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
Jan 21, 2019
On Monday, January 14, over 30,000 teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the second-largest school district in the country, enrolling 500,000 students, went on strike.
The LAUSD, like many other urban school districts, is overwhelmingly made up of poor and working class students; 75 percent are of Hispanic descent.
Teachers are focusing on issues directly impacting the educational quality in the district: average class sizes reaching over 30 students in elementary schools and over 40 and even 50 students in the high schools. There are few counselors and no nurses in many schools. Their biggest demands are a dramatic lowering of class size, and more counselors and at least one librarian and nurse per school.
LAUSD schools have high class sizes, while some neighboring districts, made up of mostly white, mostly middle-class families, have much smaller class sizes. The message is clear: The authorities are prepared to sacrifice the education of working class, Hispanic kids, in order to save a buck.
So far, the teachers are receiving enthusiastic support from parents and students in the district. And that makes sense–they’re all fighting for the same thing: better schools to provide a better education to their children.
This sounds perfectly reasonable for anyone who truly is interested in providing a decent education for students; but the school board refuses, saying that the district has no money for such reforms.
No money? The teachers’ union has shown that the district has almost two BILLION dollars in cash reserves, or over 26 times what they are required to maintain!
The district tries to say that they need to hang on to that money, because they forecast funding shortages within three years. But they’ve been forecasting that same shortage “within three years”–for over a decade!
Why would they not want to spend that money to benefit the students of the district they supposedly represent? Because they want to give the money to private concerns, including charter schools.
In 2017, billionaire developer Eli Broad and others spent $10 million to elect a majority of pro-charter-schools candidates to the L.A. school board. The current Superintendent, Austin Beutner, a former investment banker with NO educational experience, has allowed the continual expansion of charter schools in the district, while not even collecting the 3% oversight fee for charter schools operating in school buildings the district owns.
Large class sizes benefit the expansion of charter schools in district buildings, because they make more space available for charter schools in that property.
And despite a curriculum focused on preparing students for tests, charter students do no better than comparable students in public schools.
L.A. is only the tip of the iceberg. Last year, we saw strikes spread across the whole states of West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, and others. Oakland and Sacramento schools are also on the verge of strikes.
The strikes last year took place in states dominated by Republican legislatures. California is dominated by the Democratic Party. The outcome for working class people is the same. From the state-wide level to the city of L.A., the Democrats in power have supported the gutting of the public school districts in favor of the privatization of public money–the evisceration of working class public education, in favor of draining those funds to the pockets of private corporations.
This is not a Republican problem or a Democratic problem. It is a problem of the capitalist system, and its representatives, protecting ruling-class interests at our expense!
The working class of the entire country has an interest in supporting the strike of the L.A. teachers–and in seeing that fight spread. Not only to school districts across the country, but to all industries in which working class people are being attacked. It’s the same attack; it’s the same fight.
Jan 21, 2019
Clarence Shipley was released and exonerated of all charges on December 18 after being imprisoned for 27 years for a murder he did not commit. A retired detective hired by his family finally got a Baltimore public defender to convince the city state’s attorney to find the critical witnesses to prove his innocence.
Shipley was arrested in 1991 in the middle of the years when drug and violence sentences were inflated across the U.S., leading to an explosion in the number of prisoners. Politicians put police under enormous pressure to make arrests, especially in poor and black neighborhoods. Courts were under great pressure to order long sentences, regardless of whether suspects were innocent or guilty.
Shipley was convicted because a prosecution witness lied in court. A snitch jailed for car thefts told police Shipley had been at the shooting. Shipley wasn’t there, and he said so, but police didn’t research this. He is left handed, and murder witnesses said the shooter was right handed. A witness named the murderer: another man. But police did not investigate. After Shipley’s conviction, the courts repeatedly denied Shipley’s challenges.
Now Shipley becomes the 30th Maryland prisoner since 2000 exonerated by DNA or new testimony due to the work of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project.
“Free”–after a lifetime of imprisonment, for crimes not committed.
Jan 21, 2019
It seems like every other day a new revelation comes out about Trump’s corruption. The FBI investigated if he was a Russian agent. He had his lawyer, Michael Cohen, pay a tech company to manipulate polling data to make him look like he had more support than he really had in the early stages of the 2016 election campaign. Buzzfeed reported that he told Cohen to lie to Congress, though the lead investigator into Trump’s ties to Russia disputed the details of this claim.
The water may be up to Trump’s neck, but it’s not yet clear if it will go up over his head. Either way, this political soap opera focuses everyone’s attention on Trump and whether or not he can be impeached.
This decision will not just hang on what Trump did or did not do with Russia or the 2016 election–it will come down to whether or not enough of the capitalist class decides that Trump is a big enough problem for their interests that he should be removed.
From a working class perspective, Trump’s racist, anti-worker, anti-immigrant, misogynist politics are more than enough to prove that he is our enemy. His tax breaks for billionaires continued the attacks on public services. His continuation of imperialist policies, including trade and war, prove that he is an enemy of the working class on the level of the world.
Even if Trump is removed, all of our problems will remain. Trump wants workers to think that our problems come from immigrants and from other countries. The Democrats want us to think all our problems come from Trump. Neither is true.
It might be satisfying to see this pompous jerk get his comeuppance, but if Trump is removed from office, nothing much will change for the working class. The monied classes have gotten comfortable transferring wealth to Wall Street with little resistance from the population. We can only stop this by counting on our own forces, and organizing a fight to take the money back.
Jan 21, 2019
The partial government shutdown has dragged into its fourth week. On top of threatening services like food stamps, public housing, and national parks, hundreds of thousands of workers have been effectively laid off, and hundreds of thousands of others have been working without pay. The government has labeled these workers “essential,” so they have to report–even though they have started missing paychecks.
Federal workers and contractors have been postponing necessary surgeries, falling into debt, and skipping bills and even rent payments. Nonetheless, while more people have been calling in sick than normal, so far, most of these “essential” workers have been reporting to work, despite the missing paychecks.
Undoubtedly, they report in partially because of the threat of being fired, and mostly with the hope of eventually getting back pay. Also most workers feel obligated to perform their jobs to provide services needed by the public.
In any case, the fact that the federal government is making almost half a million people go to work with only a promise of pay “sometime,” is a sign of how far the ruling class is willing to go.
As the shutdown drags on, and its effects deepen and spread out, we can hope to see a fight-back develop among sections of workers directly or indirectly affected; a fight that could spread and inspire others like the teacher strikes did last year. Why should workers be set so far back on bills, risking homes, health and savings, just for the politicians’ petty political duels?
One thing is for sure–workers will only be able to solve the problems they face by organizing and counting on our own forces.
Jan 21, 2019
At 7 a.m. on Monday, Jan. 14, over 30,000 striking Los Angeles public school teachers began to picket their schools. Thousands–students, parents and other school workers–joined them on the picket line despite heavy rain.
The rain did not let up for four days–nor did the energy and enthusiasm of the teachers and their supporters. On Monday, Tuesday and Friday, over 50,000 people each day packed downtown L.A. for mid-morning rallies. So few teachers crossed the picket line that district officials have been refusing to release the number of teachers who reported to work.
The main demands of the teachers are about staffing–reduced class size, more school nurses, librarians and guidance counselors. This certainly strikes a chord with working-class parents.
Parents kept their children out of school in large numbers. Attendance was less than 30 percent on Monday, and got even lower on the following days. On Friday, only 85,000, or 17 percent, of the 500,000 students affected by the strike showed up at school.
It certainly is difficult for working-class parents to get child care, or forego the free or reduced-price meals, which more than 80 percent of LAUSD students receive. It is a sign of the strong support the teachers enjoy in the working-class communities their schools serve.
Jan 21, 2019
In 2014, Chicago cop Jason Van Dyke shot and killed Laquan McDonald, a black teenager. Police dashcam video clearly showed McDonald walking away from police just seconds before Van Dyke opened up a fusillade of 16 shots into him. Van Dyke fired 12 of these shots into McDonald after he was already lying on the ground.
A jury convicted Van Dyke of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery. During the trial, several witnesses testified that Van Dyke was a racist cop who had used racial slurs toward them during traffic stops.
But Judge Vincent Gaughan just sentenced Jason Van Dyke to less than seven years in prison. Gaughan had the option of sentencing Van Dyke to 96 years for the aggravated battery charges. Instead he chose to call second-degree murder the more “serious” charge, which allowed him sentence Van Dyke to just 81 months. It was less than half the 18 to 20 years prosecutors asked for, and way less than the 45-year minimum Van Dyke would have gotten if the jury had voted for first-degree murder. It’s likely Van Dyke will spend no more than about 3 years in prison.
In a separate trial, three other cops were accused of lying in reports of the incident. They claimed that McDonald attacked other officers at the scene and tried to get up from the ground even after being hit by Van Dyke’s first barrage of gunshots. Another officer, Dora Fontaine, testified that one of the cops on trial falsified a report in Fontaine’s name, falsely claiming that she corroborated the claim that McDonald had tried to attack the cops with the knife.
Another witness, Jose Torres, testified that he and his son witnessed the shooting from their car, just a few car lengths away. He stated he never saw McDonald act in any aggressive manner toward the police and was shocked at the number of shots he heard. He said the cops ordered him away from the scene after he yelled out from his car. When he heard a police spokesman days later calling the shooting justified, Torres spoke out to investigators.
The judge in this second trial, Domenica Stephenson, brushed off the credibility of both of these witnesses, and dismissed what the video shows in crystal clear detail. She said, “Two people with two different vantage points can witness the same event” and still describe it differently. Seriously? This judge apparently subscribes to Rudy Giuliani’s logic that “Truth isn’t truth.” She let the lying cops off, scot-free.
The “blue code of silence” is at work in yet another cover-up of a racist murder by a cop, and it extends throughout the entire “system of injustice.” The video sparked months of protests and a conclusion by federal investigators that Chicago police officers routinely violate the civil rights of minorities.
In its aftermath, the county’s top prosecutor was voted out of office, and Chicago’s Mayor, Rahm Emanuel, decided not to run for re-election. Yet these judges sent the message that the cops are still free to murder and get away with it.
Jan 21, 2019
Translated from Lutte Ouvrière, the newspaper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
Thousands of people marched in downtown Budapest on January 5 to protest against a labor law reform they call the “Slave Labor Law.” Opposition groups and labor unions called for the march.
The law increases the number of hours of overtime bosses can require from 250 hours to 400 hours a year. That is the same as an additional two months of work. And the law lets bosses wait three years to pay! The legislature’s vote in favor of the law on December 12 set off a wave of demonstrations in the capital and in many provincial cities. “We don’t want to work more. We want to live decently on eight hours work a day,” many protesters said.
The government justifies this “reform” by the lack of workers in the country. Thousands of Hungarians left the country to try their luck in Western Europe. But actually the law is intended to satisfy big international companies attracted by the low wages in Hungary. The minimum wage is 149,000 forints a month, around $530. This especially concerns the automobile industry—Mercedes, Suzuki, and Opel—employing 155,000 people and producing 20 percent of Hungary’s exports.
Prime Minister Orban poses as the champion of a nationalist and anti-immigrant policy and claims to “protect the Hungarian people from foreign threat.”
But his demagogy just serves to establish his own power and to get the population to accept sacrifices. The current labor law reform shows the truth about his policies. He attacks the rights of workers and aggravates exploitation and poverty in order to meet the demands of the bosses, whether they are Hungarian or foreign. From anti-immigrant demagogy to attacks on workers is only one small step. It’s one and the same policy.
Jan 21, 2019
Venezuela remains in an unprecedented crisis.
Falling prices in oil led directly to a drop in the standard of living, and scarcity in necessities like food, which are imported. Prices have soared–inflation reached 830,000% last year–literally strangling the population.
More than 2.3 million Venezuelans have fled the country, mostly to Colombia or Costa Rica. There they are targeted by the anti-immigrant parties of the right and the far-right. One refugee camp in Brazil was burnt last August.
This catastrophe did not come out of the blue.
From 1998 to 2012, the Chavez regime took advantage of the country’s oil wealth to substantially improve conditions for the poor–which worked so long as oil prices remained high. The so-called “21st Century Socialism” of Chavez only used oil exports as a revenue source, leaving intact the immense fortunes of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie.
The Venezuelan bourgeoisie used their fortunes to finance campaigns against Chavez’s successor, Maduro. These campaigns rallied a big part of the middle classes and a fraction of the popular layers of the population against the regime. The country almost descended into civil war last year. Rich Venezuelan business people continue to raise prices, when they are not conspiring to organize shortages.
The right-wing parties have made several failed coup attempts, with the backing of the United States. A section of the opposition has attempted to launch an armed insurrection–witness the attacks on barracks to steal arms, or the revelations in The New York Times in September that Donald Trump spoke to rebel military officers about organizing a coup. Up until now, the bourgeoisie has hesitated before this option, because Maduro still has a base among the poorest.
The poor know what a return to power of the right would mean for them. For the time being, the bourgeoisie considers strangling the poor using the economy to be less risky than finishing off the “Chavista” regime.
Venezuela’s terrible lesson is vital for the poor and workers all over the world: they cannot improve their lot without expropriating the wealthy. And they cannot count on a Chavez, or a Maduro, to do it.
Jan 21, 2019
On January 11, the U.S. military announced that it was in the process of withdrawing all 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria, which is what President Trump had promised three weeks before.
The U.S. military’s announcement didn’t give any specifics of where these troops are going. But the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that a convoy of U.S. armored vehicles that was the first of the pullout from Syria was seen traveling to the border with neighboring Iraq, only a few miles away from where they had been based. Permanent bases in Iraq near the Syrian border are being built to house these U.S. forces, according to the Arabic-language Al-Maloumeh news website.
The withdrawal from Syria does not at all constitute a reduction from the 102,000 U.S. soldiers and private contractors stationed in at least 27 bases in 12 Middle East countries (not counting those in Syria). The U.S. military is simply shuffling its troops from one country to another.
When the U.S. military began its troop withdrawal from Syria, it demonstrated just how massive its forces really are. It brought in an entire F-35B squadron of fighters on board the USS Essex, as well as two Navy amphibious ready groups and about 4,500 shipboard Marines on standby in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.
U.S. military spokesmen claimed that this massive military presence surrounding Syria on land, sea and air is simply to support the American troops. But in reality, it is much more than that. It is a demonstration by U.S. imperialism that no matter whether U.S. troops are permanently based in Syria or not, the U.S. military is ready to invade or bomb the country at a moment’s notice.
Trump’s promises to withdraw U.S. troops from the Middle East are completely bogus, just like those of his predecessors, Clinton, Bush and Obama. No matter what these presidents say, the U.S. military is not pulling out of the Middle East, because it is there to defend the interests of the big U.S. oil companies, banks, and military contractors–that is, U.S. imperialism. And in the process, U.S. imperialism is fomenting endless wars and laying waste to an entire region of the world and all of its peoples.
Jan 21, 2019
The following article was translated from Lutte Ouvrière, the newspaper of the French revolutionary workers’ group of that name.
The British Parliament rejected an agreement that the government of Prime Minister Theresa May negotiated with the representatives of the European Union (EU) that would define the relationship between Great Britain and the European Union after Great Britain pulls out of the EU.
In June 2016, the Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, organized a vote of the population on whether or not to leave the European Union. He did so as a political maneuver against a right wing party that was calling for Britain to exit the EU, blaming it for the problems facing British workers. But to Cameron’s surprise, the so-called “Brexit” (British Exit) vote passed, and he was removed from power. The current Prime Minister, Theresa May, is from the same Conservative Party. She has tried to oversee Brexit, even though she did not campaign for it.
The rivalries between politicians are one thing, and the interests of the capitalists are another. The big majority of the British capitalist class does not want to give up access to the European market, and the European capitalists also want to keep Great Britain as part of the European market.
May’s work has consisted of trying to negotiate the appearance of a departure from the EU, while behind the scenes making sure that the exchange of goods and capital could continue as before. To satisfy the pro-Brexit demagogy, she made loud declarations against the EU and implemented policies against migrants and European citizens living in Britain.
In particular, her government announced that if there is no agreement, it would not give long-term visas to European workers, unless they can prove they earn more than 30,000 pounds (about $39,000 a year). Every possible care for the interests of the capitalists, and damn the poorest foreign workers: that is the thrust of May’s government in these negotiations.
The approach of Brexit has not helped Great Britain escape from the economic crisis. Just the opposite. It has aggravated the fall in the value of the pound sterling, Britain’s currency. A number of politicians from her own party have distanced themselves from Theresa May. Some play an even more reactionary game, while others want to renounce Brexit. As for the Labour Party, the majority of its base is against Brexit, but its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, continues to defend it.
This is why Theresa May’s government has had such a hard time getting a majority in Parliament to vote for the Brexit deal it negotiated with the EU. This deal might be the least-bad solution from the point of view of the British capitalists, who seek to protect their interests while retaining the semblance of respecting the so-called will of the people. It is possible that an additional delay will prod the EU into resuming negotiations. It is also still possible that Theresa May will be removed, which could bring new elections and maybe a victory for the Labour Party, who could call a new referendum on whether or not Great Britain should leave the EU. The economic crisis has thus touched off a political crisis that might be inextricable, because the British bourgeois politicians, in trying to keep their electoral support, engage in increasingly reactionary demagogy.
Brexit is a poison, because it divides the working class between pro- and anti-Brexit, and it reinforces nationalist prejudices and directs them against foreign workers. The workers have nothing to hope for from this political system and these politicians who, with the open crisis of Brexit, have shown their irresponsibility. The workers must have confidence in their own forces, in their own capacity to defend their interests through class struggle.
Jan 21, 2019
Translated from Lutte Ouvrière, the newspaper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
The workers who guard Tower of London visitors went on strike on December 21. HRP, which is contracted to manage the royal palaces, wants the workers to pay more for their pensions. The younger workers will lose the most because the pension was supposed to compensate for the low wages.
So for the first time in 55 years, Tower of London visitors were welcomed by strike pickets. The Beefeaters have that name because in the 15th century, they got a daily ration of beef for guarding the crown jewels. Have they had enough of eating “mad cow”?! In any case, instead of their famous red uniforms they wore yellow safety vests like the protesters in France.
Management didn’t budge, so the guards and other HRP workers decided to do more job actions on December 28 and January 2.
Hopefully the Beefeaters—now the Yellow Jackets—will win and inspire other British workers. Just like in France, they have every reason to say “enough”!
Jan 21, 2019
The following article is the editorial from The Spark’s workplace newsletters, for the week of Jan. 14, 2019.
Trump says there is a crisis at the border between the U.S. and Mexico.
Yes, there is a crisis at the border, and not only at the U.S. border with Mexico, but at borders around the world. Famine, wars, dictatorships have been loosed on the peoples of the world by the big imperialist powers, the chief of them being the U.S., at the head of which sits Trump. Famine, war and violence have driven people to cross borders, fleeing from where their families have lived for generations, seeking escape.
Caught in an economic crisis of their own making, the big multinational corporations and banks have been pushing to wring one more drop of wealth from the less developed countries for almost half a century now.
They have destroyed the conditions of life for populations around the world, including in El Salvador, from which the migrants fled, trying to get to the U.S. border.
The big multinationals destroyed agriculture, tearing out crops needed to feed the local population, replacing them with cash crops like sugar cane, palm oil, coca and opium.
The big U.S. companies built factories, in which people work under labor conditions not far from slavery. Their factories poison the water and the land, making it uninhabitable.
The imperialist powers have funded and trained paramilitary groups around the globe, using them to control those who labor in their plantations and factories. They have invaded countries around the world, setting off wars between peoples, dredging up ethnic and religious differences.
The U.S. has not gone one day since the end of World War II, without carrying on a war somewhere in the world. And beyond what the U.S. does, there is England, France, Portugal and Germany. Large parts of the world—including most of the Middle East, a good part of Central America, most of Africa, big stretches of Asia—have been made uninhabitable for the people who used to live there.
It’s a crisis. And Trump, sitting at the head of the U.S. government, shares the blame for it with the heads of the other imperialist powers. Just as previous U.S. presidents did.
The migrants who fled their homes did not create the crisis, they are its victims.
And so are we.
We live in the midst of a country of unmatched wealth. But for almost half a century, the economy has been mired in a crisis, bumping from one recession to another, from one financial collapse to another. The capitalists who run the economy have no answer for the crisis, other than to exploit those of us who work ever more severely. Our standard of living is lower than it was 45 years ago. And it will keep going down. If we are just starting out, our possibility for a decent job is almost nil—and what will it be tomorrow?
Inside this country, we face a catastrophe—and the migrants are not the ones who caused it.
The people who run things today, the people who benefit from the world’s wealth, are a tiny minority. They are able to do what they do because the working people of the world, the vast majority, are divided. Divisions in our class are a weapon in the hands of our enemies—to be used against us.
We have to prepare to fight. But so long as we let ourselves be divided, we weaken our ability to fight. We need all our forces. Old, young, men, women, black, white, Spanish-speaking. We need people born in this country, and people who just got here. We need everyone. We need workers in the factories and the offices, those with a job, and those unemployed. We need workers in private companies, and those who work for the state. We need full-time workers, and part-time; permanent workers and temporary workers. We need everyone. When we act together, we can have the power to change the world, to turn it into a world without victims. We can become the class that will create a humane future for everybody.
Jan 21, 2019
The number of children separated from their parents at the Southern Border is much higher than the official count of 2,737, according to a report by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).
It’s because that count goes back only to April 2018, when the federal government announced a “zero tolerance policy,” meaning it would arrest every adult entering the U.S. without authorization, and separate their children from them. But the DHHS report says that this policy must have been in place already in the summer of 2017, when the rate of separations jumped up more than ten-fold, from 0.3 percent to 3.8 percent.
The authorities sent the children to detention facilities, sometimes hundreds of miles away from their parents. Many parents were deported before they even knew where their children were; but even those parents who were not deported were not able to find their children–because the authorities did not even bother to set up a process to track the children they were detaining!
So no one knows how long, if ever, it will take for each child to be reunited with his or her family–in fact, no one even knows how many children have been, and are still, separated from their parents!
Everybody understands that putting young children through such trauma opens wounds in them that they will carry for many years, and some perhaps all their lives. The Trump Administration may have taken this cruelty to new heights, but in the end what’s cruel is the policy of criminalizing workers for looking for work across the border.
And that is the policy of U.S. capital, which has always used the borders as an excuse to divide the U.S. working class and lower wages.
Jan 21, 2019
Dan Gilbert and his development firm, Bedrock, have gone too far in flexing their muscles by telling the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration that Bedrock was exempt from state inspection citations. According to the Detroit Free Press, Bedrock executives requested and were granted a meeting with the governor’s office to “get an understanding of how the state views them and what they do” and “to make sure everyone is on the same page.”
All of this came after an inspector cited Bedrock for unguarded windows and four other violations, including failure to guard against falls, which resulted in a $3,500 fine.
Multi-billion-dollar Bedrock went to the governor’s office to complain. The citations against Bedrock were eventually dropped and veteran inspectors were given a “refresher training” about the more than 90 Bedrock properties in downtown Detroit. The state workers union president said, “State workers become a target because what we do interferes with corporate profits.”
Big business is putting money over workers’ safety and Lansing leaders are going right along with the plan. The cost of revitalizing Detroit is taking workers’ rights backwards 50 years. Imagine if workers flexed their muscles back to show the bosses who really runs things. Safety would be the last thing we would have to worry about.
Jan 21, 2019
Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) of California recently announced that it plans to file for bankruptcy protection by the end of January. PG&E’s current liability for the recent fires in Paradise can reach to 30 billion dollars and it would avoid paying for these liabilities by declaring bankruptcy. The fires in Paradise in November killed 86 people and destroyed 14,000 homes. This fire was sparked when a PG&E electric power line of 115,000 volts dislodged from a tower.
PG&E is the largest utility company in California, providing natural gas and electricity to 16 million people. But, as state inspectors found again and again over the years, the company has neglected maintenance, repair and safety work of these natural gas and electricity lines–despite the fact that this very profitable company charges its customers very high rates.
One reason for such failures is that PG&E has aged equipment. The company reported that more than 16,000 sections of its high-voltage lines fell, mainly due to equipment failures, between 2013 and 2017. The company did not upgrade this equipment.
Another reason for these failures is that PG&E needs to clear trees and vegetation around the power lines. Since 2010, the state inspectors found that PG&E was behind schedule in completing such maintenance and repair work.
Fires, such as the one in Paradise, could have been avoided. But did PG&E take responsibility for executing these vital upgrades and repairs and maintenance–NO! And the State of California even allocated money for such work between 2007 and 2017, but PG&E spent less than half of these state funds in the meantime!
What do you call it when a utility company, such as PG&E, can find money to reward its executives and shareholders; can charge outrageous rates to consumers; can now try to walk away from its responsibility for the deaths and the loss of thousands of homes in Paradise? Try grand theft and mass murder, for starters.
Jan 21, 2019
John Engler, interim president of Michigan State University (MSU), resigned on January 16, right before an MSU Board meeting to fire him.
The MSU student newspaper rightly asked, “What took so long to get Engler out of office?”
A year ago, Engler, a well-hated former governor, was unanimously appointed interim president. The MSU Board hoped that Engler would finesse the scandal around Dr. Larry Nassar, the MSU gymnastic team doctor who sexually abused over 300 young women athletes under his care over the years.
For the past year, dozens of abuse survivors, together with MSU students and faculty, packed every Board meeting, vehemently protesting Engler’s appointment and the Board’s attempts to sweep the scandal under the rug.
Even as late as the Board meeting on January 9, 2019, the Board—now with Democrats in charge—stood by Engler. But only for 2 days! On January 11, Engler gave the Detroit News interview that would be his last act. He said that survivors who stood up publicly were “ones who’ve been in the spotlight who are still enjoying that.”
Outrageous! Larry Nassar would have NEVER been stopped without the bravery of the many women who roared in the public spotlight. The MSU Board had to cave in.
Rachel Denhollander, the first to go public about sexual abuse at the hands of Dr. Nassar, said of Engler’s comments, “His perception is that sexual assault survivors speak up because they want money and fame. This is the last thing anybody wants to be famous for.”
In fact, Engler was accusing others of what he was guilty of—being focused on money.
In this society ruled by the owners of Capital, money is the top priority—valued more highly than people.
Engler was put in office by the MSU board to prevent the hemorrhaging of money. Engler was able to use his reputation as a well-connected bully to stop all talk in the legislature of cutting MSU’s money. Engler negotiated a 500-million-dollar financial settlement with survivors.
This former governor of Michigan has long been hated—for good reason. He destroyed mental health care in Michigan, he eliminated pensions for new state workers, and he fought against a lawsuit brought by women raped in Michigan’s prisons.
Engler has been willing to do whatever the wealthy owning class of society needed from him, brutally. He represents their money-focused point of view and their disgusting prejudices. Now that he is gone, good riddance to bad rubbish!