"The one thing we all have in common is that we are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%."
-- From the website of the Occupy Wall St. movement
"We're going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. In theory, some of those loopholes were understandable, but in practice they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying ten percent of his salary, and that's crazy. [...] Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver or less?"
-- President Ronald Reagan, June 1985
"The one thing we all have in common is that we are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%."
-- From the website of the Occupy Wall St. movement
"Until someone goes to jail, there will be no justice done here.”
-- Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, commenting on how the U.S. Attorney is not pursuing criminal charges in the deaths of 29 miners in last year’s Upper Big Branch Mine disaster.
Of course I believe in free enterprise, but in my system of free enterprise, the democratic principle is that there never was, never has been, never will be, room for the ruthless exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few.
- Harry S Truman
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
It was working men and women who made the 20th century the American century. It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today. The 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans. The cornerstones of the middle-class security all bear the union label.—President Barack Obama, September 6, 2010
"I don't care what the unemployment rate is going to be. It doesn't matter to me."
-- GOP Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum speaking in Moline, Ill., where the jobless rate stands at around 9.8 percent.
Without unions, workers will lose many of the protections against abusive employers. Wages for all will be depressed, even as corporate profits soar. The American Dream will be destroyed for millions. And we will have a government of the corporations, by the already powerful, for the wealthy.
—Kenneth Bernstein, teacher and blogger, in a 2011 CNN opinion piece1on the Wisconsin measure to strip public employees of collective bargaining rights
"The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce. You can not weigh the soul of a man with a bar of pig-iron"
Samuel Gompers