Weekly Address: Stand Up for American Workers and Pass TAA

[Jack Rabbit]

30. Stand up for American workers: Defeat the trade package and overthrow the oligarchs

If there is no trade deal that will displace more American jobs, then there should be no need for trade adjustment assistance.

So what is trade adjustment assistance supposed to do for displaced American workers? Retrain rocket scientists to flip burgers or greet customers at WalMart?

Of course, I'm oversimplifying. There's a bigger problem here than bad trade deals. One DUer is hitting the meme that jobs are being shipped to India and China, with which the US has no trade treaty. I think that poster may be on to something in identifying the problem, but his solution is more bad trade deals and that doesn't impress me as a good solution.

The neoliberal social paradigm is unsustainable. Large corporations cannot direct a race to the bottom without destroying the middle class, leaving them without consumers to purchase the products they manufacture. When that happens, they go broke, too. At some point we come after the bastards with torches and pitchforks, but after that, then what?

That is a conversation we need to start having. The then may be fast approaching, so we'll need the what sooner than we think.

In this case, we'll have to meet behind the proverbial closed doors, as much as it is possible for 99% to meet behind closed doors, to discuss the matter, because the captains of industry and their pet politicians are not invited. They'll only try to sell us on their neoliberal paradigm (you know, the one that is unsustainable), and we don't have any more time to waste listening to their pitch. We can listen to more enlightened 1%ers like George Soros, Warren Buffet or Nick Hanauer. They might have something to contribute to the discussion, but Legs Dimon, Pretty Boy Lloyd and the Koch kingpins are going to be left behind as we forge our own path the other world that is possible.