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“Slavery in the Union”

"’We must ensure that all life is treated with the dignity it deserves,’ President Bush declared during his final State of the Union address. He then segued into a call to ban human cloning. He didn’t talk about dignity in terms of ravaged pensions, working longer hours for lower wages, and the loss of healthcare and other benefits. He didn’t talk about dignity in terms of the rise in poverty – 37 million Americans, one in eight citizens now living below the poverty line in the wealthiest nation in the world. And he certainly didn’t talk about dignity when it comes to migrant workers in Immokalee, Florida where – as Senator Bernie Sanders told me just days before Bush’s SOTU – ‘the norm is a disaster, and the extreme is slavery.’"

Read Katrina vanden Heuvel’s entire article.