Since the Reagan era and the GOP war against unions and working people, progressives have been warning about the US becoming a nation of fast food chains and financial industry fraudsters....that the US wasn't making things anymore.

That day arrived and with the addition of an economic meltdown caused by greedy Wall Street and jobs offshoring corporations, perpetrators bailed out by the Bush and Obama administrations at the expense of regular Main Street Americans, created increased economic injustice and massive unemployment for those on Main Street.

Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers writes at Our Future: ".....shuttered U.S. factories and off-shored manufacturing are sapping American strength. The nation has lost more than 40,000 manufacturing plants and one-third of its manufacturing jobs, nearly six million, over the past dozen years. China is on the verge of overtaking the U.S. in manufacturing output. And Americans know it. Late in April, 58 percent of 1,000 likely voters told pollsters they believed America’s economy no longer led the world.

"They also told pollsters they supported enacting a national manufacturing policy to promote resurgence of domestic production -- a return to the days of a robust Rosie the Riveter and a country that could secure its independence with dynamic manufacturing capability."

"Democrats in Congress heard that message. They’ve created a program called “Make It in America.” They plan to pass a series of bills to create an environment in which both Americans and American manufacturers make it.

However, Washington seems to be filled with more DINOs than real Democrats, both in the White House and on Capitol Hill. 

A bit of history should serve to remind everyone that DINOs have treacherously betrayed working people and their unions.

Beware the DINOs.

As David Macaray writes at Counterpunch: "...the vitality of the post-World War II labor movement was staggering—so staggering, in fact, that the federal government and America's leading corporations were in a state of panic.  It’s no exaggeration to say that never in our history had organized labor come so close to becoming an equal partner in the national economy than in the years directly following the war. 

"Not only were unions full of confidence and buoyed by the support of a sympathetic public, they were fearless....

"The realization that working men and women were now wielding genuine power—power that translated into independent political and economic clout—was scaring the wits out of the Establishment.  It was that fear that precipitated the Taft-Hartley Act.

"Taft-Hartley was the naked attempt to neutralize America’s unions by revoking key provisions of the landmark 1935 National Labor Relations Act (commonly known as the “Wagner Act,” after its sponsor, New York Senator Robert Wagner), the act that legitimized a union’s right to strike, engage in collective bargaining, and serve as the workers’ sole representative.

"....the Taft-Hartley Act did precisely what it set out to do.  It crippled the labor movement. 

"Taft-Hartley prolonged the union certification process; it gave the federal government the right to issue strike injunctions; it expressly excluded supervisors from union membership and collective bargaining; and it severely weakened the union security clause (language under which joining a union was a condition of employment).

"By lengthening the certification process, management could now stall; with injunction power, the feds could now squelch any large-scale strike; by excluding supervision, bosses could now reclassify workers as “supervisors,” thereby exempting them from union membership; and by de-fanging the security clause, 22 states now have right-to-work laws....

"....while it became the law of the land despite the veto of President Harry Truman, it was congressional Democrats who assured its passage.  Liberals and progressives like to place the blame on anti-union Republicans, but it was the Democrats themselves who pushed it across the finish line.

"Fact:  A majority of the Democrats in congress voted to override Truman’s veto.  While many were Southerners (“Dixiecrats”), many were not.  Had the Democrats simply supported their president—had they provided working people with the economic equivalent of the same privileges guaranteed to citizens under the Bill of Rights—Taft-Hartley would not have become law.

"All of which raises a question:  If American voters were given the choice, how would they choose to be governed?  Would they prefer that Big Business—with the blessings of a corporate-oriented government—dictated our domestic and foreign affairs?  Or would they prefer giving working men and women an equal voice in determining policy?

"If regular citizens had been running the show, they never would have abandoned our manufacturing base.  They never would have agreed to enrich international oligarchies at the expense of the American economy.

"Taking the greatest manufacturing power in the history of the world and dismantling it—relegating it to the role of industrial “spectator”—is something that working people would never allow to happen.  Never."

So, in promoting a national manufacturing policy, make sure that working men and women have an equal voice in determining that policy.