WILL THE DEMOCRATS BE FRAIDY CATS?

• Author: Hightower, Jim

"Trust me," bellowed the billionaire Donald Trump to working-class voters in 2016, promising hed be the champion of what he called "the forgotten Americans."

Trust him? He's a lifetime real-estate huckster infamous for ripping off workers. Youd have better odds trusting a coyote to guard your last lamb chop.

Nonetheless, many working stiffs did buy Trump's promises to stand up for them against corporate and political elites. But he quickly proved that, true to form, his promises were just another scam. Again and again, he has carelessly stiffed working stiffs, consistently siding with corporate powers to transfer more money and power from workers to corporations.

For example, candidate Trump pledged to hike the minimum wage to $10 an hour, but, once in office, President Trump coldly turned his back on underpaid workers, never mentioning--much less fighting for--any increase in our nation's shameful, poverty-level wage floor of $7.25 an hour.

Also, Trump's Labor Department, headed by anti-labor corporate executives he intentionally appointed, ruled that millions of service workers are "independent contractors" rather than company employees. Thus they are not entitled to the minimum wage, overtime pay, or other labor protections. And instead of monitoring corporate violations of wage laws, his administration announced that it would trust top executives to monitor themselves and self-report any violations.

Moreover, the Trumpsters have gutted OSHA, cutting the numbers of job-safety inspectors to the lowest level in the agency's history. As a result, it's open season on maiming workers. For example, when an assembly line worker at an Arkansas chicken processing plant had a finger cut off last September, OSHA didn't even send an investigator. The next month, Trump's OSHA "regulators" let the plant's owners speed up their assembly line. Then, two months later, another worker lost a finger. Again, Trump's job safety officials didn't inconvenience the corporation by sending an inspector.

It's true that Trump has not "forgotten" the forgotten working class. Indeed, the pampered son of privilege remembers to slap them with plutocratic policies every chance he gets.

As an old saying puts it, "Where there's a will... there are a thousand won'ts."

Sure enough, while there's a large and steadily growing public will across our country to take bold steps to battle the plague of inequality ripping America apart, here come the won'ts.

The corporate powers...