On Tuesday, Senator Scott Brown chose the 1% over the 99%. Yesterday, we mourned the middle class’s untimely death at the hands of Scott Brown and his Republican leadership on the steps of the Mass GOP headquarters.
Pastor Paris Cherry of Dorchester delivered the funeral sermon, flanked by a row of coffins marked with the names of the deceased: American Jobs, the Middle Class, Massachusetts’ Infrastructure, and the United States Economy.
“The people of Massachusetts came to weep, to feel, and to wonder in anguish as we share in the loss of our nation’s middle class,” said Cherry. “We gathered to mourn our senator’s vote to kill the family-supporting jobs our communities so desperately need.”
Following the procession of pall bearers and Cherry’s sermon, eulogies were delivered by unemployed Boston-area workers whose jobs have been effectively killed by Brown’s support of the national Republican agenda.
“Like me, millions of people will be hard hit by these senseless deaths – fatalities at the hands of Scott Brown and the politicians in Washington,” said Olivé Hendricks, an iron worker who has struggled for years to find consistent work. “As a Christian, I believe in good and evil – and their actions are most definitely evil.”
As proposed, the American Jobs Act would invest upwards of $850.7 million in structurally-deficient bridges, roads and transit systems across Massachusetts – creating at least 11,000 local jobs. Brown voted with the national Republican leadership to kill the bill Tuesday evening, despite previous calls for action on job creation.
Cutting the social security tax on pay, without lifting the “cap” on income taxed is not okay, but this bill is still better than having NO action on jobs. I pushed for a WPA/CCP approach for years starting in 2008 and it was like talking to a pile of bricks when I called and wrote about it. I am, personally, grateful to the Occupy movement for putting the focus where it belongs – wealth consolidation and the shift towards fascism and away from an actual representative democracy.
It gives money to the now-unaccountable MassDOT hierarchy – the same crew that hoarded the Stimulus money under Aloisi who just slapped ARRA signs on jobs that hed been on the TIP list for ten years. The ONLY jobs created by this were new MassDOT hires (similar to the DA jobs created by getting rid of independent lawyers) and more money to the same SMALL cadre of cement truck owners who have greased cnough palms to get onto the state bid list (Landers, Edwards, et al work closely together on this at their shared summer home in Falmouth).
ELEVEN THOUSAND NEW JOBS? Outside of MassDOT, WHERE?
It is another reward to state government, and has little to no effect on the economy overall. It’s why the stimulus failed. “Not enough shovel ready jobs out there, I guess”, quipped Obama. Does he really think that NEW ONES have materialized in a few months? Or does he just owe the government labor unions that badly?