“Trust me,” bellowed the billionaire Donald Trump to working-class voters in 2016, promising he’d be the champion of what he called “the forgotten Americans.”
Trust him? He’s a lifetime real-estate huckster infamous for ripping off workers. You’d have better odds trusting a coyote to guard your last lamb chop.
Nonetheless, many working stiffs did buy Trump’s promises to stand up for them against corporate and political elites. But he quickly proved that, true to form, his promises were just another scam. Again and again, he has carelessly stiffed working stiffs, consistently siding with corporate powers to transfer more money and power from workers to corporations.
For example, candidate Trump pledged to hike the minimum wage to $10 an hour, but, once in office, President Trump coldly turned his back on underpaid workers, never mentioning—much less fighting for—any increase in our nation’s shameful, poverty-level wage floor of $7.25 an hour.
Also, Trump’s Labor Department, headed by anti-labor corporate executives he intentionally appointed, ruled that millions of service workers are “independent contractors” rather than company employees. Thus they are not entitled to the minimum wage, overtime pay, or other labor protections. And instead of monitoring corporate violations of wage laws, his administration announced that it would trust top executives to monitor themselves and self-report any violations.
Moreover, the Trumpsters have gutted OSHA, cutting the numbers of job-safety inspectors to the lowest level in the agency’s history. As a result, it’s open season on maiming workers. For example, when an assembly line worker at an Arkansas chicken processing plant had a finger cut off last September, OSHA didn’t even send an investigator. The next month, Trump’s OSHA “regulators” let the plant’s owners speed up their assembly line. Then, two months later, another worker lost a finger. Again, Trump’s job safety officials didn’t inconvenience the corporation by sending an inspector.
It’s true that Trump has not “forgotten” the forgotten working class. Indeed, the pampered son of privilege remembers to slap them with plutocratic policies every chance he gets.
As an old saying puts it, “Where there’s a will . . . there are a thousand won’ts.”
Sure enough, while there’s a large and steadily growing public will across our country to take bold steps to battle the plague of inequality ripping America apart, here come the won’ts.
The corporate powers, plutocratic elites, and their political hirelings hate the very idea of public action to restore economic fairness and equal opportunity for all people. So they’re frantically trying to scare the public away from big ideas like Medicare for All, free college tuition, and a wealth tax, by branding them with the hoary old, rightwing bugaboo: “Socialism!”
However, they have three major problems in selling this scare tactic. One, such progressive ideas are quite popular. Two, the greedy rich are quite unpopular. And, three, the cry of “Socialism!” has lost its sting.
A July poll shows that Senator Elizabeth Warren’s idea of a new tax on fortunes greater than $50 million is favored by two-thirds of Americans, including 55 percent of Republicans.
Nearly six out of ten people favor Medicare for All, including a majority of high-income Americans. And nearly 60 percent of us favor free tuition.
Ironically, the major barrier to passing such changes is not the one thrown up by big money lobbyists and Republican Congress critters. Rather, it’s the meekness of establishment Democrats—including many elected officials and operatives—who don’t have the courage of their party’s convictions.
They whimper that it will be hard to pass the sweeping changes Americans need and want, plus those ideas might offend some of the party’s big donors and scare off some crossover Republican voters in 2020. So rather than respond to the grassroots will for real change, those weak-kneed forces are opposing strong advocates like Warren and Bernie Sanders. They’re urging the party to back off from its core values and fighting spirit, and instead make incremental adjustments in the status quo that might win support from Republicans and corporate chieftains.
If the meek ever inherit the earth, these timid do-nothings will be land barons! If Democrats don’t stand for the people, why should people stand for them?