Yesterday Sen. Bernie Sanders issued a statement on his Senate website outlining the current situation Americans are facing, “With 23.7 MILLION AMERICANS UNEMPLOYED OR UNDER EMPLOYED, 15 % of our workforce,” these numbers do not include the number of people incarcerated (2.3 million), the largest in the world. The United States has only 5% of the worlds population and almost a quarter of the world's prisoners.
The solutions he enumerated in his statement are a good start, but go not nearly far enough. “One of the fastest ways to create jobs is to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure – roads, bridges, railroads, airports, water systems, waste water plants and aging schools,” said Sen. Sanders. Increasing the amount of our GDP we spend on infrastructure to compete with China and Europe would be a start, but what is really need is the return of the manufacturing industry.
Switching from fossil fuel to more sustainable forms of energy such as wind, solar, geothermal, wave and current, would be another positive step in the right direction, in addition to converting homes and buildings to be more energy efficient, would be another right step.
But this does not go far enough, there also needs to be a push to repeal NAFTA, GAT and other free-trade agreements and institute a fair-trade policy, in addition to putting a freeze on all home foreclosures and repealing Glass-Steagall through a direct action from congress,whether through a bill or a Constitutional Amendment.
There also needs to be a move from congress to turn over all abandoned buildings to be refurbished for the use of those who are currently homeless in America. As a one of the top economies in the world there is no excuse for there being a single person with out a place to lay their head in some minimum measure of comfort and security. There is no excuse of one person to be hungry or to not have adequate medical treatment in this country. Those things are all apart of our G'd given rights as laid out in the Declaration of Independence when it declares “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The things that I have laid out are the most basic of needs for life and under the laws of our land must be secured for the people who have given their consent to be governed, not in tyranny but in freedom. This is not a political statement, outside of the need to change the way we look at ourselves, to gauge accurately what we believe and stand for those things, that our founders called for.
It is not the 1% that can give consent to rule but the 99% that must give that consent, Sen. Sanders has declared his support for the 99%, but is he willing to take that support to it's natural conclusion?
Is he willing to repeal laws that do not protect society, that hinder the lives of the people unnecessarily, to repeal laws that give global corporations free reign, and end the tyranny of a federal government and global power structure that has gotten long out of control, that seeks power for powers sake?
Is he willing to stand against the police state that has been set up in this country and stand for the freedom of the people he was elected to serve?
