“[Teddy]Roosevelt had come to believe that a strong government must regulate business. “The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power,” he said.
After all, he said, “[t]he object of government is the welfare of the people.” ~ Milwaukee Independent
It reads like copy from today yet it’s from a speech Roosevelt gave in 1912. The times have changed but the tension remains the same. The question is as it was then: is the object of government the welfare of the people – all of the people – or is it to protect the prosperity of the few?
Theodore Roosevelt believed that the purpose of government was to prosper the people. In today’s parlance that would make him a Democratic Socialist. Government must be strong in order to regulate corporations. Government is the firewall that protects the people from corporate greed and exploitation.
The current occupant of the White House and the contemporary republican party believe the opposite: The purpose of government is deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy few. It’s an agenda that serves a long debunked claim that wealth will trickle down. It doesn’t. It never has. It never will. It creates “…a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power.”
The purpose of DOGE was not to cut waste, fraud and abuse. The purpose of DOGE was to cut oversight and regulation of corporate activity. We are feeling the effects of a weakened government oversight in the grocery store, at the gas pump, in the gutting of healthcare and the social safety net.
“Over the past five decades, economic analyses indicate that roughly $50 trillion to $80 trillion in aggregate income and wealth has been redistributed upward or concentrated into the highest-earning brackets away from the bottom 90% of Americans.”
The cuts to healthcare, to Medicaid, to SNAP…to every program that served the welfare of the people pays for an enormous tax cut extended to the already morbidly wealthy. It is the centerpiece of the republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill. It balloons our national debt. Much of the damage is yet to be felt since they courageously (I’m being facetious) planned for the majority of the cuts to take effect AFTER the midterms.
Today is Labor Day. It has a history and a purpose: “Workers formed unions and held rallies. On September 5, 1882, the first Labor Day parade was held in New York City when 10,000 workers marched for better pay and conditions.”
Although the cost of living has escalated, the last raise to the minimum wage was in 2009.
The republicans under the current occupant of the White House have convinced many people at the bottom of the economic ladder that government is the problem. It’s not corporate greed. It’s not corporate influence in Washington D.C., it’s not that business driven policy and purchased-politicians that weaken the role of government… The MAGA cult famously votes – and continues to vote – for its own exploitation. They cheer the wreckage of the firewall built to protect them.
It’s Labor Day. It’s time for us to remember the reason why we gather this day and place our focus and intention on the workers. It’s time for us to remember that “the object of government is the welfare of the people.”
It is time for the people to reclaim their government from the small class of enormously wealthy people who exploit the people at every turn. And, more to the point, it is time for this nation to exit the question: is the object of government the welfare of the people – all of the people – or is it to protect the prosperity of the few? This nation has always prospered when the welfare of the people are the object of policy. It teeters when our government is hijacked and used to protect the wealth of the few.
We are a government of, by, and for the people. A government for the people. It’s in our founding documents. It is the reason why we vote, why we have the right to vote. It is the reason the republicans and this president are assaulting our right to vote from every direction.
It’s Labor Day. It’s time to remember that working people had to fight for their rights. They are not a given. They are tenuous. It’s time for us to realize how hard this administration is working to strip us of our rights, to gut the government whose purpose is to protect the welfare of the people while it is working overtime to protect “a small class of enormously wealthy people, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power.”
What will you do now and in November to protect your rights, especially your right to vote in free and fair election, given that this might be our last Labor Day celebrated by people governed by a system rooted in the belief that the people should choose their leaders – and not the other way around?
read Kerri’s blog post about LABOR DAY
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