LETTER: Republicans not good for workers

Former President George Bush liked to use the phrase, “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.” To be fooled over and over for more than 40 years is just plain insanity.

It is time for blue-collar Republicans to shut down the asylum. Before the next election, every voter should ask themselves, “In the last 100 years, what have the Republicans done for middle-class working people in America?” The short answer. Nothing! Every piece of legislation, every government program, every policy, every law that makes it possible for the middle class to survive and prosper has been passed by Democrats over the objection of Republicans — FDR’s New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, voting rights, civil rights, banking laws, the SEC, Glass-Steagle, labor laws, 40-hour weeks, overtime pay, paid vacation, workplace health care, minimum wage.

The Republicans want to abolish even the concept of a minimum wage. Without the New Deal farm programs, today’s family farms would not exist. They would all be tenant farmers like in Central America. In the past 100 years the Republicans have given us the Great Depression, trickle-down Reaganomics, 40 years of economic stagnation for the middle class, jobs gone to foreign countries, and the Great Recession of 2008.You may never be able to own a home, send your children to college or retire when you are too old to work, but you will always be able to buy a machine gun and a hundred-round magazine.

How many more times are you going to let the Republican con men fool you into voting for the party that is dedicated to keeping you in economic bondage? Fool me once, fool me forever. The choice is yours. —Tom Shaughnessy, Kalispell