the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Feb 29, 2016
Funding for everything is being squeezed, leading to one catastrophe after another. Just look at what’s been in the news lately. The lead in Flint’s tap water has been poisoning the population. And not just in Flint, but throughout the country. Old, corroded infrastructure led to the largest leak of methane gas in U.S. history in Aliso Canyon, Los Angeles. Public schools, such as in Detroit and Chicago, are being decimated by round after round of school closings and cuts to teachers and staff. Private and public sector retiree pension benefits are being slashed, and retiree health care benefits are being done away with.
None of this is because of a lack of money. No, the money is there. But it is being siphoned off by big companies in their drive for new sources of profits.
Big companies have already increased their profits by cutting their workforce to the bone. They have sped up the work, forcing one worker to do the work of two or three. They have outsourced a lot of the work to low wage companies. Yes, some in other countries–but many more here. And they have slashed wages and benefits. Just look at how auto workers went from the highest paid industrial workers to the lowest paid.
But all those profits from increased exploitation haven’t been enough for the capitalist class. So, the capitalists have been putting their hands on big pools of money that had been set aside to take care of vital needs of the working population and to make the society run. So, money that should be going for schools or water systems is instead swallowed up by banks and big financial companies. The banks and financial companies are cannibalizing vital services and programs.
That’s why the conditions in public schools in working class neighborhoods are more like those in underdeveloped countries, the Third World. That’s why traditional retirement pensions that pay out a regular benefit are increasingly a thing of the past, in the private and now the public sector. And it’s why the physical infrastructure that everyone depends on is rotting and corroding away.
And what do the capitalists do with all those extra profits? They certainly don’t invest it in production. They haven’t done that for a long time. No, they simply speculate with all that money, turning the entire world economy into a great big gambling casino.
They have been blowing up enormous financial bubbles, in real estate, stocks, gold, oil... anything, often taking on huge amounts of debt to increase the chance of a big payout. They bury governments, companies and consumers under huge mountains of debt, making interest on debt an increasingly larger source of profits.
All that debt, all those speculative instruments have grown to such proportions, they far outweigh the workings of the real economy. Fictional wealth based on debt, gambling and speculation has become more important than production, construction and vital services for the entire population.
And what does this lead to? Eventually, every financial boom becomes a bust. And the bigger the boom, the bigger the bust. So far, the government and Federal Reserve have prevented a full financial collapse by turning over to the banks and financiers even more money. But this solves nothing. It just means that the bankers and financiers have even more money to speculate with, which means even bigger bubbles. By putting off the eventual crash, the government and Federal Reserve only add more fuel to the fire.
That just shows how insane the workings of the capitalist economy have become.
The enormous productive potential of the workforce, along with advanced science and technology, is being wasted away by a capitalist class that is driving the entire economy over the cliff. And in the process, it is laying waste to everything working people need simply in order to survive.
In other words, it is an old, outdated economic system that should have been swept into the dumpster of history a long time ago.
Feb 29, 2016
Saturday, February 27th was the grand opening of the H Street NE streetcar line, all 2.2 miles of it. It only took a decade of bungled attempts and spending 200 million dollars of taxpayer money to “re-start” streetcars after streetcars disappeared from the city more than 50 years ago.
Why streetcars? Why not improve buses and metrorail? “We really truly, truly believe the streetcar system is an economic development initiative. It’s not just a transit thing,” answers one former top city official, Allen Y. Lew. Let’s be clear. The city is and has been in the process of gentrifying poor neighborhoods. The streetcar was a sort of “Trojan Horse” to change the street, according to one D.C. resident.
The line begins at Union Station, and goes through the upscale Capitol Hill neighborhood. It ends in a poor, rough area that has been hit hard by the ’68 riots and years of drugs, crime and unemployment.
Residents on the poor end of the line are hostile to streetcars. “This really doesn’t seem like it’s going to benefit the blacks in this neighborhood,” argued Olene Claggett, a longtime resident of Langston Dwellings, a public housing project built in the 1930s. “All this money for building the trolley, and we don’t even have jobs.”
Where else in the city could you take five years of tearing up the streets? Many businesses have sold out or closed.
“It was just a waste of government money, better spent on community centers and hiring better outreach workers for kids. The streetcar appears designed for more affluent people, to get them off the bus,” another angry resident said.
Development could be a good thing. But in D.C., like most cities, it has meant development for the wealthy and pushing poor and working people out.
D.C.’s streetcars are a boon for the contractors and developers. But for working people in D.C., it spells disaster.
Feb 29, 2016
A decade ago, Mayor Daley and the Chicago City Council turned the Skyway over to a 99-year lease with a big company, Cintra-Macquarie, in exchange for 1.8 billion dollars cash. The Skyway is a long bridge over the industrial area of South Chicago that lets traffic move quickly.
The Skyway was completely paid for by the taxpayers decades ago. Yet its privatization benefits only big corporations.
In 10 years, Cintra-Macquarie will have increased tolls by 250%–from $2 in 2007 to $5 in 2017. This toll revenue has been extremely profitable. So profitable that Cintra-Macquarie can sell the remaining part of the lease to another investor for the original 1.8 billion dollar price plus another billion dollars.
This comes at a time when the city of Chicago says it has a 426 million dollar deficit and the Board of Education a deficit of 480 million dollars. They are using this as an excuse to lay off and reduce services.
The billion dollars being made off public property would totally cover these deficits and still have 94 million dollars left over for other purposes.
The Skyway privatization is only one of several the city of Chicago has carried out. The money to cover all government deficits and more is in the hands of these profiteers at the public’s expense.
Feb 29, 2016
“Shut It All Down, Now!” That’s what the residents of Porter Ranch demand of Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas): to shut down the Aliso Canyon underground natural gas storage facility near Porter Ranch.
And they are right. After a corroded, 62-year-old well there developed a leak in October, thousands and thousands of tons of methane gas gushed into the air unhindered for four months until, faced with constant protests, SoCalGas finally stopped the leak–but not before the leaking gas caused headaches, nausea, nosebleeds; put carcinogens in the air; constantly threatened a huge fire; and drove more than 5,000 households from their homes for months.
And now SoCalGas refuses to shut down the facility–even though at least 39 of the 115 active wells at Aliso Canyon are more than 60 years old and highly prone to corrosion and leaks. Even during the four-month leak, at least six of those wells had problems and needed repairs–according to what SoCalGas itself reported.
Instead of taking at least some safety measures, SoCalGas makes the usual threats, such as, “If the facility is shut down, gas prices will go up.” In other words, customers are supposed to pay for the leak, which was a direct result of SoCalGas’s failure to take some very basic safety measures in the first place!
And public officials and politicians, who looked the other way when SoCalGas was operating unsafe wells for decades, continue to hold the company’s profits above the interests of the public. California Senator Fran Pavley, for example, may have proposed a moratorium on gas injections into Aliso Canyon. BUT, she said, the facility could not be permanently closed.
What needs to be done is to reorganize and coordinate distribution so that the public’s needs can be met under safe conditions. If private companies are not willing to do that, those facilities should be taken out of their control, so that this vital service can be provided to the public–and safely.
That would be the logical thing to do; and that’s what a rationally organized society would do. Working people, organized to run society, could do that.
But instead, this capitalist society leaves vital services in the hands of private interests, who are interested only in their own profit. And that not only leaves the population’s needs unmet; it also makes the world unsafe for all of us.
Feb 29, 2016
The governor of Maryland has just proposed a 20-million-dollar loan from the state’s Sunny Day fund to help out one of its largest corporations, Northrop Grumman. Supposedly the loan would ensure that Northrop keep one of its division headquarters in Maryland and maintain some 10,000 jobs.
We all know these kinds of deals don’t ensure jobs. The last time the state of Maryland used Sunny Day funds for an employer was Bechtel Corporation in 2011. A loan was approved to retain 1,250 jobs. Three years later Bechtel moved 1,000 jobs to another state.
It’s nothing but a handout to another super-wealthy corporation. Northrop Grumman is a 23-billion- dollar a year military contractor with two BILLION dollars in profits last year. It wants to get wealthier still, feasting on money stolen from our schools, our roads, our pensions, our public transit, etc.!
Feb 29, 2016
The last e-mails released by the governor’s office make it clear that people in high places–very high places–knew about the lead and other problems almost from the beginning.
Only months after Flint switched to the caustic Flint River, two of the governor’s top lawyers told the governor’s Chief of Staff it was urgent: Flint should immediately shift back to the Detroit Water System because of a growing economic and sanitary problem.
Nothing was done or said publicly.
Could it be because it was only a few weeks before Governor Snyder’s re-election?
Would anyone be so cynical as to accuse Snyder of letting Flint children be poisoned in the search for a few more votes?
You bet we would!
Feb 29, 2016
Detroit’s mayor, Mike Duggan, announced that the city pension plans are short 490 million dollars. His incredible explanation was this: the “experts” working on the bankruptcy who looked at the books miscalculated, based on old formulas. Old formulas!
He didn’t explain why his “experts”–who were around at the time of the bankruptcy–didn’t catch this “mistake” until now.
But don’t worry. He says the city will deal with it. It will cover all the loss. He even goes so far as to say, “we’re not asking anybody for a bailout. This isn’t a problem of our own making, but we’re going to manage it.”
Great, if he had proposed to manage by getting the money from the people who got it from the city–the bankers and the financial speculators who made out like bandits during the bankruptcy proceedings.
But no–“we’ll manage it,” means that Duggan intends to cut back on city services, on roads, on lighting, and above all, on wages paid to city workers. And pensions.
It’s the same old, same old–and will be the same right on up to the day that city workers and city residents stuff the politicians’ words back down their lying throats.
Feb 29, 2016
For three decades an abortion clinic, Amethyst Health Center for Women, has stood right next to an anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy” center, misleadingly called AAA Women for Choice, in a suburb of Washington, D.C. Same building, same generic office door.
Understandably confused women seeking abortions have wound up at the anti-abortion clinic, where they are bombarded with pamphlets, pleas and prayers, promises of help, used baby gear, and bloody imagery–all to convince them to change their minds.
Deceptive? Oh, but there is more. A few months ago the abortion provider retired and Amethyst Health Center closed. Nothing indicates that the clinic is closed except a locked door. The clinic’s Google ads still pop up, and phone number still works with one major hitch. The anti-abortion activists who bought the closed abortion clinic answer the phone pretending to be the abortion clinic!
The anti-abortion activists are derailing women who are trying to do the responsible thing by ending an unwanted pregnancy–a pregnancy they maybe can’t afford or can’t handle. And the women who can’t find a way out, can’t find another abortion clinic, some of them are going to die, others are going to give birth to children they can’t provide for.
The people who perpetrate this disgusting scam are de facto murderers.
Feb 29, 2016
Abortion clinics across the U.S. are closing at a record pace. In five states–Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming–just one remains. Since 1991, 75 percent of abortion clinics have closed. Seventy-three abortion clinics were shut down in 2014 alone.
What’s more, since 2011 there have been more than 200 abortion restrictions enacted. These restrictions include laws targeting clinics, like standards that are difficult to attain in a clinic setting; laws targeting methods of practice, like banning the use of medications for early pregnancies. There are laws that require waiting periods, or force women to have ultrasounds or listen to fetal heartbeats–to name just a few of the restrictions. It is becoming more and more difficult to get an abortion.
It is an on-going war of Christian fundamentalists against women’s right to control their own bodies. Women will only defend themselves by organizing together–it’s how earlier generations of women won the right to vote, it’s how more recent generations won access to jobs and to the right to decide for themselves what would happen to their own bodies. This generation will defend itself only in the same way.
Feb 29, 2016
Hillary Clinton presents herself as a symbol of women’s progress in the 21st century U.S.–finally, a woman candidate for the presidency. Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State, and Gloria Steinem, former editor of Ms. magazine, have said women who don’t support Hillary Clinton are going against their own interests.
Certainly, it is disgusting that some criticisms of Clinton have been pure sexism.
But the difficulties faced by working class women and well-to-do women are not the same. Some women have become top corporate executives. Clinton herself was on the board of Walmart. But the majority of women working at Walmart earn poverty-level wages. The interests of the executives and the interests of the workers are in direct conflict with each other, whether they are men or women. This class difference has been present throughout the long history of women’s struggle for a decent life.
In the fight for the right to an abortion, wealthier women have always been able to find a sympathetic doctor. But it took a fight in the 1970s, following on the struggle of the black population, for all women to gain the right to a legal abortion in the U.S. And almost from the moment Roe v. Wade passed in 1973, politicians tried to take away the right to an abortion from poor women. Today, the majority of counties in the United States do not have a single abortion provider. So we’re going back to the days before Roe v. Wade: women with money can get an abortion easily, while access for poor women is increasingly blocked.
Women had to fight for the right to vote for more than a century before the 19th Amendment was ratified after WWI. This fight was mostly led by the better off, better educated women in the 1800s, though these women often tried to link themselves to working class women. It went along with a struggle for decades against laws that treated women as chattel, that is, as the property, first of their fathers, and then of their husbands. The legal right to vote in an election made women a little more able to stand up as adults, rather than remaining property without a voice, like children. But once the right to vote was won, many privileged women abandoned the fight, feeling that they had achieved their goal.
But working class women had to continue the struggle. One of the longest-running and least successful battles has been the fight for decent pay and decent working conditions for women. After a 1911 factory fire in which 146 women died, union activist Rose Schneiderman addressed a New York City funeral march of 100,000: “I would be a traitor to the poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting.... This is not the first time girls have been burned alive in the city.... The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred.... It is up to working people to save themselves....”
Conditions in the early days of U.S. factories were horrendous. Six days and 65 hour work weeks were common. While men workers’ wages were abysmal in factories and mines, women’s wages were worse–because the bosses could get away with paying them less, using the excuse that they were not heads of households. In the early 20th century, half the people in New York City were immigrants, crowded into slums. In the factories where they worked, the majority were under the age of 20.
These problems were not addressed by upper class women. Rather, women organizers in the International Ladies Garment Workers Union led strikes against such appalling conditions, as did organizers in other industries. Often these organizers were socialists or later communists. Through these fights, women workers won some improvements from the most appalling conditions they faced.
Yet today, women workers face similar problems. Working class women still make less money and have many more family responsibilities than men–and working class men also make less and less every year, adding on to the problems facing working class families. As in the past, these problems will not be solved by looking to upper class women like Hillary Clinton to help us. They will only be solved by working class women organizing and fighting for themselves, in their own interests.
Feb 29, 2016
For eleven weeks, from November 1909 through February 1910, some 20,000 mostly young, Jewish, women workers went on strike against low wages in the New York City garment industry. Their abysmal wages, even lower than men’s in the trade, meant poverty for their families. They were led by women like socialist Clara Zemlich, who thought workers would eventually need to overturn the whole capitalist system in order to get a decent life. This momentous strike would later be called the Uprising of the 20,000.
No one acquainted with labor history will be surprised to hear that the bosses hired thugs. The police arrested hundreds of strikers, after which the courts gave them big fines or time in jail. A judge expressed the usual sentiments against women: “You are striking against God and nature.” Even union leaders disdained them. Samuel Gompers, head of the AFL, said it wasn’t worth organizing women because they would just get married and leave the union.
Nevertheless, by the end of the strike, the women had won a somewhat reduced work week and a bit higher wages. Some 85% of the strikers joined the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.
This wasn’t the only fight organized by women workers in that era. For instance, in May of 1908, women textile workers in Chicago had gone on strike for similar reasons.
It was fights like these that socialists Clara Zetkin and Luise Zeitz commemorated starting in 1911 with International Women’s Day. The first of these drew out an estimated million marchers in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Denmark. To this day, people around the world continue to celebrate women’s fight for a decent life every year on March 8.
Feb 29, 2016
Five pregnant women suffered from a rupture and infection of the membrane surrounding the fetus, a condition that leads to natural miscarriage. This life-threatening condition can cause several dangerous problems including sepsis–indicating severe, widespread infection and retention of the placenta–a leading cause of maternal bleeding and death. The treatment for this condition is to immediately deliver the fetus and terminate the pregnancy. This was not done for any of these women.
These women went to Mercy Health Partners–a Catholic hospital. In the U.S. Catholic hospitals follow a set of medical directives written by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops–not by doctors, but by Bishops. None of whom, by the way, are women. All doctors working in Catholic hospitals must follow church teachings. Performing or even facilitating an abortion is prohibited. “Abortion is never permitted,” the directives read. A hospital executive told county health officials that at Mercy Health Partners, “as long as there is a heartbeat, induction of labor is not an option in a Catholic institution unless the mother’s life is in jeopardy.”
These women’s lives were “in jeopardy” and they showed signs of infection–fever, rapid heart rate. But Mercy Health forced them to endure long, and dangerous and totally unnecessary miscarriages. The women were not even informed that anything could be done or that the fetuses had no chance for survival.
There has been an increase in the number of Catholic hospitals and a string of Catholic takeovers of secular hospitals all across the U.S. One out of every nine hospital beds in the U.S. are located in facilities that follow Catholic teachings and in 30 communities, the only local hospital is a Catholic one.
If the Catholic Church would stop being preoccupied with women’s bodies, it would be healthier for everyone, including children.
Feb 29, 2016
Walmart is closing 154 stores in the U.S., mostly in poor, rural areas. A number of small towns will be left without a grocery store or pharmacy. The residents will often have to drive many miles to get the same service–almost always to a different Walmart!
When Walmart came, it drove local stores out of business by lowering prices. In many cases, Walmart subsidized unprofitable locations just to drive local businesses out.
But now they’re gone–and the real face of Walmart appears–greedy, voracious and intent, not on providing access to needed goods, but on amassing as much wealth as possible.
Feb 29, 2016
New York police choked Eric Garner to death in July of 2014. The world knows the story because his friend, Ramsey Orta, took a video of the murder with his cell phone. Anyone who has seen the video, with Garner repeatedly saying “I can’t breathe!” can see that it was murder by cop, plain and simple.
Yet Ramsey Orta is the only person who was there that day who has been charged with a crime.
In fact, Orta has faced constant harassment and surveillance by the NYPD. When he asked why the police were filming him, they said “you filmed us, so now we’re filming you.” He was held in the notorious Rikers Island jail twice, once for 60 days, once for 30 days, where he went on a hunger strike because he said they put rat poison in his food. His wife was arrested for assault–but the charges were dropped immediately. Now he has five charges pending against him.
It’s a warning to everyone else: report a cop and you are toast!
And this in “liberal” Bill de Blasio’s city!!!
Feb 29, 2016
The State of Louisiana kept Albert Woodfox in solitary confinement in a nine-foot by six-foot box in Angola prison for more than 43 years. On February 19th, his 69th birthday, he was finally released after pleading no-contest to a crime he continues to maintain he did not commit.
Woodfox and his friend Herman Wallace were accused of stabbing prison guard Brent Miller in 1972, but Woodfox, Wallace, and their co-defendant Robert King maintain that, like hundreds of others from that time period, they were prosecuted for their political activity. Woodfox’s conviction was even overturned three times–but the state always found a way to keep him in prison.
Woodfox, Wallace, and King were active in a Black Panther Party chapter in prison and organized prisoners to stand up against the injustices they saw. They worked to stop the guards from stealing food and tools meant for the prisoners, and they tried to “build a bridge with the white inmates, because, you know, the divide-and-conquer philosophy was a part of the prison.” They formed anti-gang squads in the prison and made a point of befriending young prisoners to, in Woodfox’s words, “stop the sexual slave trade that was going on in Angola at the time. And ... a lot of security people were profiting from this.” Woodfox, King, and Wallace maintain that they were prosecuted for Miller’s murder because of this political activity.
The state of Louisiana took away the bulk of Albert Woodfox’s life. They took away his right to say goodbye to his mother when she died. They finally let Herman Wallace go free from Angola, just a few days before he died–and they would not let Woodfox visit him or go to his funeral. And in the end they made Woodfox plead no-contest to a crime he insists he did not commit in order for him to finally get his freedom.
Yet despite all that, Woodfox remains unbroken. He continued his struggle the whole time he was in Angola. He was able to finally get free in part because Robert King also kept up the fight after he got out of prison, after himself spending 29 years in solitary. And Woodfox and King plan to continue the struggle against the injustice of the prison system and the broader society.
“We were politicized,” Woodfox explained. “We had understood that we were–or why we were being targeted and punished, and this gave meaning to why we should struggle more so, because it was an unjust reason and unjust position we were in ... you know, the Black Panther Party may not exist, but we still exist. And we continue to–we will continue to struggle to free some of our comrades, and to, you know, stand shoulder to shoulder and try to take on all of the injustices that go on in America every day.”
Feb 29, 2016
Chicago State University is threatening to close. This South Side school that serves mostly black, working class students canceled spring break so it can try to finish the semester before it runs out of money. It sent out layoff notices to its entire workforce and declared a “state of exigency,” all because it has not gotten any funds from the state.
This is the result of a despicable soap opera being acted out between the Republican Illinois governor, Bruce Rauner, and the Democratic legislature, who have refused to pass a state budget and have stopped paying the state’s bills–or at least, those bills that help ordinary people.
These politicians want to threaten teachers and state workers into accepting big cuts. Don’t want to give up your pension? We’ll just close the schools! They are so disgusting they might even carry out their threat.
But of course, the state HAS NOT stopped paying all its bills. They have not skipped one interest payment to the banks. No, they pay what they want to pay.
Chicago State is the first school to go on the chopping block because it’s the poorest. And it’s the poorest because it serves the working class students who need the most help–the ones the politicians in Springfield couldn’t care less about.
Since last fall, Chicago State University students have been protesting and rallying. They marched downtown, went to the state capital Springfield, and even blocked the I-94 expressway. They are right–standing up to these bullies is the only way out of the mess. Too bad students at every school in Illinois don’t yet realize it is in their interest to join the fight.
Feb 29, 2016
According to opinion polls, Donald Trump sits on the top of the Republican heap because of the support of parts of working class and lower middle class voters–mostly, but not only, white. Trump styles himself as “honest” and “fearless,” a political outsider. A true demagogue!
Faced with worsening unemployment and falling living standards, Trump appears to oppose the policies of politicians, government officials and the Republican Party for the loss of jobs in this country. As opposed to the official Republican position, Trump says he will not cut Social Security and other entitlements. He even says he is for continuing to fund Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions and healthcare for poorer women–which is exactly the opposite of what the Republican Party says.
Trump attacks the presidency of George W. Bush for its military actions using stronger language than the Democrats ever have. Trump blames Bush for the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon–thus playing into the suspicions of many that 9/11 was an inside job. And Trump blames Bush for invading Iraq, saying that it was the worst decision ever made.
But all of this is pure demagoguery. For at the same time, Trump says that the U.S. government should take over the oil fields in Iraq, make the oil fields into a colony–which would mean carrying out a new war and occupation of Iraq! A demagogue–that’s exactly what he is.
What is Trump’s answer to jobs? He says he opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership for supposedly allowing jobs to be shipped overseas. In fact, Trump is blaming unemployment on other working people, workers in other countries. This is one of the oldest political tricks in the book. Trump is merely trying to deflect peoples’ anger away from the capitalist class, the banks and the big corporations that are robbing and plundering the working and lower middle classes. It is a rhetoric designed to divide the working class against itself.
Finally, by Trump openly attacking Mexican and Muslim immigrants, he taps into longstanding prejudices and racist attitudes in some sections of the working class. And not just among white workers, but others faced with high unemployment, as well as crime and violence in their neighborhoods. By saying this openly, Trump fans the flames of racism and violence inside the working class, making it more acceptable.
And behind his support for funding Planned Parenthood, Trump also says he is “pro-life.” By opposing a woman’s right to choose, he opposes the most basic rights for women.
Any worker who votes for this kind of poison is, in fact, supporting big, destructive attacks against the whole working class.
Feb 29, 2016
Bernie Sanders has seemingly mounted a big challenge to Hillary Clinton, at least after the first two primaries.
Sanders is portrayed as an “outsider,” an underdog, and even some kind of “socialist”–who calls for “political revolution.” During this time of crisis, high unemployment, starvation wages and war, this kind of political rhetoric can find a lot of support–especially from young people. But coming from Sanders, it is just rhetoric, political double talk. In Congress and the U.S. Senate, Sanders voted for and supported many of the very same policies that he now denounces.
Sanders denounces big business and the “1%.” He denounces the taxpayer bail-out of the banks and the big speculators. Demanding is easy! But in 2000, Sanders voted for the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which gave the federal government’s seal of approval to wild financial speculation–because that is what Wall Street banks and speculators wanted. After the financial crash of 2007-09, Bill Clinton himself decried signing the bill. But Sanders doesn’t acknowledge his vote.
Sanders denounces the profits of the health insurance companies and drug companies and how they rip off the American public. But as a member of the Health Education Labor Committee, Sanders helped write the Affordable Care Act, which gave carte blanche to pharmaceutical companies to rip off those who need vital drugs, as well as forced millions of people to pay a lot of money to private companies for insurance that often covers almost nothing ... fake insurance.
Sanders also denounces the fact that the U.S. has more people in jail than any other country in the world. He calls it a national disgrace. But Sanders voted for Bill Clinton’s “tough on crime” policies, including the Omnibus Crime Bill of 1994, which expanded the death penalty, decreased the minimum age for minors to be tried as adults, required longer prison sentences, and paid states to build more prisons as well as expand state and local police forces. As the Justice Policy Institute later wrote, these “policies resulted in the largest increases in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history.”
Worst of all, not only doesn’t he apologize for these votes, he calls for more U.S. wars. He has voted for every war appropriation since he has been in Congress–including Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
In fact, Sanders is not an insurgent or an outsider. He has supported every Democratic presidential candidate since 1984. He’s simply dusting off the tarnished Democratic Party nameplate, after trying to drum up votes and support for the Democratic Party once again. After his victory in New Hampshire, Sanders said that no matter who wins the nomination, “we will need to come together in a few months to unite this party, and this nation, because the right-wing Republicans we oppose must not be allowed to gain the presidency.”
So, Sanders, the self-described “socialist,” who talks a lot about “political revolution,” finally wants to do nothing more than give the Democratic Party four more years in the White House.
It would be laughable, if it weren’t for the fact that, once again, people’s hopes are being hijacked by the Democratic Party, one of two parties in the service of the capitalist class.