The never-ending war on America's working class

The war on America's working class has gone on far longer than the war on terror or the war on drugs or the war on poverty.

The war on America's working class is the grand-daddy of all domestic wars.

The high-water mark of working class America's standard of living came with the Teamster's Master Freight Agreement of the late '50's. That agreement set a standard that spread out over all union contracts in all sectors of the economy.

It also attracted the attention of government. The Kennedy administration determined that the workers were getting too large a slice of the pie. All of a sudden Robert Kennedy was investigating corruption in what was then the most powerful union in the land.

It's been a downhill slide ever since. Where are unions now? A lot of your academic types want to pin the decline of unions to Reagan's destruction of the air traffic folks. That's because a lot of your academic types want to absolve the Kennedy administration.

And everone is keen to forget that unions created the modern middle class in America.

Jimmy Hoffa created America's middle class.