the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Sep 3, 2012
The Republicans officially anointed Mitt Romney on August 29, while the Democrats were lining up to give their blessing to Barack Obama the following week.
The Republicans staked out their position as defenders of the wealthy, promising not only to keep current tax breaks, but to further reduce taxes on the corporations and their wealthy owners. They may pretend this will create jobs, but decades of giving more breaks to the wealthy haven’t produced anything yet in the way of jobs for us–only more unemployment.
Promising to “get government off YOUR back,” the Republicans proposed instead to get government off the backs of the capitalist class–eliminating restrictions on industrial pollution, mine and workplace safety, and unsanitary food.
Doing everything they can to appeal to the most extreme right-wing base, the Republicans would eliminate women’s access to abortion–even, according to their vice-presidential candidate, in cases of rape or incest. They denounce marriage between people of the same sex. They inflame anti-immigrant prejudices. They give rabid support to U.S. imperialism’s wars.
They speak of the need to reduce government debt. This debt was run up by giving out tax breaks to the wealthy and by increasing military spending–but Romney and the Republicans propose to gut Medicaid, limit unemployment benefits, restrict disability payments, replace Social Security with “private investment accounts” and replace Medicare with “vouchers.”
If Obama and the Democrats win this year, it will be for one reason only: because the Republicans, spouting this garbage, handed the election over to them.
Certainly Obama and the Democrats have done nothing to recommend themselves. Obama has presided over the longest and most severe period of unemployment since the 1930s. Unemployment is worse today than when he entered the White House. He may have presented himself four years ago as the “change you can count on,” but he continued the policies Bush had laid out. He followed the Bush plans for Iraq, and even increased Bush’s war in Afghanistan. He increased Bush’s bailout of the big banks. He helped to push through a renewal of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and the corporations. He had significantly more immigrants deported than Bush did. He may finally have promised full rights to same sex couples, but promises are cheap–as shown by the promises he made four years ago about defending abortion. Democrats have continued to vote over the last four years to chip away at women’s rights to control their own bodies. Obama set up the body that has already recommended big cutbacks in Social Security and Medicare–a recommendation scheduled to be introduced in Congress immediately AFTER the election. He cut funding for all those agencies that monitor health place safety or industrial pollution, etc.–when they need more money.
This election is not really a choice between different policies–it is simply a choice between who will be in charge of carrying out the same policies, that is, of ripping us off and driving us further backward.
No matter who wins this election, the rich will get more tax breaks, resulting inevitably in a worsening of the crisis, and more unemployment. Women will face more restrictions, as will immigrants. Our situation will degrade, as more money goes to support the profits of a worn-out system that depends on war, unemployment and poverty to keep rolling along. All of that will happen, no matter who wins, unless we fight to push back the wealthy class and the politicians who defend them.
It’s true, we can sit back, wait two months to see who wins, wait another year or two or three or four to see what he will do.
But why do that? Why wait while things get worse? Why not prepare to fight–right now!
Sep 3, 2012
More than 9,000 people visited hospitals in the Bay Area for respiratory and other health problems after a fire at Chevron’s Richmond refinery on August 6, which also injured a worker at the plant.
This particular refinery has a history: it has had 13 other fires and leaks of hazardous chemicals since 1989. And this most recent fire was apparently caused by a 40-year-old, leaky pipe that wasn’t fixed.
Most refineries in the country today are aging facilities. The oil companies run them with practically no maintenance–with the complicity of state and federal agencies that supposedly inspect the oil industry for safety.
In the meantime, the profits of oil companies are through the roof. In 2011, the five largest oil companies made a combined profit of 137 billion dollars.
Take every cent of those huge profits–put it to work replacing these dangerous old facilities.
Sep 3, 2012
About three million long-term unemployed workers will lose their unemployment benefits by the end of the year. Extended unemployment benefits are ending, and neither Democrats nor Republicans in Congress are doing anything to renew them. In most states, 26 weeks will be the maximum benefits can last. In some states, like Michigan, that maximum will be only 20 weeks–five months.
In the current economy, joblessness lasts a lot longer than five months for a great many people.
For many, it is permanent. Of all the people laid off from January 2009 up to January 2011–only 56% had found another job by the beginning of this year, and half of them were working for less.
More and more jobless workers are losing their homes. With Republicans and Democrats working equally to seal their fate, the only question is: after the elections, will the shantytowns be called Obama- or Romneyvilles?
Sep 3, 2012
Our electric bills get higher and higher. And one reason is that Wall Street banks are in the electricity business–adding hundreds of millions of dollars of profit to the billions they already make from fees, loans, mortgages, government bailouts, etc.
It wouldn’t be half as bad if they actually sold electricity. No, they get paid millions of dollars for just pretending that they can sell.
Yes, it’s a scam–designed for those who have the means to enter the markets where electricity is bought and sold daily.
In 2005, JP Morgan Chase set up an energy trading arm to do just that. Then, for years, this “JP Morgan Ventures Energy Corp.” got paid millions and millions of dollars to deliver electricity without delivering one kilowatt. In just six months in 2010 and 2011, JP Morgan collected at least 57 million dollars–which electricity customers have paid for, of course.
JP Morgan used this scam against the Independent System Operator (ISO), which runs the electricity market for California, and the ISO for 11 Midwest states, from Michigan to Montana. How many other big banks and companies have been doing the same thing? And exactly how much have they stolen from ratepayers?
No one knows. But Deutsche Bank, too, is under investigation for manipulating the California market, and Constellation Energy agreed to pay a 245-million-dollar fine last March for doing the same kind of thing in New York. The ISO noticed JP Morgan’s scam in March 2011–and set new rules–only to watch JP Morgan come back 10 days later, collecting more than five million dollars in five days by manipulating another loophole!
You can make millions of dollars a day in these “electricity markets,” where you don’t have to sell electricity at all. But ONLY IF you OWN a bank. ONLY IF you have money, that is. Big money.
This is how capitalism works. Money makes money, just like that. And who pays the price? Working people, who keep seeing their bills go up and their pay go down–just so that these scam artists, these thieves, can get even richer, even more quickly.
When you have a parasite in your intestines, living off you, you do all you can to send it down the toilet. These bigger parasites, who call themselves “entrepreneurs” and other such fancy names, deserve nothing less.
Sep 3, 2012
Over the last three years, student enrollment in California community colleges has plunged by almost half a million, going from 2.9 million students in 2008-09 down to 2.4 million in 2011-12. This is happening as the number of students seeking to get into community colleges continues to increase, as students try to find a less expensive alternative to the skyrocketing costs of the regular four year colleges and universities. Not to mention all those who are trying to go back to school to get training. Many of these people have lost their jobs and are desperately looking for a way to get back into the workforce.
But instead of trying to meet the increasing need, the state government has done the exact opposite. It has cut close to a billion dollars over the last three years from the community college budget. The colleges have, in turn, eliminated 25% of all classes. By the first week of classes this year, there were long lines of people outside classrooms who couldn’t get in.
Budget cuts have also made conditions much more difficult for those attending. The cost of classes has almost doubled in the last two years. And vital services, such as remedial classes, financial aid, tutoring and counseling have been either scaled back drastically or eliminated entirely.
Hundreds of thousands of students trying to attend a community college in California have had the school door slammed in their faces–just when the need is greater than ever.
Sep 3, 2012
Dental coverage for poor adults across the U.S. has gotten dramatically worse. In about half the states, Medicaid no longer covers preventive dental care, according to a recent report by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.
This means cavity filling and tooth cleaning are not covered. Only the treatment of dental emergencies is paid for.
In practice, “emergency Medicaid” pays only for pulling teeth to relieve pain. So, a dental treatment dating back to 1846–is all that is paid for!
With emergency Medicaid, in cases of multiple tooth infections, all of a poor person’s upper or lower teeth get pulled, to allow for dentures. This is the only option that emergency Medicaid will pay for.
This situation will not improve under President Obama’s healthcare overhaul because the new law only requires dental coverage for children.
Pressure will continue for states to move Medicaid money around and cut “optional” Medicaid services–dental, optical, and prescriptions–because the new healthcare law did not fully fund Medicaid.
Whether politicians realize it or not, teeth ARE a part of the human body. Untreated dental problems can morph into huge infections.
“It’s penny-wise and pound-foolish,” said a spokesperson for the Pew Research Center. “Rather than ... a $300 filling, states are spending much more on emergency room visits.”
This is what both parties have agreed to do BEFORE upcoming November elections. Just imagine what more cuts will lie in store for the poor AFTER the elections. No matter which party controls the government.
Sep 3, 2012
In a workplace somewhere in Maryland, workers discussed Todd Aiken, the reactionary Republican Congressman who claimed that in a “legitimate rape a woman’s body has a way of preventing conception.”
A female worker commented that this scientific idiot obviously failed biology. Another woman asked, “Is there another kind of rape besides forcible or ‘legitimate’?”
A guy came in defending Aiken, saying he had apologized for what he said. A female worker yelled at the boorish guy to leave. One male worker suggested Aiken should get raped so he could tell us whether or not it was “forcible.” A woman angrily added, “these assholes have no right to tell us how to live or what to do.”
Meanwhile, no work was getting done. All in all, it was a good discussion.
Sep 3, 2012
Some board members of the Denver Public Schools are pushing their district to sue two big Wall Street banks, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, for cheating them of millions of dollars. These banks had sold the school district 750 million dollars in complex financial instruments, supposedly to help meet shortfalls in the school district’s pension plan.
As has since been revealed, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America had conspired to hold down the interest rates–lowering the payments they were supposed to make to schools. That interest rate is set according to LIBOR (London Interbank Offering Rate). This summer, another big bank, Barclays, was fined 453 million dollars by U.S. and British authorities for reporting that LIBOR was lower than what it really was for many, many years. It soon came out that all the other major banks were doing the same thing, manipulating LIBOR for their own benefit–often with the encouragement or at least knowledge of the chief regulatory agencies, such as the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve.
The Denver Public Schools and the pension funds of the school district are not alone in being cheated out of millions of dollars by Wall Street. Wall Street banks sold the same kind of complex financial instruments to countless municipalities and school districts all over the country, putting most of them deep in debt.
Sep 3, 2012
Following the London Olympic games, Abdi Bile, a popular Somali athlete who won her country’s only gold medal, talked about the tragic end of one of her colleagues. She explained that Samiya Yusuf Omar, a young 21-year-old woman who took part in the Beijing games in 2008, drowned in the sea trying to reach Europe.
In Beijing, Samiya became popular, applauded at the end of her participation in the 200-meter race, although she finished last in the final round.
She was from one of the poorest countries in the world, today under the domination of Muslim fundamentalists. Born in the year the war began, she was the oldest of six children, with the father killed in the street fighting. She was described as a symbol of perseverance, will and success.
Less than four years later, fleeing misery and trying to escape, she boarded one of those makeshift boats used by African immigrants to cross the Mediterranean. With six other passengers, she drowned while trying to get on board an Italian coast guard boat.
This tragedy isn’t an exception. The UN High Commission for Refugees estimates that more than 1,500 people died in 2011 while trying to reach the coasts of Europe. Over the past 20 years, more than 18,000 men and women have lost their lives in this way, a fate reserved for the poor of the planet.
Sep 3, 2012
Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, died in August, provoking sincere nostalgia around the world, especially among the people who witnessed his televised walk on the moon.
Many remember his words in 1969: “One small step for man, a giant leap for mankind.” Those words–which went way beyond the political situation that led to his walk–spoke to the immense capacity of human technology. It shows what is possible, what is best in all humanity. And it profoundly marked an entire generation.
But the dream of humanity rising to the level of its common interests was destroyed by the sordid reality of a disgusting social system, one which has only become more degenerate over the 43 years since Armstrong walked on the moon.
The United States in the 1950s and 1960s, that is, during what was called the Cold War, spent 12 years to prove its economic, military and technological prowess, after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, the first satellite in outer space.
Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy were willing to spend billions, not in the “interests of humanity” but simply to demonstrate U.S. military power, to show the rest of the world that it continued to hold industrial and technological supremacy.
These U.S. presidents knew very well that private enterprise operates only for profit. So the government created its own national agency, NASA, to provide the money and resources so researchers could fully use their talents. They overcame great obstacles, and the astronauts took the risk of death in space in order to be the first humans to walk on a celestial body other than the Earth.
The moon walk demonstrated the immense potential of human technology used in the service of a collective project. But the technological developments of this endeavor ended up enhancing only U.S. military efforts, the so-called Star Wars. The U.S. military turned outer space into an arena for launching nuclear weapons–to any place on the globe.
The potential for freeing the world from poverty and backwardness–something the immense industrial and economic capabilities that NASA developed could have done–that potential was wasted, even destroyed, by a system operating only for profit, with its never-ending crises.
That was the consequence of maintaining a completely out-of-date social system, that is, the capitalist system.
This world is still marked by the destruction of part of its industrial capacity in the pursuit of profit, by unemployment, and by increasing poverty. Capitalism is today destroying social gains made in education, in healthcare and in social services. The poorer parts of the world are threatened with famine while farmers in the rich part of the world can barely make a living. The total failure of the capitalist system is returning humanity to barbarism in all aspects of life.
The immense potential that humanity carries within itself remains obvious. But for that potential to develop and for humanity to live up to its dreams we must take control of all human productive activity. We will not have the future promised by Armstrong’s moon walk until we throw out this system of exploitation, capitalism.
Sep 3, 2012
For many months, nearly every politician from the City of Detroit and the State of Michigan and every media personality from the area has put out the idea that the city has no choice but to lay off city workers, slash wages and benefits, and reduce city services. The cuts are necessary, they say, because the city is in a financial state of emergency and has no money.
In reality, the city year after year has handed out huge amounts of money in tax breaks to big corporations, developers, as well as wealthy individuals moving into gentrified areas of the city. And it paid for them through increasingly complicated and shady loans from the biggest banks on Wall Street. As a result, the city now pays more each year to the banks in various forms of debt, interest payments, fees and charges than it does for public services. For the 2011-2012 fiscal year alone, the city paid 597 million dollars just to the banks.
The amount the city owes to the banks has ballooned because of boondoggled deals it made with them. In 2005, for example, the banks advised the city to invest its surplus money in Pension Obligation Certificates (POCs) that would pay out variable rates. These same banks however set fixed rates on the loans they made at the same time to the city. It was an enormously complicated arrangement, which no one had heard of before, much like mortgaged-back securities and credit default swaps that led to the mortgage crisis. When some city council members at first balked at the deal, the Wall Street ratings agencies threatened to lower the city’s ratings if they refused. At that point the city council gave in.
The city was gambling that interest rates would go up so it would make more money on its investments than it paid out in interest. The banks advising city officials knew full well the rates would go down, costing the city extra money.
These were some of the same banks that ripped off countless cities and school districts by manipulating the LIBOR rate, the interest rate the banks pay to one another. That rate sets the rates the banks charge in interest or pay in interest, to cities and to everyone who borrows.
The city of Detroit ended up owing not only on loans from the banks but also on the POCs it held. At the same time, the ratings agencies systematically lowered the city’s bond ratings, costing the city still more money in higher interest payments.
When the city couldn’t come up with the money, the banks forced more onerous payment schedules and double or triple payments. In 2009, for example, when the city couldn’t make an extra 400 million dollar payment on the POCs to UBS, the bank, helped by the state of Michigan, forced the city to turn over all its casino tax revenues and all its state revenue sharing funds to pay toward the debt that the banks had engineered to grow, despite payments the city made.
The city–which is not taxing corporations or wealthy people building new homes in Renaissance Zones and which also pays hundreds of millions each year to the banks–turns to working people, saying they have to foot the bill with high taxes and much reduced or non-existent services.
Detroit is one of the first major cities to fall victim–Birmingham, Alabama already did. But cities, counties and school boards across the country were also sucked into such schemes–and they are sitting on the edge of the same abyss into which Detroit fell.
The banks acted in common, just like the Mafia rigging sewer bids. There is only one answer to the money problems of the cities. Take over the banks. Use the vast fortunes they have accumulated in such criminal schemes to put the cities back into decent shape again.
Sep 3, 2012
Two weeks after 34 striking miners were shot dead by the South African police, the miners themselves were charged under an old apartheid law with “murder.” Yes, 270 of the striking miners were charged with murder of their fellow miners, even though official autopsies proved the miners were shot in the back by the police.
The ANC government, using terror, was attempting to break the strike. But contrary to what the government expected, the threats and charges seemed to have strengthened the miners’ determined opposition.
The strike that had begun in a platinum mine on August 10 spread to other platinum mines and then spread to other minerals like gold. One miner told a reporter “People have died already so we have nothing more to lose.... We are going to continue fighting for what we believe is a legitimate fight for living wages. We would rather die like our comrades than back down.” A different miner said, “It’s better to die than to work for that shit.... I am not going to stop striking. We are going to protest until we get what we want.... Police can try and kill us but we won’t move.”
Former and present ANC government leaders made little headway in trying to convince miners to go back to work. As of August 31, almost all the original platinum miners were still on strike and a quarter of the Gold Field miners had joined them.
“South Africa is a social, political and economic disaster waiting to happen,” said one commentator. Even the minister of justice said the murder charges were probably a mistake, causing “shock, panic and confusion” among the population. He undoubtedly remembers the important role the miners played in bringing down the apartheid regime.
The miners will have a few more surprises for the pro-capitalist government of the “new” South Africa.
Sep 3, 2012
Black lung disease has returned, killing miners in West Virginia at a rate 20 times the national average. Black lung is the disease that prevents miners exposed to coal dust or silica from breathing. It is always fatal.
And it’s going to get worse if a bill now in Congress passes. It would prevent funds going to enforce current regulations lowering miners’ exposure to coal dust.
It’s obvious that standards on miners’ health are already being ignored. Even a consultant for the National Mining Association pointed out that silica standards are not being enforced for miners: “These people are being exposed three to four times the silica exposure [standards],” said Bob Glenn.
Forty years ago, thousands of miners went on strike to gain black lung protection. And they won better regulations to be enforced on the mining industry. The rate of black lung fell by 90% in the 1970s.
But within capitalist society, nothing won is won permanently. It was the mobilization of the 1970s that enforced respect for miners’ health on the mine owners.
It will be their own mobilization that lets workers have safe conditions today.
Sep 3, 2012
Chrysler is hiring! Oh, no, they’re not hiring. If you blinked, you missed it. At 5 a.m. Tuesday the 14th, they took applications on-line only–until noon Wednesday. A stealth opening! Only if you were clued in did you get a chance to submit a resume.
Even then there were around 10,000 people who got in applications. For maybe 1000 jobs.
And they tell us that unemployment and the economy are getting better!
Sep 3, 2012
Union officials at Chrysler’s Dundee Engine Plant in Michigan have called for two “informational” meetings. That was their response to workers’ rejection of a local contract by 73%. A worker said that the contract “was purely a kiss Chrysler’s butt, we are rolling over on everything.”
One union official told workers that Chrysler might close the plant if they didn’t vote yes. Officials clearly intend to use this old stale tactic, trying to make the workers “vote till you get it right.” Union officials say that workers can’t strike.
In fact the national contract may say, “no strike”. But locally, legal grounds for a strike, such as health and safety issues, always exist. In any case, workers can strike regardless of the contract–if they are determined enough to force the company to respect their decisions.
If workers listen to fools who say we can’t strike, then it’s the same as watching our rights taken away. Waiting for others to “give” us our rights means waiting forever–and the company wins. Again!
Sep 3, 2012
“An Omar Broadway Film” is a movie featuring scenes of prison life secretly videotaped by a young inmate.
Omar Broadway was convicted of car-jacking in his late teens and was placed in the maximum-security gang unit of Newark, New Jersey’s Northern State Prison in 2004.
Some guards, disgusted with what was going on, gave him a video camera. For six months he recorded the near-daily beatings and tear gas attacks by guards. He showed how two prisoners were forced to live in cells designed to hold one. Prisoners were not issued toilet paper, soap, toothpaste, or cleaning supplies for their cells, and had to buy them from the commissary. When one prisoner’s toilet clogged and he was denied showers, guards dragged him across the floor for resisting. Omar Broadway’s footage of that scene made it to local TV news shows.
Eventually, the camera was taken away from Omar Broadway. But on the outside his mother and his brother, a videographer for Lil Wayne, found a professional director to make this feature film, which ran on HBO.
This unusual film can be requested on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, and some cable providers.
Sep 3, 2012
The CAW (Canadian Auto Workers) is in contract negotiations with GM, Ford, and Chrysler. The companies are crying that Canada is their highest labor cost in the world.
Remember that in 2011, they claimed that U.S. labor costs were the highest in the world, and they compared the U.S. with “lower cost” Canada. The UAW used that pretext to give away concessions like more two-tier second-class wages, shorter break times, skeleton medical coverage, skeleton pensions.
Now the companies are not satisfied with Canada. They are whipsawing us against each other again. They want all the concessions that U.S. workers gave–plus more. They want to take back 30-and-out retirement.
It would be completely in our interest if the Canadian workers find the way to fight back, to fight to maintain their standard of living.
We need to find all possible ways to join with them if they fight–a common fight against whipsawing, a much stronger fight.
Sep 3, 2012
Schools in L.A. Unified started early this year–in the middle of a severe heat wave. As temperatures rose above 100 degrees, many teachers and students found that air conditioning in their classrooms did not work. Many of the broken A/C’s were not fixed for days, sometimes a week or two. It’s not a surprise, given that L.A. schools have laid off so many workers in the past decade, including maintenance workers.
At an elementary school, an administrator told an inquiring teacher: “Shut the windows and blinds, turn the lights off, and tell the kids to put down their heads and sleep.”
It’s just one more admission that the students are being cheated of an education.
Sep 3, 2012
Saginaw, Michigan police have been trying to make a murder committed by six cops go away–by dragging out a so-called “ongoing investigation.”
On July 1, Milton Hall was shot more than 40 times by six police officers. The officers had surrounded Hall in a strip mall parking lot. Police say Hall was wielding a 3-inch folding knife; but some witnesses say it was actually a plastic knife from a convenience store.
Whether the knife was real or plastic doesn’t change the main fact: one man with a knife did not present a threat to six officers with guns pointed at him. And a recently released video clearly shows that. Hall was standing there with his knife, not even close to any of the six cops who were surrounding him when they opened fire.
Hall was not a threat. This mentally ill man, who had taken a cup of coffee from a convenience store, was simply uncooperative, arguing with the cops. For that, he was executed by police in cold blood! Hall’s mother called it “a firing squad dressed in police uniforms.”
After the murder, the six officers were placed on administrative leave for 30 days–with pay. In early August, the six murderers went back to work, still drawing paychecks at desk jobs.
After nearly two months of waiting for some action or word, the community had had enough. Several protests have been held outside Saginaw police headquarters, drawing several hundred people each time. But the police have still said nothing.
Obviously, Saginaw police still need more convincing!
Sep 3, 2012
In Baltimore City schools, some kids swelter in 90 degree heat with no air conditioning; toilets don’t work in some schools; 22 schools start the year with no principal. But the headquarters staff has apparently been having a ball–at the children’s expense.
A reporter using the Freedom of Information Act uncovered a half million dollars spent over the past year and a half on items like $7,000 for a “retreat,” at a downtown hotel. Yet all Baltimore City administrators live in the area. $13,000 was spent for headquarters catering, while teachers pay for toilet paper and supplies out of their own pockets. The out-of-state hotel for one board member cost $1,800, even though “guidelines” prohibit travel expenses paid for board members. School chief Alonso had a nice little $1,000 lunch to discuss his own contract–a salary of more than $200,000 per year–not including his driver’s $100,000-plus salary.
These fat cats believe they can spend anything they like from city and state tax money. Of course, they justify giving away not just thousands, but millions of dollars taken from public school funding–to go to the real fat cats: construction companies, big developers, tech companies, “educational” book companies, etc.
Those people who really run society, who have starved public education of funding for a decade, will be glad if all our anger is aimed at these local stinkers.
Sep 3, 2012
Washington, D.C. tax office supervisors were told to lower property assessments when big developers appealed their assessments. These settlements cut 2.6 billion dollars from 500 commercial properties so far this year. The assessment of downtown Gallery Place was lowered by 58 million dollars. Another developer got 25 million dollars knocked off of a dozen of his properties. “They’re just giving it away,” one city appraiser said.
With the lower assessments just for developers, the city agreed to lose 48 million dollars in property taxes.
This is one of the reasons the city has cut its homeless services funding by more than 12 million dollars since 2008, and last year cut welfare benefits by 20% for thousands of families. All this on top of cuts in medical, rehabilitative, and home care services for the elderly and disabled.
The city steals from the working poor, the elderly, the sick, and from children to give to wealthy developers.
Has anyone seen Robin Hood?
Sep 3, 2012
They say the auto companies can’t keep up with all the truck orders and that August auto sales are expected to jump 16% over 2011. But one of the reasons for the jump is what the business press is calling “easier access to credit.”
But beware. Just like the real estate bubble before 2008, banks are pushing a subprime vehicle loan scam of high interest loans on people least able to repay them. And, again, the banks will make out like bandits at the expense of people driven into debt!