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
Oct 25, 2004
This election finally boils down to choosing the "lesser evil"–that is, if we believe all those people, including union leaders, who argue that we need to vote for Kerry in order to get Bush out of office.
Lesser evil? What does that mean? The two parties may use different words, but Kerry and the Democrats are still aligning themselves on Bush’s policies. As for Bush’s wars–Kerry promises to step them up, sending more troops and more bombs. On tax cuts to the corporations–he promises to give the corporations still more cuts, using Bush’s pretext that tax cuts produce jobs. On government spending–Kerry promises to reduce the budget deficit, which is nothing but a code word for cutting the social programs, public services and education that working people need.
The Democrats helped Bush push through his polices over the last three and a half years–sometimes voting in their majority with his proposals, for example, for the war, for new repressive laws and for two of his four tax cuts to the wealthy and the corporations. In other cases, they gave him the votes he needed to get his program through.
The Democrats a lesser evil? That’s preposterous. That’s like arguing that it’s a lesser evil to die from arsenic rather than strychnine. Lesser evil it may be, but you’re still dead.
Of course workers cannot vote for Bush and the Republicans, who make it clear they are the workers’ enemies. But to vote for the Democrats, just because they pretend to be our friends while carrying out an equally anti-worker policy, is just as big a mistake.
To vote for either party gives that party a blank check to impose more sacrifices on us. With our vote, we give our stamp of approval–in advance–to the attacks the Democrats (or the Republicans) have carried out and will continue to carry out.
The ruling class, which is a small minority of the population, has two parties to choose from–Democrats and Republicans.
And yet there are people who dare tell us that working people can’t even have one party of our own! Why not?
The American working class has more than enough forces to build its own party. If Kerry wins this time, it will mainly be due to all those union activists who, despite what Kerry stands for, throw themselves into activity to convince their fellow workers to go vote for him. If Kerry wins, a good part of the price of his victory will have been paid for by the unions’ fund raising efforts and, what’s much more significant, by all the activities union activists have carried out.
Think about all this effort, all the energy put out by working class militants to campaign for someone who defends the corporations. Put this same energy to work telling the truth about the trap of the two-party system, exposing the policy of both parties, leading political fights for what the workers need. If the energy used today to put Kerry in office were spent to defend the interests of the working class, we would have a workers’ party.
The working class of this country has the forces needed to build up its own party. But this party won’t come into existence so long as our money, our efforts and our votes are used essentially to put the Democrats (or the Republicans) in office.
A workers’ party is not only possible, it is an absolute necessity. Whatever comes out of the November elections, working people will still face attacks. What will count then is what we decide to do–whether we stand up for ourselves, refusing further calls for sacrifices, fighting against the speed-up in our workplaces and the downsizing that has cost so many jobs. What will count is whether we express our anger against these filthy wars, which not only are setting American workers against other peoples in the world and grinding down a new generation of young people sent off as cannon fodder, but are stealing from the population’s needs at home. What will count is whether we support those U.S. troops who are expressing their opposition to this war. What will count is whether we mobilize to force government at every level to pay for the things we need: education for our children, public services and social programs.
By fighting for these things, not only can we defend ourselves today; we can also start the process of building a true working class party, one devoted solely to defending the interests of working people and other oppressed people.
Oct 25, 2004
There’s now an extreme shortage of flu vaccine. It’s a foregone conclusion that several thousand vulnerable people will die this winter from influenza that a vaccination could have stopped.
When citizens raised the question of getting extra vaccine from Canada, which has no shortage, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services said that it was out of the question because Canada’s vaccine hadn’t passed U.S. standards.
What standards? Perhaps the standards of restricting access to needed goods and services, until mountains of private profit can be made?
Oct 25, 2004
The latest study by the California Budget Project has found that over half of the corporations that reported profits in 2001 paid no state income taxes. And 46 of those profitable companies had sales of over one billion dollars.
Very conveniently for these companies, state officials are not allowed to divulge which of them did not pay taxes. But it is assumed that the list includes Walt Disney, Fluor (engineering and construction with lots of U.S. government contracts in Iraq), Computer Sciences, Health Net (health insurance) and Ingram Micro Computer–since they all paid no federal taxes over the last several years.
Politicians and businessmen assert over and over again that California is a high-tax state–which is supposed to be what is driving all those companies out of California, taking their jobs with them.
What a bunch of lies–lies that are used to justify cutting corporate taxes further, providing still more loopholes so still more companies, especially the big ones, will pay no taxes at all.
And politicians from every state in the country pick our pockets to give out tax breaks such as these.
Oct 25, 2004
Without much fanfare, the U.S. Congress just passed a new law giving corporations 210 billion dollars in tax breaks over the next ten years.
The law was passed with the votes of both Republicans and the Democrats. In the House of Representatives, where the Republicans couldn’t muster enough of their own votes to pass it by themselves, 73 Democrats joined them. In the Senate, only 14 of the 48 Democrats voted against this major handout to the corporations.
Of course this new massive tax break to the corporations can only mean more taxes for ordinary people (whether in Social Security and Medicare taxes, or state and local taxes). And it will mean further cuts in the public services and social programs working people depend on–not to mention further cuts in money for the schools.
This grab-bag for the corporations and the wealthy people who control them was passed just two weeks before the election–showing the arrogance of both parties who think they can openly screw us–and still get us to vote for them!
They have another "think" coming!
Oct 25, 2004
John Kerry attacks George Bush for opposing imports of cheaper drugs from Canada. Bush says Canada doesn’t have enough drugs to handle the U.S. demand.
Neither of them touches the issue of why drug prices are lower in Canada in the first place.
The drugs from Canada are produced by the same companies in the same factories–often in Puerto Rico–that produce drugs for the U.S. In Canada, there is a federal review board that to some degree regulates the prices that drug companies charge. The Canadian system certainly doesn’t keep companies from making sizeable profits. It simply forces companies to price their products somewhat closer to what they cost.
If Canada seems able to keep down drug prices while keeping drugs available to its citizens, why are the politicians talking about importing Canadian drugs? Why aren’t they looking into importing the Canadian system?
Oct 25, 2004
The Los Angeles County government brought in a private consulting company called Navigant Consulting to take over, manage and restructure Martin Luther King Medical Center, the large public hospital complex in South Central Los Angeles.
If L.A. County officials were really so interested in "cutting costs," then why pay Navigant such a shockingly high fee: 13.25 million dollars for the services of about 20 consultants over the period of a year? (A Los Angeles Times editorial called the consultants’ fee "eyepopping.") If delivering health care more efficiently were really everyone’s goal, then why not spend all that money on a lot more staff and resources at the hospital, where it is so badly needed?
And if delivering better health care to the community and straightening out the public health care system were really their goal, then why have they been slashing it, strangling and throttling it for so long? Only two years ago, the county closed 11 community clinics, reduced the number of inpatient beds in all five L.A. county hospitals and cut thousands of jobs. And they are now about to close the trauma center at Martin Luther King hospital, which also happens to be the second largest trauma center in the county. Of course, nothing disorganizes and disrupts health care more than forcing the millions of patients county-wide who have little or no health coverage into a smaller and smaller public health system.
No, the county officials are not interested in delivering better public health, but cutting it, and Navigant is just one of many consulting companies that help businesses and government do that kind of thing. Last year, Navigant recommended cutting 475 jobs at the UCLA medical center. In 1999, Navigant recommended that the hospital at the University of California at San Francisco cut medical services and staff.
The people primarily responsible for the sometimes abysmal and chaotic kind of health care are the very officials and big shots who are using these conditions as the excuse to bring a bunch of corporate hit men to cut it even more.
Oct 25, 2004
The first flu outbreak of the year has already been reported, from a nursing home in Manhattan–at a time when New York has practically run out of flu vaccine. But even before this official beginning of the flu season, the flu vaccine shortage had already claimed its first victim. On October 14, a 79-year-old woman collapsed and died in northern California after standing in line outside a supermarket for more than five hours to get a flu shot.
All over the country, people have been waiting in line for hours for the limited amount of vaccine available. In Montgomery County, Maryland, where health officials decided to organize a lottery to avoid the long lines, 4500 people had signed up within the first five hours for the 800 shots available.
"I don’t understand at all how it’s gotten to this point," said a 65-year old cancer patient waiting in line at a supermarket in Tampa, Florida. Many people share her anger. This flu-shot crisis, in the 21st century in the world’s wealthiest country, is really like a bad dream. It’s here nonetheless, an inevitable product of the capitalist system we live under.
The production and distribution of the flu vaccine is left to private companies, even though these companies are not interested in developing the vaccine themselves. Thus, every winter, the World Health Organization, a United Nations agency financed with taxpayer money, carries out the initial research to develop that year’s flu vaccine. But the vaccine is turned over to private companies for mass production–and massive profits!
But profitability also means monopolization, which in turn increases the risk of a shortage in case something goes wrong. That’s how half the supply for the entire U.S. market disappeared overnight when the vaccine made by one company was found to be contaminated.
Once there is a shortage, the much-praised "free market" then guarantees that those who get the vaccine are not those who need it the most. So, for example, 2000 doses of the vaccine were available for the 535 members of Congress and their high-ranking staff–and most of them wasted no time to get theirs–at the same time that federal officials, starting with George Bush, were telling elderly Americans waiting in lines "to be patient." Also, those providers who ordered large quantities of the vaccine got theirs delivered while "small-timers" didn’t. That’s why doctors, who have no vaccine, have been forced to send their patients to supermarkets where people have to wait in line for hours, or to private clinics which don’t accept Medicare and charge $25–or more–for a single shot!
In fact, flu vaccine is being marketed at up to 10 times the normal price these days–at "whatever the capitalist market will bear."
The government has been an accomplice in the whole crisis, from the very beginning. The contamination at Chiron’s Liverpool facility was revealed months ago. So the British government bought backup supplies last summer while the Bush administration did nothing–even though it was U.S. inspectors who first discovered the contamination!
In every possible way, and at every stage of its making, this flu vaccine crisis is nothing but a product of the capitalist system. It clearly shows how big a lie it is when we are told that everything is "more efficient" if it’s left to private enterprise.
Oct 25, 2004
More than 40 fires have been set in Baltimore area schools in the last two months since school opened, including five on October 21. Last week, there was also a shooting. Twice recently security guards used Mace to break up student fights and at least one student is recovering from injuries in a bus incident. Both adults and students have expressed concern that the schools are out of control.
Yes, they are out of control, but in ways that go way beyond these incidents.
To put it clearly: the Baltimore City school system does not do what it is supposed to do, educate the working class youth of Baltimore.
The Baltimore City schools, blaming it on repeated budget crises, have too few teachers, too few supplies, old text books that students cannot even take home. Young people get an inferior education in old, falling apart buildings. Their results on tests are the worst in Maryland.
The school incidents reflect how many young people are angry in these holding pens called schools. They can feel that education is far down on the list of priorities for the city’s politicians and big-wigs.
It’s right there in front of the students–the ostentatious display of wealth in the Baltimore area, reflected by ever more buildings going up downtown along the Inner Harbor. There are expensive condos, multi-million dollar penthouse apartments, marinas filled with pleasure boats, a Westside arts center and two new stadiums. Everything–except real sums of money for city schools. Government officials and the heads of big companies have other priorities.
The future proposed to poor and working class youth in this society is bleak. And they know it.
Oct 25, 2004
The Bush administration promised in 2003 to deliver AIDS treatment to two million people affected by the disease in Africa. Although this is a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed, little was done. Now, almost two years later, the administration has finally signed a contract worth seven billion dollars to deliver AIDS treatments to Africans.
Logically, the money ought to go to existing humanitarian organizations, which already work in Africa and know the people, the health systems and the governments, and have been carrying out campaigns to deliver this aid.
Instead, the U.S. government has contracted with Northrop Grumman, a defense contractor. Its business isn’t health care–it is weapons systems!
Using the pretext of the AIDS crisis in Africa, the government is going to deliver only one thing–profits to Northrop and its subcontractors.
Oct 25, 2004
The battle between armed gangs in Haiti took a new turn at the end of September when the supporters of former president Bertrand Aristide took to the streets to mark the anniversary of his overthrow and exile by a military coup. As they demanded Aristide’s return to Haiti, his supporters launched an operation they called "Baghdad," a reference to the armed chaos in the streets of the capital of Iraq. Barricades were thrown up in a number of working class and poor neighborhoods, like Bel-Air, La Saline and Cite Soleil. In the following week, confrontations between armed supporters of Aristide and armed policemen left at least a dozen dead.
Daily life in the capital city of Haiti has come to a halt. Schools are seldom open; most shops are closed. Armed gangs run the streets, terrifying the population. The situation is the worst in poor neighborhoods where workers, "jobbers" or street merchants and small shop owners are caught in the crossfire. Houses have been ransacked, women have been raped; mutilated bodies are found in the streets. Those who can flee seek shelter among friends and co-workers in other neighborhoods.
U.N. forces in Haiti are supposed to maintain order. In reality, these 3000 soldiers protect the presidential palace, the airport and the industrial zone.
One day in October, 200 U.N. soldiers and 150 Haitian police entered the Bel-Air neighborhood to disarm some of the gangs. But the thugs in the neighborhood had advanced warning and moved their cache of weapons out of the area before the search could begin. However, a few hours after the police and U.N. soldiers left the area, the armed supporters of Aristide took back to the streets, again throwing up barricades and occupying the center of the city. They looted stores, burned vehicles and carried out a number of murders.
Another armed gang–made up of former army members who had carried out the military coup against Aristide–showed up to occupy some public buildings. They said, since the government could not maintain order, they would–by disarming others.
The government of Latortue, put in place by American and French troops in 2004, seems unable to organize even the minimum services necessary for the country to function. This government has almost no control over the country, not even the capital city of Port-au-Prince. Haiti remains splintered, under the rule of the various armed gangs, each one fighting for its own interests: the armed supporters of Aristide; the official and corrupted police; the former army men; and even others.
Meanwhile, the poor can barely find enough to eat. And they are the ones who pay the highest price for all the chaos and violence of the armed gangs–none of which represents any interest for the workers and poor.
Oct 25, 2004
Opel, owned by General Motors, has almost 10,000 workers split between three factories in Bochum, in the western part of Germany. When management announced in October that it intended to lay off more than 4,000 workers at this location alone, it was like a bomb going off. Something occurred that rarely happens in Germany. The workers immediately stopped work, catching the union officials unprepared; the workers ignored the numerous legal obstacles that are supposed to prevent the outbreak of wildcat strikes. For six days, production was completely stopped. Due to the lack of parts, a Belgian GM plant was shut for a day as were plants in Antwerp, southern Germany and northern England.
Twenty years ago, there were more than 20,000 workers at Opel’s Bochum plants, twice the number of today. The workers gave concessions in the form of lower wages and an increased work load for many years, supposedly to "save jobs." But just like here, the concessions didn’t save jobs. For several months now the workers knew that GM was preparing another attack. The company’s proposal to eliminate 4,000 workers also meant that thousands more jobs could have been lost in the area at parts plants under contract to Opel.
The workers were enraged. They demanded no layoffs and no factory closure. Then, for the first time in 20 years, workers occupied a factory. Management tried to intimidate them by bringing in 40 extra security guards.
The strikers got a show of support from other workers who organized collections or stopped by with food. Others from nearby work places came by to show their solidarity with the strikers.
Now workers are waiting to see what negotiations will bring. If GM is negotiating at all over these issues, it’s due to the fight made at Bochum. Union officials had tried to convince the strikers to go back to work and stop their strike. So workers can scarcely trust them.
At Bochum the union delegates elected to the works council negotiate alone with the management, without having to answer to the workers. And in this case, the delegates did everything they could to put an end to the movement. While strike funds usually replace part of strikers’ lost wages, this time the unions didn’t even use the funds to feed the strikers.
One thing is clear: to win, the workers will have to count on themselves–and on other workers.
Oct 25, 2004
On Sunday, October 24, 49 Iraqi army recruits and their civilian driver were killed in an ambush near Baquba, northeast of Baghdad. The day before, two suicide bombings targeting the Iraqi National Guard had killed 20 people. No U.S. deaths were reported that day, but six U.S. soldiers were badly wounded when their armored vehicle was attacked on the road to the Baghdad airport, a scene of frequent attacks.
U.S. military officials admit that the insurgency against the U.S. and its allies in Iraq is growing by the day in both the Sunni and Shiite regions of central and southern Iraq. The U.S. military itself estimated in August that the number of insurgents had grown from 5,000 back in March to 20,000 in July, not counting the much larger support network around them.
The rise of the insurgency is also seen in the official casualty figures released by the Pentagon. The numbers of U.S. troop casualties have doubled within the last six months, to 1,100 for the dead and 8,000 for the wounded. This sharp increase is all the more striking if one considers that, since the upsurge of the insurrection in the spring, U.S. troops have been leaving their bases much less frequently and only in large groups protected in heavily armored vehicles.
U.S. authorities also admit that the insurgents can count on widespread support in the population. Latest polls announced by the U.S. indicate that 80% of the population is hostile toward the U.S., up from 72% last February. And even these figures understate the situation, first of all because the polls are conducted by the U.S. itself. But also because they include people in the northern Kurdish region, where the population has not been subjected to U.S. military attacks and repression as much as in the Arab regions.
U.S. authorities are caught in a quagmire of their own making. No matter what they do now, they are apt to strengthen the insurgency. If the U.S. leaves cities like Falluja, where insurgents are based, alone, they will continue to thrive. But if the U.S. attacks these cities, as it has done in several cities such as Falluja, Najaf and Samarra since last spring, it is apt to make the population even more determined in its anger towards the U.S. The insurgents can pack and leave before the attacks begin. But the population is caught up in the bombardment and subsequent door-to-door raids, interrogations and arrests. Up until now, all this has made it easier for the insurgents to find both support and recruits in the population.
Commentators agree that the Iraqi elections scheduled for January would be meaningless when, in fact, the U.S. and its puppet, the Allawi government, don’t even control most of the Iraqi cities. But U.S. officials insist that the elections will take place no matter what–which raises the question that the U.S. might use the elections as a pretext to carry out a major offensive against Iraqi cities.
In any case, up until now the U.S. military has confined itself to massive aerial bombings and limited raids, preferably carried out by Iraqi troops. Neither Bush nor Kerry wants the war to become a major issue right before the U.S. presidential election.
Nonetheless, everything indicates that the U.S. military will, sooner or later, launch massive attacks on the cities it doesn’t control–if not to wipe out the insurgency then at least to intimidate the population into abandoning their support for the fighters. U.S. military officials see no reason to hide their intentions. According to The New York Times, Pentagon and administration officials explained that the air campaign against Falluja was "in part intended to present a stark choice to the people of Falluja, especially those who may be supporting Iraqi insurgents or the foreign fighters’ network." The Times also quoted a Pentagon official, who explained exactly what kind of "stark choice" Iraqi people face: "If there are civilians dying in connection with these attacks, and with the destruction, the locals at some point have to make a decision. Do they want to harbor the insurgents and suffer the consequences that come with that, or do they want to get rid of the insurgents and have the benefits of not having them there."
These words will ring familiar to those who remember the other war a generation ago, in Viet Nam. The insurgency in Iraq is turning into a full-fledged guerrilla war against occupation forces, just as in Viet Nam. And now, as it was then, U.S. authorities have only one response in mind: to step up the barbaric bombardment and repression against civilians.
Those in the Viet Nam generation will also remember, however, that the threatened "consequences" of this policy are not suffered by the local population alone. Americans will also pay a heavy price for the barbarism of their government and military, first of all the troops on the ground in Iraq. Being used as the soldiers of this brutal, dirty war against a whole people, they are targets themselves. And as for working people here at home, we will continue paying for this war, which has already swallowed hundreds of billions of tax dollars, and in the deaths and maiming of their relatives in the Army.
That’s why, from the viewpoint of the troops in Iraq and workers here at home, there is only one solution: to get out of Iraq, and get out now. The U.S. government is not about to do that. But the sentiment that can change that, forcing the government to do what it doesn’t want to do, is already visible–among the soldiers in Iraq, like the 19 soldiers who recently refused to go on a mission without adequate protection; and among the soldiers’ families who, practically from the beginning of this war, have been protesting the deaths of their loved ones, the extended tours of duty and the conditions.
It’s not Bush or Kerry who will end this carnage in Iraq, but the U.S. population, starting with the soldiers themselves.
Oct 25, 2004
Since 1984, Amtrak has paid out more than 186 million dollars in damages for accidents that have killed 53 people and injured over 1,300. Amtrak may have paid, but most of these accidents were actually found to be the fault of the freight company that owns the tracks the trains ride on, particularly CSX, the largest freight company of all.
The accidents happen because the freight railroads do not keep up basic maintenance on their tracks and crossing signals. In a case stemming from a derailment in 1991, causing eight deaths and 77 injuries, Amtrak paid out over 88 million dollars in damages. CSX, whose unsafe tracks were found to have caused the crash, paid the Federal Railroad Administration the maximum fine–$20,000–a slap on the wrist.
This bizarre arrangement, by which Amtrak pays out liability claims for accidents caused by other companies, has been set into law since Amtrak was formed in 1970. It was reaffirmed by Congress in 1997.
Amtrak, of course, gets most of its money from the U.S. government–that is, from taxpayers. The freight companies, by contrast, are privately owned corporations set up to make a profit. And this arrangement helps them do it, while giving them no reason to keep the tracks safe.
This amounts to a huge bailout for the big freight railroads–paid for by the very people who risk their lives riding on those rails.
Oct 25, 2004
Kmart just replaced its CEO, Julian Day. During Day’s reign, Kmart’s sales dropped from 36 billion dollars in 2001 to 23 billion in 2003.
Despite what seems like a dismal performance, Day will leave the job over 110 million dollars richer. He holds stock options currently worth 105 million dollars. He received one million dollars in salary for 2004 and will get an additional cash payment of two million dollars. He stands to receive another 1.5 million in long-term performance awards. On top of that he will receive a bonus for 2004 that has yet to be announced.
So why such a big golden parachute?
In fact, Day was rewarded for doing exactly what the bosses wanted him to do. He cut 66,000 workers from Kmart’s payroll and closed at least 600 stores.
The stores were not closed because they were not producing. Many of these stores were among the company’s most profitable. Kmart simply sold the stores to raise cash, letting it pile up almost three billion dollars in cash. And, instead of investing the cash in its remaining stores, it is putting the money in securities and other financial-services businesses.
It does not matter that communities are left without stores, that workers lost their jobs, nor that retirees who had money in Kmart stock lost their savings when Kmart declared its old stock worthless.
What matters for Kmart executives is what always matters most for capitalists. Their aim is not to produce and sell things that people need or to provide jobs. Their goal is to find the quickest way to turn a profit. These days, financial wheeling and dealing fit the bill.
Oct 25, 2004
For many years, U.S. auto workers have been persuaded to accept profit-sharing deals in their contracts, instead of the previously traditional three% yearly raise.
Workers’ hopes are regularly raised by news reports such as "GM earns 3.06 billion for first nine months of 2004," or "market share grows in all four global regions in the most recent quarter," or even the GM CEO’s statement, "we do have $25 billion in cash." All of those statements were made in early October, in regard to GM’s third quarter report.
But the largest headlines were reserved for a different spin. "GM profits far below expectations." "GM must cut 12,000 jobs." "Perfect storm sinks GM profits." And workers’ hopes for profit-sharing sank, too.
How can these different headlines be referring to the exact same company at the exact same time? It’s simply a matter of which set of books are on display. The corporation which has 25 billion dollars in cash and made over three billion dollars profit in nine months includes many legal-fiction divisions, including the fabulous GMAC finance company. GMAC shows nine quarters of continually improving profitability on its books.
GM North American automotive operation shows on its books a third-quarter loss of 22 million dollars. Conveniently for GM–and not so conveniently for the workers–it’s these operations alone on which profit-sharing is calculated. Meanwhile, payouts to stockholders are calculated on the earnings of the corporation as a whole!
Matters stand similarly at Ford and DaimlerChrysler. Stockholders–and execs–receive dividends based on the earnings of the entire corporation; workers receive profit-sharing based on the part of the company whose books show no profit.
These books couldn’t be better cooked if Martha Stewart and Ken Lay were stirring the pot together.
Oct 25, 2004
United Airlines, in bankruptcy proceedings, recently stopped making contributions to its pension plans, and announced it will likely soon terminate them altogether. US Airways, which just declared bankruptcy for the second time in two years, has suspended contributions to its pension plans covering 15,000 workers. Delta Airlines has stated it may have to declare "bankruptcy" soon, too, and possibly terminate its pension plans.
The junking of pension plans has become commonplace in the last few years. Big steel company pension plans have been junked–at Bethlehem, National, LTV Steel, Weirton, Great Lakes Steel and Rouge Steel. Thousands of Enron workers were left with no pensions. And recently a bankruptcy judge allowed Kaiser Aluminum Company to terminate its main pension plan, leaving 20,000 hourly and salaried employees with no company pensions.
Corporations in bankruptcy can continue doing business, paying their bankers, suppliers and executives and their stockholders. The things they rush to junk are obligations to their work force.
Their pension plans get dumped on the government-backed Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC), which cuts some pensions and eliminates retiree health care benefits for everyone.
Because of all the depleted pension plans from "bankrupt" companies that have been thrown on the PBGC, this agency is now running a deficit of about 10 billion dollars, a deficit which is expected to rise to 20 or 30 billion dollars as a result of these games the bosses play. In addition, Congress recently passed a law that will allow companies to underfund their pension fund contributions even more than they do now.
In fact, despite what we’ve been led to believe, private pensions have never really been "guaranteed." They will be protected not by courts or politicians but by the same means that established them originally: a struggle of workers which forces the bosses to come up with the billions they’ve stashed away out of sight!
Oct 25, 2004
Two Harvard Medical School professors announced a study showing that at least 1.7 million U.S. veterans have no health insurance whatsoever: no VA benefits, no Medicare, no employer plans, nothing.
These veterans are mostly from the Vietnam and Gulf War eras. One out of three under age 25 has no coverage; one out of 10, aged 45 to 65. And 85% of the uninsured are working.
The number of uninsured veterans has always been very large, running about 10% of all veterans under age 65. But in 2003, that number suddenly spiked up by over a quarter million, to 11.9%, largely due to a government decision that denied VA coverage to "Category 8" vets. "Category 8" means those with incomes over $25,000 a year, that is, just barely above the family-of-four poverty level.
The government makes big talk about how it values soldiers and veterans. But any GIs who survive the meat grinder of war and return to civilian life will find that the government has another kind of meat grinder waiting for them.
Oct 25, 2004
A federal panel of medical experts has finally concluded what was obvious for the past thirteen years: Gulf War Syndrome is real.
An estimated 100,000 Gulf War veterans, or one in seven, continue to suffer war-related health problems. These include headaches and other pain; fatigue; muscle weakness; chronic diarrhea; skin blistering; and difficulty in thinking.
For thirteen years, the government refused to acknowledge that the medical problems reported by vets were real, with physical causes. The government ignored suicides of some vets; it ignored deformities in children born to radiation-exposed vets. Effectively it said this was all in the vets’ heads!
Finally, the Department of Veterans Affairs has acknowledged that vets’ claims have a real basis–but only to put the blame on exposure to chemicals that supposedly came from Iraq. The VA continues to deny that exposure to "depleted" uranium, a radioactive material used in explosive shell casings, has anything to do with vets’ problems. Independent studies may have linked Gulf War Syndrome symptoms to this exposure, but the U.S. continues to use depleted uranium in Iraq today. So mum’s the word!
Today, the government has admitted what the vets long have claimed–but much too late to give the medical help needed. This monstrous government, which treated the troops as cannon fodder during the last Gulf war, treats the veterans as even less than that after they come home.
Oct 25, 2004
In mid-October, 18 Army Reservists, together with their staff sergeant, refused to transport a convoy of fuel trucks into a dangerous area outside of Baghdad. Stories like this have made the rounds before, but this is the first one the Army has acknowledged. This one would never have made it into the news if it hadn’t been for relatives’ efforts to get the story told when they heard from other people in the same unit that the Reservists had been arrested.
Ironically, the Army, which at first had arrested the 19 people involved, later tried to downplay the refusal, with one officer saying only that the Reservists had "declined an assignment."
"Declined an assignment"! The Army, which usually calls this "mutiny," was trying to put as good a face on it as it could. The fact remains, the refusal threw a spotlight on the growing unrest among U.S. troops in Iraq.
At the very beginning of the war, many of the troops may have believed the stories they were fed about being welcomed as "liberators" by the Iraqi people. That myth has long since been shattered by what the troops are going through daily on the ground in Iraq, seeing the U.S. army kill women and children and old people, knowing that any Iraqi civilian walking by them might try to kill them in turn."I didn’t come over here to kill civilians"–it was a refrain heard by reporters as well as by relatives of the troops who got e-mail and phone calls.
As the war has descended into the chaos we see today, troops are no longer going over to Iraq with illusions in their "mission." Some, in fact, aren’t going. On a recent call-up of Reservists for Iraq, only one-third reported for duty on time and ready to go. Some active duty soldiers have left for Canada. Others have simply gone AWOL and disappeared.
But even more significant are the troops who return from Iraq and begin to speak out publicly against the war and even form organizations to mobilize opposition to it. They have been joined by veterans from the first Gulf War who had formed organizations fighting to get the government to acknowledge the ailments they were still suffering as the result of that relatively short war. Veterans from the Viet Nam war, who in their turn had formed organizations against that war, back up the current soldiers, adding their voices to the protests about the Iraq war.
The Army has what it calls a "morale" problem. In other words, more U.S. troops are coming to realize that their lives are being put at risk in a bloody war decimating the Iraqi population. And for what–so big U.S. oil corporations can put their hands on Iraqi oil, so that Haliburton can make billions off the disaster the U.S. has created in Iraq?
It’s not the first time that American soldiers have come to publicly oppose a war they were involved in–what happened during the Viet Nam war is well known. One of the factors that drove the U.S. government to decide to withdraw from Viet Nam was the increasingly bitter disaffection among U.S. troops there–a disaffection that in many cases was acted on. The government no longer knew how much it could count on its own army.
As the U.S. continues this filthy war in Iraq, the same bitter disaffection may develop among this generation of troops. If it does, we may see an end to this vicious slaughter–both of the U.S. troops themselves and of the Iraqi people.