Corporate heads are not really downsizing to help the economy. They are doing it as a political protest. That is their way of telling people that if they don't vote conservative, their lives can be devistated. They used that as a tool to intimidate their workers before the last election. Companies like Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Papa John's, etc are feeling the backlash now that people are patronizing their competition instead of them in protest to their treatment of their workers.
The indication of need for Roosevelt era tactics is excellent. I have long stated that the New Deal was a stimulis package that we need the likes of today.

I won't use those resturants either - add Denny's and Chic Filet. The restaurants unhappy with Obamacare could have quietly raised menu prices and no one would have said a thing. That was too easy, they had to let the world know how they detest Obama and his policies and lash out at low paid employees.. Chic Filet is another chain that flexed an anti-gay position. The vaste majority of Americans tend to be tolerant and actions by these chains usually backfire bigtime. There is a long history of ultraconservative hostility toward labor, increased minimum wage, Social Security and Medicare. Jeb Bush, as Florida Governor, privatized many civil service functions to move state money to friends under the guise of more efficient and cheaper services. Crist, then Scott, continued this purge of Civil Service professionals that are not obedient to Republican conservative agendas. It's all very corrupt. Unfortunately, the Democrats can not claim clean hands either. Final comment, there was an attempt to overthrow FDR when he was president due to New Deal policies by monied conservatives. Check it out on the Web. Thanks for your comments.

I never really researched it, but I seem to remember, from history lessons as a child, that the great depression was under the watch of a Republican administration, with Republican economic policies that FDR fixed with the New Deal.

When Obama passed the stimulus package, I immediately saw a parallel. Especially since they said we were headed for another Great Depression.

I also remembered that I learned in school that Conservatives opposed Medicare & Social Security as Socialism.

As Sonny & Cher once said, " & the beat goes on, the beat goes on"

I have never belonged to a union, as I live in Florida, but as a child I marched with my Father on Labor Day one year in N.Y. It was a march of Union Members & I remember people cal lus names & throwing raw vegetables at us.

I never realized, till adulthood, that it was political.

My Father wasn't a political man, so I thought. Maybe I didn't know him like I thought I did.
http://newportrichey.patch.com//blog_posts/martin-luther-kings-birthday-isnt-a-second-class-holiday

Similar to the CEO's trying to get their workers to sell out, it brings to mind an example from my childhood that displayed the inability of a Teacher in trying to make young children sell out & how she was unsuccessful.

It was in the early '50s in Long Island. Most of us kids had moved out from Brooklyn & the Brooklyn Dodgers were playing their main Rival, The hated Yankees in the seventh game of the World Series. The Teacher was a Yankee fan. She had no lessons that day. Just a Radio for the game. She wrote an extensive & oppressive homework assignment on the board & announced that if the Dodgers won, that was the assignment. If the Yankees won, there would be no homework.

The kids didn't care, we rooted for the Dodgers anyway & they won that day. None of us cared about the homework. We didn't even give a thought to selling out.

I don't remember the year, but a goggle search of when the Brooklyn Dodgers won the World Series will give the date.

Main thing is even as young Americans, we didn't even think of selling out. That's the part that conservatives can't understand because that kind of thinking isn't in their make up.

Michael: I'm a sucker for baseball stories and that's a great one. I suggest that a strong minority of conservatives make a lot of noise with an extreme agenda and a lot of financial backing. However, the quiet sensible voter is still in the majority. It will be very difficult for the right wing to win national elections. Local elections are another story and the influence of conservatives can not be underestimated..

I think you are right about them not winning national elections. In many red states, they are a shoe in.
Florida is on the fence & Rick Scott is helping turn many Floridians against over the top conservatism.
On a national scale, Florida is becoming very important. We are the largest swing state. New York & California will always go blue, Texas will always go red. Flodida, with 29 & increasing electoral votes is a shift of 58 & increasing electoral votes. Whoever carries Florida will carry a Presidential election. I expected Florida to go blue this time because Rick Scott was doing a good job of delivering the state to Obama. You can say that for Presidential politics, Florida is the hub of the action. That's why I don't cast my vote for independents, like my true leanings. If people like me hadn't voted for Nader, but against Bush, Bush wouldn't have beaten Gore. Florida is important to go anti right wing.