The Spark

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

Issue no. 1047 — December 11, 2017 - January 8, 2018

EDITORIAL
2018—Could It Be Worse for the Working Class than 2017?

Dec 11, 2017

Every day, there is another piece of news about the investigation into Trump. Will he stay or will he go? Will he hang on or will he be dumped?

No one can say for sure.

But this is what we CAN say: the working class will confront the same problems, and worse, next year–regardless of what happens to Trump.

We won’t find good-paying decent jobs. Trump will announce, just like Obama did, that the unemployment rate is looking really good. So if things are so good, why are 39% of working age adults without a job today?

Companies may announce they are hiring–but hiring for what? If you have two or three degrees, you can get a decent job. Maybe. Certainly if you have a wealthy family or connections to a big boss, you can get a decent job. But what about everyone else? We get hired as temporary workers, or part-time workers, or contract workers–with no rights and no job security from one day to the next.

The economists pretend to be surprised that wages aren’t rising. The economy is doing so well–so they say! Maybe THEIR economy is doing well. The stock market and company profits are jumping. But that’s exactly why wages are low. Higher profits are built on lower wages.

Why are the schools our children attend in such bad shape? Why aren’t there enough teachers, enough books, enough supplies? The capitalist class, which searches everywhere for more money, is draining money out of the public schools.

Roads crumble; public services degrade; medical care, no matter how we get it, costs more; water bills go up, property taxes go up, both hitting us whether we own or rent. And all the money stolen out of these things we need is funneled right into the bank accounts of the corporations and the wealthy.

A new tax bill is being pushed through Congress–one which will cut taxes to corporations and wealthy people to the tune of 1.3 trillion dollars. Everyone else will get a little cut in the first years–BUT then every one of us will soon see higher taxes. It’s a bait and switch scam.

For more than 40 years, working people have been living precariously, trying to keep our balance on a slippery, downward slope. It’s as though we went through the Crash of 1929 in slow motion. It’s just taken us longer to hit bottom.

It’s a disaster. It’s been a disaster. And it’s going to go on being a disaster. Because the same corporations–and the wealthy class that own them–will keep pushing, trying to steal from us in order to accumulate more for themselves.

Fifty years ago, if our grandparents had been able to look forward to today, they would not have believed what they saw. How could they have imagined that their children would be worse off today than people were back then? How could they possibly imagine that it would be even worse for their grandchildren?

There is only one way to respond to this situation–and that is to do what our grandparents and great grandparents once did: they fought to defend themselves. They put their confidence in their own abilities. They put their trust in the people around them.

Many of them understood what we still have to learn: that we do have the means to make a decent life for ourselves–if we lean on the rest of our class, the working class. On our whole class: black and white; immigrant and native born; women and men; young and old.

Pages 2-3

Trump and Jerusalem:
Playing with Matches

Dec 11, 2017

Donald Trump announced that the U.S. will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and will begin, eventually, moving the U.S. embassy to that city. Trump said he was only recognizing the obvious: “Jerusalem is the seat of the modern Israeli government.” Trump also pointed out that the so-called “peace process” between the Israelis and the Palestinians has long been going nowhere. At the same time, he hedged his bet by stressing that he was not saying how much of Jerusalem was Israel’s capital, leaving open the door that a future Palestinian state could still make its capital in East Jerusalem.

Immediately, the British, French, and German governments, along with many politicians within the U.S., condemned Trump’s announcement.

While Trump’s statement reflects reality, by saying it openly he threatens to upset the delicate balancing act imperialism has played in the region for decades.

U.S., British, and French imperialism look to protect their oil interests in the Middle East. Israel, whose very existence depends on the military might of imperialism, is their staunchest supporter. But imperialism also has to rest on the less-reliable governments of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt to keep their impoverished populations down. In the past, U.S. allies like the Shah of Iran have been overthrown and replaced by governments that attempted to assert some independence from imperialist domination.

The situation of the Palestinian population, many of whom are living in what amount to permanent refugee camps, is a symbol of the domination of imperialism over the whole region. That’s why any fight by the Palestinians to break free from the domination of the Israeli state has destabilized the situation in other parts of the Middle East.

To have any legitimacy in this part of the world, imperialism has to pretend to be neutral. It has to hold out some hope for the Palestinians that by participating in the “peace process,” by counting on so-called “legitimate” leaders like the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to negotiate, their situation will eventually improve. But as Abbas said, Trump’s announcement makes it impossible for the U.S. to play the role of mediator between Israel and the Palestinians.

The opposition of all these political leaders to Trump’s grand-standing has nothing to do with concern for the future of the Palestinians. They just worry that Trump’s move threatens a region which is already not very stable.

Yemen:
A Disastrous War

Dec 11, 2017

Ali Abdallah Saleh, Yemen’s ex-dictator, was killed on December 4, shortly after severing his alliance with the Houthi militias, with whom he had been allied against Saudi Arabia since 2015. That alliance reuniting two old enemies was more than fragile.

For as long as he was in power, during the 2000’s, Saleh had carried out several wars against the Houthis, causing tens of thousands of deaths and displacing 200,000. On Saturday December 2, Saleh had decided to call on the population of Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, to rise up against the Houthis, offering, by this reversal, his services to Saudi Arabia. Saleh’s death risks closing this exit door to the war the country has been stuck in since March 2015.

Saudi Arabia’s War

After the mobilizations of the “Arab Spring” in 2011, Saudi Arabia and the United States tried to replace the dictator Saleh in order to try to put out the fire, installing behind the scenes the number two of the previous regime, Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi. In 2011, president Saleh agreed to step down in favor of his vice-president, Hadi, who was elected in February 2012. But the new power was immediately destabilized by the rebellion of the Houthis. The militias reached the edge of the capital, Sanaa, joining with part of the army tied to the old president Saleh, and forced Hadi to take refuge in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi regime then formed a coalition with Egypt, Sudan, Morocco, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait, and launched “Operation Decisive Storm” to try to reestablish Hadi’s power and drive Houthi militias out of the cities.

...Supported by the Imperialist Countries

This project received the blessing of the international community through a UN Security Council vote. Great Britain, France and the U.S. then provided the coalition with weapons, material support, and military intelligence.

Each week, these imperialist powers help bomb both military positions and public infrastructure, hospitals and schools, not hesitating to resort to fragmentation bombs.

To justify his policy, the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has for months been using the same rhetoric, accusing the Houthi of being on the payroll of its big rival, Iran. At the beginning of November, Saudi Arabia thus imposed a blockade on Yemen after the interception of a missile launched from Houthi zones, asserting without proof that the missile was Iranian-made.

The Saudi power would like to impose its supremacy on the region, including the Yemeni population. It is comforted by the support displayed by Trump. The dragging-out of the conflict, the dissolution of the Yemeni State, the destruction of its public infrastructure render the situation more and more catastrophic. The war economy, the black market linked to shortages, the growing weight of war lords and their militias, the enormous material destruction, all create terrible suffering for the population.

Dramatic Consequences

There have been 10,000 civilian deaths since the beginning of this war, not to mention military deaths and injuries. Over 2.8 million people have been displaced. On December 4, the UN raised to 8.4 million the number of Yemenis on the edge of famine, out of a population of 28 million. Add to this an epidemic of cholera. Children are the most affected. “We estimate that every ten minutes a child dies in Yemen from preventable diseases,” said UNICEF’s Director-General for the Middle East and North Africa.

The UN again called on December 5 for a humanitarian truce. But we are much more likely to witness an intensification of bombings and the blockade that Saudi Arabia imposes on the population in so-called rebel areas.

In Yemen, after Iraq and Syria, imperialism and its Saudi cop are destroying one more country.

Amazon:
Holiday and Everyday Super-exploitation

Dec 11, 2017

While Amazon’s sales skyrocketed on Black Friday, strikes hit its distribution centers in Italy and Germany.

Behind every click that completes an order, there is a worker who has to prepare a package in one of Amazon’s giant warehouses. The success of this business depends on the exploitation of its workers.

At the Tilbury warehouse in Britain, workers on Black Friday had just nine seconds to fill each order. They walked ten to twelve miles with just two half-hour breaks. One worker passed out and had to be taken to the hospital. On other days, even when they don’t have a package to make-up, they’re not allowed to sit.

In Italy, the biggest of Amazon’s three distribution centers was hit by a strike on November 24. Amazon employs 1,600 workers directly plus 3,500 temp workers hired for the season. These workers are angry about their wages, which are at the legal minimum, but also about the extreme control over their breaks and over when they can go to the bathroom.

In Germany, six of Amazon’s nine centers were hit by strikes on the same day. The service workers union, Ver.di, took advantage of Black Friday to call on workers to strike against a pace of work that is damaging to their health. There had also been a strike over wages two months ago.

The 300,000 Amazon workers in the world, plus all the temps who are hired just for the season, struggle to make ends meet with their low wages and exhausting work. Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos, founder, investor, and CEO of Amazon increased his fortune by 2.4 billion dollars in one day, thanks to an increase in the stock price. He now has 100 billion!

The richest man on the planet owes his wealth to being one of the biggest exploiters of the work of others.

Amazon CamperForce

Dec 11, 2017

Amazon hires about 1400 workers during the Christmas rush who live in campers, vans, or RVs, and move from place to place–most because they can’t afford a permanent home. Amazon pays them $11.50 an hour for temporary warehouse jobs. It calls this group of workers “CamperForce”.

In the 1800s, there were lots of migrant workers. After workers fought for better conditions, there was a time when having a job usually meant you could afford a permanent place to live. It shows you how far back the companies have pushed the working class that so many people are forced to be migrant workers once again.

Pages 4-5

“The Vietnam War”:
A Documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick

Dec 11, 2017

The American war on Vietnam started in the McCarthy period with the drumbeat of anti-communist propaganda; it finished 21 years later when the U.S., wracked in social upheaval at home, was forced to admit defeat in Vietnam. Vietnam, itself, was in ruins.

In 10 episodes, covering 18 hours, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick have created an emotionally wrenching account of that war and of that time. Their PBS documentary, “The Vietnam War,” combines film footage taken inside dozens of battles in Vietnam; TV news broadcasts of the time; and interviews with the war’s survivors–Vietnamese and American, soldiers and civilians. The interviews, most with relatively ordinary people, are often horribly vivid, with memories that remain personally devastating. Finally, there are audio tapes of private discussions between presidential advisers and three of the U.S. presidents who presided over that war (Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon)–tapes that are not only revealing, but show the total cynicism of those who directed that war.

The wars in Vietnam were marked by the determination of generations of Vietnamese to have “independence,” and of landless peasants to have land. Some of them speak in the film: former fighters in the Viet Minh, or soldiers in the North Vietnamese army, or guerillas in the Southern National Liberation Front (NLF); or women and girls who, by sheer labor power, dug out routes to transport troops and weapons from the North.

Unending War

The Vietnamese fought, first, against the French colonial army; then against the Japanese during World War II; then against the French who returned. By the end of the French war in the mid-1950s, the U.S. was providing 80% of the money for the war French troops were waging. The first episode of the documentary touches on this “pre-history,” but the remaining episodes focus on the direct U.S. war.

Basing itself on the arbitrary 1955 division of Vietnam, north and south–the map that big power diplomacy contrived after the French defeat–the U.S. poured money, material and “advisers” into the southern part of the country. The U.S. used a puppet regime, resting on the old landlord class and many of the same upper class Vietnamese who had been part of the French colonial structure. And the U.S. organized, funded and directed an army (the ARVN) that was forcibly conscripted from the southern peasantry.

Nonetheless, the main force supporting the southern regime was not the ARVN, but the U.S. military, with its enormous air power and, eventually, with hundreds of thousands of “boots on the ground.” Before the U.S. finally pulled out the very last one of its forces in April 1975, 2.7 million U.S. service people would rotate through Vietnam.

The Awful Reality of War

To watch Burns and Novick’s “The Vietnam War” night after night, as it was presented on most PBS stations, is to be struck by the terrible horror of war, so unremitting it becomes almost ordinary.

Three million Vietnamese, north and south, were killed, as were 50,000 Cambodians, and 58,000 U.S. troops. To deny cover to the NLF’s guerilla forces, vast tracts of land were sprayed with Agent Orange and other defoliants, rendering land useless for agriculture and permanently disabling tens of thousands of Vietnamese, as well as U.S. soldiers. In the south, 75% of villages were destroyed, either by bombing, including with napalm, or by the deliberate torching of huts and land. Almost all the north’s infrastructure–including its harbors–was laid waste. Such statistics, put onto a screen against the backdrop of battles in which 60 to 70% of the forces on both sides die within a few days, take on some of war’s awful reality.

When the U.S. finally left Vietnam, it left behind a territory in which survival was barely possible.

U.S. Soldiers: From Patriotism to Despair to Protest

Burns and Novick present the evolution of U.S. soldiers who, through their experience in the war, became aware that officers lied, that politicians were morally corrupt, that patriotism was crap. Some of them, bitter when they came back, began their own protests of the war, like those who threw their medals back at the White House. Some, still in Vietnam, “fragged’` (killed or otherwise attacked) officers who attempted to send them back out in the field. Many drugged themselves with heroin or alcohol or marijuana. Some killed themselves.

A former U.S. marine, John Musgrave, recounts the awful distress he felt the first time he killed someone. “That was the last time I killed a human being,” he says; adding, “after that I killed only gooks.” “Gooks” was the racist term imprinted on the brains of new recruits. All wars try to dehumanize the enemy. But, as the Marine training films show, the U.S. did it in a very overt, organized and direct way. New recruits were literally brainwashed, prepared for a job they did not yet know they were going to do: kill not only soldiers, but civilians, old men, women, children; destroy their crops, their animals, their villages. Musgrave, who went to war patriotic, came back a wasted human being, dependent on drugs and alcohol. He eventually became one of those returned soldiers who used their status as vets to denounce the war.

Class Divisions in War and in the Protests

The film shows some of the growing civilian opposition to the war–demonstrations, civil disobedience, active disruption of the draft, picketing of politicians. But Burns & Novick only hint at the impact of the growing black revolt, and of the urban insurrections wracking U.S. cities, which, in fact, finally played the key role in the decision of the U.S. state in 1969 to begin to extricate itself from that war.

You get a vague sense in the film of the profound gap between a “peace movement,” much of which was based among middle-class students, most of whom could avoid the draft, and the soldiers, most of whom came from the laboring parts of the population that could not escape it. Without clearly and directly saying it, the film demonstrates the class divisions in American society, which determined who went to war and who did not; class divisions reinforced by an institutionalized racism that guaranteed black draftees would be placed disproportionately into combat units and disproportionately killed.

There is a stark moment late in the series when a woman who had been active against the war as a student speaks about her later shame, remembering the moral condemnation she and others once aimed at returning U.S. soldiers, treating them as though they were responsible for the war.

Tet: The Beginning of a Very Long End

In the January 1968 Tet Offensive, the northern army and the southern NLF guerillas carried out a coordinated attack on every important city in the south–including Saigon–holding some for days. Ultimately, the NLF and the northern army had to withdraw after suffering enormous losses. But Tet demonstrated their ability to live in the population, even while it demonstrated the hollowness of the ARVN, the puppet Vietnamese army the U.S. had created.

When the U.S. finally completely left Vietnam in 1975, it did so under the same negotiated settlement its leaders had already discussed among themselves in 1969 after Tet.

But for six more years, the U.S. carried out the most terribly destructive part of the war: deadly bombing north and south, bombing and invasions of Cambodia and Laos. After Tet, almost two million Vietnamese would die, 50,000 Cambodians, almost 31,000 U.S. troops–ground up in a spectacular demonstration of what happens to any country which tries to make its own way in a world controlled by the imperialist powers.

The War Was No “Mistake”

The film shows the corruption of the U.S. political class and military leaders who carried out the war. Starting with Kennedy, we hear them in discussions, noting that there is no “end game” to this deadly war they will continue to carry out, decimating a population.

But Burns & Novick offer no explanation for why the U.S. continued the war–other than the inertia of political leaders once they made a decision. And there certainly is no real explanation for their decision to go into that war. Burns & Novick even assert, in the first episode, that “America’s involvement in Vietnam ... was begun in good faith by decent people, out of fateful misunderstanding”–in other words, “a mistake,” as the war in Vietnam has long been portrayed.

Imperialist Motives

After World War II, when the French and Dutch and Portuguese were driven out of their Asia-Pacific colonies and when the Chinese revolution drove out the Chiang Kai-shek regime, leaders of the U.S., having become the most powerful of the imperialisms, decided they would “draw a line in the sand,” first in Korea, then in Vietnam. Unable to “win” in Vietnam, they could at least devastate it, to make victory seem so bitter as to make the struggle not worth the price the U.S. extracted.

In effect, the Vietnamese were made the terrifying example of what can happen to a country which seeks to make its own way in a world dominated by imperialism.

This political reality is nowhere to be seen in Burns and Novick’s documentary–only the worn-out idea that the Vietnam war was a mistake, the same one made over and over again from Truman to Eisenhower to Kennedy to Johnson to Nixon to Ford.

Like so many other documentaries, “The Vietnam War” avoids the political, economic and social issues behind the war, the main one of which is that the war was an inevitable product of capitalism–just as wars in the Middle East and Africa are today.

But the documentary does give a feeling of the terrible every-day reality of that war, of what it did to generations of people in Vietnam and in the U.S., and of the courage some of them have now, speaking of what they lived through then.

How to Watch “The Vietnam War”

Dec 11, 2017

“The Vietnam War” was broadcast on PBS. Check your local listings to see if it is being rebroadcast.

The series can also be streamed from the PBS website (www.pbs.org), or the PBS app for iPhone, Android, or streaming devices like Roku. It may be necessary to buy a “PBS Passport” subscription to be able to stream the series; subscriptions cost $12.00 a month, or $60.00 for a year.

If you want to own the series, DVD sets are sold at Amazon for $50.00.

Or, check your local library to see if they have the DVD set.

Pages 6-7

Destructive Wildfires—Products of Capitalism

Dec 11, 2017

More than half a dozen wildfires are raging in Southern California, burning more than 120,000 acres, destroying hundreds of homes and businesses and forcing 300,000 people to flee their homes. Firefighters are having difficulty containing the fires, which are being fanned by strong Santa Ana winds.

While scientists always caution against calling climate change the direct cause of any single weather event, including wildfires, researchers have strong evidence to show there has been a definite increasing trend in the weather patterns that create the conditions for wildfires to happen.

Higher temperatures dry out soil and vegetation, so that any spark can cause a forest to go up in flames. California commonly has wet cool winters and hot dry summers. But this pattern has become more extreme, with alternating years of drought and wetter periods.

California’s average temperature rose about 2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1950. Scientists have shown that both extremely hot, dry years and extremely hot, wet years have become much more common in that time compared with earlier periods.

Recent weather patterns in California provided practically perfect conditions for both the current wildfires and those that took place earlier this year in Northern California’s wine country. Last year, California had a wet snowy winter. That precipitation provided just enough moisture to allow the growth of small vegetation, which then dried out and became tinder for the recent fires after another extremely hot, dry summer.

Periods of high winds are also quite common in California. The earlier Northern California winds were fanned by the Diablo winds, a regular occurrence like the Santa Ana winds contributing to the fires in Southern California. Both winds blow in the opposite direction of winds coming off the ocean, which makes them dry and adds to the fire danger.

But these winds are getting stronger. The Diablo winds during the wine country fires reached speeds of 79 miles per hour according to the National Weather Service. Scientists project that stronger Santa Ana winds will cause a 60 per cent increase in the number of wildfires in the Los Angeles region by mid-century. They also project non-wind-driven fires to increase by 80 per cent by that time due to hotter, drier summers.

Global warming is certainly not the only “man-made” cause contributing to these kinds of wildfires. Real estate developers add to the problem by building expensive homes for the wealthy high up in wooded areas, where there is nothing to break the high winds. Sparking downed power lines lead to some fires due to lack of maintenance by the energy companies. Failure to clear dried underbrush and preventing smaller naturally-occurring fires to protect expensive real estate developments do so as well. But all these conditions are greatly exacerbated by the weather extremes resulting from global warming.

In fact, none of these causes of more devastating wildfires are simply “man-made.” They are “capitalism-made,” particularly climate change, a product of the enormous increase in fossil-fuel-driven emissions taking place since the Industrial Revolution.

Stopping climate change, and its accompanying wildfires, will require an end to the profit-motive that drives the decisions made by the capitalist class and the politicians that work for it.

Haitian Workers Force Back Big Business

Dec 11, 2017

In Haiti, companies withhold workers’ income tax, like in the U.S. Over the last year, workers in the industrial park in the capital Port au Prince fought to eliminate this tax for workers earning the minimum wage. The government retreated! The comrades of the Organization of Revolutionary Workers–called OTR because of its initials in French–were always at the workers’ side. Following is an article from their newspaper, Workers’ Voice.

Thousands of workers rose up as one to protest when the bosses imposed the income tax. The scrooges and their lackeys did not expect this virtually instantaneous reaction!

After the protests, the government reformed the tax. It raised the cut-off income from $950 a year (60,000 gourdes in the Haitian currency) to $1,900 a year (120,000 gourdes). This new floor means almost all workers at the outsourced factories do not have to pay the income tax. A hard year’s work doesn’t even earn them $1,900! At the minimum wage of $5.55 per day, they earn $1,332 a year in the best circumstances.

First workers in Sonapi Industrial Park factories #11 through #17 went on strike, stopping work for more than eight days. They held firm in spite of pressure from management. At factory #34, the workers struck for half a day. In #52 and #53, the workers did not go out on strike but showed their anger by taking apart some chairs. At #41 and #42, the WILBES plants, workers threatened to strike. They gave out leaflets against management and called for unity to oppose the bosses’ greed.

Two weeks into the movement, and faced with the workers’ strong determination, finally one boss after another gave in. Management in factories #11 through #17 agreed to stop withholding the income tax from the workers’ pay. Plus the bosses were forced to pay the workers for the days they were on strike! And at factories #34, #41, and #42, the bosses didn’t dare to deduct the tax from paychecks.

On the Tuesday the workers went back to work, a worker satisfied with the outcome of the struggle said, “We found the effective method of fighting the bosses: to strike all the workplaces, the general strike. Our working conditions and standard of living would not be as low as they are today if we had used this method earlier as the main way to fight against these leeches.”

Page 8

South Side School Closings in Chicago

Dec 11, 2017

On November 30, Chicago Public Schools announced it intends to close all four neighborhood high schools in Englewood, a poor and working class black neighborhood on the city’s South Side.

The school board says these schools don’t have enough students–true enough. Each one has fewer than 200. But the city’s own policies drove the students out.

There are still 3,000 high school students in the neighborhood–but they have been driven into charter schools. In fact, two of the high schools slated to close already have charters operating–in the same building! Now the privately-run charter schools will be able to take over the whole buildings.

These charters focus on discipline. And they are famous for expelling students for any little thing. They are designed to train the “best” students to be good workers for the bosses–but not to serve ALL students.

Students were also pushed to choose the charters because the neighborhood schools were attacked. One of them, Harper High, was “reconstituted” in 1999, then “turned around” in 2008, which means all the teachers and support staff were fired. Englewood High School was closed in 2007, then reopened as a “small” school. Is it any wonder many students left these schools?

Attacking the neighborhood high schools has meant attacking the neighborhood itself. As recently as 2000, Englewood had over 40,000 people. Now it’s down to around 25,000. Most people left because jobs disappeared. But destroying the public schools helped.

Now CPS is going to build a new 85 million dollar high school on the grounds of one of the closed schools. But this school will be a “selective enrollment school”–meaning you have to do well on a test to get in.

These policies are all aimed at driving poor and working people out of their neighborhood, not at educating their children.

Working People Were NOT Invited!

Dec 11, 2017

Governor Snyder recently hosted a 100,000-dollar-a-plate fund-raiser dinner in Detroit. One state worker asked, “How do these wealthy people get this kind of money?” The answer is, they get a lot of it from the state!

According to Crain’s Detroit Business, the host committee included business titans Bill Ford, Chris Ilitch, and Roger Penske, whose companies have all received state “incentives” like tax breaks and grants.

According to media reports, the money may eventually go to support the candidacy of Lt. Governor Calley when he runs for governor next year.

Money In the Bank

While 100,000 dollars might sound like it’s a lot of money, even for wealthy people, it is probably seen as a good investment. Millions of dollars in tax breaks and grants are dispersed yearly by the Michigan Economic Development Corp. The governor makes appointments to this organization. Executives may view these campaign contributions like spending a little to potentially get a lot.

U.S. Congressmen Resign

Dec 11, 2017

Women have rightfully been speaking up about powerful men and their sexual misconduct. The latest wave has hit national politics. In three days in December, three members of the U.S. Congress resigned.

Facing allegations from several former staffers, Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat from Michigan, retired. Accused of harassment by several women, Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, resigned. Upon revelation that he had asked two female staffers to bear a child for him, Representative Trent Franks, Republican of Arizona, resigned.

According to the Washington Post, three members of Congress all resigning in the same week hasn’t happened since 1861–right before the Civil War!

This wave of forced resignations is a further sign of changes churning this society. But this change is problematic for both Democrats and Republicans, because they have participated in and/or tolerated this kind of behavior for decades and more, so now they are scrambling to get ahead of the problem.

The two parties are different, each appealing to a different base. Each seeks its own ways to divert its own voters back into support for the party in time for the 2018 elections.

The Democratic Party has decided to display “zero tolerance” for sexual misconduct–once a scandal erupts. They want to show that they are not like the Republican Party, a party that supports Roy Moore and Donald Trump, both of whom have been accused of sexual assaults.

The Republican Party has also forced a few to resign. But at the same time, they will keep a few who can win an election–and in the case of Moore, to appeal to evangelicals by flat-out saying that a child molester is better than a “baby killer” who supports abortion!

Both political parties are jumping out to control and contain women’s anger. Their message to women? Focus on an election almost a year away from now.

Elections won’t stop the misogyny and racism that this system thrives on. Nor will any government or political party that supports capitalism.

Fairy Tales from Washington

Dec 11, 2017

The politicians in Washington are planning to pass a tax bill, even though the polls show that the majority of the population is against it. And there is a good reason why most people are against the bill. It is all about cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations, even though the rich hardly pay any taxes as it is.

Trump and the rest of them are telling us that if they give more money to the corporations, the bosses will share it with their workers. In other words, they tell us that if they cut Ford’s taxes, Ford is going to turn around and give its workers a raise???

Anybody who believes that fairy tale, please raise your hand!

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