One big reason why we need a Democrat President and majorities in congress:

"The Mall Of America"
OpEd in the 2/21 Washington Post, by Harold Meyerson

Excerpt:

"So we've shopped. And now we've dropped.

One of the crucial differences between the two parties this year is that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have both revived the idea of a national industrial strategy -- better late than never -- while John McCain still acts as if banks and corporations, left to their own devices, would revive our economy through their investments. Problem is, we've left banks and corporations to their own devices for decades, and they've funded the rise of low-wage, high-profit East Asia.


Nonetheless, McCain calls for across-the-board corporate tax cuts, though that money may well be bound for Shanghai. Clinton and Obama, by contrast, call for the public sector to take up the slack created by the private sector's reluctance to invest in the United States. Each proposes a construction, transportation and manufacturing strategy to retrofit America and create millions of "green" jobs. Each advocates public health insurance when private employers decline to cover workers. Each wants to make it easier for workers to boost their incomes by joining unions (and our economy still has 50 million private-sector jobs that can't be offshored in such industries as construction, transportation and health care).
The Democrats' incomes-and-industrial policy won't bring back, say, Big Steel, but it will raise wages and put more Americans to work actually making things. As a national economic strategy, that sure beats shopping."

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