What interest is there for the workers in this election? The only choice we are offered is between an open enemy and a false friend -- millionaires both of them, defenders of the capitalist system, enforcers of exploitation. The choice we are offered is between a party that speaks for the big banks and the big industrialists -- and another party that, while it gets some of its money from the unions, acts for the big banks and the big industrialists.

Here is the plain and simple truth: there is no party of the working class. And has not been for decades.

One hundred years ago, in 1912, Eugene V. Debs ran for the presidency on the Socialist ticket. He did not expect to win, knowing then, just like today, that money controls the outcome of elections in capitalist society. But he ran to let speak all those who otherwise would not be heard.

Six years later, he was put on trial for supporting the Russian Revolution and opposing the first big imperialist war, World War I. Two years later, while behind bars in federal prison, he won nearly a million votes in the 1920 elections. It was only 3.4% of the vote, but it showed that in the working class there already was a sizeable current who agreed that it was necessary to "organize not to conciliate but to fight against the capitalist class."

Debs was not a "politician," not someone whose aim was to fool as many people as he could. He used the electoral platform to speak the truth about the capitalist system, a system in which we are still trapped: "I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence."

He was truly a militant of his class -- having led the great railway strike of 1894, spending time in prison for that also, declaring, along with Marx, that the emancipation of the working class can be carried out only by the working class itself.

If we want to go forward, we have to resurrect our history -- a history filled with working class militants like Debs, or like the many devoted, and often nameless revolutionary syndicalists who made up the IWW, or the selfless and committed activists who made up the Communist Party or the Communist League.

But it's not just militants, individuals. The working class needs its own party, built around the conviction held by all those revolutionaries that "the working class and the employing class have nothing in common" -- in the words of the IWW.

That's never been more true, perhaps, than today. The capitalist class has engaged itself in a great war, a class war against all of us who do the work necessary to make this society run. Up until now, it has been a very one-sided war, because workers have not found the way to join together in a common struggle against our enemies -- against the bankers, the big industrialists and the politicians and governments that serve the capitalists.

But we could. We don't need saviors to come defend us. We have the forces to defend ourselves. We make the whole economy run. Not only can we make it stop running, in order to defend ourselves. We have the power to put it back to running in a way that can serve all of humanity.

These companies have been reducing their workforce and forcing the remaining workers to pick up the slack. The workers' increased productivity has not benefitted them -- either through higher pay or reduced hours of work. The companies and their owners have taken it all at the workers' expense.

These are words that U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta used when he spoke about two photos published by the Los Angeles Times. The photos show U.S. troops in Afghanistan posing jokingly with body parts, and the Times says 18 such photos were leaked to the paper.

The Pentagon, headed by Panetta himself, demanded that the Times NOT publish any of the photos. The public should not know that the war these officials are presiding over is "ugly and violent."

Panetta declared that the photos depicted actions against the "regulations" and "core values" of the U.S. military.

In fact, that's exactly what these photos show: the "core values" of U.S. imperialism. For more than 10 years, the biggest, most advanced military machine in human history has used all its might and state-of-the-art weapons to rain destruction on Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world -- at the cost of death and suffering to Afghan people and U.S. troops.

Disturbing? These photos? No, what is disturbing -- violently disturbing -- is the war.

In fact, this summit is little more than an election-year stunt. British newspapers are reporting that the agreement will allow thousands of United States troops to remain in the country until at least 2024! These would include American Special Forces soldiers and air power, practically guaranteeing that the war will continue to rage for a long time.

The U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is already the longest war in U.S. history. Since it began in October 2001, the U.S. has carried out bombings, nighttime raids and search and destroy missions that have killed tens of thousands of Afghans, destroyed much of the country, and turned most of the population against the U.S., thus swelling the insurgency.

On a regular basis insurgents carry out attacks inside the most fortified parts of Kabul, called the Ring of Steel. These attacks are only possible with the cooperation and collaboration of parts of the Afghan police and army. Only days before the announcement of the U.S. plan, heavily armed insurgents attacked several embassies and the Parliament plus three provincial capitals and a U.S. air base -- all at the same time.

The Afghan military and police also regularly attack U.S. and NATO troops as well. Rather than getting smaller, the U.S. war is feeding on itself. It is sowing ever more death and destruction, turning not just Afghanistan, but the whole region around it, into a more and more dangerous and explosive hell.

A letter to the students had been taped to the door in the early morning hours. The letter said that the school had lost its federal financial aid certification, and therefore there was "no choice" but to close.

One student was $21,000 in debt after five months at the college. She said, "We're out of our financial aid …. People are not accepting our credits from here to transfer (to other colleges), so we have to start all over."

Like all for-profit colleges, ACT College receives the majority of its revenue from federal financial aid.

The U.S. Department of Education says that this college currently owes students more than $250,000 of unused financial aid that should have been refunded to them. And that the college changed and destroyed records to cover up this theft.

So is the U.S. Department of Education forcing the school to return the $250,000 to the students? Or prosecuting those responsible?

And what about reimbursing the students for classes that they took -- but which won't lead to a degree because the school's credits won't transfer?

No, just the opposite! The U.S. Department of Education simply cut off future financial aid payments to ACT. The college could even open up again using a different name and location.

The government knows very well that corruption and outrageous profits at the expense of students are rampant in this industry. It's the very reason for-profit colleges exist. The U.S. Department of Education simply hands the owners fistfuls of money, letting them charge whatever they please as tuition. The government looks the other way as working class students receive a substandard education, with credits that won't be accepted at accredited schools like private universities, state colleges and community colleges.

The students, on the other hand, will be chased down and their paychecks garnished if they fail to pay back their loans. A hard lesson learned for 300 students at ACT College.

Even a politician like Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart noted that cuts like these have made the jails into "the largest mental health provider in the state of Illinois."

But all of this will supposedly save two million dollars.

Ha! Emanuel's same budget includes four million dollars to build four boathouses along the Chicago River. That's right, boat houses for Chicago's wealthiest residents are at least twice as important to the Mayor than mental health services for the city's population.

In protest, a group of two dozen patients and activists occupied the Woodlawn clinic, which is scheduled to close. The police arrested them, charging twelve with trespassing. But the protests continue, with an Occupy encampment around the clinic and a rally at City Hall.

Debt collection companies embed their agents in emergency rooms and demand that patients pay outstanding bills before they receive treatment.

One debt collector agency, Accretive Health, instructed its employees to tell incoming patients that, in case they don't have credit cards, "if you have your checkbook in your car I will be happy to wait for you."

Hospitals in collusion with these agencies allow debt collectors to have access to patients' records and to pose as hospital staff. Both are violations of government laws and regulations. Not to mention, it prevents people from getting proper medical treatment.

It's just a small corner of a medical system based on profit!

The man died.

Everyone with a cell phone knows you have to regularly charge it.

Did Metro skip that part of the instructions?

His target recently has been working women, young women, poor women -- that majority of the female population who are not independently wealthy, the women for whom health insurance and healthcare clinics boil down to a matter of life and death.

The war on women is aimed at limiting women's reproductive rights -- meaning that women will remain a cheaper source of labor for the capitalist class.

In capitalist society, the labor of women is undervalued, and overall, women earn less than men for doing the same type of work.

Women give birth to and raise children. But capitalist society puts no monetary value on this very important work. Other industrialized countries at least have some type of government paid maternity leave and/or family allocation. Not the United States.

Because women care for children or care for other sick family members, they go in and out of the workforce. They start out at new hire wages over and over again. They end up accumulating fewer credits toward Social Security. They end up with a smaller pension or less in their 401K.

Because women earn less in this society, that creates a wedge that can be used to drive down everyone's wages.

Abortion has always been legal for wealthy women, regardless of what the law said. They had the financial means to discretely pay for the procedure with a trusted doctor. Working class and poor women have gotten abortions too, but much more dangerously when they were illegal. And it has never been widely publicized, but the number of abortions performed has remained fairly steady, whether the procedure is legal or illegal. It shows there is a very human problem underlying the abortion question.

So many of the women who required abortions were denied access to simple, safe and sure contraceptive methods -- whether for economic or political reasons. That goes double for teenagers, who are also denied access to adequate education about their own bodies and their own sexuality.

Abortion, like all issues concerning women's reproductive system, is a health issue. Yet reactionaries turn it into a religious issue, trying to impose their own warped views on everyone else.

The right wing speaks of abortion as the destruction of human life.

Yes, an abortion destroys a potential human life. A fetus, while not yet a person in the same way as a newborn infant, is a potential human being. But the fetus is only part of the broader picture of human life.

Women chose abortion even when it was illegal, and they choose abortion today even when it is difficult to obtain -- because they may be facing alternatives even more destructive to human life.

The birth of a child that a woman cannot provide for involves the destruction of human life. She may have to work herself literally to death trying to provide for that child. Any future for her children who are already born may become impossible once she has more children than she can handle. High unemployment rates and laws restricting eligibility for public assistance have left 1.5 million single mothers without jobs and without cash aid, according to the Urban Institute.

There is also the sad reality that the birth of emotionally unwanted children can lead to the destruction of human life. Newspapers are full of stories about the death of children from abuse and neglect.

It is for these reasons and more that we say that it must be the woman herself who makes the choice -- not her parents, not her husband or companion, not the government nor legislators, and certainly not the churches.

In making her choice, a woman should not be pressured legally or morally, nor have to face right wing fanatics, those dirty old men who hang out outside women's clinics.

The Hyde amendment got around the Supreme Court decision by pretending to cover simply a matter of funding for Medicaid. The Hyde amendment says that federal funds cannot be used when a state's Medicaid plan covers abortion. At that time, President Carter was asked if this legislation discriminated against poor women. He replied, "Life isn't fair."

Today only 17 states use state funds to provide all or most medically necessary abortions.

Every year since 1976, more restrictions have been put on women's access to abortion. But 2011 was the worst year by far: 92 provisions restricting abortion were passed either by Congress or state legislatures.

Many of the specific restrictions on abortion have been portrayed as insignificant. But the chipping away has now reached the point that over half of all women live in states where there is little or no access to abortion. For women in their teens, the situation is much worse.

Because of the worsening economy, more and more public hospitals have closed, either replaced by or taken over by the Catholic Church. In huge parts of the U.S., the only healthcare facility for miles is a Catholic hospital -- a hospital which follows church dogma about women. That means, in large parts of the country, there is no medical facility providing access to birth control or abortion.

"Americans United for Life" is another force in this attack on women's rights. It is an old organization, founded in 1971, but only recently it experienced a phenomenal increase in funding. Last year it joined with a right wing group that lurks in the shadows, the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, funded by some of the biggest corporations in the country, including AT&T, Coca-Cola, Exxon Mobil, Johnson & Johnson, Koch Industries, Pfizer, Reynolds American, State Farm Insurance, United Parcel Service and Walmart.

In 2011, AUL worked with ALEC to draft 28 anti-abortion bills introduced last year into state legislatures.

AUL was also the primary engine behind the targeting of Planned Parenthood, whose clinics are the only place where many women can go for family planning and other health issues such as screening for breast cancer, cervical cancer and sexually transmitted diseases.

In the fall of 2011, intentionally falsified allegations in an AUL report were used as a pretext by Republican Florida Congressman Cliff Stearns to investigate Planned Parenthood.

That investigation was then used as the pretext by the "Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation," the pink ribbon breast cancer charity, as its reason for cutting all funding to Planned Parenthood.

Komen, masquerading as an organization that raises money for breast cancer research, in reality is the third big force behind the attack on women's reproductive rights.

Komen's CEO, Nancy Brinker, is a major Republican donor who held several positions under George W. Bush, helping to promote anti-abortion legislation.

Faced with real outrage, Komen was forced to reverse its decision. But the whole ordeal exposed top officials of the Komen foundation for what they are: a bunch of right-wingers, virulently opposed to women's rights.

Some of this country's wealthiest capitalist families fund reactionary ideas: billionaire families like the Waltons of Walmart, the Koch brothers with oil refineries who now fund the Tea Party movement, the Devos family of Amway fame who push charter schools.

These wealthy families, with deep links into the banking system and control over industry are also behind the attempt to destroy public schools so that charters can replace them and produce profit for businesses. They are behind attacks on cities and unions as a means to privatize all city services, so new business opportunities can be opened up for the wealthy.

What kind of a society are these wealthy families creating for us? A world where schools are less and less able to mention contraception. A world where family planning clinics will either have their funds removed or will be terrorized out of existence.

Using the war on women as an election strategy seems like it might backfire this time for the Republicans. Normally, if an economy is really bad, like the one we are in right now, the sitting president does not typically win reelection. If Obama wins after four years of a bad economy, and with a level of unemployment greater than when he took office, it will be because of the Republican war on women. Women are saying in poll after poll that if the election were held today, they would vote for Obama.

But no one should believe that women's rights would be safe if Democrats are put in office.

Despite Democrats posing as strong defenders of the right to choose, the Hyde Amendment passed in 1976, when Democrats had an enormous 291-144 majority in the House, and a 60-40 majority in the Senate. And it was signed by Democratic President Jimmy Carter.

Democrats haven't even been weak defenders of women's right to choose.

One of the quirks of the Hyde Amendment is that it is a "rider" to an annual appropriations bill, which means it must be renewed by Congress every year. So each year, enough Democrats have supported it to get it passed.

A 2010 deal between Democratic President Obama and a group of anti-abortion Catholic Democrats produced Executive Order 13535, which is aimed at permanently continuing the Hyde Amendment's policy of restricting federal funds for abortion.

What's for sure is that after the elections are over, attacks on women will become fiercer again. Women must organize to defend themselves.

In order to pit one group against another, and turn potential allies into enemies, lies get peddled. Reactionaries repetitively push insane lies like: women who use birth control are "sluts," poor people are just "complainers," trade unions "created the financial crisis," black people are "criminals," and immigrants take "our jobs."

Reactionary ideas are sold as a solution to workers' problems. But it doesn't take much to realize that the capitalist class will not solve workers' problems. The capitalist class is organized only to solve the problem of making more money in the next quarter.

In order for society to move forward, the working class must lead the fight to take on our worsening problems and in so doing, open the door to another society.

In 1871, men and women workers took control of Paris, France, and held it for 10 weeks against all the reactionary forces in French society. This historic struggle became known as the Paris Commune. In 1917, faced by economic hardships that had become unbearable, Russian women took to the streets demanding bread. This led to the overthrow of the czarist regime, to the sweeping aside of all reactionary forces and to the establishment and defense by the working class of its own power -- the Russian revolution.

Was it just a coincidence that fights set off by the protests of women led directly to the two most important political struggles of the working class known so far? Perhaps. But it has often happened that women push other oppressed layers of the working class into struggle.

But however it starts, the sooner the working class begins to flex its political muscles, to put itself forward as the new leader of society -- what could eventually become a socialist, a communist society -- the better off working people will be.

In Retirement Heist the author interviews many retirees from auto, rubber, steel, mining and other industries, and their family members, who fought to keep their benefits. Sears retiree Elaine Russell got sick and tired of using her grocery budget to buy prescriptions. Iron foundry retiree John Galloway had enough when hundreds of retirees were told to provide notarized affidavits proving they weren’t dead. Pilot Chuck Ackerman refused to have his pension taken back. Former NFL running back Victor Washington demanded treatment for his concussion and degenerative joint disease. Some of these retirees sued the companies. These stories make the conflicts personal.

The author is an award-winning Wall Street Journal reporter and watchdog. Her book shows companies do not cut retiree pensions and health benefits because they are broke or going bankrupt. They do it to increase profits. Read this 2011 book, and you’ll see that your family is not alone.

The L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is called Metro, admits it has not been doing hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs of signals, tracks and passenger cars on that line. And that is only part of the 1.3 billion dollars in the deferred maintenance backlog throughout the L.A. bus and rail system.

This is not because of a lack of money. Metro's budget is bigger than ever. But most of that money goes into the pockets of private contractors and subcontractors building -- very slowly and very profitably -- a few new transit lines.

The banks pocketed the money, but the workers are now paying for it.

The workers are paying most heavily in Greece, Ireland and above all Portugal, but also, more recently, in Italy and Spain. But no state and no population is spared, nor are they protected from going through the same thing.

The same measures have been applied practically everywhere, with more or less severity, according to the situation, by left wing administrations as well as right wing ones. These measures include lowering or freezing wages; cutting the number of public workers; increasing the value-added tax (the national sales tax, the tax that weighs most heavily on the poorest layers); increasing the number of years of work before workers can get full retirement; increasing health care costs.

No matter what the form, no European state and no population escapes these plans. The result is that the banks continue to receive interest on their loans, but the European economies are sunk in recession and the population is hit with unemployment and growing poverty. It's no different in the U.S.

Today, the recession seems to be worsening. Almost all the European states are affected -- including those, like Holland, which appeared up to now to escape it. Some economists call in the media for "limiting the brutality of these austerity plans."

But, in fact for political reasons, this "brutality," this policy of "generalized austerity" is nothing other than the struggle led by the rich classes, by the bourgeoisie of finance and industry, to make the poor classes, the workers, pay for their crisis. Meanwhile they continue to get rich, despite the crisis, and even thanks to the crisis.

Suspended students are invited to attend the Freedom School and two university professors have volunteered to teach.

This sudden escalation of punishments seems to indicate that school officials are a bit panicked by the third student walk out -- and 5^th demonstration -- at a Detroit public school in the last two months.

Said one Western freshman of administrators: "You are basically keeping us out of school for wanting to better our school.... I was worried the day of the walk out. I'm not now. I'm angry."

The most recent walk out involved unified actions by students from two schools: Western and Southwestern High Schools. Students are worried about the planned merger of their two schools, pointing out that Western is overcrowded already.

Recently about 50 high school students at the Frederick Douglass Academy protested a lack of teachers, and were given one day suspensions. Before that, hundreds of students at Denby High staged a demonstration against their school being thrown into a state wide failing district. And hundreds of students, teachers and parents protested outside Mumford High School. Two demonstrations have been held to protest the closing of the Detroit School for the Deaf.

Any chance of Detroit Public School students receiving an education will come from more students, parents and teachers getting on board with the fight these students have started.

Cuts were imposed in retaliation for union teachers voting NO! on concessions in March.

Students are learning a valuable lesson in solidarity. They are giving themselves an excellent preparation for their own future.

Right now, Detroit supplies a lot of its own power. After this plan, that electrical grid will be transferred to DTE. Right now, Detroit city agencies pay for their power, to the PLD, at a very low wholesale rate. (And, that payment stays within city government.) After the transfer, they will pay DTE -- at a much higher retail rate, 50 percent higher than the current rate.

The city claims this will save money because DTE will be paying to renovate the system. But their plan calls for the CITY to take on 160 million dollars of debt in order to renovate the system -- BEFORE giving it to DTE! By the time the city finishes paying off this debt twenty years later, the cost will be twice that much -- 320 million. The city will be paying, so that DTE can reap the profits from a renovated system.

Detroit politicians are lying through their teeth if they say this deal will save the city money.

And, this plan will leave many residents even more in the dark. The plan calls for the number of lights in the city to go DOWN by the end of the renovation, almost by half.

But it won't be happening everywhere equally. The new plan rates neighborhoods from "steady" to "transitional" to "distressed" to justify leaving poorer neighborhoods without lights while giving richer neighborhoods 100 percent lighting. So much for helping residents!

And the city says 20,000 lights will be removed from alleyways. Darkened alleyways behind people's houses will surely make those homes and streets even more dangerous for the residents than they already are. But the city acts as if those lights are completely unnecessary. Sure -- because the politicians aren't living in those neighborhoods!

But don't worry -- citizens will have the ability to "purchase and fund additional lights if they desire more lighting than their allotment." So -- the neighborhoods with the LEAST ability to pay will have to pay MORE if they want the full lighting that the wealthier neighborhoods will enjoy automatically!

For decades, one city administration after another let Detroit's electrical grid and lighting system fall apart. It shut down its power plants, letting DTE take over. It reduced maintenance, and let its substations rot. Now the current crop of politicians says it's too far gone for them to be able to afford to fix it. So they propose to hand it to DTE for nothing -- AFTER they go into debt to fix it.

This has been nothing but a protracted campaign of malicious, contrived neglect.

The deal on Public Lighting is only the first of many to come under the new "consent agreement." This is NOT "fixing" the city. It's not a bailout by the state. It's gutting the city even further -- to "fix" and bail out private industry!

The petition had 203,000 valid signatures -- 40,000 more than needed. But right-wing challengers claimed that the type in the headline was one-eighth of an inch too small.

Two Republican board members voted to block the petition. Two Democrats voted to accept.

It's a tidy little package. The Republicans provide the dictators to turn the screws on workers, while also turning over public resources to banks and corporations. The Democrats win credit for their vote, but Democratic mayors break union contracts, cut services, impose wage and benefit cuts.

The workers and the communities are left holding the bag.

If the activists who devoted themselves to the huge and difficult task of successful petitioning don't want to be left high and dry, they had best ignore the games of both parties, and take their cause directly to the streets. There, they would have far more chance of success.

They are both to blame: they both used their control over the government to support the corporate drive for profit.

It's that drive for profit that produced the unemployment.

Some of the biggest companies in the country have been shifting their cash reserves into the money markets in order to make money off of money, that is, off of speculation. Instead of producing goods and services they have gone on a gambling spree. That drove up unemployment.

Some of the biggest banks invented crooked mortgage schemes, which eventually brought the whole economy to a crashing halt. That meant more unemployment.

Today, with the collapse of the financial markets, some companies are pushing out production again. But they are doing it with fewer workers.

And that means still more unemployment, pure and simple.

Every bit of speed-up means someone without a job. Every added little piece onto your job means someone else without a job.

No, unemployment is no accident. It is a product of the capitalist drive for profit, of all the assorted ways the bosses use to squeeze one more drop of profit from the workers' sweat and blood.

Within the framework of capitalism there is no answer to unemployment. And there is no politician serving the capitalists -- no Democrat or Republican -- who will provide it. The workers themselves have to impose it.

There is, in fact, a simple remedy for unemployment: share out the work, with no loss in pay.

It wouldn't be difficult to do -- look how hard we work today. Every one of these jobs on an assembly line could be split in two or in three, and we would still be working too hard. Jobs answering phones in an insurance company or state offices or hospitals need to be split up -- workers don't have enough time to get people the answers they need. Look at the lines we stand in to get anything done -- that's because companies don't hire enough people to do the work.

There's more than enough work to provide a job for everyone who wants to work -- at a decent wage for everyone. Why not? There's more than enough money floating around this economy to provide a decent wage for everyone, more than enough to keep our wages going up, directly and immediately, whenever prices go up.

The main reason for the mortgage scam was an excess of money sitting in the accounts of the big banks -- money they couldn't find anything to do with. It's still sitting there. Well, use that money productively. Put people to work, pay a decent wage.

Will the bosses want to do it? Of course not.

Will they even admit they have the money? Of course not.

But it is reasonable and necessary. And it could be done -- it just has to be imposed on the bosses and their bankers, imposed by the collective activity of working people who decide no longer to pay the price for the bosses' mess.

Maybe we are not yet to the point that workers are ready to carry out such a struggle. Maybe, in fact, such a prospect seems very far away. But things can change very quickly in a time like this. In any case, it's necessary to have goals and aims in mind when we do begin to fight. It's important that there be people who say to their fellow workers: every one of us should have a job; every one of us should have a decent wage.

Last year former Chicago Bears defensive back Dave Duerson also shot himself in the chest, leaving a hand written note stating: "Please, see that my brain is given to the NFL's brain bank." Duerson, who played 11 seasons as a battering ram, wanted his brain tested for chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE. CTE is a progressive degenerative disease, diagnosed after death in individuals with a history of multiple concussions and other forms of head injury. It is thought to be caused by the accumulation of tau proteins in the brain that kill cells in the regions responsible for mood, emotion and planning. Tau proteins are also found in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease but the patterns of deposits differ between the two conditions. Individuals with CTE can show symptoms of dementia such as memory loss, aggression, confusion, poor judgement and depression, which can appear within months of the trauma or many decades later.

In 2010 a 21-year old college football player hung himself. The autopsy revealed that Owen Thomas had CTE. Thomas was a lineman, a position that endures as many as 1,000 hits to the head per season. Even though he had never been diagnosed as having a concussion, this young player had brain damage more often seen in NFL veterans.

In fourteen brains of late NFL players studied, thirteen of them showed signs of CTE.

It is no accident that team owners turned a blind eye to CTE -- and still do. The players are expendable even if they are highly paid. The owners have no problem with using up players to fill seats only to throw them in the garbage heap when they can no longer play.

Shortly after this announcement, the Baltimore Development Corporation announced it was recommending tax breaks for another downtown developer.

That's where the money saved by closing rec centers is going.

Ticket prices at the "new" Howard Theater will exclude many people who grew up nearby, once enjoying music at this historic hall.

Tickets for Chuck Berry's upcoming show cost $95. Michael Bolton, $158.

But the reopening was a success for a local developer, a former public relations officer in the Clinton White House and son of a city judge. DC gave him an eight million dollar grant and a four million dollar tax break.

DDOT promises that buses on the 4 busiest bus lines will run every 15 minutes between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Though, that means the other bus routes will run less frequently. And about that "15 minute" guarantee for the 4 busiest routes: That will actually mean worse service. The Woodward bus ran every 8 minutes less than a year ago! And it ran 24 hours a day. No longer! And three more routes are discontinued.

Buses provide the only public transportation in the city, and the only means for many workers to get to and from their jobs. Riders already face wait times of as much as 60 minutes on many routes, and that's when they run according to schedule! DDOT had completely eliminated 4 routes in the last year and already increased wait times and reduced hours of service on many others.

Students and senior citizens, who once rode for free, now pay $0.75 and $0.50, respectively -- each way -- a lot of money for low-income households. Now the company managing the system wants to require riders to buy a "stored value card," adding yet another burden to riding a bus.

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has been quite open about his desire to completely privatize the bus system. He already has outsourced its management to a private company. His budget proposal for the next fiscal year includes a nearly 23 per cent cut in the city's subsidy to DDOT.

Cutting DDOT's budget is criminal. The cuts already implemented have practically destroyed what bus service previously existed. They have wilfully imposed malicious neglect on this system -- in order to justify turning it over to private hands.

Bus riders did not cause Detroit's financial crisis and should not pay for it. Get the money from the banks and other big corporations who have bled the city dry!

The State of California cited the Chevron Oil Company in the death of a 55-year-old veteran oil field worker killed on the job.

When he was doing routine work, the ground beneath him gave way, and he fell into a sinkhole filled with boiling liquids. It took seventeen hours for the fire department to retrieve his body.

The authorities found that the steam Chevron injected into the ground to extract oil created this sinkhole. The state fined Chevron $350 â€" less than you can get for running a red light in California.

The director of the California Department of Conservation defended this minuscule fine, saying that the process to extract oil by using steam can be “very tricky” and “the industry itself is learning [this process] as it’s going along”.

So, Chevron is “learning,” and a worker was boiled alive because of Chevron’s rush to make a profit, with the consent of the state of California.]]> Mon, 14 May 2012 00:00:00 -0400 http://the-spark.net/np_916206.html http://the-spark.net/np_916206.html Three hundred thirty-three DC public school teachers were notified this week that they've been "excessed." Their jobs were eliminated due to budget cuts. That's on top of the 384 who were laid off in 2011, and 373 in 2010.

Meanwhile, a look at just one DC public charter school gives a clue to where the budget is going.

Imagine Southeast Public Charter School is a not-for-profit institution, at least on paper. In 2011 the school received enrollment-based funding of 6.8 million from the DC government. And it received another half a million in grants from the federal government.

So what did the school do with the money? In 2011 alone, the school turned around and paid nearly two million dollars in various "operating fees" to a private corporation. That corporation is a for-profit, nation-wide, "charter school operator" called Imagine Schools, Inc. -- along with its shady real estate subsidiary, Schoolhouse Finance.

And what about the teachers and staff? In other words, the people who actually operate the school? Not one penny of those operating fees went to them! The teachers and staff who operate the school are left to make do with whatever is leftover after the Virginia-based "operating corporation" is paid.

No wonder -- in a system like this -- teachers themselves are considered as "excess!"

People like Dan Gilbert, CEO of Quicken Loans, for example. Gilbert got a little unwelcome press, recently, when he applied for a gambling license for a casino he wants to open in Cleveland. A background check revealed a $60,000 "loan" he made to Kilpatrick -- just part of a $240,000 "loan" from him, Roger Penske, Compuware CEO Peter Karmanos, and PVS Chemicals CEO Jim Nicholson, to get Kilpatrick to shuffle off to Houston.

Kilpatrick, by comparison to these guys, is a choir boy.

That was one benefit of the way the government wrote the bankruptcy deal. It let GM dump what it owed -- but use those past debts to reduce its future tax bill.

When companies, from GM to GE, don't pay taxes, we end up paying the bigger share.

When the government gives tax breaks to the wealthy and to big corporations, it cuts services. Roads don't get repaired. Schools and parks and libraries are closed. Tuition for college skyrockets.

The tax break given to GM is just one more "concession" imposed on working people.

In the five years up to 2010, the Greek government purchased more of Germany's arms exports than any other country, accounting for 15 per cent of all German weapons makers' exports. The Greek government is also the top buyer in Europe of France's arms manufacturers. These huge weapons purchases continued when the big debt crisis hit in 2008. In fact, the Greek government increased its military spending from 6.24 billion euros in 2007 to 7.1 billion euros in 2010.

This was no accident. It is well known that the German and French governments, acting in the interests of their own big weapons manufacturers, imposed new arms deals on the Greek government, even as politicians the world over bemoaned the Greek debt crisis. In particular, there was concerted pressure from France to buy several stealth frigates. Germany sold 223 howitzers and completed a controversial deal on faulty submarines. Not to be left out, U.S. weapons makers have sold the Greek military F-16 jets and M-1 Abrams tanks.

All the austerity measures imposed on the Greek population -- the enormous cuts in social spending, jobs, the minimum wage, pensions -- are just a way to rob the Greek working population and the poor in order to enrich the biggest capitalists all over the world.

On May 3^rd, Ghislaine Joachim-Arnaud, the secretary general of the General Confederation of Labor of Martinique (CGTM) and a member of the leadership of Combat Ouvrier (Workers Fight), the West Indian Trotskyist organization, won her appeal in court against her conviction for "inciting racial hatred." She had been put on trial as the result of a complaint made by Jean-François Hayot of the Respect DOM (Overseas Department).

The original court found her guilty -- because she had signed the guest book of the TV station ATV with one of the slogans of the 2009 strike that tens of thousands of demonstrators chanted in Creole: "Martinique is ours, it's not theirs, a band of bekes, thieves, profiteers, we'll kick them out. We've got to continue this fight."

The beke and other bosses' lobby wished to take vengeance for the 2009 general strike and to prevent her from expressing herself freely. The 2009 strike had cost them a great deal.

This is above all a victory for all the workers mobilized around Ghislaine Joachim-Arnaud , for her comrades at work, her comrades in the CGTM -- the principal organizers of the committee to support her. It was also a victory for the militants of some political and union organizations in Martinique which had supported her, including those of her own organization, Combat Ouvrier.

Finally, the defense lawyers, by their legal and militant defense against injustice, made an important contribution toward the acquittal.

But behind all this talk about "growth" is only another attack on the workers' standard of living. Look at what Monti has done since taking over the Italian government last November, when he replaced Silvio Berlusconi. He pushed a new austerity plan, on top of the two previous plans adopted during the summer. Calling it "Save Italy," he increased the age at which workers can take Social Security pensions, increased the national sales tax and other taxes on the population and cut public services. The entire population has paid to save -- not Italy -- but the profits of bankers who speculate on the country's debt.

Monti then announced a new stage preparing for "growth." He claimed the main obstacle to "growth" was Article 18 of the Labor Law, protecting workers against layoffs. He engaged, with the complicity of the union leadership, in a "reform of the labor market," which was supposed to encourage businesses to hire... by letting them lay off without hindrance.

This new talk about "growth" is nothing but a new pretext to give money and opportunities to the bankers. It's been at least twenty years now that these people have been saying that to hire, they first have to be able to lay off. The sole result of this has been the aggravation of the crisis.

But in all the countries of Europe, the workers are beginning to be fed up with suffering under such a swindle.

Banks seem to have decided that student loans are the next big vein to mine. They play on the desire of young people to get an education.

Desire or not, there's a problem: most young people these days can't afford it.

With the cuts in state funding for education, college tuition rates have been skyrocketing. Students and their families have been forced to borrow more and more to cover the costs. In 2010, two-thirds of college students needed student loans, and they carried, on average, over $25,000 in student loan debt. Some students finish college with loans totaling up to $100,000. Except for the election-year reduction to 3.4 per cent, interest rates now range from 6.8 per cent to 8 per cent or even more -- and that's just for the government-backed loans; don't even mention the privately-backed loans, with interest rates that vary all over the place -- just like subprime mortgages. Typically, by the time they pay off their debt, students will have paid more than twice as much as they borrow.

College graduates with so much debt put off buying a house or car and having a family. These college degrees that were supposed to be their ticket to a brighter future, have instead become their ball and chain.

Today, three out of ten student borrowers are at least 30 days behind on their payments. Default rates are climbing toward ten per cent.

But the banks don't worry about getting their money -- the loans are guaranteed by the government, which means the taxpayers are on the hook to bail out the banks yet again.

And the government doesn't worry -- because, unlike other kinds of loans, student loans can't be discharged if a person declares bankruptcy. The borrower is on the hook for life.

Defaulting doesn't hurt the banks or the government, but it makes things worse for the borrower. When the borrowers default, late fees and collection costs get added on to what they already owe. Their paychecks, sick pay and even unemployment checks can be garnished, leaving very little behind to actually live on. And if they live long enough while still owing money, they'll find even their Social Security checks garnished.

College -- a financial salvation? No. More and more students -- and even their parents and grandparents -- are trapped in a pit of debt for the rest of their lives.

Young people, signing away their lives to chase a college degree, are sentencing themselves to a debtors' prison as soon as they graduate!

Already forced to pay a lot to get a university diploma, 57% of the province's students have to go heavily into debt. This new increase didn't pass unnoticed. Demonstrations broke out. On March 22^nd in Montreal, 25,000 students and teachers were in the streets. Many other demonstrations followed, but the government ignored them. On May 4^th in Victoria, where the ruling Quebec Liberal Party was holding its convention, there was a demonstration the police violently repressed, seriously wounding two protestors. Three days later, the fourteenth evening protest occurred.

According to the strikers' spokespersons, an increase in the cost of education would automatically lead to a reduction in the access to higher education, despite loans and scholarships.

Faced with this mobilization, the Quebec Liberal Party proposed to spread out the increase ... over seven years instead of five. "It's not an offer, it's an insult" thousands of demonstrators shouted in the streets.

Forced to receive student union representatives, an Education official announced that an "understanding" had been reached, so the strike must stop. But at the same time, the Quebec Liberal Party announced that the tuition increase was part of the "understanding."

Students at only two schools resumed classes and adopted the agreement. But tens of thousands of students voted again by a large majority to continue the strike. They weren't deceived by propositions that added up to a cut in university expenditures, but not in their tuition.

But today, people working for lower wages, which the top UAW leadership pushed through, may not even be able to buy a home in the first place.

Auto workers haven't had a raise in nine years, and some of us are struggling to hold on to our homes.

The best way to fight foreclosures, is to fight against concession policies that lead to people losing their homes. The best way is to organize a fight so everyone has a decent standard of living.

It wasn't supposed to happen. The Canadian Auto Workers' contract was up for renewal, and the local leadership had unanimously recommended the new contract's terms. All that remained was to vote. The vote was held on Sunday afternoon.

Surprise! The workers voted more than 60% NO. And then they did the next logical thing: they upset the apple cart, and went on strike after the midnight shift.

CBC news reported the CAW local president as saying, "Absolutely I was surprised.... It was a little bit of a shocker. To me it's like committing suicide."

The workers had done the logical thing, but evidently, not what the officers had intended!

In less than 24 hours, management changed their offer, to improve the hated "short shifting" rule. "Short shifting" at Dakkota meant that workers were sent home early, unpredictably, without compensation, whenever the Chrysler plant used less than a full shift's production. After the improvement, the workers then accepted the new contract.

It's not often, these days, that workers find a way to break through the wall of company-union "partnership" and impose a demand or two of their own. True, this action was very small and very brief. But it shows that the rank and file does have leverage -- more than it realizes -- when it seizes the time to act, over the heads of timid union leaders if necessary.

The workers, members of the International Association of Machinists, Lodge 851, are going up against a monster. Caterpillar has long been one of the most ruthless corporations.

Cat was one of the earliest companies to force major concessions on its workforce.

In the early 1990s, it provoked workers covered by a UAW Master Agreement to go on strike, then used scabs and professional strikebreakers to break their strike. Cat routinely threatens to do the same thing again to any workers who dare to strike or it simply shuts their plants.

The 1992 defeat imposed two-tier wage scales on active workers and shifted retiree healthcare benefits into a quickly dwindling VEBA fund that soon ran out. Those 1992 concessions became the pattern for the GM, Ford, and Chrysler contracts from 2007 on.

Yet some Caterpillar workers decided to strike, in this economic climate. The Wall Street Journal cannot understand it! "Are you crazy?," writes the Journal.

It may be true that the odds are long. And it's true that strikes have been very rare in the U.S. for decades -- with the result that the working class standard of living has dropped like a rock.

The contract rejected by the workers would have frozen their wage and increased their health care costs, to the point that second tier workers would be working for eight dollars an hour. As one of the workers quoted by the Journal said, "It's a good wage here, but if you take it away, why work here?"

All we hear these days is: "You're lucky to have a job." The Cat workers of IAM Lodge 851 in Joliet, Illinois seem to have decided that it isn't worth keeping that job without fighting for something better.

When that attitude catches on more widely, the businessmen and their Wall Street Journal will have some real problems to cry about.

There will be a big increase in so-called "collateral damage," that is strikes against the civilian population.

That's not going to stem al-Qaida recruitment, quite the opposite. Al-Qaida was reinforced when one of its heads, Anwar al-Alex was killed last September. The Wall Street Journal reported that drone strikes constitute "a powerful recruitment tool for Al-Qaida and its allies."

Obama is as much a warmonger as Bush was, like him in the service of U.S. imperialism.

Under the pretext of waging the war on terror, the U.S. sows death among the civilian population, but at the same time it sows hatred and the desire for vengeance throughout the world.

Since that first case, doctors have found CTE in about a dozen war veterans whose bodies were autopsied -- leading experts to suggest that PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), which today is treated as a "mental" disease, could instead be a physical ailment caused by permanent brain damage. This might also help explain why there are so many suicides among veterans -- 18 every day, now, more than 6500 per year.

The real number of war casualties is far higher than the official figure, because the official figure ignores the thousands of soldiers who kill themselves after the war. Not to mention the thousands and thousands of veterans, who can no longer have full lives because of injuries, whether authorities call them "physical" or "mental."

All these summits, prime time speeches and repeated briefings for the press allow Obama to go into the presidential election campaign on a platform of ending the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

There is only one problem: the Obama administration is NOT ending the war.

The U.S. continues to bomb Afghanistan from the air. Just a week before the NATO summit, the U.S. apologized for "mistakenly" killing six members of a family in southwestern Afghanistan. The toll on Afghan lives continues to provoke outrage amongst the Afghan population. Recently, hundreds of Afghans, carrying the bodies of four children aged eight to 12 who had been killed in fighting in southern Afghanistan, blocked the Kabul-Kandahar Highway in protest against the U.S. war.

This outrage is also reflected in the sharp rise in the number of attacks on U.S. and NATO soldiers by Afghan soldiers and police. U.S. officials admit that these attacks from the U.S.'s own Afghan "allies" account for 20 per cent of the total U.S. and NATO fatalities.

Neither is the U.S. withdrawing all its troops from Afghanistan by 2014, as promised. On the contrary, the Enduring Strategic Partnership that Obama signed with Karzai specifies that the U.S. will continue to have access to bases inside Afghanistan until at least 2024 -- that is, a decade later. U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan under the cover of being "advisors" and "trainers." U.S. jets, drones and helicopters will continue to drop bombs and fire missiles inside Afghanistan. And U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) will continue to carry out night raids on private homes.

The U.S. war in Afghanistan will continue, just like the U.S. war in Iraq is continuing in a similar form. It will just be more hidden.

This is not a peace treaty. It's simply an agreement between the U.S., its NATO allies and its puppet Afghan government to continue the war.

And it's an election year trick. Remember 2008, when Obama ran as the peace candidate and promised to get out of both Iraq and Afghanistan? Once he got into office, he turned Bush's wars in both countries into his own.

This war, like all wars in this capitalist system, serves the interest of the oil companies, the weapons systems contractors and the banks. And Obama, like Bush before him, are carrying out their dirty work. Obama assumed Bush's timetable for fighting the war in Iraq. And Obama carried out his own troop surge in Afghanistan, tripling the number of U.S. troops.

There are currently 89,000 U.S. troops there. Obama promises that he will reduce troop levels in Afghanistan by 20,000 by the end of 2012. But that will still leave more than twice as many troops there as when Obama took office.

Fall for a politician's lie one time, bad enough -- but a second time is downright foolish.

Mitt Romney says he doesn't remember the incident.

Maybe not. Bullies often don't remember their victims!