Remember the Great Depression? It started under a Republican president and ended under a Democratic president (Franklin Roosevelt). He tried hard to pass laws to allow the labor unions to organize and give the working people something to look forward to, such as workman’s compensation, social security and minimum wage. He also started a public works program, like the Tennessee Valley Authority, the CCC Camp and built electric power plants on our rivers out west. He had to fight the Republican Party but had it not been for his foresight in getting all these improvements in our manufacturing capacity, we may have had a different outcome of World War II.
After the war, the Republicans couldn’t wait to get control of our government so they could pass new laws that would break the labor unions. They didn’t succeed but they got the Taft Hartley Law that was soon followed by the Landon Griffith Act, which has had a chilling effect on the labor movement. Now they’re trying to destroy our Social Security by chipping away at it bit by bit by privatizing part of it now. The rest will come later. They’ll never be satisfied until we have a society like Mexico, where you have the very rich and the very poor.
I’ve lived through that type of government when I was a youth. I volunteered and fought for our country and hate to see what we fought for destroyed. In my thinking, the way they have destroyed our forests, just for profit, and left a wasteland for our children, makes me wonder what we fought for. Was it for the betterment of the country as a whole? Or was it so the greedy could reap all of the benefits? I certainly hope not.
Stanwood
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