We must foster love, care, and respect for all, she
continued. I didn't dare even mumble that as a youth I harbored such
aspirations myself.
We must fight to take the huge dollar signs out of politics;
to overhaul our educational system because education, like voting, is a right,
not a privilege. We must not allow the interest on Stafford loans to be
doubled.
Let's get done what Congress cannot, she concluded.
Damon Silvers, Director of Policy and Special Counsel for
the AFL-CIO, said that listening to Molly made him feel better about this
country.
He reminisced about a profile of the twentieth century done
sixty years ago by Time magazine.
Seventy years ago, he said, the United States restructured family debts and got
people back to work, reinvesting in the economy, a solution Europe most lately
hasn't followed. Financial growth in Asia is slowing. Paul Krugman calls this
dismal era a depression, not a recession.
Following a generation of bad policy, that is, financial
deregulation and wage suppression, cam the advent of austerity and increased
joblessness, resembling the situation in Europe in the 1930s, which opened the
door to fascism and communism, and depression.
A low-wage/high-income society is untenable, continued
Silvers, calling Citigroup and the Bank of America "zombie banks."
We can't afford to ignore climate change.
Our competitors have a huge advantage over us; our real
estate train wreck and inflated student debt must give way to positive change--investment
in domestic society rather than overseas high finance of whatever description.
We're in a fiscal trap that will lead to massive long-term unemployment.
The Simpson-Bowles agenda cuts entitlements and extends the
Bush tax cut; the Democrats respond with appeasement, giving things away to
make things better while the people want Social Security and Medicare to expand.
Social Security represents the healthiest part of our
economy. Medicare is not a problem but a solution. And higher education is a
right, not a privilege.
Repealing the Bush tax cuts is not enough. The entrenched
power of money in politics must be removed. This is the view of the American
labor movement, struggling as it is from a receding foothold in the U.S.
economy.
If the growing hordes of unemployed took to the streets,
perhaps more police and emergency responders would be hired? You go, Occupy.
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