US Sen. Bernie Sanders: Now Is the Time

[marmar]

via CommonDreams:



Published on Wednesday, October 22, 2008 by The Huffington Post
Now Is the Time
by Sen. Bernie Sanders


These are frightening and unusual times. The world of finance and the overall economy are both in perilous condition. Almost every day a new crisis erupts. The stock market has plunged dramatically, and is more volatile, than at any time in memory. Loans between banks have dried up. Major financial houses have either failed or merged. Government bailout follows government bailout.

Just how deep the financial crisis is can be seen from this paradox: the Bush administration, the most wild and irresponsible defender of right-wing economic ideology and free markets in our nation's history, now has to muster one initiative after another to intervene in the financial markets. It is even in the process of nationalizing banks.

The economic crisis has received less attention in the media than the financial crisis, but it is no less real or threatening. Unemployment, which is conservatively estimated in our country, last month hit a five-year high of 6.1 percent, and it is rising. In July, home prices - the main source of most Americans' wealth - fell 16 percent in 20 U.S. cities from a year earlier. The bottom is nowhere in sight. Foreclosures are at the highest rate in almost three decades. Health care, food and educational costs are rising, and more and more Americans are lining up at emergency shelters and food shelves.

Meanwhile, during President Bush's tenure in office, the gap between the very wealthy and everyone else has dramatically increased. While 6 million Americans have slipped into poverty, while median income for working families has declined by more than $2,000, while 7 million people have lost their health insurance and 4 million workers lost their pensions, the highest income Americans have made out like bandits - which many of them are.

In Bush's first seven years, the top 400 individuals in America saw an increase in their wealth of $670 billion, so that by 2007 the top 1 percent earned more income than the bottom 50 percent. Tax cuts for the wealthy, unfettered free trade, no-bid contracts, deregulation of every conceivable market and a belief that markets are the best determinant of social policy have together brought about a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the very wealthy. The backbone of the American economy for the past 50 years, a strong and prosperous middle class, has been severely weakened by the extremist policies of this administration. The economic future for the next generation looks bleak. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/10/22-8

[Greyhound]

1. There are few good one's, aren't there? K&R.

:kick: & R

[al bupp]

2. That's one of our Sens from VT

And it's why we love him.