Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Please note I have a new phone number...

512-517-2708

Alan Maki

Alan Maki
Doing research at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

A program for real change...

http://peaceandsocialjustice.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-progressive-program-for-real-change.html


What we need is a "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity" which would make it a mandatory requirement that the president and Congress attain and maintain full employment.


"Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens"

- Ben Franklin

Let's talk...

Let's talk...

Monday, September 30, 2013

1945 was an important year for the working classes of Great Britain and the United States.

Some people want to forget that in Great Britain in 1945 the working class coming out of World War II, led by the Communist Party, was full determination to fight for its rights and was able to muster the strength and the power to complete much of the progressive agenda that the working class in this country was also seeking but here in this country the working class was confronted by a massive Wall Street assault of governmental repression resulting in a huge and prolonged setback that put an end to the expansion of New Deal reforms and with an unrelenting and vicious red-baiting attack chopped off labor's head while sowing greater division between the Communist and Socialist parties.

The New Left joined this attack on the working class as it tried to replace working class Marxist ideology with muddle-headed upper middle class interpretations of Marxism. and this goes on today with these super-revolutionary New Leftists having taken up with Obama and his Wall Street imperialist agenda trying to make people believe the Democratic Party and its politicians are the vehicle for change when nothing could be further from the truth.

We should look back at history to 1945 to figure out why the British working class won in 1945 what the U.S. working class did not. There are important lessons to be learned.

Our setbacks began with the defeat of the "Full Employment Act of 1945."

It is dishonest to deny this history. We don't learn this history to our own detriment.

What is involved in the concept of a "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity?"

21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity”

Mandatory full employment--- make the president and Congress legislatively responsible for attaining and maintaining full employment like what was called for in the “Full Employment Act of 1945” which was authored by liberal Texas Democrat Wright Patman.

Put America to work creating jobs solving the problems of our people and society. This is what was envisaged by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Vice-president, Henry A. Wallace, his Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins and his trusted adviser Harry Hopkins, the architect of job creating public works programs.

What we are advocating is nothing new. We don't have to “re-invent the wheel.” We are advocating restoring the New Deal to what it was intended to be and completing its unfinished agenda cut short by vicious Wall Street attacks on the working class.

Elanor Roosevelt worked to assure that all of this was included in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Winning this legislation will take re-creating the historic coalition of liberals, progressives and leftists who struggled for, and won, the New Deal together with a new working class based progressive people's party.

Raise the Minimum Wage based on cost of living factors indexed to inflation with regular increases to improve standard of living.

Jobs programs...

Universal health care--- 15 million jobs
universal child care--- 5 million jobs
WPA--- infrastructure, schools, community centers, high speed rail and affordable mass transit
CCC--- reforestation, flood control, dams and levees and environmental safeguards and clean-up
CETA--- training for WPA, CCC, green technology, computer training for all, etc.
Build homes for the homeless based on the Habitat for Humanity model as a government program
Build and Repair infrastructure

Retirement age reduced to 55.

More vacation time--- 3 weeks minimum with pay for everyone.

Reduced work week 32hrs with 40hrs pay.

Social Security, increase benefits and expand programs.

The right to a job is the most fundamental and basic human right; workers without jobs are going to be poor.

Increase Food Stamp benefits and pay farmers to produce instead of paying farmers not to produce.

Increase unemployment compensation from time of unemployment to back to work with unemployment compensation a real living income based on cost of living.

Enforce Affirmative Action until a level playing field is achieved for people of color, women and the handicapped.

Pay for it all with:

“Peace dividends” derived from ending militarism and wars.
A hefty tax on the rich.
A tax on Wall Street transactions.
Double the employer portion of the Social Security tax.
A tax on natural resource extraction: taconite tax, stumpage fees, oil, gas, etc.

All funding processed through a federal public bank like the State Bank of North Dakota.

Picking up where the New Deal left off.

In addition to the “21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity” there is going to have to be additional legislation to:
* Place a moratorium on home foreclosures and evictions.
* Create no-interest student loans and forgive all interest debt on existing student loans.
* Roll back prices and initiate price controls on food, electricity, gas and home heating fuels.
* Remove all sales taxes on food and clothing.