Elizabeth Warren

“I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever. No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody.

“You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.

“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

~ Elizabeth Warren

The Death Throes of the Middle Class

It isn't Barack Obama that fucked this country up - it was none other than the 'Great Communicator' Ronald Reagan!

You can't give the people who have all the money a 'free ride' - that's insanity!

What did Reagan do, aside from chomping on jelly beans and falling asleep in the Oval Office? He sold out the middle-class to the wealthy! (Google it if you have any doubts.)

Here are just a few random statistics compiled by businessinsider.com:

* 61 per cent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck;

* 66 per cent of the income growth goes to the top 1 per cent of Americans;

* 43 per cent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for retirement;

* 24 per cent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age;

* Only the top 5 per cent of US households earned enough to match the rise in housing costs;

* In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1; since the year 2000, that ratio has   exploded to between 300 and 500 to 1;

* The bottom 50 per cent of income earners in the US now collectively own less than 1 per cent of the nation's wealth;

* More than 40 per cent of Americans who are actually employed are now working in service jobs, which are often low paying.

You can google dozens of similar statistics from sources all over the political spectrum. Until very recently, politicians in both parties have been very slow to address this problem beyond the early inadequate stimulus programme, instead spending months drawing up plans for further "shared sacrifice" on the part of the people, only stopping to argue about whether the rich should be required to kick in some insubstantial tip money or nothing at all.

In the midst of this mess, Elizabeth Warren has arisen as an unlikely lone voice speaking out on behalf of the shrinking and increasingly desperate American middle class, first fighting against an army of financial lobbyists to create a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and now as a candidate for the US Senate.

Warren's message is a potent one, expressing progressive values in terms that are almost intoxicating to the base of American voters, hungry as they are for someone to take up the cause of the American middle class, workers and families who are being unbearably squeezed and yet asked to give even more - even as the wealthy fatuously declare themselves to be "job creators" and therefore absolved of any duty to pay their fair share.

Go Elizabeth Warren!