At the urging of others, I've sent some messages to our political leaders about not throwing workers and the oppressed under the bus in the name of a budget deal. But these pre-formatted messages don't suggest any way around the impasse. So I decided to send my own message addressing the radical danger of financial catastrophe with a radical solution. This is what I wrote on the White House Web comment form:
The President must put an end to Republican budget terrorism by declaring a state of emergency. He should use emergency powers to:
1) Raise the debt ceiling by Executive Order;
2) Implement the People's Budget proposed by members of the House Progressive Caucus, which would create millions of new jobs while reducing the deficit with a deep cut in military spending;
3) Mandate that all US-based corporations offer living-wage jobs with benefits to any who apply for them, as a condition for keeping their corporate charters; and
4) Repeal or modify antitrust laws so that companies can coordinate to achieve greater efficiencies and, in particular, so that they can raise prices as needed to cover increased labor costs resulting from the previous measure.
President Lincoln addressed an earlier national crisis with revolutionary economic measures, expropriating the entire planter class of the rebel states. President Obama can and must do likewise to resolve the present crisis.
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