By Jack Burgess
From the Chillicothe Gazette, November 24, 2010
Most of us have a lot to be thankful for at Thanksgiving. Most of us have a roof over our heads and enough to eat, but there's also a lot to be concerned about this year.
As our nation continues to struggle with the effects of unregulated stock speculation and failures, unemployment and continued war in the Middle East, we wonder where we're headed.
We're told our pensions are too large, we retire too soon, we want too much health care, and taxes that are too high are somehow the cause of our problems. The powers that be are setting us up for some tough, but they say unavoidable, choices.
In Chillicothe, it's school crossing guards and police protection versus tax cuts for the well-to-do, which decimate the state's ability to fund essential services. That's what it comes down to.
Preserve the benefits of the new health care law -- keeping your college age kids on your health care plan, no maximum on your own plan and being assured you can get coverage even if you're suffering from some dreaded disease -- or going back to the world's most expensive health care that still leaves us struggling to keep up with ever higher deductibles, wondering how long we'll even have coverage.
Why do Americans face such choices? Maybe it's the fault of history and government teachers -- of which I am one -- that we taught the kids to memorize historical documents, like the Gettysburg Address, but didn't help them internalize the truth of the Civil War as a bloodbath over slavery. How we said, "All men are created equal," but didn't include women, African Americans or First Americans until they won those rights.
Maybe we spent too much time on famous battles and not enough on the day-to-day battles of working people to get a living wage, a day off or compensation if they were injured on the job. Maybe we focused too much on the genius of men like Henry Ford but ignored their use of armed thugs to shoot workers demanding fair treatment.
Somehow, Americans have not learned that when tax rates on upper incomes were much higher, in the 1940s and 1950s, our nation was most prosperous. Or that when we in Ohio began cutting corporate taxes, back in the 1960s, we were prosperous and were promised we would become more so, but the opposite happened. We were promised that corporations would invest the extra money from the tax cuts here in Ohio, but instead they invested in low-wage countries in Latin America and Asia.
So we've become a society where a Donald Trump has a regular TV show about firing people, while millions look for work, and there are essentially no shows about working people. A society in which people who manipulate stock numbers get rich, while those who work hard making things with their hands -- when jobs are available -- are told they demand too much. Where failed business managers get tens of millions in extra compensation when they retire, but we are told we're overpaid and should work until we're 70.
And in our anger about all this, we've taken the bait of the folks who gave us this bad deal, and we've strengthened their hand in the government.
It's time for us to relearn, or learn for the first time, the lessons from history, that only through making ourselves heard through unions, pressure groups and progressive political parties did we achieve what equality and prosperity we have. It wasn't a gift of the Donald Trump's. It was what we earned with our work and our organizing.
If we expect the Republicans of today -- the party of tax cuts for the rich and more war in the Middle East -- to help us out, we're counting on the foxes to guard the hen house.
As to the Democrats in Washington, they have become the sheep guarding the hen house. It remains to be seen if they can move beyond their desire to be nice to the folks who are exploiting us and them and reinvigorate the party of Franklin Roosevelt, which stood for economic democracy, opportunity and hope for working people and the middle class.
Burgess is a retired teacher and a member of the Chillicothe Gazette's Board of Contributors.
