Word: labors
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Populist (or People's) Party was founded at the St. Louis Convention of 1892. Among those who came together to form this agrarian empowerment movement: the Christian Women's Temperance Union, the Farmer's Alliance, the Knights of Labor, the American Federation of Labor and the Christian Socialists. Yet almost from the outset, the Party was as negative as it was diversely constituted. Georgian populist Tom Watson, one of the Party's guiding lights, was infamous for such enlightened remarks as, "Did [Jefferson] dream that in 100 years or less...red-eyed Jewish millionaires would be chiefs of that [Democratic...
...Populist Party that arose from that ferment was short-lived, but the common-man sentiments that it crystallized lived on. Separately or together they ran through the presidential campaigns of William Jennings Bryan and Prohibition, through Teddy Roosevelt's Progressives, the left-wing labor movement and the right-wing radio priesthood of Father Coughlin. And the Republican Revolution of 1994. "But the Republican populism of the past generation or so has been all antigovernment," says historian Alan Brinkley. "Buchanan is putting back the anticorporate elements...
...surplus of losers among factory workers and middle managers alike. Investment is rising, and every week the stock market strains its own altimeter. Yet since 1991 some 2.5 million workers have lost jobs in corporate restructurings. Most have found new ones, but with thinner paychecks. Last week the Labor Department reported that wages and benefits in 1995 rose just 2.8%, the slowest pace in at least 15 years and scarcely enough to keep pace with inflation. One big reason: layoffs and other cost-cutting moves kept workers in line and their paycheck demands low. Meanwhile, corporate profits climbed 22% last...
...voters that they aren't doing as well as they were four years ago. But Democrats have the advantage of being able to taunt Republicans for their opposition to raising the minimum wage, for wanting to cut the earned-income tax credit and for their free-floating hostility to labor unions. Says Labor Secretary Robert Reich: "Foreign competition is a sideshow relative to these other factors...
What The Buying of the President cannot do is prove that policy is actually made in order to win contributions, or in response to contributors' wishes; as might be expected, rich business executives donate to Republicans and labor unions give to Democrats, but these groups have a common ideology as well as a common financial interest. At the very least, however, the money in the political system limits politicians' freedom of action, disillusions the public about democracy and distracts lawmakers by forcing them to hold constant fundraisers...