Representative Paul Holvey - Take Back America Rally Speech

Take Back America Rally Speech

Welcome to District 8. It’s a beautiful day and I wish I was talking about something good. I have a few things to say about the war in Iraq, and it is difficult for me because I am a patriot and I believe we must support the troops…my son spent a year in the Sunni Triangle in Iraq. However I do not support the policies that sent us into Iraq. Last spring I introduced House Joint Memorial 38 with Representative Shields and Senator Avel Gordly to have the State of Oregon urge the President to bring our troops home.

This administration has betrayed the loyalty and patriotism of our soldiers by putting them in a war on false pretenses with no clear achievable mission.

From talking to my son it is clear that this war is about oil and that we will never bring peace to Iraq. Our troops should not remain as a police force in a civil war. I worry that we are seen by most of the world as an occupying force not a liberating force. We should bring our troops home now.

But I ‘m supposed to be talking about something else that’s going on in another kind of war that has caused more damage to our national security, our rights and freedoms, the American pursuit of happiness, our children’s future, and has resulted in the loss of more American lives than in Iraq. It’s a class war being waged against America’s working families and the poor, it’s an economic war and we are losing.

The bush administration has put this country in debt to the tune of 9 trillion dollars,.. 9 trillion! And who’s paying for it, the American taxpayer, working families, we are and our children will have to pay for this fleecing of our treasury, our paychecks. And their solution is the Deficit Reduction Act Tax, which is cutting real dollars out of the food stamps programs, healthcare and Medicare programs, education programs and veterans benefits while providing tax cuts for the rich. Who’s the Patriot?

Where’s all this money going? A redistribution of wealth. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It’s going to the wealthiest 2% and to the corporations who have taken over our economy. And in their economy they are walking away from there responsibilities to pay their share to our society that they profit from… walking away from healthcare coverage for working families and they are running away with our promised retirement in their back pockets. That is creating poverty in our nation. They claim those tax cuts are necessary to stimulate our economy and create jobs, and keep us competitive in the global economy, and that will solve all of our problems. I don’t buy that sound bite. The only thing that’s keeping their economy going is the no limit credit card they’ve talked our political leaders into providing. And as you know the American taxpayer will have to pay for it out of our paychecks. What will happen to our economy then?

They’ve come up with Free Trade agreements to expand the global economy. Where has it gotten us? Oregon has lost 40000 jobs since NAFTA was passed and the jobs that we have created to replace those pay on average $9000 per year less. Wages for American workers have been flat at best for the last 20 years .We are being asked to compete globally in free trade agreements that have no wage standards and no environmental standards. How can we compete with the likes of Walmart factories in China, ford auto plants in Mexico textile industries in Asia, that all use virtual slave labor, closer to home how does Weyerhauser in Oregon compete with Weyerhauser in Canada where wages and stumpage fees are subsidized and environmental standards are minimal. We claim it’s not fair but the WTO says too bad, do away with your standards and work for less. That’s the real reason we are closing mills, it’s not an owl or the call for sustainable forest practices. It’s the corporate greed for more profit at the expense of living standards and a healthy planet. We need to expose The WTO for what they really are, and dismantle that organization until they understand fair trade and commit to living wages and healthy environments throughout the world.

These are not just global issues these are also local issues too. Here in Oregon we peel off billions in subsidies and tax breaks at the expense of education, healthcare and public safety with no guarantees of family wage jobs. Corporate taxes paid in this state have dropped from 18% to around 5% of our revenue collected. And now were projected to hand out a kicker refund to corporations of which over 70% are out of state. Since Measure 5 there has been a huge windfall to corporations and big landowners because they shifted their property tax burden to fund schools to Oregon income tax system, to wage earners. Walmart shifts the cost of employee healthcare to the state.

The rights of workers to join unions, and assert their right to earn a decent living is being abused. Even in Eugene there is a national delivery company that has used accounting schemes, and a series of temporary agencies to thwart workers who voted to be union. And then they fired them. These kinds of practices leave workers powerless to stand up for themselves and demand fair treatment and they undermine our local economy and standard of living. I dreamt up a solution to this one, I called the good people in Brown to ship this red and yellow operation and they’re temp agency partners out of town. Our community won’t stand for this. Then I woke up.

The point is we as a community should not stand for these kinds of unethical treatments of our neighbors. We should not stand silent as Katrina victims have still not been rescued. In short we have different points of views about solutions, but we need to engage the different organizations and groups like Jobs with justice, the environmental community, business groups, the religious community, the academic community, and our government officials, form coalitions to move solutions forward to solve injustice. As many union members know, our survival is dependent on working together and peace depends on justice and fair treatment , no justice, no peace, rings true in all disputes around the world. If your not pissed now you ought to be. We need to move that anger to a change in political leadership in this country to reclaim our rights and economic justice. We need to Take Back our America!

I’ll finish with a song…

Tax the rich and feed the poor til there are poor no more.

Peace