The unions are already telling us that our future is in jeopardy if Obama isn't re-elected. Black leaders like Jesse Jackson chime right in -- as do leaders of various immigrant groups and women's rights organizations.

Their strongest argument comes from the Republicans themselves -- who today are contesting with each other to see who can spout the most reactionary garbage.

Rick Santorum, for example, says a woman who is raped should be forced to bear the child of the man who raped her. And every last one of those vile Republicans jumps on the bandwagon, morally condemning abortion and, thus, the women forced to choose it.

They line up, one after the other, to call for a wider war in the Middle East. Everyone but Ron Paul, and he is denounced by all the other Republicans when he says what is obvious, that the U.S. blockade around Iran is an act of war.

Ron Paul, in turn, says we should get rid of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The others hide their intentions behind code words. They offer us private savings accounts instead of Social Security, private medical insurance instead of Medicare. And they'd slash Medicaid even more than Obama already has.

Michelle Bachman said, "deport every 'illegal' immigrant" -- even little children. The others hint they might make exceptions for some children, but they rush to back the various anti-immigrant laws passed by the states.

Every one of the Republicans attacks unions. Not for the reasons most workers today criticize the leaders of the unions, which is that they don't lead a fight against wage cuts and job cuts. No, the Republicans attack the unions simply because the unions exist, that is, because workers have the legal right to be organized.

Romney, who has expressed all these reactionary positions, just in a slightly less extreme way, may turn out to be the nominee. But the Republican primary campaign has already spewed poisonous garbage into the political atmosphere.

So, some workers, who today are fed up with Obama and the attacks he has spearheaded, may end up pinning their hopes on the Democrats again -- simply because the Republicans are so bad.

And they are. But that's a little like choosing to be executed by lethal injection instead of the electric chair -- because the electric chair is so gruesome.

In either case you're dead.

For four decades, under Republicans or Democrats, the standard of living of working people has been pushed down by the bosses' incessant striving for more profit. The rich have become richer; the poor, much poorer; and nearly everyone else has sunk into poverty or is teetering on its edge. And the politicians have turned more money over to the wealthy by cutting public sector jobs, public services and social services.

Alternating between Democrat and Republican hasn't stopped our nosedive. It's simply diverted us from taking on the real problem: the continual push by all the bosses to cut jobs and to cut wages.

That's what we have to fight against. Those are fights we can make. Now. We don't have to wait for next November. We can start in the places where we work, especially in the biggest workplaces. A fight started in one workplace to defend our jobs and wages can spread to other workplaces, all up and down the line.

Facing the economic crisis, we have to defend ourselves. There is no time to waste. It's a long time until November. We can make a lot happen before then. Fights that break out now can put whoever wins the election in a corner, making it impossible for him to impose greater sacrifice on us.

Montiel had been head of the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA), which is responsible for running public housing for about 60,000 of Los Angeles' poorest people. In 2010, Montiel introduced a plan to begin to privatize some of the city's public housing projects -- turn them over to private developers and managers. Tenants of these projects protested the plan since it would mean big increases in rent, not to speak of put them in danger of losing their housing all together. To stop the protests, Montiel threatened to evict the protesters immediately.

Protestors revealed that Montiel's compensation package was worth nearly $450,000 annually, including 10 weeks of vacation and a housing allowance. Montiel escalated the scandal by exposing how members of the housing board were reimbursed with public money for staying at extravagant hotels, eating at expensive restaurants, taking limousine rides and shopping for gifts.

The board retaliated by firing Montiel. It then paid him 1.2 million dollars in severance to shut him up. Of course, the money didn't come out of their pockets, but the money supposedly earmarked for public housing.

They live quite well, don't they -- these vultures who masquerade as "public servants"!

This is not a minimum wage -- it's a starvation wage!

Baltimore City Health Department decided that this year, the temperature has to be 13 degrees or colder to activate Code Blue for the homeless -- when additional beds and services must be provided. This is 7 degrees colder than last year, when it was 20 degrees.

Why? City officials say it is to make Baltimore the same as other cities. And to prevent people from losing sensitivity to the plight of the homeless.

What? They want to freeze a few people to death so the rest of us will be more "sensitive"?

Who can believe this BS? We are in an economic crisis, which has caused the number of homeless people in Baltimore to shoot up from 3,400 people two years ago to 4,100 right now.

Thirteen degrees?

Even if it's with the "wind chill factor," this is nothing but a decision to let some people freeze to death.

D.C.'s sewers are old, like this one built in 1889. These should have been replaced decades ago as opposed to the repair-as-it-falls-to-pieces method currently in place.

Some D.C. residents actually thought that since our water and sewer bill had gone up 50 percent in the last four years the city had finally figured out that flushing toilets are superior to chamber pots and raw sewage in the streets.

They obviously gave way too much credit to the city.

What makes these statistics even more outrageous is that about half those poor children in California have at least one parent working full-time.

This is the inevitable consequence of decades of attacks on the working class -- bosses cutting jobs and workers' pay to increase their own profits, and government cutting back on public programs and services in order to hand out more money to the bosses.

The first measure is a cut in the payroll tax to fund Social Security. This will be the second year that Congress has cut this tax. In the short term, it left more of what working people earn in their pay check. But the money they are keeping would have gone to fund Social Security. You can bet that in the future, the politicians will turn around and use that as the excuse to cut Social Security benefits for retirees. They already are. Right-wing publications, like Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard which openly opposes Social Security, have applauded cuts in Social Security payroll taxes.

The second measure was presented as the continuation of extended unemployment for the long term unemployed. But the fine print in the law specifies that the final extended benefits program is available only in states where the unemployment rate has risen significantly over the past three years. Of course, unemployment started to skyrocket in big parts of the country more than three years ago. So, even though unemployment remains extremely high, this rule means that in 11 states, including Michigan, Ohio, Rhode Island and Oregon, the maximum unemployment benefits are being slashed by 20 weeks from 99 to 79 weeks, and less in Michigan, which just slashed its own payments by six weeks.

It was a New Year's gift from Obama to the capitalist class. And, by the way, he hopes we will fall for his big lie, pretending it's a gift to us!

In the meantime, most businesses will now not pay taxes and those few corporations that still do pay taxes will pay a lot less.

Governor Snyder claims this will "create jobs." In reality, it will only "create" more rich people, more poor people, and more inequality.

* * * * * *

For the fiscal year that closed on September 30, 2011, the state ended up having a big budget surplus -- so big, they still don't have an accurate amount. Estimates say it could be anywhere from 500 million to almost a BILLION dollars.

That money came from cutting our jobs, reducing revenue sharing to cities, cutting school funding, and throwing kids off cash assistance.

Now legislators are trying to figure out ways to get this money to their rich friends!

The new law reduces the number of weeks workers are eligible to receive unemployment from 26 to 20 weeks. This in a state that has seen its official unemployment rate remain above 10 per cent since the end of 2008.

The new law also broadens the definitions of absenteeism, theft, and drug abuse as reasons for being denied benefits.

Those lucky enough to receive benefits can now lose them if they refuse work, even if it is outside their previous area of experience, so long as it pays just slightly more than they receive on unemployment. In other words, accept a pay cut of more than 35 per cent or lose your unemployment check!

The law also includes stricter requirements for people to report where they went to look for work and to whom they spoke. With unemployment as high as it is, very few businesses even accept applications.

Michigan is not alone in attacking unemployment benefits. In the last year, two others, Missouri and South Carolina, also reduced their weeks of eligibility from 26 to 20. Florida reduced its to between 13 and 23, depending on the unemployment rate, and Arkansas reduced its to 25 weeks. Like Michigan, Florida and South Carolina are states with high unemployment and the others are not far behind.

It would seem crazy for the states to be cutting unemployment benefits when unemployment remains high. But the bosses are crazy like a fox. Unemployment is a tool they use to force workers to accept low wages and poor working conditions. The new laws help them do it.

To cover themselves, the legislators decided to give something to ordinary taxpayers. So each person in Illinois will get a tax exemption worth ... $2.50 per year!

The Arab League wanted to find a way out of the crisis from within the Arab states. Evidently, if their intervention could calm the popular revolt against the Syrian regime that has been continuing for months, it would benefit all the leaders of the Arab states who are worried about their own positions.

The naming of Sudanese General Mustapha Al-Dabi as head of the delegation of observers did not bode well, however, given that he is the former chief of the military secret services implicated in the repression of the population in Darfour. And the result of the first eight days of the presence of the observers confirmed the impression.

First of all, except in his visit to the city of Homs, where the residents were savagely repressed, the Sudanese General stated that he observed nothing “very shocking.” Nothing worse than in Darfour, to summarize!

With observers or not, the security forces of the regime continue to massacre the demonstrators, killing another 150 people in one week, added to the some 5,000 victims of the repression since the beginning of the crisis. As for the 14,000 prisoners taken during this time, many of whom have been tortured, only 755 have been released.

The number of observers has climbed to 500. But no matter what their number, they do not protect the populations. The president of the Arab Parliament, representing the Arab League, has even admitted that the Syrian regime continues to massacre innocent civilians, underlining “an increase in the violence” including “more deaths, including of children, and all that in the presence of the observers.”

In any case, this tragi-comedy of the observers has not disarmed the anger of the population. The hundreds of thousands of people who responded to the calls to demonstrate on December 30 and 31 in Doma, and who faced the nail-bombs that the repressive forces launched to disperse them, is proof that the determination of the population to rid themselves of this dictator has not fallen.

On December 26^th, 250 airport security agents, in their eleventh day on strike, voted to continue the strike. By now, almost everyone has learned about the situation of these airport contract workers. They work seven days out of seven, even Sunday, for hardly more than the minimum monthly salary. They’re forced to work long stretches at a time, standing, without a cafeteria or a decent break room. Others work part time with only four hours work per day. Their revolt made itself heard, and that’s the success of their strike.

Yes, the workers have made themselves respected and this week they saw management back down step by step. Government officials wanted to prevent the agents from marching in the terminals, and so they mobilized police, equipped like Robocops. Well, for ten days, the strikers met in the big hall of one of the terminals and 400 to 500 of them went through all the terminals, addressing the other workers and the passengers, and denouncing the presence of police at their work stations.

So the arrogant bosses of the security companies who didn’t want to discuss had to open national negotiations. They didn’t want to speak about money, and they also had to give in on this.

But the negotiations gave rise to a funny comedy! The first two sessions, where nothing resulted, were held at the big Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris, where the workers came in with a big delegation of strikers. This profoundly displeased the government’s Minister of Transportation, Mariani. So the bosses and the government mediator moved the negotiations 18 miles away to Gare du Nord in Paris, and limited it to union representatives. Nevertheless, striking unionists from the airport were present, keeping their fellow workers up to date and making their voices heard. This irritated one the bosses who said, “This isn’t a direct democracy here.” Yes, that’s right!

The bosses, while refusing any negotiations over the demand of a raise of 200 Euros a month ($260) and payment for strike days, ended up proposing on Christmas eve to double the individual performance bonus, up to a month’s pay �" but with only 400 euros guaranteed, and the rest submitted to unpredictable and arbitrary criteria, just like before. Further, this bonus isn’t paid to those with less than one year of seniority �" which is the case with many workers due to the high turnover. But at the very end, the bosses added an increase of 1.6 euros a day to the basic bonus, equivalent to a 370 euro ($480) increase a year. Finally, they said they’d keep 100% of the workers in case there’s a change in contractors, which hadn’t been the case before. But they had the effrontery to pose an ultimatum: if their proposal wasn’t accepted by noon the next day, Saturday, it would be withdrawn!

Despite that, the strike continued. On Saturday, more than 50% of the 4,000 workers were on strike, and on Sunday, 38% of the Paris airports were on strike, despite double time pay for the day. The strikers refused this proposal, deciding it wasn’t what they demanded.

But on December 26^th, unions other than the CGT (General Confederation of Labor) signed the agreement, often against the advice of their elected union stewards at the big De Gaulle airport, and of the general assemblies. Many expressed their anger against the unions signing.

If the strikers weren’t able to obtain what they demanded, they nonetheless got an agreement which affects the 10,000 workers at all the security companies at the country’s airports. They made the bosses retreat. They are proud of their struggle and of being heard by all the country’s workers.

Using aerial surveillance provided by a U.S. produced Heron drone, Turkey carried out a lightning military attack on the Iranian border. For 45 minutes, war planes dropped powerful bombs. As a result, 35 poor Kurdish villagers died. They had crossed the border over to Iraq to smuggle in oil to earn 50 Turkish lira, or $27. Most of them were under 20, and a number of them were of school age.

Now, Turkish politicians promise to find those responsible and prosecute them. Maybe they’ll find a soldier to accuse who ordered the air attack. But the politicians are the ones responsible....

When they got photos from the Heron drone showing a group of people on the border, the decision to bomb was made in the Turkish capital, Ankara, without alerting local authorities and without checking with the local police. The local authorities are thoroughly up to date about border smuggling and were aware when it was going on.

Now they say that there couldn’t be so many border smugglers. What does that mean? Given how much unemployment and poverty have increased, village income has been reduced to nothing. The number of those willing to risk their lives for 50 lira could only increase.

Maybe if there were fewer victims, as in the past, they would have been able to stifle the affair by saying that the smugglers were only PKK terrorists. This is how they recognize the rights of the Kurds!

This affair shows how ready the political leaders are to shed blood, how much savagery they can use to defend their order. This violence used today against the Kurds, tomorrow can be turned against workers anywhere in Turkey who struggle for their demands. In the past, in Turkey, the local and national police have often been turned against the workers. That can happen again.

As workers, our interest is to see the end of these military interventions and police and state actions. The Kurdish people must have their rights. It isn’t only a question of solidarity, but of the common interest of the Kurdish people and the whole working class of Turkey.

The NDAA includes sections that authorize the indefinite detention and torture of U.S. citizens by the U.S. military! That is, a U.S. citizen can now be as easily "disappeared" as in any banana republic.

If detained by the military, a citizen is totally deprived of rights. No right to know the charges; no right to face the accuser; no right to trial at all, let alone a jury trial, let alone a speedy one; no right to legal counsel; no right to remain silent -- absolutely no civil rights whatever. A person could be kept in prison for the rest of his life with no charges being filed at all.

Although Obama tried to shift the blame, these sections were specifically demanded by his Administration, as Senator Carl Levin told the Senate.

The NDAA takes up where Bush's infamous Patriot Act left off. Now, not only can a citizen's phone be watched and their library reading spied upon. If caught speaking to the "wrong people" or reading the "wrong things", a citizen can be accused of a "belligerent" act and be "disappeared" into military custody -- for as long as the military and its Commander-in-Chief desire.

We are told this law is anti-terrorist. If that were so, then the government would not need it! There is already a vast oversupply of laws perfectly usable against any conceivable form of terrorism. No, this law is calculated for use against the coming protests and rebellion in the population.

The government understands that the "Occupy" protests are merely a hint of the rebellion to come, as deep recession and unemployment continue, as social services and safety nets are more and more cut back, as desperation grows at the bottom and middle of society -- while billions of needed dollars are hoarded by multi-billionaires at the top, and kept unproductive. In the service of those billionaires, the government now prepares the mechanisms to use against anyone who may fight for something better in life -- something better that might require a bit of sacrifice from the billionaire class.

This is not the first time that the Bill of Rights has been cancelled for certain selected citizens. Bush's Patriot Act itself cancelled the rights of privacy, association, and free speech, and led to harassment and persecutions of many who opposed the Iraq War. Members of the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee and of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization are still under threat of indictment by a federal grand jury in Chicago.

The McCarthy persecutions of the 1950s also threw aside citizens' rights and caused many to be blacklisted, indicted and jailed for no other crime than using their rights of speech and association -- and, not by coincidence, using those rights to organize unions, to fight for workers' rights on the job.

The law signed by Obama also harks back further, to 1940, to the arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of 28 militants of the Socialist Workers Party -- merely for saying in writing that they were against the new capitalist world war. Those jailed included the most important leaders of the Socialist Workers Party and the core Midwest leadership of the revitalized Teamsters Union. Those militants had led the 1934 Minneapolis Teamster strikes, and springing from there, directed a surge of Teamster organizing among drivers and warehousemen across the entire Midwest. Depriving citizens of their rights was handy when it came to taming a workers' movement, too!

Obama didn't only sign a Pentagon appropriation bill. He signed a threat against anyone who decides to fight against any of the capitalists' plans.

Which only goes to prove how necessary it is to take up the fight against such unbridled, arrogant power.

Cat points to its U.S. plants that have only half the labor cost of the Canada plant, due to previous UAW concessions! Cat is using cheap U.S. labor to threaten the Canadian workers.

Cat is riding high with record corporate profits. But that doesn't satisfy its greed. This is nothing but international whipsawing -- taking down first one, then the other, in the race to the bottom.

Several of the targeted schools have fought back. Teachers at Piccolo and Casals elementary schools canvassed their neighborhoods, discussing with neighbors and parents. Teachers at Casals drew up a fact sheet refuting the Board's reasons for closing the school. Together, teachers, students and parents of the two schools organized an after-school protest.

Parents at Christopher House Elementary circulated a petition protesting the decisions to open a UNO charter school on their school's campus. More than 1000 community members signed it including almost all the parents. UNO is a charter school network run by a friend of Rahm Emanuel.

The night before the December Board meeting, the teachers union organized a rally of five hundred outside the board, including teachers from the targeted schools, students, parents, and other activists, including from Occupy Chicago. About forty stayed overnight to be in line for the board meeting the next day.

At the Board meeting itself, the audience decided it had had enough of the Board's lies. A parent got up to speak during CEO Brizard's presentation, backed up by members of the audience. When security escorted the parent out, others intervened, until the School Board retreated into its private chambers. The teachers union continued the public meeting, with parents and staff presenting their problems in the room without the Board.

A week later, there were rallies at eight of the schools targeted for closure.

People need to go on fighting to keep their schools. Closing schools and opening charters benefits no one, but some real estate interests -- displacing poor children out of neighborhoods where condos are to be sold to upper class people. But this policy has not meant educational improvement for the students.

If the past ten years in Chicago Public Schools have shown anything, it is the failure of the policy being pushed by Emanuel and Arne Duncan, former chief of Chicago Schools and now Obama's Education Secretary.

No, the war is NOT over. First of all, there are still two large bases, with 4,000 U.S. troops -- only now, they are called "employees" of the State Department. An "Office of Security Cooperation" has been set up, with civilian and military personnel attached as "trainers" and "advisers" to the Iraqi army. There are at least 40,000 private military contractors in Iraq -- mercenaries, bought and paid for by the U.S. government. The massive U.S. embassy in the Green Zone is being expanded, with 16,000 people attached to it. Two new U.S. "outposts" were recently put in place in northern Iraq. U.S. troops are garrisoned in Kuwait. The U.S. Fifth Fleet is stationed in the Persian Gulf, complete with aircraft carriers. The same U.S. air bases, from which combat missions were flown last year, continue to operate in U.S. client states around the region. And the sectarian militias -- including the Shiite militias which were transformed into the Iraqi army -- remain armed and an ever-present danger to the population. Their arms and money come from the U.S.

No, this war is NOT over. The U.S. has just shifted the military means it uses to control Iraq's oil.

That was the essential reason for this war: oil. Not weapons of mass destruction. There weren't any. Not Iraqi nuclear facilities preparing nuclear weapons. There weren't any. Not Iraqi involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. There was no Iraqi involvement. Not bringing democracy to Iraq -- the U.S. brought only civil war, which still continues.

Oil was behind this war. Just as it's behind the continuing occupation of Iraq today by other means.

Before the war, Iraq controlled and ran its own oil fields. Today, Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and ENI run the only important facilities producing oil. And two American companies, Halliburton and Baker Hughes, service those oil fields.

To hand over the profits from Iraq's oil to big multinational companies -- that was why the U.S. invaded Iraq. It's why U.S. imperialism continues the occupation of Iraq by other means.

Bush lied. Obama lied.

This war, no matter how it continues, will live on in the scars and memories of people for generations, just as did the U.S. war on Viet Nam.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have already been killed. Hundreds of thousands more Iraqis wear the scars and permanent disabilities of injuries suffered. Millions of Iraqis, driven from their homes, still live in other countries or are displaced in their own country. Services required by the population, destroyed by U.S. bombing, still barely function. Electricity is sporadic; clean water, a fiction. The impact of this war will not soon be over for the Iraqi people.

Nor will it be over for the 7,000 American families who lost a loved one -- killed in the war or lost to suicide afterwards. It won't be over for the more than 600,000 U.S. soldiers returning with disabilities. The war is an ever present companion to the hundreds of thousands coming back with PTSD and other psychological wounds endured in a war fought mostly against civilians.

These are the costs of a U.S. war of aggression directed against other people.

The same multinational companies and financial interests, which exploit us here, engage us to carry out wars of exploitation against other people. And the same government helps them carry out both wars.

Today, many of us are outraged at the way these class forces and their government drive down our standard of living, destroy public services, eliminate social services and tear up the public school system.

We should be outraged. They are carrying out a war against us here. But the war here is only part of the war they carry out around the globe.

We should be outraged at both kinds of war -- and decided to stand up against both.

They say it's recovering, because housing sales are up. Yes, but why are the selling prices going down? Because banks are dumping their toxic mortgages as fast as they can. The dumping is lowering prices, undercutting still more those homeowners trying to sell their homes. Going deeper underwater is not a recovery!

They say it's recovering, because the unemployment rate is getting better. But why is the number getting better? Because the workers who long ago exhausted their benefits are now dropping off the charts. So many are discouraged that they don't look for work every month. The government doesn't count these workers -- sweeps them aside like they aren't there anymore.

In the two months before Christmas, only 300,000 more people found work -- temporary work for the holiday season. But what about the 24 million workers who need work NOW? At that rate, it would take more than 13 years to employ 24 million -- even if Christmas came every two months!

The politicians tell us to elect them either because they are businessmen, or, because they will give tax breaks to help businessmen, whom they call "job creators." Only in the mouths of liars hired to sell the idea that down is up and up is down! Businessmen as a group have laid off 6.3 million workers since the beginning of 2008. Job eliminators!

But maybe the "job creators" simply lost too much money and couldn't pay workers to keep working? Just the opposite! While laying off millions of workers, the corporations, banks and investment funds were stockpiling billions in cash. Too much cash to count.

Today the "private equity" investment funds as a group have over half a trillion dollars in unspent cash hoards. And corporate giants as a group hold more than two trillion more dollars, stashed away unspent. The banks as a group have many trillions more, gifted to them by the government bailouts. The capitalists call this "dry powder" -- money laying in storage.

In storage, when 24 million workers need work! In storage, when society's basic infrastructure -- housing, schools, utilities, roads -- is falling to pieces.

The capitalists say it's their money. But, no. Money represents a social product. It can be a social tool. Value is created by the daily work of millions, using machinery and materials worked up by earlier millions. Money represents accumulated social value.

Society needs that money, now. It must be put to work -- regardless of the claims of a few greedy hoarders.

Those many trillions of dollars could provide jobs for everyone who wants to work. If the demand for goods isn't enough at first to employ everyone for a full 40 hours, then the work can be shared out, while everyone gets a full check to live on. The bosses have jammed three people's jobs into one, already. Every job can be slowed down, made safer, unwound back to three jobs.

Those several trillions of "dry powder" could be taken and used by society to provide a decent improved standard of living. Houses could be well fixed up, medical care could be well provided, students could be well educated, public services could be well restored. Needed work of all sorts could be done and done well -- if those hoarded trillions were put to intelligent use, invested in real work.

The resources exist. The housing that is now vacant, the office buildings now standing empty "for lease," the factories now chained shut, the equipment and tooling now idle -- and yes, the money now hoarded up. Everything is right here at hand, all that society needs to hum and come to life again, and promote the general welfare.

The workers who have produced society's store of "dry powder" have a right to reclaim it, and put it to work, doing the work that needs doing.

Romney's "defense"? That's how "investment income" is taxed. It's true -- in the past two decades, the White House and Congress, under both Republican and Democratic control, worked together to pass one tax cut after another on "capital gains."

The accurate name for that type of income is unearned income. While workers face higher and higher taxes on the money they earn from their work, those who make money on money -- that is, the rich -- pay less and less tax. According to the Congressional Research Service, after-tax income, adjusted for inflation, rose by about 75 per cent for the top 1 per cent from 1996 to 2006, while it dropped by about 5 per cent for the bottom 20 per cent. And the top 0.1 per cent doubled their income.

Yes, Romney, who uses his money to get even richer, needs to be put on the hot seat. But how about the rest of his class -- the big industrialists, bankers and "private equity" speculators?

How much is "not very much"? More than $374,000 from February 2010 to February 2011!

For that amount, many of us have to do real work for 10 years, clocking in and out every single day.

Sure would be -- and our biggest risk comes from religious fanatics (or cynical politicians) like Santorum. He would like the United States to be governed by Biblical, Old Testament law.

What?! He thinks there's a difference?

Would he like to enforce Biblical prohibitions against abortion and homosexuality? Undoubtedly -- that's part of his right-wing platform. How about contraception, adultery, or children talking back to their parents? All are forbidden in the Old Testament -- and all are punishable by death!

How is Santorum's Christian backwardness any different from the Taliban's Muslim backwardness? Religious reaction is religious reaction -- no matter which religion it is.

Michigan's real unemployment rate in the 2011 fiscal year was at 19.2% -- when you include all those without jobs who are left out of the official statistics -- discouraged and part-time workers.

This new law will drive down wages by pressuring workers to accept a lower-paying job when their unemployment insurance is cut.

"Reform" -- it's another word for giving more money to business!

People who know Ocampo painted a picture of him that's anything but that of a gruesome murderer. In fact, he was known to be compassionate and generous to the poor and homeless.

Ocampo himself comes from a family that has lived with the reality of unemployment and homelessness. His father lost his job as a warehouse manager in 2005, and has not found steady employment since then.

Ocampo is an Iraq war veteran. In 2006, the year after his father lost his job, the younger Ocampo joined the Marines. A friend who had basic training with Ocampo said he was "really motivated" and "gung- ho" then.

Ocampo acted very differently when he came back in 2010 after two years of deployment in Iraq. A roommate said he would wake up screaming twice a week. His brother said he would look for bombs in the closets and bathrooms at home. He had trembling hands and hallucinations. His behavior got worse when a Marine friend was killed in Afghanistan.

Upon his return from Iraq, Ocampo also found his father living under a bridge. And he himself met the scourge of unemployment. His brother said Ocampo was always applying for jobs, including at Wal-Mart and other stores, but they would never call him back.

Whatever led him to become a ruthless murderer, if he is the one who killed these men -- one thing is for certain: Izzy Ocampo is a victim of the Iraq war and unemployment.

And the four homeless men who were killed are victims of a war as well -- for there are two different kinds of wars going on. One is waged by the U.S. military, invading other countries -- spreading misery in those countries. The other is waged by U.S. companies, laying off workers -- spreading misery and homelessness in this country.

Both wars are waged on behalf of the rich, to make them richer. Ruined lives are the price -- and workers pay it.

The shipping company, Carnival Corp., of which Costa is an affiliate, hurried to throw the entire blame on the Concordia's captain. It does seem he steered the ship onto the reefs and then was incapable of pulling it off. And he abandoned the ship before all the passengers and crew were safe.

But what the shipwreck really shows is the risk of bringing together thousands people, among whom were very few professional sailors, in what more resembled a floating casino than a ship on the high seas.

In fact, several hours were needed to evacuate everyone. Yet the weather was good and the ship ran aground very close to an inhabited, well-lit coast from which aid came. However, even if the lifeboats had all been operational, the crew had no way to rapidly evacuate thousands of panicked and inexperienced people in an unknown and dangerous environment. What would have happened in the case of fire or storm in the middle of the ocean? What would have happened if the Concordia had sunk instead of running aground?

In order to cut the cost per passenger, cruise lines buy larger ships, needing larger crews, to provide swimming pools, casinos, supermarkets, gyms, ballrooms, even floating gardens and an elevated train on the ship. In this way, shipowners create floating cities. In order to go so close to the coasts that tourists can touch the rocks or to maneuver between two supertankers, cruise ships draw the least possible water, making them extremely unstable in the case of strong winds. There have been several incidents in the English Channel and the Caribbean with cruise ships floundering.

Despite this, the shipowners build ever bigger ships. The next generation will carry 8,000 people aboard. The same logic of profitability prevails in the entire shipping industry. So ships with 13,000 containers stacked in eight layers above the deck go through the English Channel every day, almost blindly. They are way too heavy to be towed to rescue in case of accident. But who cares? They are already building even bigger ships.

This race for size is a race for profit. Carnival had almost two billion dollars in profit last year -- 12% of its income. Let the ships sail on!

Not quite! The cost of putting solar panels on a home is $90,000. Only the well-off can afford it. This is where banks step in. They offer to put on the panels for free, then charge the homeowner for electricity. But the banks get all the tax credits.

And then run off! They sell the installed panels to investors, just like they did subprime mortgages and student loans. Rates go up and the consumer gets stuck with the electricity bills. All in the name of "green energy."

Unfortunately, people couldn't get close to his house -- he lives in a private, gated community. Fortunately, the crowd was loud enough to be heard well beyond those locked gates.

The 1930s: A Determined Attack on the Working Class

After the stock market crash of 1929, the following years saw enormous cuts in production, employment and workers' income.

The bosses drove down the average weekly pay in auto from $33 a week to $20. In addition, there was speed-up, a vicious drive for increased productivity. In the face of a disastrous depression, the big capitalists were determined to preserve their profits.

The Working Class Begins to Resist

Three years after the stock market crash, the working class began to gather its forces. There were almost 1700 strikes nationwide in 1933, most of them in the second half of the year; that was almost three times the number of strikes seen in all of 1932, and the biggest number since 1921.

Despite defeats, the strike movement increased: in 1934, there were almost 1900 strikes nationwide; in 1935, more than 2000; and in 1936, more than 2200. If nothing else, the workers had come to understand that a fight was not only necessary, but possible.

Communist and Socialist Leadership

Communist or socialist militants were at the head of most of the important strikes of this period, including the three most significant mass strikes in 1934. In the Toledo Auto-Lite strike, they were militants of A.J. Muste's American Workers' Party; in the San Francisco longshore and general strikes, they were Communist Party militants; and, in the resounding victory of the Minneapolis Teamsters strikes, they were militants of the Communist League, the Trotskyist forerunner of the Socialist Workers Party.

At that crucial time, the working class found in its own ranks such militants, people determined to see the working class organize itself, to mobilize all its possible forces. Usually only a handful of such militants were present, sometimes only one in a factory. But in many cases, they were the necessary difference.

Sit-Down Victories Open the Way to Flint

Probably the most important victory which prepared the road to Flint came in Akron, where the workers sat down inside their factories.

The first quick sit-down victory in January of 1936 led to a 6-week-long shutdown which forced Goodyear to recognize the union. The next months saw the workers enforce their demands with a rapid-fire series of sit-downs, mostly spontaneous. There were more than 180 recorded in a 10-month period in Akron's tire plants. Firestone and U.S. Rubber fell in line behind Goodyear.

Of course the plant occupations were illegal, and were attacked by the capitalists with every means at their command. But workers everywhere saw something more important: those workers were winning.

The sit-down wave quickly spread from Akron to Detroit. In the months of November and December alone, Midland Steel, Gordon Baking, Alcoa Aluminum, National Automotive Fibers, Bohn Aluminum, and Kelsey Hayes were all occupied.

Flint in 1936: From Fear to Confidence

In June 1936, Wyndham Mortimer, a vice president of the newly formed UAW-CIO, and a militant of the Communist Party, came to Flint to initiate an organizing campaign. Mortimer had been active for years in plants in Cleveland; he had led job actions and strikes forcing the White Motor Company to accept the union.

The first courageous workers to sign up with Mortimer campaigned secretly. Risking discharge if discovered, they pasted union stickers to car bodies rolling down the line. Everywhere the workers discussed among themselves what was happening, as the speed-up and the arbitrary firing continued.

Small spontaneous job actions began. In one week, at Fisher Body #1, there were seven brief work stoppages against speed-up and firing of workers. GM no longer appeared all-powerful.

Workers began to pour into the union office to sign up. Soon, the workers felt strong enough to organize a public meeting at the union hall, where Mortimer spoke. It was filled to overflowing. Membership grew from 150 in October, to 1500 in November, and to 4500 in December.

For the first time, union members wore their union buttons openly in the plants, and GM didn't dare fire them.

GM Is Shut Down

The national leaders of the UAW planned for a decisive strike after the first of the year. But workers' action pulled things ahead. Workers in the Chevrolet plant in Cleveland sat down on December 26, when GM management postponed a grievance discussion. The aggrieved workers sat down in their department; other departments followed. The whole plant was quickly occupied.

When the news spread to Flint, the unionists decided that they couldn't wait any longer. Several of the key plants at Flint were occupied almost immediately.

The strike spread to the rest of GM outside of Flint. Atlanta and Kansas City had already been on strike for over a month. On the 31st of December, Guide Lamp in Anderson, Indiana and Fisher Body and Chevrolet plants in Norwood, Ohio were occupied. On the 4th of January, Toledo Chevrolet joined the movement; on the 5th, Detroit Ternstedt and Janesville Fisher Body and Chevrolet; on the 8th, Detroit Cadillac; finally, on the 12th, Detroit Fleetwood and St. Louis. At this point, GM was forced to close most of its remaining plants.

Flint was the center of GM's empire. The longest sit-down, 44 days, and the toughest fights were engaged there. But the strike extended throughout GM's empire. If the Flint workers carried the most important part of the fight, still, they did not fight alone.

The Workers Realize Their Own Strength

Everything required to make that 44-day occupation possible depended on the workers' own organization. Workers built up barricades, organized patrols inside the plants, secured the entrances, and sometimes mobilized to battle cops. The most famous fight, known as the Battle of Bulls Run, occurred early in the strike. On the 7th of January, the cops attacked with tear gas and guns to drive the strikers out. The strikers responded by throwing the tear gas grenades back to the cops, by soaking the cops to the skin with icy water from the plant's fire protection hoses, and by pelting them with two-pound door handles "just right for throwing" and other heavier metal parts.

Before it was over, there would be a number of skirmishes, each time provoked by the police or National Guard either directly attacking, or trying to force the workers out by cutting off heat, electricity, or food. Each time, the workers used both their control of the plant, as well as their supporters outside, to defend their positions. When the heat or electricity was cut off, the workers threatened to set bonfires. That was enough to have GM turn the power back on. When the food supplies were interrupted, the strikers who remained outside dealt with the National Guard, either diverting them so food could be brought in or persuading them to let the food go through.

Several times it was the working class women of Flint, organized in the Emergency Brigade, who stood up to the cops or National Guard, shaming them and making it more difficult for them to attack the workers inside the plant.

The Flint strike gained national importance, watched by workers all over the country. And many of those workers watching Flint began to sit down in their own factories. Others came to Flint to make sure the Flint workers did not have to face the power of the state apparatus alone. On the days when the threat was the most serious, between fifteen and twenty thousand workers from all over a three-state area were massed outside the two plants which the National Guard stood ready to invade. The battle at Flint belonged to the whole working class, and the workers knew it.

Living a Collective Life

Inside the occupied plants, the necessities of daily life had to be organized. Meals were prepared for strikers both inside and outside the plants. The factories were cleaned up, living areas were constructed, safety was monitored, bedding was found, problems were solved.

Penned up in the factory, the workers discovered among themselves the basis of a rich social life. Many of their memoirs speak fondly of the singing, the discussions, the debates, the plays, the games of chess or checkers or cards, the caricatures drawn by someone who never before realized his ability. They also speak fondly of the work they each were responsible for, work which was carried out collectively and coordinated by the strike committees inside the plants.

The union headquarters became the center for the strikers outside, for the families, for other workers who came to help. They too enjoyed the collective way their lives were lived during that period.

Those who remained outside carried the responsibility, among other things, for spreading the news about the strike, through distributing the strike newspaper, and also through door-to-door discussions in the working class neighborhoods, recruiting for the union.

The decisions about organizing the strike were taken on the spot, by the workers involved. They had daily meetings, both inside the plants, and in the union headquarters near the plants. Later on, it was this fact that the workers had taken up habits of deciding things for themselves, and then acting upon them right away, which caused so many problems for the company when the strike was over. The workers who came through 44 days of self-organization were not ready to let the company make arbitrary decisions, nor order them around.

And neither were they ready to wait a long time for their grievances and complaints to be settled by someone else. In the four months after the strike was settled, there were, according to GM's own figures, 170 quickie sit-downs, organized by the workers on the spot in order to get immediate satisfaction of their demands. The sit-down had given them a sense of their own strength, and confidence in their own ability to handle their problems.

The Victory at Flint: A Victory of the Working Class

The ground-breaking victory at Flint demonstrated something that, ordinarily, American workers have not perceived; that is, the workers at Flint were part of a class, a large class with immense power when it acts together. When the workers finally left the Flint plants after 44 days, their power had forced GM to recognize a union that GM had sworn never to recognize. Almost the whole working class of Flint celebrated, alongside all those workers from throughout the Middle West who had made the Flint sit-down their own.

Within 20 days of the original settlement at the 17 affected GM plants, 18 more GM plants were occupied. Nationwide, beyond the auto industry, there were more than 700 major sit-downs by the end of 1937. In February and March in Detroit alone, 100 factories, stores and offices were occupied by sit-downers for some period of time. Even salesclerks at the Detroit Woolworth lunch counter sat down! Chrysler plants were occupied for 17 days.

Nothing was handed to the workers. As late as 1941, it was necessary for auto workers to shut down the massive Ford Rouge plant in order to crack Henry Ford's resolve never to allow a union on his property.

One Class, One Interest, One Fight

The workers of 1937 had come to view themselves, at least for a while, as part of one single class, with one set of interests, with one fight to make. Their consciousness of that fact was the essential key that secured the victory at Flint in February of 1937, and secured the victories in the massive wave of sit-downs and union organizing that would follow.

Today, the bosses are rolling back every advance won since 1937. They are succeeding because such class consciousness in the working class is but a dim memory. But as the capitalists use today's economic crisis to press harder and harder on workers, it means that workers somewhere, sometime, will feel no choice but to fight in the old ways. Through their fighting experiences they will regain the necessary consciousness to turn the bosses' plans upside down, once again.

But this time, it is necessary not only to upend the bosses' plans, but the bosses themselves. The power the workers have when mobilized like this gives them the means not only to take over a big company, but to take over society and run it in the interests of the population.

International Steel became the new owner in 2003, reducing the workforce to 2,530. Mittal took it over in 2005. The Russian company Severstal took it over in 2008. Then came a 7-month shutdown in 2010, with 2500 workers unemployed.

RG Steel took it over March 2011, reducing the workforce to 2200. December 23, two days before Christmas, RG bosses proclaimed financial difficulties and announced an immediate shutdown of major parts of the plant, laying off 750 workers. Will these layoffs be permanent or temporary? No one knows.

But this is what we do know: the decline in the steel industry is a sign of capitalism in crisis and decay. What an irony to decimate an industry that could produce steel and steel products for improving aged infrastructure and provide thousands of useful jobs.

It makes a mockery of Maryland officials who brag that our state's unemployment rate is improving and things are looking up.

James was a tremendously versatile singer, gracefully mastering musical styles ranging from rhythm and blues, jazz, rock 'n' roll, blues, and gospel. She could sing romantic jazz-influenced ballads like Sunday Kind of Love, Stormy Weather Keeps Rainin' All the Time, and her signature tune, At Last. She soulfully rocked on songs like Tell Mama, Something's Got a Hold on Me, Seven Day Fool, Tough Mary and her remake of Ray Charles' What'd I Say. And she put her own stamp on blues classics like I Just Want to Make Love to You and her own I'd Rather Go Blind.

James' career stretched from the mid-1950s to the early years of the new millennium. She was a major influence on many artists who came after her like Janis Joplin, Diana Ross, and the Rolling Stones and more recent artists like Amy Winehouse and Adele.

Though Etta James received some acclaim near the end of her life, like so many other black artists of her time the enormous impact she made on popular music remains shamefully unrecognized.

City officials said they had no other choice. The city has a budget deficit of 30 million dollars, and it was left with only $300,000 in reserves. The city manager Paul Walters said that the city "faced shrinking tax revenues and state raids on its budget over the last four years."

Budget deficit? The workers didn't cause it. Officials like Walters did.

Santa Ana has set up so-called "enterprise zones," which cover more than half the city. The businesses located in these areas are allowed to reduce their taxes by $37,440 a year per employee, which is more than what almost all these businesses pay to their workers. There are also sales or use tax credits for equipment. All these tax credits reduce the City of Santa Ana's income. That's why there are "shrinking tax revenues."

If there is a budget deficit, get the money back from the business owners who benefitted from it! Stop trying to cut workers' wages to make business more profitable -- and their owners richer!

The Obama administration says it is trying to stop the Iranian government from producing nuclear weapons -- a variation of the same deceitful weapons-of-mass-destruction argument that U.S. officials used against Iraq.

The Iranian government denies the charges that the U.S. levels against it. Iran says it is trying to develop nuclear technology to produce electricity, so it doesn't completely depend on oil for all of its energy. And it points to the fact that the Iranian government started this program back in the early 1970s, with the help of the U.S.!

But even if the Iranian government were secretly producing nuclear weapons, who could blame it? Almost all the big powers that denounce Iran for trying to produce nuclear weapons have their own nuclear weapons arsenals. And the U.S. is the worst. Not only has it actually dropped nuclear bombs on people, the U.S. also has enough weapons to destroy the world population many times. Moreover, several of Iran's neighbors, including Israel, Pakistan and India, also have nuclear weapons, with the U.S. government's blessings!

Yes, Iran is a repressive dictatorship, and a fundamentalist religious state. But this cannot be a problem for the U.S. Most of its closest allies in the Persian Gulf, such as Saudi Arabia, are just as bad or worse. No, the problem for the U.S. is that the Iranian government is rival to the U.S.'s main client states in the region, Israel and Saudi Arabia. To maintain and consolidate its own hold over the Persian Gulf's oil, the U.S. has targeted Iran. Hands off Iran!

In 1979, after 26 years of violent repression, the Iranian population overthrew the Shah. The U.S. government didn't attack Iran directly. Instead, it encouraged Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein, to go to war against Iran. That war lasted eight years and resulted in one million deaths. Toward the end of the war, Hussein used poison gas against Iranian troops and Iranian Kurdish towns, with U.S. financial aid and the help of U.S. military intelligence. In the U.N. Security Council, the U.S. government blocked even the most timid recognition of the use of these weapons of mass destruction by Iraq against Iran and the Kurds on March 21, 1986.

Since then, the U.S. has continued to attack Iran, not just through economic sanctions, but terrorist attacks of all sorts inside the country. One of the latest took place on January 12 in broad daylight in Tehran. Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a 32-year-old scientist and university professor, was blown up after two assailants on a motorcycle put a magnetic bomb under his car. He was the fifth scientist in Iran over the last two years to be assassinated either by the U.S. or Israeli secret services.

This ongoing war by the U.S. sows more death and destruction, makes the entire region more unstable, creates the possibility of even worse wars -- all for the greater good of Big Oil.

It isn't a minor disease, far from it. In France, one person out of five with measles has to be hospitalized, and elderly and frail people sometimes die of it. The disease is very contagious. The virus can be spread through direct contact through sneezes or the coughs of infected people, including by drops suspended in the air, where it remains active for thirty minutes. It can contaminate an entire class, a movie theater or a sporting event.

Fortunately, measles vaccination is very effective: in Africa, big vaccination campaigns succeeded in cutting mortality by 90% from 2000 to 2007. In France, the epidemic is most widespread in areas where the rate of vaccination is the lowest.

Some trends or groups oppose vaccination for religious reasons, and others under the pretext that it's necessary to develop natural defenses without recourse to vaccines. These ideas are dangerous. In most European countries infected people can rapidly be hospitalized and taken care of, but this isn't the case in the rest of the world. Among populations strongly affected by malnutrition, up to 10% of measles cases are fatal and the complications from the disease can lead to blindness or severe diseases like encephalitis. For people infected with HIV, the consequences are still worse.

The World Health Organization says, "In countries where measles has mostly been eliminated, imported cases remain an important source of infection." Genetic studies of the virus show that the virus that began in France wound up in Germany, Denmark, Russia and Romania. Virus of Swiss origin is found in the shanty towns of Latin America. And measles returns to Africa today, in part due to the virus imported from Europe.

This shows the global importance of vaccination, and the completely individualistic irresponsibility of those in the rich countries who would risk the lives of people around the world.