shoved into the same box because it’s convenient — because god forbid men ever have to acquiesce to the notion that women might be their equals.

You may have noticed that no woman has ever been President. It’s a big deal every time a woman wins a job over a man, no matter the title. Being a woman in a “man’s job” is a liability that we should have gotten over long ago, but there are still far fewer women in government than there are men. That isn’t going to change until attitudes change, and as long as the GOP holds the cards, that’s not likely.

When it comes to motherhood, America is a bastion of hypocrisy. Half the people in our country think there’s nothing wrong with forcing women to carry a fetus to term, sending the message loud and clear that their own ambitions will always have to take a back seat to motherhood.

At the same time, there are forces working inside our government to take away any protections families, including single mothers, might need to care for their children. Cuts in everything from health care to food stamps to housing allowances makes the children of those struggling families vulnerable. Our government refuses to take care of the children born to women who have few or no resources. Our government refuses to even see them.

But that will all change if a woman becomes President. Can Elizabeth Warren break that glass ceiling? Or Kamala Harris? Or Amy Klobuchar? The question now is, are we ready for a woman president?

I know. It’s a silly question. Of course we’re ready. We’re long past ready.

~ ~ ~

(Cross-posted at Medium/Indelible Ink)

Hillary, You Need To Stop Attacking Trump

Dear Hillary,

In only a few days we'll finally know which of our nation's two candidates has won the presidency.  No secret that I'm rooting for you, and that I have no earthly use for Donald Trump, but I'm begging you to stop talking about him. Right now.

We know what he is. We know how you feel about him. He's vile, he's an opportunist, he's so far from being a logical choice for a viable candidate we can't stop thinking, you and I and everyone in our camp, about how impossible, how improbable his rise to being this close to the presidency really is. We're shocked.  Okay, we're shocked.  But there it is, and the next million words about it and a million words after that won't change a thing.

Stop obsessing over him.  Forget about him altogether. You need to spend the rest of  your valuable time convincing voters you feel their pain and, what's more, you've got pretty good ideas about how to heal.

Hillary at Dartmouth - Dartmouth News

We want to know exactly what you plan to do about trade, joblessness, poverty, health care, education, infrastructure, the military, the environment and everything else that impacts our daily lives. We need to feel comfortable with handing you the keys to the highest office in the land, and it's obvious a whole lot of us are not there yet. 

We are a country so afraid, so on edge, so wary of our future, we've allowed a hate-filled, utterly ill-equipped demagogue to take over and build a ridiculously flawed case for his leadership.  The crowds his hateful taunting has been drawing for many long months should have sent shock-waves all over every single campaign throughout the land, both Democrat and Republican. He's pushing buttons you all can't seem to dismantle and it's working for him.

I don't mean to pile on you. Lord knows you get that enough of that, but if you want to get those young people, those undecideds to vote for you, you'll have to give them reason to believe in you.  Right now, less than a week before the election, they still don't. They're beginning to think your repetitive attacks on Trump are a way of sidestepping the real issues. That can't be good.

Do I need to bring up Bernie Sanders?  Do I need to remind you that he built a huge following by addressing real-world issues wholly abandoned by the Republicans and seemingly abandoned by our party, the Democrats? While I've always been your loyal supporter, I can't help but love Bernie's message.  Who wouldn't? It was, in a nutshell, "I care more about the have-nots than about the haves."  The undecideds need to believe that's your message, too. Bernie is now working to get you elected, but you'll remember that he was able to climb half way up the mountain by making his followers believe you weren't with them. It's your job to make them believe otherwise.

Let's remember, too, that Donald Trump rose to astonishing prominence by demagoguing his followers into believing he was the only one who could ease them out of their misery--an existence forced on them by a corrupt, uncaring government of, by, and for the establishment.  (Not unlike Bernie's populist message, it should be noted.)

So let's pretend Donald Trump is out of the picture.  Let's pretend your opponent is someone who knows something about politics  He or she is a Republican, a member of the same party that set out to ruin Barack Obama's--and the nation's--chances at any kind of social or economic success, simply because they couldn't stand the thought of watching our first black president get credit for a win.  These are the people working to take us down, and they'll go on working at it until we pull the rug out from under them.

Your-opponent-who-is-not-Trump understands government and policy as well as you do, and can go head-to-head over what our future will look like under either regime. They know a little something about demagoguing themselves. You need to get your game on.  You need to push the Democratic platform, which, as you know, is stronger on equity, equality and opportunity for all.  You need to ask favors of every blue collar leader you know and get them to push our agenda--the one where we win and the other side loses and the country is the better for it.  You need to energize our young voters by giving them a reason to dream.

We are a country of hard workers.  We need good paying jobs, we need good benefits, we need good retirement packages.  We need good, low-cost health care, we need education packages that build learning and literacy. We need to get back to building a solid middle class. We need more of what we used to have.

We can only get those things if you and the Dems win. If you want those things, too, then tell us.  For God's sake, tell us!  The script is there; we've written it before.  Now go out there and deliver it.  You only have a few more days.  You're wasting your time on Trump.  Leave him in the gutter. The country and its citizens are far more important.
_______________________

(Cross-posted at Dagblog and Crooks & Liars)

An Education By Fits And Starts But Not Degrees

My formal "college" consists of 26 community college credits, half of them in ceramics.  I took two classes in cultural anthropology, fell in love with Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart", and decided anthropology was my life's calling--until my husband called my attention to the want ads in our big city paper.  Not a single call for anthropologists anywhere, and since we were among the almost-poor, and I still had kids at home, I had to think inside the box.

I took a business class taught by a one-handed pianist who should have stuck to his night job.  He invited our class to his concert and, even with one hand, his performance was flawless.  When it came time to evaluate him, none of us could do the honest thing and point out his flaws as a teacher of business.  We gave him high marks for personality.

 I took two creative writing classes taught by an old pot-smoking hippie who wore chains and earrings and orange tennis shoes and who told us right off that he didn't care what we wrote as long as we wrote something.  I thought the guy himself was ridiculous, trying as he did to be George Carlin and Jack Kerouac, all in the same skin, so it took me a while to realize how much I had actually learned there.   It came to me much later, when I was putting together materials to teach my own adult-ed creative writing classes:  What he gave us was a setting where we could write and fail and get a huge kick out of what we were doing.  He was a teacher without judgement but with a knack for finding what could be fixed.

I took a modern literature class taught by a woman I don't remember at all--not her name, not her face, not her teaching technique.  But through her I met Eudora Welty, Joseph Conrad, Langston Hughes, and Flannery O'Connor--writers I might have overlooked if she hadn't brought them (and so many others) to my attention.

And that was the end of my formal education.  Whatever else I've learned, I've learned either by happenstance or serendipity. Being in the right place at the right time.  Stumbling across something that got me curiouser and curiouser and led me to something else that led me to something else.  Unless I got distracted; then it was something else altogether.

 Living near Detroit, I had the advantage of meeting some exceptional writers and thinkers and I latched onto them like a parasite on a host.  I tried to drain them of everything they had to give--quietly, of course, without drawing blood.  I went to readings and workshops and lectures.  I joined groups where professional writers gathered.

They taught me a trade, but it's a haphazard way to get an education.  It's not an education, in fact.  Whatever it is, it's full of holes.  Great gaping holes.  Great gaping embarrassing holes.  (I couldn't find Iraq on a map if you gave me a hundred bucks to do it. I don't know what Pi is and I'm afraid I'm missing something meaningful.  I only recently found out that Goethe is pronounced "Gurt-uh".  Good thing I never had occasion to say his name out loud.)

Now President Obama is pushing for free two-year community college for everyone.  It'll be an uphill battle, but I'm right there beside him, rooting him on.  I don't want anyone to have to take on the task of educating themselves.  It can't be done.  They need teachers.  They need campus life.  They need to argue and debate, to be challenged, to be opened up to directions they might never have taken and ideas they might never have formed on their own.  They need to be pushed and pulled and exposed to a world wholly outside of themselves.

 They need to prepare for jobs, and we as a country need to pave the way.  We need to build again, creating good-paying jobs for them to fill.  We need to smarten up, and the best way to do it is through education.

We know that now.

 Pretty sure we do.

But I could be wrong.

Ye Auld New America: Didn't We Go Down This Road Before?

 
Working for someone else, fingers to the bone with no expectation of decent wages or a foothold on the ladder, is back in vogue here in America.   Even your big deal congresspersons will tell you that.  There are no greater patriots than the country's laborers, and the very, very finest--the finest patriots of all--are those who have no use for unions. The best patriot/workers understand that in America it's All for One and None for All.

And this, too:  If God wanted you to be healthy, wealthy and wise, he would have given you better parents.  It's a practice near to sin to get the taxpayers to take care of you and yours.  The taxpayers have a hard enough time taking care of the rich.

The rich have earned our blind, gushing loyalty (How, you ask? By being rich, you ninny).

You? You haven't.

Yes.  Well.  You'll pardon me for bringing this up, O ye sensitive ones who hate having to hear about the bad old days vs. the good old days, but didn't we goddamn settle this already?

Child coal mine workers, 1900s

I bring this up because Nate Silver says there's a 60% chance the Republicans will take the senate.  Nate seems to know what he's talking about but he doesn't say why the Republicans deserve to take the Senate.  That's for the rest of us to chew over.  So I'm chewing:

How many workers see something in the Republicans that tells them life will be better when the GOP/Tea Party takes over Congress?  What is it they see?

How many women see something in the GOP that the rest of us don't?  Enough to take them over the top?  What is it they see?

When the Republicans win will they finally get busy and deliver on sustainable jobs? Affordable, ethical health care?  Bridges?  Roads? Pollution? Kids?  Or will a comfortable win tell them all they need to know about the sterling virtues of capitalism and the ready acceptance of an oligarchy?

Paul Krugman:

America’s nascent oligarchy may not yet be fully formed — but one of our two main political parties already seems committed to defending the oligarchy’s interests.

Despite the frantic efforts of some Republicans to pretend otherwise, most people realize that today’s G.O.P. favors the interests of the rich over those of ordinary families. I suspect, however, that fewer people realize the extent to which the party favors returns on wealth over wages and salaries. And the dominance of income from capital, which can be inherited, over wages — the dominance of wealth over work — is what patrimonial capitalism is all about.

In Bernie Sanders' report, "Poverty is a Death Sentence", he warns:

“If people don’t have access to health care, if they don’t have access to education, if they don’t have access to jobs and affordable housing then we end up paying not only in terms of human suffering and the shortening of life expectancy but in actual dollars."

These are not revelations new to the 21st century.  Krugman and Sanders are both echoing what President Roosevelt said in his 1944 State of the Union speech, in the midst of the Second World War, when he proposed a second Bill of Rights:

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:

• The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;
• The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
• The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
• The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
• The right of every family to a decent home;
• The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
• The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
• The right to a good education.

We've been here before.  Millions of Americans took FDR's words to heart and worked tirelessly for decades to insure that these most obvious, common-sense American rights should come to pass.  Many of them did come to pass, but now they're in jeopardy.  Now the Republicans (and, yes, some bloody Democrats) are working tirelessly to undo it all.

Millions of us see clearly what's happening again and are trying to stop it, but there are millions of distinctly separate Americans who think it's high time we give up on that old FDR course and head in another direction.  The direction they want to take us in is the same direction we were headed when all hell broke loose in 1929 and it all came crashing down.

It looks like the oligarchs might just get away with it.  So what is it they're seeing in this new, same-old plan--the plan that caused the stock market crash in 1929 and led us into a devastating long-term depression--that makes them think it's going to work this time?

The answer is, it doesn't have to.  America is the place to make money; any idiot knows you wouldn't want to keep it here.  Whatever happens to us won't happen to them.

Some setup, huh?  Makes you wonder if we shouldn't have stuck with that Democracy thing and at least given it a try.

(Cross-posted on Dagblog, Alan Colmes' Liberaland, and Political Carnival.  Featured on Crooks and Liars Blog Round Up)

It's Jobs and then it's Jobs and after that it's Jobs

Consider: in 1928 the richest 1 percent of Americans received 23.9 percent of the nation's total income. After that, the share going to the richest 1 percent steadily declined. New Deal reforms, followed by World War II, the GI Bill and the Great Society expanded the circle of prosperity. By the late 1970s the top 1 percent raked in only 8 to 9 percent of America's total annual income. But after that, inequality began to widen again, and income re-concentrated at the top. By 2007 the richest 1 percent were back to where they were in 1928—with 23.5 percent of the total.

Each of America's two biggest economic crashes occurred in the year immediately following these twin peaks—in 1929 and 2008. This is no mere coincidence. When most of the gains from economic growth go to a small sliver of Americans at the top, the rest don't have enough purchasing power to buy what the economy is capable of producing.

Robert Reich, The Nation, July, 2010 

 The first task is to rebuild our industrial commons. We should develop a system of financial incentives: Levy an extra tax on the product of off-shored labor. (If the result is a trade war, treat it like other wars—fight to win.) Keep that money separate. Deposit it in the coffers of what we might call the Scaling Bank of the U.S. and make these sums available to companies that will scale their American operations. Such a system would be a daily reminder that while pursuing our company goals, all of us in business have a responsibility to maintain the industrial base on which we depend and the society whose adaptability—and stability—we may have taken for granted.
 Andy Grove, How America Can Create Jobs

Despite all the perks we've been giving to corporate America, it's not at all clear that the private sector will ever again create enough decent jobs to support a middle class society in this country. Right now the economy is supposedly growing, but employment isn't. So what is growing? Well, the obscene bonuses and pay packages of corporate America and Wall Street --- the only growth that counts for our financial elites.
We're at a critical point in the jobs crisis. Nearly 30 million of us don't have jobs or have been forced into part-time jobs. It's not like there's no work to do. We have millions and millions of kids to educate. We desperately need to slash our energy use--and with an army of workers, we could weatherize every home and business in the country. Our bridges and roads will take decades to repair. We need to build an entire national system of efficient public transit.
When Wall Street is in trouble, we come to the rescue with trillions in bailouts. We've poured hundreds of billions more into two wars. But when it comes to investing in our people to get needed work done, we can't seem to summon the will or find the cash.
 Les Leopold, Why All the Idiocy about Unemployment?

The consensus, no matter who says it and why, is that American manufacturing industries are no longer of Americans, by Americans, or even for Americans.  It's beyond a worrisome rumor, it's an established fact:  American manufacturing, compared to manufacturing world-wide, fills a niche no bigger than the size of an ant farm box.

Let's face it, the people in charge of keeping Americans working are not just incompetent or oblivious, they're the next best thing to the enemy.  The public sector is beyond just aiding and abetting the private sector, they're right down in the trenches with them.  Such a cacophony from Big Money, from the Right Wing, from  the keepers of the status quo.  Who could blame the people in charge for lending them an ear?

You kidding?  We could!  We should!  A whole lot of us DO!


A vast army of domestic terrorists bamboozled us, flimflammed us, fleeced us and left most of us bound and gagged, yet, incredibly, some truly wacky others are still begging for more.  Millions of real people are out of work, yet there are still millions of people (some of whom also fit into that out-of-work category) who can actually say the words "out-sourcing" and "off-shoring" without gagging or even flinching.  Many of them sip tea while repeating the words they've been brainwashed by the terrorists-in-gray-flannel-suits into saying:  "We don't want no stinkin' government in our lives".

Well, yes--we do.  We want a government that looks like a New Deal, acts like a New Deal, and actually IS a New Deal.  We want a works program.  We want a PWA, a WPA, a CCC.   We want a jumpstart because we're in serious trouble, I mean Trouble, that's Trouble with a capital T.

We need a Harry Hopkins, a powerful social worker for the masses, someone who cares more about people than about bottom lines.  Someone who won't stop talking, no matter who is trying to do the muzzling.  ( I see Elizabeth Warren in that role.)

We need a dedicated labor advocate.  I nominate Robert Reich.  (See above.)

We need an Eleanor Roosevelt, a conscientious, eloquent reformer who can  work with a cabinet bombarded on all sides by naysayers, greed-meisters, and relief-haters.  Michelle Obama could grow into it--she has the brains, the guts, the heart.  And who better than Michelle to convince her husband he needs to be our FDR?

Oh, and by the way:  We need to tax the hell out of the filthy rich and make them pay.  Then we need to spend what they're forced to fork over on social programs and American outlets for gainful employment.

Tax and spend, that's the ticket.  (Note that I can say that without even once gagging or flinching.)   This is an emergency.  Business as usual is not an option when the country is in crisis.  Rapid response is required.  Set up the triage teams and give them their assignments in this order:

1. Jobs
2. Jobs
3. Jobs.

And remind anyone who objects to the methods of care that we're in the midst of an emergency and they need to shut the hell up.

Ramona

Get this straight, Corporate Pimps: There ARE NO JOBS!

How many times does this have to be repeated:  There are 15 million unemployed in this country, with 6.8 million chronically unemployed.

Most of them spend their days looking for work.  When they hear about the possibility of jobs, they'll stand in long lines just waiting for a chance at an interview.  They would rather stand in line for a job than stand in line for an unemployment check, but the check is a lifeline when there are no jobs.

Most of them have families who are suffering because there are no jobs.

Most of them had good jobs before the Republicans and turn-coat Democrats took up the phony cry about good wages killing us all and turned the entire country over to Big Business, who in turn thanked us all for bending over and kissing their asses by sending our jobs to corrupt slave wage countries.

They rub salt in the wounds by expecting us to buy those sweatshop goods at whatever price they tag them.  They're cheaply made and cheap to produce--facts not in the least reflected in the dazzlingly audacious price tags.  Talk about chutzpah.

They scream bloody murder because people aren't buying enough but they'll kill every chance American workers might have to earn enough to pay for their pirated booty. (Again with the chutzpah.)




And now the final slap in the face:  The Republicans in the Senate (and one Democrat, Ben Nelson) voted against an unemployment benefits extension.  Two reasons, according to them:  They don't want to add to the enormous deficit they created in the first place, and they don't want to be giving unemployment checks to people who would otherwise have to be out finding a job.

What hogwash.

Never mind that there are at least five people clamoring for every available job, including those jobs that only old people and teenagers used to take:  Fast food flippers, car washers, Walmart greeters. . .what's next?  Shoe shiners and apple sellers?

The real reason--as perverse and cold-blooded as it can get--is that the Republicans don't want the Democrats to have any kind of an edge that might win them the majority again in November.  The bastards are fighting for their political lives and using the already miserable and downtrodden as pawns

So let's say the Republicans win back the majority in November. (A likely prospect, given the baffling inattention of their followers and the woeful inability of the Democrats to fight against our domestic enemies.) What will they do to improve the lives of all our displaced American workers?  What kinds of jobs will they create?  Will the poor get richer and the rich get poorer?  Will all our troubles be over?  Will happy little bluebirds fly?

* La
** La la
*** La la la. . .

I'm waiting. . .

Ramona

A Year of Obama: The Hope Still Lives

A year ago today, as I sat watching the inauguration of Barack Obama, listening to our new president's call to duty, it suddenly occurred to me that it might be a good day to start a political blog.  I already had a couple of sadly neglected blogs on other subjects, and I had been sort of casually thinking of ideas for it, so I got to work setting it up the morning of January 20 and finished it around 4:30 that afternoon.  I began it like this:

Today is January 20, 2009. Inauguration day for Barack Obama, and it can't have come soon enough. It's true that he's been de-facto president since November, 2008, when George W. Bush unofficially, without fanfare or hesitation, turned the job over to him, but today it became official. What a day it's been! They're estimating the crowds at 2 million strong, a sight unseen on any Presidential First Day in modern history.

Obama's speech, so anticipated by us all, was anticlimactic and, at first hearing, a bit of a disappointment. It didn't soar. It didn't sing. The soundbites were few and far between. But, as I think about it now, I realize that what he was going for was resonance. I don't remember the words, but I feel the feeling. What he said was that we're in trouble, we'll need to work hard to get out of it, and if we'll do all that we can do, so will he. He told the world that we were back to being honest and sincere and that they could trust us again.  He told those who would want to harm us to back off.  But most importantly, he told the Fat Cats that their glory days are over. As I said, resonance.

Oh, the joy in my heart as I wrote those words.  Take THAT, you lousy, bloated, insufferable faux-Capitalists.  The Sheriff's saddling up and the posse's not far behind.  We're off to save the ranches!  Widows and orphans, help is on the way!

But lest you think I was totally naive, I also wrote:  "I have no grand illusions about a rapid return to health for this country."  No, I had no grand illusions, but I did have dreams.  I've followed the Great Depression and the effect Roosevelt's brave New Deal had on the country, and I thought I heard the welcome sounds of a Rooseveltian Revolution in Obama's words.  Three hundred and sixty five days later, I realize my hearing might have been failing me.

Still, as I've said so many times before, I'm not ready to write Obama off.  I'm nervous about a lot of what's been coming out of the White House this past year--I admit it.  When I saw Wall Street move in, I chewed my fingers to the nubs.  When Rahm Emmanuel became the head whip-cracker, I felt a distinct shiver up my spine.  And when Barack Obama stopped talking about labor, even as hundreds of thousands of our workers were losing their jobs every month,  I gave up any inclination I might have had to genuflect.

I keep reminding myself that the Good Man took on what amounted to a national nightmare.  There were no easy fixes, and nobody pretended there would be.  But I would have slept better this past year if only I had been able to see the president as a "people person".   Was he ever that?  I don't know.  We might have made him into our own images, taking much needed comfort in an illusion of our own making.  Maybe he is what he is.  But what is he?  After a full year of hosting him in The People's House we're no closer to knowing where he stands, or, more importantly, where he's going.

And yet. . .  And yet.  I trust him.  I believe he is a Good Man.  I believe he understands what it is we need from him, and I believe he is Honest to God trying.  Do I believe he's done everything right?  Of course not.  The proof is in the pudding.  We are not that far along.   In fact, in some respects, we've fallen farther behind.  Our unemployment numbers hover at an unacceptable 10 percent, the bankers are giving out even bigger bonuses even as more and more homes sit empty, the stock market sings "Hallelujah" every time it looks like we're all shout and no clout, and just last night the state of Massachusetts awarded Ted Kennedy's senate seat to a Republican whose election promise was to kill any kind of Health Care Reform bill.   As if it isn't enough that we had to say goodbye to the great Lion of the Senate last year.  Now we have to watch as health care reform, Teddy's all-consuming passion, breathes its last.

So, as this January day marks the beginning of Barack Obama's second year, I'm remembering the grand enthusiasm of that dawning day one year ago.  And, while I admit to the need to dream, I'll be at my listening post, keeping my eyes wide open, pushing--ever pushing--this Good Man to find his backbone and boldly lead where no Democrat has gone before.  (Or at least not for a long, long time.)

I think I'll send him this as a reminder.  Feel free to do the same:

" On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' And Vanity comes along and asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But Conscience asks the question 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right"

The Rev. Martin Luther King.  Address at the Episcopal National Cathedral, Washington D.C., March 31, 1968

Ramona

 (Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here.)

Now, About Those Jobs. . .

We have spent the better part of a year locked in a tedious and unenlightening debate over health care while the jobless rate has steadily surged. It’s now at 10.2 percent. Families struggling with job losses, home foreclosures and personal bankruptcies are falling out of the middle class like fruit through the bottom of a rotten basket. The jobless rate for men 16 years old and over is 11.4 percent. For blacks, it’s a back-breaking 15.7 percent.
We need to readjust our focus. We’re worried about Kabul when Detroit has gone down for the count.          Bob Herbert, NYT, 11/10/09

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Why are we skirting the issue of joblessness these days?  There will be no recovery without jobs. None.  We need to get cracking on that promised jobs creation program.  But first we need to get past the notion that creating multitudes of low-wage jobs accomplishing nothing more than servicing the upper class is going to get us out of this mess.

We need to re-build and re-tool factories and we need to produce our own goods. Without the majority of the population employed again in meaningful, productive work, we might as well resign ourselves to serfdom and the lives our people led pre-Industrial Revolution.

We need to stop pretending that we need those cheap goods from China and other slave-trade countries. For one thing, they're not all cheap.  Have you looked at the price of athletic shoes lately? With the exception of one company, New Balance, they're all made by human beings working long hours for mere pennies outside of the U.S.  Do the prices reflect that?  Would those ridiculous shoes cost a ridiculous $300 instead of the ridiculous $80 they now cost if they were made here?  Of course not.  I defy anyone to show me how a shoe company in the U.S couldn't produce an $80 pair of running shoes without making a profit.

Almost everything we buy in this country is made somewhere else by people who work under unconscionable conditions for embarrassingly paltry wages.  Do the prices reflect that?  Of course not.  Every year the cost of everything rises, no matter where the goods are produced.  Our new refrigerator was make in Mexico.  I haven't had a new refrigerator in 18 years, but if that was a low, low, non-USA made, non-union made price just for me, I'm not impressed.

Food, clothes, shoes, tools, appliances, office goods, computers--you name it.  They could all be made here by people earning decent wages under conditions that celebrate humanity while still keeping the company in the black.  For most mid- to high-end items, the prices couldn't be much worse.

It can be done.  We all know it can.  It must be done.  There will be no prosperity without a middle class, and there will be no substantial middle class unless we go back to MAKING things. We have to go back to making quality goods better than anyone else at a price that American workers can afford.  That used to be our claim to fame.  American-made goods were the best.  American wages were the best.  When we were the leaders in manufacturing, we lived in an era of exceptional prosperity, and nearly everybody benefited.  The Good Life was here in America.

We can do that again, and we can do it without breaking the bank.  But first things first. The Fat Cats need to go on a diet.   The hard part will be convincing them that their present way of life is killing them--along with the rest of us.  Their King Midas approach to economic stability looks good when they're viewing it from their hog-laden banquet tables, but they need a Marley's Ghost to drop in and show them how they're going to look selling apples on the street corner.

We can't go on like this.   Unemployment has surpassed that magic number--a national average of over 10 percent.  All hell was supposed to break loose if that ever happened, but of course it only affects the unemployed, so watching the stock market go up, even in the face of it, shouldn't surprise us.   But could it at least infuriate us?

Health care is important.  Getting us out of two wars is important.  Climate change is important.  But there is nothing more important today than creating the kinds of jobs that will bring this country back.  Let's get over the idea that such a colossal undertaking can be done without initial governmental/taxpayer help.  We need a WPA-like program and it should have started on Obama's first full day in office.  Congress should have been prepared to sign into law a jobs program that exceeded even our wildest dreams.  Every able-bodied unemployed person should have been ready to flex every muscle when the time came and we should, all of us, have been pushing that enormous, expensive project from day one and working toward making it the most efficient, effective project this country has ever seen.

CCC Crew, Senatobia, MS 1938

So let's say we work on getting that done.  Now we need to go after the off-shore "American" companies and give them the bad news.  They're no longer a part of us.  They get what they've wanted, including all the benefits of being a foreign company.  Cheap goods, low wages, tariffs. . .  Enjoy--somewhere else.

So.  If Americans want to build a strong America we have to do it the American way:   Honestly, righteously, willingly working hard.  Together.  For the common good.

Ramona

(Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here)