My wife and I marched to the Minnesota State Capitol yesterday. The date, April 4th, is the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.--and is appropriate since the rights of labor are under attack by the Republican Party in the USA. One of the key points for me at yesterday's rally, was the call for the truth. While the Republicans want to "balance the budget" by reducing wages and benefits to public employees, the real issues of why the budget is broken are not being addressed--and middle class labor is being coerced into paying for the problems created by corporate greed, unscrupulous bank lending practices, and spending much of "our" budget on military campaigns. The USA recently fired 123 Cruise Missiles at Libya for about a million dollars apiece. How many teachers could America pay for $123,000,000?
Not too long ago, it was widely thought that teachers were not highly paid. Suddenly, there is a right-wing political movement that says all public employees are making too much money! So when the middle-class is pushed (backwards a century or so) into poverty, who is going to pay (the taxes) to support the government that has bailed-out the banks and corporations? Hard-working Americans are not looking for a bail-out, they just want fair wages and benefits to support their families. If the middle-class is taken down, the whole country is going to follow.
Here is my view as I approached the state capitol.
On a lighter note, here is a good reminder to be conscious of how you hold your sign--so as not to change the meaning...
Not too long ago, it was widely thought that teachers were not highly paid. Suddenly, there is a right-wing political movement that says all public employees are making too much money! So when the middle-class is pushed (backwards a century or so) into poverty, who is going to pay (the taxes) to support the government that has bailed-out the banks and corporations? Hard-working Americans are not looking for a bail-out, they just want fair wages and benefits to support their families. If the middle-class is taken down, the whole country is going to follow.
Here is my view as I approached the state capitol.
On a lighter note, here is a good reminder to be conscious of how you hold your sign--so as not to change the meaning...
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