Ok...and first. If you are going to have ANY serious input into a discussion about politics in this country...you need know what political system that is. WE DO NOT HAVE A DEMOCRACY IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!!!!
We have a representative republic! VERY different things. Democracies don't work..never have, never will...our Republican form of government DOES. As a matter of fact...and since you seem so concerned about what the founders intend with our Constitution...try this. The federal government was only directed to do about a half dozen things by the Constitution and everything else was for the states and we the people. NOT thousands of things, about 6 things and describes exactly how. Things like deliver the mail, defend our borders and the like. Among those things is to provide that the states are GUARANTEED a Republican form of government. NOT a democracy.
So, I wish you guys would stop with that democracy stuff. Until 1913(remember that year for the next post I have quoted below), senators were NOT ELECTED...they were chosen by the peoples representatives who WERE elected in their home state. THAT is how the founders intended it to be. It insured that the state rep AND the senator were accountable to the people back home for what they did in Washington. As a matter of fact, we need to repeal the 17th Amendment as a beginning to take our government back to it's founding!
Now, to you numbers. Just stating the same statistics in numeric form instead of graphic form does not add weight to an argument. Those numbers are simple representations...a symptom of a disease. The numbers don't mean a thing without context.
Trust me, I LIVED through those years. The wife and I were a struggling young couple in those days. Vietnam, cheap Japanese steel, autos, electronics and dozens of other imports from Japan and Twain had more to do with the demise of unions and concentration of wealth away from the middle class back then than some mystical link between unions and the middle class.
Hell, over 80% of Americans have NEVER BEEN IN A UNION...then or now!
Exactly so westwall. Some of these folks don't understand that the rhetoric they are regurgitating began in this country with the Fabian Socialist...import from England around 1900. A socialist agenda that was adopted by the FIRST progressive president, Woodrow Wilson. The guy who helped start us down the road to serfdom.
If these jackwagon...useful idiots don't lay of the class warfare crap, learn our REAL history and founding and start to help return to our foundings principles WE ARE SCREWED!
Now...I'd like to apologize to Conservative for taking this tread sideways. To one way of thinking, this does actually apply to the debate over the recall vote. It's being conducted by progressives/socialist/useful idiots who are diluted about not only the role of unions in this country, but the very nature of the kind of government we have and why it was set up as it was.
All that said, I still apologize for my part in taking it off course.
Oh, I know the US is a Republic. I also know that the term democracy comes from the Greek word "dēmokratia", which means "rule of the people", thusly the term "democratic elections" which we have in the US. All of this comes around to my point regarding plutocracy and the funding of candidates from corporate and union entities.
The Supreme Court with their ruling in favor of Citizens United clearly chose to spin the words of the Bill of Right, "the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the
people, and reserves all powers not granted to the federal government to the
citizenry or States.”
The terms “
people” and “
citizenry” clearly refer here to living human beings, not to artificial entities such as corporations, labor unions, or political lobbyist.
In my original post to Westwall, I condemned all the money coming to Wisconsin from outstate interests, that being corporate and union interests, thus the attempt to manipulate the election their way. In the case of Wisconsin, a huge majority of the money went to Walker. Nationally, it depends which way the wind blows, but in recent years the Dems have reaped a majority of corporate and union donations.
Now Westwall refused to see or failed to see that my comments (Post 46) refereed to both ideologies as being tools of Big Money and then went off on the unions. Yet the business world has contributed over a trillion dollars to political candidates since 2000, while unions have contributed almost 45 million dollars. (
Business-Labor-Ideology Split in PAC & Individual Donations to Candidates and Parties | OpenSecrets)
A trillion dollars is alot of influence for favorable legislation and certainly shrinks our nations unions attempts to strengthen their agenda. And all the Big Money minimizes people.
The chart that posted (that was discounted by ideologues), clearly showed that as the unions weakened, the middle class's share of the National Income has nosedived. As a matter of fact, in the year 2010, the middle class hit a record low regarding their share of the National Income. Go and Google and research, my point it's accurate as hell.
What all this means is the "rule of the people" is becoming a thing of the past. The US has entered the early to mid stages of becoming plutocratic. Big Money trumps "people". It's no secret that our elected leaders (from both parties) in Washington spend more time raising funds from Special Interest than they do investing the time to represent their constituents.
And a "oh yeah". I am not union, there are no members of our family or friends inter-circle that are union. I believe that unions did help strengthen the middle class when the middle class was strong. The unions are almost insignificant as they make up less than 12% of this nations workforce. The Working Class has also become insignificant as indicated by their record low share of the National Income.
I'm not an ideologue, I'm Main Street America, middle class and I am mad as hell at the demise of "the people" as Big Money rules America. I also believe that those people who support this phenomena are the "useful idiots". I guess they don't care about their future or even more importantly, the children's future.
Read this article from the conservative
The Economist.
Ever higher society, ever harder to ascend
Meritocracy in America: Ever higher society, ever harder to ascend | The Economist
