Outlook!

I'm going to allow myself to sound old for just a little bit, but I feel it's necessary to prove a point. I was raised in the 50's and 60's, a time of prosperity for all. It was a time when unions were strong, workers were faithful to the company and the company was faithful to the workers, when you could raise a family with one member working and the other caring for the children, when if your company offered a pension, and you got it.
Today, we live in a different time, where there is no loyalty towards either side. The workers are struggling just to make a minimum wage in a service job, (or 2 or sometimes 3), with both parents working, where children are raised in daycare by minimum wage workers, not learning the bonds that we used to have, nor the values we used to live by.
Today it's all about pursuing the almighty dollar, whether it be out of necessity to live or the want of as much as they can accumulate. It's dog eat dog! No more corporate loyalty and no more loyalty from workers because they have to pursue the buck to survive. Where the Financial, Pharmaceutical, Big Oil, and Walmart own all the money, leaving the scraps for the lowly workers, who are basically slaves to them.
Most decent manufacturing jobs have been shipped off-shore to countries with cheap labor because it's better for shareholders bottom lines to produce elsewhere and ship it back to the states. And no matter how much money you throw at the corporations to bring those jobs back, they will not return. We used to be the most advanced manufacturing country in the world, no one better. Now, we are almost a third world country, hoping that someone will send US jobs that pay decent wages.
Corporate America has become so strong and greedy that they own our government and will dictate the rules they wish to operate by, the average American be damned. If this is how you wish to live the rest of your life, have at it. I choose not to.
The average Congress person, if they're not millionaires when they enter Congress, they are by the time they leave.
Graft is rampant, because they know you won't kick them to the curb, You continue to elect the same people because, even though Congress has about a 7% approval rating overall, it's not MY rep or senator that's crooked, it's someone else's fault.
I believe that unless we, as a country, elect persons that have values other than greed, we are doomed to the same scenario I have just described. We will not turn it around!
People say 70 is too old, that our ideas are outmoded, that we don't understand how life really is. Well, I beg to differ with you. I have lived that life and I can't be bought! I care about the children and the less fortunate. I care about the disabled and the sick, and I'm telling you, we must find a better path or we are doomed to this type of life. If that's what you want, have at it. But I don't and I won't.
Dennis O'Connor #Resist2018 dennismoconnor.com