Dear Editor:
It’s not by accident that America’s working class is suffering these days. During the 50-year period that stretched from Roosevelt’s New Deal 1930’s to the dawn of the Reagan 80’s, America’s working class prospered. Labor Unions were strong during this golden age for working folks, and one salary could support a comfortable family life in a nice suburban home. And because Americans worked the least amount of hours of all the industrialized nations during this era (now they work the most, having recently surpassed the workaholic Japanese), there was plenty of time to spend with friends, family and community. Civic organizations like the Elks and Kiwanis overflowed with members during this time. Low and behold, there was even time available for dinner parties, card games and after-work bowling leagues.
Now working Americans barely have time to breathe. They get home exhausted from their two or three low-paying jobs, and many are still forced to tap their credit cards for such essential items as food and rent. And as opposed to most of the civilized world where health care is considered a basic human right, we’ve reached a moral low point in America when only the rich can afford decent medical treatment.
How did it get this bad? It wasn’t by accident but by design. The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans saw their 1920’s “Great Gatsby” heyday erode with the arrival of Roosevelt’s New Deal and weren’t happy about it. It was only the specter of Socialism, a viable threat at the time that caused people like the Rockefellers to throw their support behind the “lesser evil” of Roosevelt – lest they lose it all. So politically at least, the super-rich went into hiding. And a golden age of life for the common man began to unfold under the leadership of the Democratic Party. Through program after program, from Social Security to Medicare to the G. I. Bill and through a supportive relationship with labor unions, the Democratic Party brought a level of prosperity, dignity, respect and happiness to working Americans unheralded in our history. But certain greedy elements of the super-rich plotted their comeback. They wished to be mega-rich, and with the help of the Republican Party of the 1980’s onward, successfully engineered their resurgence. Inequality of wealth has now reached such staggering proportions -exacerbated by Bush’s recent tax-cut to the wealthiest 1 percent, America is looking more and more like a medieval caste-system every day.
Which is why it’s crucial to send a clear message on primary day, June 8th, by voting for Bob Menendez – one of the strongest, most articulate and compassionate Democratic voices in Congress today. By voting the entire column A, with John Kerry at the top, working Americans can take positive action to begin recovering their basic human rights – like health care – that Republicans have denied them these past 20years. And with a Democrat back in the White House, Bob Menendez will have a receptive ear in Washington as he begins to repair the damage done to working families by uncompassionate conservatives.
On June 8th let’s launch the comeback of America’s working class. Vote for Bob Menendez.
John Bredin
Educator activist