Nurses Out To Save The Country
When the country is suffering under relentless onslaught from Wall Street, when even the mighty and the mavericks have cowered down to the forces of the banksters, words of hope are coming from an unlikely source—the nurses’ union.
The powerful nurses’ unions staged a demonstration just ahead of this weekend’s NATO summit in Chicago, in which they demanded a “Robin Hood” tax on Wall Street, which could generate up to $350 billion a year. What they are asking for is: Levy 50 cents of tax on every $100 of trades of stocks, bonds, dividends and other financial transactions, which are currently not being taxed. Of course the Wall Street is calling foul and reacting as if it will bring the dooms-day, whereas the fact is, there are more than a dozen other nations that already have a financial transaction tax.
Is there a bright omen in the nurses’ struggle for the nation? The people who nurse the sick and the weak back to health, are they the best prepared to take this sick nation back to health?
Karen Higgins, a registered nurse and co-president of NNU, addressed the crowd in Chicago's Daley Plaza, “I've been asked many, many times ... ‘What are you doing here as nurses? ... What do you have to do with the economy?’” And she answered the question with, “We’re watching this every day. We're watching patients suffer. We’re seeing people without insurance or others who can't afford their co-pays, as well as a spike in the number of children with adult diseases due to eating poorly because their parents can't afford healthy food.” Karen proposed her solution, “We pay sales tax. It is time for Wall Street to start paying back what they owe the rest of the country and they need to pay sales tax.”
Continued on the next page
Follow Technorati