When it comes to Ukraine and Russia, war-mongering neoliberals could learn a thing or two from Karl von Clausewitz

(Karl von Clausewitz)
 

The 19^th century Prussian officer and famed military theoretician Karl von Clausewitz wrote about Napoleon’s failed campaign to conquer Russia in 1812. After failing to drive the English out of Portugal and thus being unable to secure victory in Spain, Napoleon wanted to “avoid being involved in a similarly tedious and costly defensive struggle, upon a theater so much more distant,” Russia.

 

“In the case of Russia, he had against him the prodigious extent of the empire, and the circumstance of its having two capitals (Moscow and St. Petersburg) at a great distance from each other,” von Clausewitz wrote.  Still, Napoleon hoped “the weakness of the Russian government and the dissension which he might hope to succeed in establishing” might overcome the disadvantages.

 

Napoleon was wrong, as his disastrous campaign in Russia proved. Hitler would learn a similar lesson in the next century.

 

Fast forward to the 21^st century, and the neoliberal dream of regime change in Russia that would lead to its disintegration into various republics open to Western exploitation. This was the dream that prompted President Bill Clinton to lead NATO into the bombing of Serbia—long one of Russia’s staunchest allies—in the 1990s. This was the dream that prompted then-U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland to assist and applaud the overthrow of the duly elected, Russia-friendly government of Ukraine in 2014.

 

Today, signs finally exist that the futile proxy war between the United States and Russia in Ukraine may finally end as President Donald Trump upends 30 years of anti-Russian meddling and warmongering. That Trump, the bombastic, wheeling-and-dealing former real estate mogul, is leading the charge for peace is no less profoundly ironic than old commie-baiter Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, re-establishing relations with what was once a feared enemy.

 

Trump’s motivations may be simply his desire not to be overseeing a costly losing war. For Ukraine has indeed lost the war. Its troops are surrounded in Russia’s Kursk region. It steadily loses ground to the Russians along its eastern provinces. Its troops are decimated, dispirited, and desperate.

 

Yet, the neoliberals in Washington and especially across western Europe still pine for war and more war in their desire to punish and de-centralize Russia while finally ending Vladimir Putin's 25-year reign. They stupidly actually believe Ukraine could defeat Russia. The ghosts of Napoleon and Hitler finally get to laugh in hell.

 

England’s Keir Starmer, a modern-day labor leader who like his contemporaries in the U.S. loves war and hates Russians, actually believes Britain’s tiny military might can help prevent Russia from overrunning Europe (as if Putin’s Russia has any remote intention of doing that). Same goes for France’s Emmanuel Macron, who loves to rattle those sabers like some modern-day would-be Charles de Gaulle, if not quite Napoleon Bonaparte.

 

Of course, their guy in Ukraine is former comedian Volodymr Zelensky, a would-be strongman in his own country after shutting down all opposition, politically and media-wise. Zelensky got a dressing down in the White House, however, a couple weeks ago, something he’s not used to, after challenging Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s views on the war and Ukraine’s prospects.

 

At that dressing down, Zelensky lied repeatedly, saying Russia had broken peace agreements 15 times, ignoring the fact that it was Ukraine and the West, not Russia, that ultimately violated the two Minsk agreements and another peace initiative in Istanbul. Did mainstream media fact-check his idiotic claims? Of course, not.

 

Now there’s talk of a ceasefire with Ukraine and Europe quickly signing on to a deal that has little in it for Russia, but plenty for them—time to rebuild Ukraine’s defenses, pump more money into its weapons systems, and meanwhile make Russia look like its breaking the deal, not them.

 

Still, it may have been a fine diplomatic slight of hand on the Trump team’s part that got England and France even to endorse the idea of a ceasefire, thus interrupting their incessant cry for more war.

Putin says he’s all for a ceasefire in principle, but “nuances” exist that need to be addressed. He’s winning the war so why should he concede unnecessary ground to an enemy who is losing? Believe me, Putin remembers former German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitting that the West and Ukraine only signed on to the Minsk agreement to give Ukraine time to re-arm.

 

You don’t stay in power in the Kremlin for 25 years by ignoring the lies told you in the past when you’re dealing with the same liars.

 

Like Napoleon, Zelensky, Starmer and Macron believe time and continued war may ultimately expose what von Clausewitz called “the weakness of the Russian government” and cause enough dissension to allow for a Ukrainian victory. 

 

Thank goodness, Donald Trump is giving them a lesson in what the Germans used to call “Realpolitik”.

 

USAID, a front for the CIA, helped foment the Hong Kong protests that put Lee Cheuk-yan in prison

(Lee Cheuk-yan in his Hong Kong office in 2013)

 

President Trump’s current crackdown on USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) and revelations of its close relationship with the CIA and its efforts to undermine foreign governments brought back memories of my time in Hong Kong back in 2013 when I witnessed the huge pro-democracy protests there that years later led to a severe crackdown by the Beijing government.

 

Huge protests in 2019 succeeded in getting the city’s government to drop a hated extradition bill that would have sent criminal suspects to mainland China. However, the protests continued and broadened into a giant, ill-fated movement that Beijing could no longer tolerate. They continued in part due to the meddling of organizations like USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy.

 

A trip down memory lane …

 

Lee Cheuk-yan was a busy man the day I interviewed him at his Hong Kong office in 2013. A member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong as well as chair of the Hong Kong Labour Party and leading democratic activist, he had to interrupt the interview to swing over to the council in session in the same building to make brief comments on an issue under consideration.

 

We talked about the recent 40-day dockworkers strike and his role in organizing the annual pro-democracy vigil in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park.

 

“We have to support independent unions, and at the same time, democratic rights,” Lee told me. “We also have the need to support democracy in China. Unless there is democracy in China, it will be far more difficult for Hong Kong to have a real democracy.”

 

Today Lee Cheuk-yan sits in prison, serving two concurrent 18-month sentences for his role in pro-democracy rallies. He has been in prison since early 2021.

 

Lee is one of several leading activists who ended up in prison after the massive pro-democracy protests of 2019 led to Beijing’s crackdown.  Rallies such as that in Victoria Park are now banned, and their leaders are behind bars.

 

Lee might not be in prison if the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID, both fronts for the CIA in its efforts to promote subversion in areas not committed to Western interests, had not interfered.

 

Journalist Dave Lindorff, a veteran China watcher, insists the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong was always home-grown and home-led, but he acknowledges Western organizations likely interfered.

 

“Clearly, the agents of US imperialism are tireless—and utterly without principle … in their efforts to use people,” Lindorff wrote in Counterpunch way back in 2014.  “What we on the left who oppose US empire should be doing is … working to insist that the US government and its secretive agencies of imperialism butt out of Hong Kong.”

 

Although mainstream media has largely ignored USAID’s close ties to CIA subversion, alternative media abound in reports of how the $40 billion-plus organization has been key to efforts over the decades to foment pro-West protest and rebellion in nations such as Ukraine, Cuba, Georgia, Bolivia, Peru, and Haiti.

 

What mainstream media report is USAID’s role in feeding hungry children in Africa and working to contain AIDS and other diseases. They say nothing about how it helped fund the coup that overthrew President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti in 1991 and 2004, worked to overthrow the Castro regime in Cuba, worked behind the scenes to make sure opposition parties didn’t challenge the Philippines’ close relationship to the U.S.

 

Trump has fired the inspector general for USAID and appears to be working to dismantle the organization entirely and move its operations into the State Department.

 

If all USAID did was feed hungry children in Africa, it might not have come under the scrutiny of the Trump Administration.  USAID’s bloated budget, more than its covert activities, likely inspired Trump’s attack on the agency.  

 

Still, Trump’s actions have pulled the cover off USAID and exposed its role in interfering with the politics and governance of nations around the world. You won’t read or hear about it in the mainstream media, but who reads or listens to them any more anyway?

 

Donald Trump's moment of truth--workers and peace, or billionaires and war

Nearly one month into the new year of 2025 we have a new president already casting clouds over the promises and expectations of the blue-collar friendly, peacemaker tone of his campaign. Along with jobs and an end to paralyzing inflation, he promised an end to the war in Ukraine. Impressively just before taking office, he forced Israeli leader Netanyahu into a temporary peace deal with Hamas in the Gaza strip.

 

Then on inauguration day Donald Trump peopled the podium behind him with union-busting billionaires. Not much later he was criticizing Russian leader Vladimir Putin for his “ridiculous” war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Israel, with little opposition from the new president, continues its bloody rage on the West Bank and in Lebanon even if its guns have stopped firing in Gaza for the time being.

 

The roundup of undocumented migrants in the U.S. has begun as Trump promised even though there seems to be dissension within his inner circle as to which migrants are desirable and which are not.

 

Labor South is following these issues, and as it reported after the November election, the working-class voters who elected Trump are also watching. After being essentially ignored and taken for granted by the Democratic Party for decades, workers in the United States show no inclination to return to the party once gloriously helmed by Franklin Roosevelt. As they now jostle for space among all those Republican billionaires, they must remember they have the power to elect and to defeat.

 

Will Trump revert back to traditional Republican instincts that always favor the managerial class at the expense of workers? Already he has fired National Labor Relations Board member Gwinne Wilcox and NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, both viewed as pro-labor voices on the board. Wilcox is fighting the action in court.

 

Will he truly push for peace if Putin decides he doesn’t like Trump’s terms?

 

Meanwhile the failed Democratic Party continues to flounder in the wake of its devastating losses last November. Its own billionaire backers are unlikely to pursue the path Bernie Sanders tried to carve out a few years ago. More likely it will move even more to the right on economic issues. On other issues its malaise deepens as its members try to come to term with the long overdue death of identity politics. Only most of the recent candidates to lead the Democratic National Committee and the millionaire winners of the recent Grammy awards believe identity politics are still viable. Further, the party couldn’t even rely on the abortion issue to pull it over the top. What’s left?

 

Trump’s greatest promise is change. He says he’s the man to make it happen. The Deep State abhors change, and it has formidable powers to resist it. For all his bluster and big talk, Trump now has the opportunity to show the world the stuff he’s made of, who he really is. The world awaits.

 

Trump's promise of mass-deportation of immigrants reminds of another migrant family more than 2000 years ago

(The Holy Family in flight, painting by Giotto)

President-elect Donald Trump's promise to mass-deport millions of undocumented migrants in the United States is the latest chapter in the long history of human migration, one that lies at the very heart of Christian tradition in America. It's worth taking a look at another chapter from long ago. Below is a column I wrote a few years ago, but which resonates perhaps even more today.  

 

They were descendants of immigrants who themselves became immigrants.

 

Soon after the baby arrived, a dream came to the father that the little family would have to leave their homeland if they were to survive. Even the life of an innocent child was in danger in their homeland.

So the three of them—father, mother and child—left their tiny village and embarked on a treacherous journey through the desert wilderness. They were very poor and had little more than the clothes on their backs.

 

They traveled by day and by night, ever fearful they might be captured or attacked, until they finally crossed the border. They brought no documentation with them, only their humility and the father’s willingness to work hard to support his family.

 

He was a trained craftsman, good with his hands, and his work was valued even if he was paid so little he could never hope to rise out of his poverty. With his teenage wife tending to their baby, he went out among the people to earn bread and shelter for them.

 

He heard the whisperings among those in this new land. They called him and his family foreigners, outsiders, and even illegal aliens, as if they had come from the moon and their very existence was something less than human, a violation of not only the law of the land but also God’s law.

 

“They’re just here to take our jobs, to feed, house, and clothe themselves at our expense,” he heard one of them say.

 

“They don’t even take the time to learn our language,” said another.

 

“Why are they even here? Is their own country not good enough for them? Perhaps they’re spies,” said yet another.

 

“The way people like these spawn they’ll soon be everywhere, expecting their new offspring to be treated equally just because they were born here, like so many little anchors for their illegal parents. Anchor babies, that’s what they’ll be.”

 

Some of these whisperings came from the very people who benefited from his labors. They would say these things as soon as they walked away from the worksite and rejoined their neighbors and friends. Local leaders heard the comments, too, and saw an advantage in such fears, prejudice, and suspicions. So they began to talk among the crowds and, being leaders, talked loudest of all, loud enough for everyone to hear.

 

Even some of the priests joined the chorus, invoking God’s judgment from their pulpits, condemning the strangers for breaking the law and taking advantage of people’s hospitality.

 

The father and mother, already homesick, longed for their faraway families and friends. They knew many did not welcome them in this strange land, but they also feared for their child’s life if they returned home. Did their little child have any idea of all the troubles that surrounded them?

 

The father remembered how his ancestors had been immigrants to this very land many generations before and had prospered here, but then a new leader had turned them into slaves and they had left. Now he and his wife and child had returned because their own land had become hostile. When would it all end? Where was there a refuge?

 

Eventually the father, whose namesake had been a dreamer and an interpreter of dreams, had yet another dream, and this one told him the time had come to return home. So he and his wife packed their belongings, wrapped up their child to keep it warm, and journeyed back to their homeland. They had to be careful. Dangers still lurked, but at least they were home.

 

And back in the strange land where they had sought refuge, some indeed missed them. “He did good work,” one said. “You know, they never really bothered anyone,” another said.

 

But these voices were quickly drowned out by the leaders and their priests who cried “Good riddance!” and then looked for others to condemn.

Trump better deliver, or the workers who elected him may decide they have the real keys to power, not some big talk politician

Joyous confirmation as well as hand wringing, name-calling, and despair followed the 2024 presidential election that saw Donald Trump win a second term in office by a landslide. Trump and his MAGA followers were ecstatic, of course.

 

“This is a movement like nobody has ever seen before,” Trump said in his victory speech. “The greatest political movement of all time.”

 

Not so much joy on the other side of the aisle. Television commentator Joy Reid blamed “white women” for Democrat Kamala Harris’ loss. Others saw the vote as proof the United States is a racist, sexist nation.

 

What the election really proved is what Labor South has long lamented: the near-total alienation of the modern-day Democratic Party from its former base: working class Americans. Bernie Sanders, an independent but more recently a loyal fellow traveler with Democrats, said much the same after this election.

 

“This election was largely about class and change and the Democrats, in both cases, were often on the wrong side,” Sanders said in a recent Boston Globe op-ed. “The Democrats lost this election because they ignored the justified anger of working class America and became the defenders of a rigged economic and political system.”

 

Ah, Bernie, once you were a hope for America. You preached those words when you ran for president in 2016. However, when Joe Biden won the presidency four years later, you grabbed his coattails and enjoyed the ride as a powerful committee chairman in the U.S. Senate. At the end of every new critique of unhinged capitalism, you told us to support Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

 

Who would follow you today, Bernie? You’ve lost your credibility.

 

The fading voice of Franklin D. Roosevelt courses through the ruins of today’s Democratic Party.

 

(Franklin D. Roosevelt)
 

“The provision of a decent home for every family is a national necessity if this country is to be worthy of its greatness,” Roosevelt said in his annual message to Congress on January 6, 1945. “Most of our cities need extensive rebuilding. Much of our farm plant is in a state of disrepair. To make a frontal attack on the problems of housing and urban reconstruction will require thoroughgoing cooperation between industry and labor, and the federal, state, and local governments.”

 

Many Americans today cannot afford to buy a home, and many more cannot afford skyrocketing rent prices. A growing population of homelessness is witness to this. Wall Street took advantage of recent recession and foreclosure crises by buying up countless homes at bargain rates and then charging an arm-and-leg for people to get back in them.  Harris talked about providing help on down payments, and Trump talked about building new homes on federal lands.

 

Neither talked about the real culprit: Wall Street, the same Wall Street where private equity firms buy up companies like Toys ‘R’ Us and Bed, Bath and Beyond and bury them in impossible debt in order to enrich themselves at the expense of thousands of lost jobs. Neither party talks about this because both are utterly beholden to Wall Street.

 

What the Democratic Party prefers to talk about are diversity, equity, and inclusion, the issues that divide us, not unite us, issues grounded in beliefs that the United States and its white citizens are inherently racist and sexist and part of an irredeemably racist and sexist system. Hillary Clinton and other Democratic leaders past and present dismiss working class disgruntlement as the complaints of “deplorables”.

 

The Republican Party traditionally has made no apologies for listening to Wall Street instead of Main Street. Trump promises a new kind of Republican Party, but his big solution to working class disgruntlement in his first term was a giant tax cut to the wealthy.

 

What we have today is a plutocracy.

 

Trump and his billionaire buddy Elon Musk are fantastically rich, veteran members of the 1 percent club that gained nearly two-thirds of all new wealth in the world between 2020 and 2022. Erstwhile Democratic campaign worker Evan Barker wrote in Newsweek in September how she found mainly “glitz, glamor, and ostentatious wealth” in inner Democratic circles, a far cry from her Midwest upbringing. “Candidates spend most of their time talking to the rich, but the only path to elected office is to be rich, or to know lots of rich people.”

 

Many of those in those inner party circles went to Ivy League schools, where a recent study shows that one in every six students has a parent who earns more than $600,000 a year.

 

Joe Biden likes to brag he is the most pro-union president since Roosevelt. True, he once stood on a picket line and helped restore the National Labor Relations Board to some union equity. However, he undermined the railroad workers striking to get a decent sick days policy, and his underlings worked behind the scenes to bring a quick pre-election end to the Boeing workers’ strike and the dockworkers’ strike on the East and Gulf coasts.

 

Will Trump be any different?

 

“Roosevelt, though indubitably a leader, was an instrument of the popular will rather than a creator of, or a dictator to, that will,” historian Henry Steele Commager once wrote.

 

Will Trump deliver for the working class in meaningful ways? Will he end Biden’s war against Russia in Ukraine, get Israel to back off its genocide of Palestinians? Will he truly “make America great again”?

 

If not, those working class voters who elected him may decide that they have the real keys to power, not some big talk politician. The protagonist Larry Donovan in Depression-era worker-writer Jack Conroy’s novel The Disinherited talks about this.

(To the right, worker-writer Jack Conroy)

 

“I knew the only way for me to rise to something approximating the grandiose ambitions of my youth would be to rise with my class, with the disinherited: the brick-setters, the flivver tramps, boomers, and outcasts pounding their ears in flophouses. Every gibe at any of the paving gang, every covert or open sneer by prosperous looking bystanders infuriated me but did not abash me. … I felt like a man whose feet have been splashing about in ooze and at last have come to rest on a solid rock.”

 

Once workers have found that “solid rock” of solidarity and then determine that neither party will ever serve their interests, they will be the bearers of a revolution that may indeed make America great again.

A comparison of Huey Long and Donald Trump. Both challenged establishment politics, but only one delivered.

(Huey Long)
 

Back in the 1930s, Huey Long, Louisiana’s flamboyant governor and later U.S. senator, explained himself this way to reporters. “I am sui generis (one of a kind), just leave it at that.”

 

Indeed, Long was a one-man revolution in Louisiana politics, wresting control from the ruling oil barons and other so-called Bourbons, upending their arch-conservative dominance and giving the common man and woman finally a piece of the pie in their oil-rich state.

 

Long taxed the oil companies, gave the people free textbooks for their children in school, paved countless miles of roads in their dirt-patch state, built bridges, and erected a new skyscraper state capitol in Baton Rouge. And he made a lot of enemies along the way—the patrician press, the ensconced rich, and finally a doctor who assassinated Long in 1935.

 

Huey Long remains today perhaps the best-known challenge to establishment politics in American history. His is a long lineage that includes fellow left-wing Louisiana populists like his own brother and three-time governor Earl Long and later four-time governor Edwin Edwards. He’s often compared to other Southern demagogues like Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Gene Talmadge of Georgia, but unlike them Long didn’t rule from the right or even more importantly race bait.

 

(Donald Trump)
 

With Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance making a strong bid for the White House in a few weeks, taking a look at politicians like Huey Long and their appeal might be instructive.

 

Like Long in his day, Trump today is generally dismissed by an equally patrician mainstream media as a dangerous demagogue who threatens the nation’s very democratic foundation. Certainly the national Democratic Party and even some politicians in the national Republican Party despise him and desperately hope for his failure in November.

 

Like Long, Trump looks beyond party leaders and their subservient press to what they scorn as “the deplorables” (what used to be known as “the great unwashed”), people who get dirty at the workplace, who struggle to pay for a roof over their head, who wince at their grocery bills. Most of them would agree that Trump is a big mouth whose delivery often doesn’t match his wind-up, but at least he acknowledges their pain. “Brie and Chablis” Democrats are too busy touting “Bidenomics” to even see the pain.

 

Still, the comparison only goes so far. Yes, like Trump, Huey Long indeed craved power, and he ran roughshod over his political enemies. However, he also delivered the goods to the people. He gave them hope as well as a true share in the economy. In contrast, Trump peopled his administration with the same kind of Wall Street types who helped create the “Swamp” in Washington, D.C., that he decried on the campaign trail.

 

Trump tried to gut the National Labor Relations Board and more recently praised Elon Musk for firing union workers. So much for standing up for the working stiff.

 

Joe Biden proudly proclaimed himself the nation’s most pro-union president even as he continually diverted the nation’s resources into wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. Plus he betrayed railway workers who simply wanted basic rights like sick leave.  Kamala Harris struggles to find an issue in which she disagrees with Biden.

 

Regular working class folks don’t have much of a choice when they go to cast their ballots in November. Mine is going to Jill Stein, a third-party candidate with no chance to win but at least one who stands strong against Harris and Trump warmongering (Trump is as blindly pro-Israel as Biden and Harris) and she seems to have a genuine care for the well-being of average Americans.

 

This is one voter who is tired of voting for the lesser evil.        

Ralph Nader wants Labor Day to mean more than bargains and sales. He wants a day that truly celebrates and champions the American worker. The AFL-CIO said "Yes" but then bowed to the Democratic Party's "No".

(Ralph Nader)
 

Legendary consumer activist Ralph Nader believes Labor Day should live up to its name. It should be a day that celebrates working people in the United States and their right to organize and speak in a united voice.

 

Instead of being a day extolling capitalism with shopping bargains and discount offers, this coming Labor Day on Monday, September 2, could feature a variety of community gatherings, including “assemblies, rallies, voter registration drives, marches, demonstrations and even agenda-driven parades,” Nader said.

 

“We can have all kinds of events at the local level,” Nader told me in a recent telephone interview. “A compact for American workers.”

 

The events would help promote important issues such as raising the minimum wage, repeal of the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act, greater protections for workers at the workplace, and more security for their pensions, all doubly important given the presidential election in November.

 

You’d think the AFL-CIO would love the idea. They did. Nader proposed it to AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and other labor leaders and got an enthusiastic response.  Several major labor leaders were ready to act as soon as they got the green light from the AFL-CIO. They included Baldemar Velasquez of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, Sara Nelson of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, and former Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen.

 

“We thought, `This is great! We finally woke up that giant on 16^th Street (AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C.) from their slumber,” Nader said.

 

Then the Democratic Party stepped in. “On anything remotely touching on elections, they pass it by the Democratic Party apparatus,” Nader said. “The Democratic Party shut it down. `We won’t be able to control it. Don’t rock the boat.’”

 

Attempts to contact Shuler national Democratic Party Chair Jaime Harrison were unsuccessful.

 

“She doesn’t even call us,” Nader said. “It completely goes dark. They’re so corrupt and so tied to the hip of the Democratic Party they can’t even put the works in on Labor Day.”

 

As for the Democratic Party, Nader said, “they’re controlled by corporate consultant media groups. They’d rather do puff pieces like what kind of coach was (Democratic vice presidential candidate) Tim Walz.”

 

Labor Day was even at its founding something of a contentious event. It ought to be on May 1, the day it is celebrated elsewhere in the world. May 1, 1886, was the day of the founding of the “Eight Hour Work Day” in Chicago and what is considered the world’s first May Day parade. However, the subsequent deadly police confrontation and bombing known as the “Haymarket Affair” and continued labor unrest in later years rattled President Grover Cleveland enough in 1894 to proclaim a “Labor Day” holiday but to make it the first Monday in September rather than May 1.  

 

A recent Gallup Poll showed that 70 percent of Americans view labor unions favorably, the second highest level in six decades. A poll in 2022 showed 71 percent viewed unions favorably.

 

The polls indicate Americans are ready for a more robust Labor Day, one that does more than ask them to reach into their pockets and spend, one that recognizes the contributions of the working class to American society and declares a commitment to make their lives better.