well…reading the newspapers over the last few years has revealed a troubling theme the I just have to comment on. Even with the overall middle-class tax burden at it’s lowest point in the last 50 years, the prevailing wisdom is that the only way to get the states and federal budget under control is to cut services, to cut the wages and benefits of workers, and cut the gains that have made the middle class the engine of our economy. Just yesterday, ole Newt suggested in Michigan that the only way out of the problem is to cut benefits that teachers and other workers have fought for the last 50 years to get.

I just have to relay what one of my professors in grad school told our class; that you can’t cut your way to prosperity and growth, that a monkey can come in and take away benefits and lay off people…but that is all I hear today…cut, cut, cut….is this jealousy from the people that are now on the outside looking in without protection that comes from being part of a unionized workforce? Where is the shared sacrifice that made our country unique in the world? I truly believe that this is a plan by the righties to fragment the opposing powers that they have fought with for control of the profits of the economy; and they are winning the battle to demonize workers to the benefit of their corporate sponsors. Why is there no uproar on the right when their leaders champion the outsourcing of American jobs which puts downward pressure on the wages of the remaining workers here? Why doesn’t anyone think that a rising middle class in wages and benefits is a good thing? Who is going to buy the 40,000 dollar Suburban when the average wage is being pushed down to minimum wages level?

I think it’s sad that our supposed leaders have stopped leading us to the future and the ideals that have been part of this country since it’s inception; that we can do anything if we just work together and that the future will be better than today….small minds think small….geez…