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 2, 2006
Five days before Christmas, transit workers in New York City went out on strike. Everyone, from the mayor to the governor to the president to every bourgeois newspaper in the country screamed, “Extortion!” The transit workers were supposedly holding the city hostage–and right during the busiest shopping week of the year, at that. Some even talked about “terrorism.”
“Extortion”? Let’s talk about extortion. Five days BEFORE the strike, the courts had already jumped into action, threatening to fine the union one million dollars a day for every day on strike, threatening to cost the workers two days pay for every day they stayed off the job.
The courts, rushing to the defense of a city transit authority, were holding the union treasury hostage–along with the workers’ livelihood.
What was the city’s Transit Authority engaged in, if not extortion, when it demanded that workers agree to increase the age for pensions, increase the amount workers would contribute toward their pensions, increase payments for medical care–under the threat of such outrageous fines? And to show their utter shamelessness, they demanded these things in a period when the Transit Authority was running a big surplus!
No, don’t come talking to the working class about extortion and terrorism–this is what every boss in the country has been engaging in.
This year, they have a very specific goal in mind–their aim is to get rid of pensions for workers who still have them, to dump medical coverage for those retirees who still have it, and to put the price for active workers’ medical coverage beyond their means.
Do we doubt it? Look at what the city of New York demanded from its transit workers. Look at GM, Ford and Chrysler. Look at all those companies that have already declared bankruptcy, depriving retirees of all medical care, and cutting their pensions to the severely reduced amounts that the government-funded insurance will cover. Bethlehem Steel, Weirton, LTV, National Steel and 40 some other steel companies, as well as United and four other airlines used bankruptcy to dump pensions and medical coverage. Delphi is now poised to do the same thing. Retired construction workers in Southeastern Michigan woke up January 1, knowing they had just lost all their medical coverage.
The NYC transit workers were correct to strike. Someone has to stand up to these demands. The only things they did wrong was to wait too long–this was their first strike in 25 years–to go back too soon, before all their demands were met, and to think they could solve the problem all by themselves.
There was no need for them to face the courts alone. Every worker’s pension is targeted for extinction today–at least, every worker who still has a pension. Every worker stands to lose more medical coverage, if not all of it.
Newspapers around the country have been counseling every worker that we should no longer expect to have such a free ride.
Free ride? Retirees worked for those pensions, putting in 30 years and more, wrecking their bodies, numbing their minds. And those of us still working have already contributed so much profit to the bosses’ bank accounts, it could pay for us and our families the rest of our lives.
Don’t tell us we’re not owed.
But being owed and getting paid are two different things.
If we want our pensions we’ll have to fight for them. All of us, with the retirees playing a special role in this fight. Maybe the courts can use injunctions to back down transit workers in one city. But all the workers and all the retirees in all the cities of this country? Let the courts try it. Let the government pretend it can go on without us. Let the bosses bluster as much as they can.
We have forces–much more than the bosses and their puny judges have. And it’s time we began to use our forces. All of us. End of story.
Jan 2, 2006
In early December, police shot and killed villagers in a small Chinese town. The government announced three deaths; villagers told the media that 20 people are dead or missing.
What was the crime for which these villagers were executed? A thousand people had turned out to protest what was being done to their village of Dongzhou. It was the site of a new power plant, brought in without the consent of the villagers. It would bring heavy pollution to the area, like all the coal-burning power plants being built in China. In addition, the government planned to fill in their local waters for a landfill, ruining the livelihood of local fishermen. In return, the villagers were offered about three dollars in compensation, more or less the equivalent of a day’s pay in China.
Word of the killings and intimidation of villagers leaked out despite government efforts and threats to prevent any news. Villagers told reporters that some had been promised thousands of dollars if they kept quiet about how a family member had died. If they spoke out, they would get nothing.
China is a poor country, with a majority of rural peasants, despite millions crowding into the larger cities to work in the factories. The country desperately lacks power for its industrial and residential needs, leading to a push for more coal and numerous accidents in coal mines. At least 6,000 miners were killed in the past year in mining accidents.
The population in China faces low wages, sometimes starvation, dangerous working conditions, severe pollution and government repression. These villagers in Dongzhou were not the only ones who have had to face their local police or military when they tried to protest a government decision.
These are the benefits of capitalism running riot in China.
Jan 2, 2006
Before dawn on December 29, Egyptian riot police raided a makeshift tent camp of Sudanese refugees with water cannons and clubs. Dozens of people were killed or injured in the resulting stampede. A human rights agency confirmed 23 of the dead, all but one of whom are women, children or elderly.
Last September, Sudanese families began to camp in front of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Cairo, Egypt’s capital, to protest the agency’s refusal to help them. Eventually, more than 2,000 people were forced to crowd into a traffic island no larger than a basketball court.
Apparently, the raid was in response to complaints from residents and business owners in the upscale neighborhood where the U.N. office, and thus the refugees’ encampment, was. But well-to-do Egyptians were not the only ones to complain. So did U.N. officials, who told the protesters that they had to go back to Sudan, since the war that drove them to flee is now officially over.
Most of the refugees are from southern Sudan, an area devastated for a number of years by a civil war. During this war, militia forces systematically attacked the civilian population.
Who could blame the refugees for not wanting to go back–especially since the militia forces that attacked them were supported by the government that’s still in power?
In fact, in the summer of 2004, the then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell visited the area and called the attacks on the civilian population a genocide–a charge repeated by top U.N. officials.
So is this the way the U.N. treats genocide victims? Calling the cops on them and getting dozens of them killed?
These U.N. officials, like the officials of western governments including the U.S., never miss an opportunity to declare themselves the guardians of peace and human rights all over the world. The plight of the Sudanese refugees, which made headlines in the media only because of this horrible massacre, shows what shameless hypocrites they are.
Jan 2, 2006
Two weeks ago, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld talked about 20,000 U.S. troops returning home after the Iraqi elections. Last week, he corrected himself, admitting that troops weren’t being recalled. It’s just that two brigades scheduled to be deployed would not be sent–although one of the brigades would be sent to Kuwait and might be sent to Iraq later–along with “a few” specialists from the other brigade. He spoke of reducing troop levels to below 138,000.
But the next day, General Peter Pace, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, added, “The enemy has a vote on this. If the enemy causes some kind of problems requiring more troops, we will do what we have done in the past and give the commanders on the ground what they need. And, in that case, you could see troop levels go up a little bit to handle that problem.”
Pace also gave the current troop levels as 160,000, saying they could drop below the 138,000 level that “prevailed most of this year” by March–that is, if they don’t go up!
A shill playing Three-Card Monty couldn’t have done it better!
Jan 2, 2006
The U.S. Justice Department announced it is opening a “criminal investigation” into media reports about the President’s domestic spying.
So what’s it looking for? For the politicians who have been taking rights away from people in this country? Is it tracking down those who have committed torture? Inquiring into people being kidnapped and held incommunicado without charges? Or investigating the violation of people’s supposed Fourth Amendment right “to be secure in their houses?”
No, the so-called “Justice” Department is looking to see who put the dime on the President for spying on people inside this country without a warrant.
It seems they have a sense of priorities–if their intention was to install Bush as dictator!
Jan 2, 2006
After the parliamentary elections held in Iraq on December 15, Bush proclaimed in his address to the nation that “we are winning the war in Iraq” and bragged that the elections represent the beginning of “constitutional democracy at the heart of the Middle East.” Administration figures added that the Sunnis, a large population that had boycotted the January elections, presented candidates this time.
But judging by the security measures taken, neither the heads of the occupation force nor of the Iraqi government shared his optimism. They instituted a curfew in the days leading up to the election. They put 130,000 cement barriers around Baghdad to stop all traffic in the streets. And they forbade all Iraqis from leaving their area of residence on the day of the vote.
The Western coalition may gloat with satisfaction about the fact that Sunnis participated this time in the election. This merely hides the fact that the Sunni political parties sponsor armed groups, just as the Shiites and Kurds have been doing. They make no secret of their intentions to impose themselves by force on the rest of Iraq. And Sunni militias demonstrated their intentions with a series of bombing attacks that killed 17 Iraqis in the two days following the cease-fire in place for the elections.
The rival factions that struggle for power have two irons in the fire at the same time: on the one hand, they use violence and terror to impose their dictatorship over the population; and on the other hand, some of them are elected to parliament, seeking to control part of the spoils of what is left of Iraq.
This is what the Shiite parties have done in the year since they took office. Unlike “parliamentary” parties, the parties now in government are the political allies of numerous heavily-armed militias. Look at one of the largest parties, the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution, (SCIRI), linked closely to the Badr militia. This militia is responsible for most of the kidnappings and executions summarily carried out against SCIRI opponents in the Basra region. Then there is the minister of the Interior, a supposed champion for “democracy,” who is one of the leading figures behind the clandestine prisons where “suspects” are held and tortured without any form of due process.
Results of the December 15 elections seem to indicate that religious parties are in the lead by a strong margin, among both Sunni and Shiite populations. On the Sunni side, the coalition formed around one of the fundamentalist parties, the Islamic Party of Iraq, won close to 20% of the votes in Baghdad, as well as gaining first place in Mosul and Fallujah.
On the Shiite side, the United Alliance of Iraq strengthened its position in the southern Shiite areas, which is not a surprise given its leading position in the existing state apparatus. Even in Baghdad, the Alliance had close to 60% of the votes, despite predictions to the contrary. More importantly, it seems the relationship of forces within the Alliance has shifted. It now will be dominated in almost equal parts by the SCIRI and by the supporters of Moktadah al-Sadr and his “Mahdi army,” which previously did not participate in the elections.
If these election results confirm anything, it is that the new power will be entirely controlled by the two main Shiite fundamentalist militias. This result could lead to a worsening situation since the Sunni militias play on the idea that they are a victimized minority. But even if these parties existed side by side in the government, they would still continue to war for top positions, escalating the violence in order to eliminate any obstacles on the path to power.
The Iraqi population remains hostage in these bloody struggles between rival factions whose appetites for power were whetted by the Western invasion.
Jan 2, 2006
More and more union leaders today push to be in a partnership with the companies. Workers can see what this partnership looks like, in full bloom, in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Robert H. Cleland.
Cleland is hearing the case in which General Motors and the UAW (United Auto Workers) are jointly trying to break the healthcare contract with GM retirees.
Attorney Driker, representing GM: “If the retirees have had health benefits that are the equivalent of a fully loaded Cadillac, they now have a Cadillac without heated seats.”
Attorney Clark, representing the UAW: “A dead goose doesn’t lay any eggs.”
Judge Cleland, representing the power of the state: “Anyone in his right mind” can see concessions to GM are necessary.
And who was there to represent the actual retirees, the ones who wore out their bodies providing 30 years of superlative GM profits? The ones who got lower wages, for years, as part of a contract that would provide pensions and health care for the few years left them at the end of their life? Not represented!
None of the attorneys, nor the judge, nor GM executives, nor UAW leaders will have to deal in their own lives with the difficulties they are perfectly ready to inflict on retired workers.
Yet the judge dares to declare that anyone who bears the actual cuts, anyone who might object to being betrayed–is not “in his right mind!”
These personages believe they can snap their briefcases, bang their gavel, and dispose of workers whose labor sustained this society for 30 years and more.
Not so fast! The case was being heard in the court because, according to labor law, the union doesn’t have the right to represent retirees in negotiations. And the company doesn’t have the right to break the contract it made with them when they worked. So, the court was dragged in to make things “legal.” And this requires a certain “procedure” that workers can use. Retirees having objections can register written statements with Judge Cleland before February 13, and a hearing is scheduled in his court on March 6. What would happen if hundreds of retirees with hundreds of active workers backing them up show up? The more that show up, the more the fraudulent “partnership” between GM and UAW leaders can be busted up. And the judge might be forced to eat his words.
Jan 2, 2006
UAW leaders reported that the Ford healthcare concessions passed by 51 to 49%. Workers immediately responded, many saying the vote was stolen, the count rigged. A UAW spokesman said union leaders had expected a close vote because workers were unhappy because they had to give up concessions in the middle of the contract, but that it was a fair vote.
Yes, workers were “unhappy” about giving up concessions. But many are enraged because the lack of accountability in the way the contract vote was reported created real distrust toward the officers of their own union.
There are very strict rules in the UAW constitution for the election of officers, but, as workers in some locals can attest, there sometimes is cheating.
But, in the case of contract ratifications and strike votes, there are no rules. And this time, the voting was so loosely done as to be uncheckable afterwards. In one Ford Local 600 plant, for example, some voting was done with officials standing over workers while they voted, collecting the ballots in an open plastic jug or pail. No procedure to ensure that someone voted only once. No procedure to make sure that if a member was absent or didn’t vote, no one else voted “for” them! Some of these ballots were kept overnight in the hands of officials who were not overseen in any way. Ballots could have been thrown out–or added!
How can any vote represent the workers’ wishes unless the workers themselves control the process, every step of the way? This one wasn’t supervised by the workers. There was no rank and file inspection of balloting. There was no rank and file verification of ballot counting.
That’s one reason workers don’t trust this vote. The other reason is that they know–in their own plants–just how many workers opposed this contract. And what was true in one plant was true in many plants across the country. In fact, even officials admitted that at least 16 plants voted down the contract, some by as much as 90%.
This tainted vote doesn’t have to stand. It all depends on what all those workers who voted against the contract do. There are more than enough of them to overturn fraudulent results.
This spring, there will be elections for delegates to the UAW’s 2006 Constitutional Convention. Why not elect delegates to go to the convention who pledge themselves to establish rank and file control over all votes and to demand a new vote under rank and file supervision? Workers can also show up at the convention to show that these delegates have real support!
Retirees may not have been allowed to vote on the concessions, but they are able to vote for convention delegates–and, why not, even to run for delegate slots. And they are certainly able to gather at the convention, gather by the thousands, to call the old officers to account and to demand that the workers’ broken retirement contract be restored.
The contract can be re-opened at any time. This has always been true, but now it is glaringly obvious. The companies have demonstrated that expiration dates are nothing but words on a piece of paper. If the contract can be torn up at the company’s convenience, then it can be torn up by the workers as well.
Jan 2, 2006
The following articles appeared in a newsletter regularly appearing at Ford’s Rouge complex. This issue appeared in the week before the vote by Ford workers on the contract concessions agreed to by the UAW leadership.
The union leadership has decided to break the contract with the retirees, and they want us to vote to cover for their dirty deal. They won’t let retirees vote! They want to hide their deal behind the votes of regular workers.
It’s a filthy plan they are trying to get away with. Telling one part of the union to screw the other part!
If they get away with breaking the retirees’ contract, it won’t stop there. They will break anyone’s contract, any time they want.
UAW leaders and Ford say that active workers have to kick in more than $1 an hour and more than $2000 in COLA to pay for retirees. It’s fraud.
When the retirees were working, parts of their wages were held back to go to their retirement programs. Ford already got their money. It’s there in their cash reserves. Now they want active workers to pay it all over again!
Once is enough!
The new VEBA fund for retiree health care would get all of workers’ wage and COLA deductions. Ford would contribute only 108 million dollars spread over six years, plus Stock Appreciation rights, IF Ford stock goes up.
That means Ford’s contribution to this new plan would be next to nothing, compared to workers’ deductions.
The cash Ford is supposed to contribute to the fund amounts to 18 million dollars a year. Peanuts! Less than a peanut! Considering there are 87,000 active workers, this amounts to $207 per worker per year.
What will a worker pay? Each worker will pay about 52 x 40 = $2080 per year, plus a dollar for every hour of overtime, plus an average of $364 COLA per year. That adds up to at least $2444 per year.
Ford pays $207, we pay $2444. And workers are supposed to approve THAT??
Before the ink was dry on the GM contract, GM announced plant closings and layoffs. Ford is saying it wants this contract signed, sealed and delivered, BEFORE Christmas, and then will announce layoffs and plant closings in January.
Ask any co-worker who has come from Rouge Steel. Ford started coming for take-aways from them since 1980. Not once. Not twice. They kept coming and coming. And 23 years later, we found our ranks went from 5,000 to 500, and having to work another 10 years just to have health care.
There has been some talk that younger workers don’t understand the seriousness of these attacks.
Understand–we are all in this together. This concessions contract is an attack on all workers, retired and active, young and not so young. What else do you call it when they are taking our money and our health care!
Why the quickie vote? Everyone’s mind is on Christmas and getting out of here for a while.
If they are hurrying to a vote now, it’s because they want to get the rotten deal over with, quick, before we notice how bad it really smells.
Under these circumstances workers are left with no choice but to vote NO. If you aren’t allowed time to read the small print, it’s suicide to sign it.
Immediately after the Ford-UAW cuts against hourly workers were announced, Ford announced it was going to reduce salaried workers’ pay raises and benefits.
In other words, they are trying to point out salaried workers’ cuts, as if that makes hourly cuts okay. Since when do two wrongs make a right?
The letter from Gettelfinger and Bantom in the UAW Ford Highlights is misleading.
They talk about Ford’s market share going down–Ford didn’t lose market share. It gave it away. It decided to concentrate on high end cars, trucks and SUVs because it makes a much higher profit on these vehicles.
They talk about Ford’s pre-tax losses in its North American operations. They forgot to mention that financial analysts predict Ford will make between 2.5 and 3 billion dollars in profits this year.
They forgot to mention Ford’s 37 billion dollars in cash and marketable securities.
Jan 2, 2006
On December 13, a few hours after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had denied clemency and the U.S. Supreme Court had rejected a last-minute appeal, California put Tookie Williams to death.
His execution exposed once again the death penalty for what it is: a horrible, barbaric act which has no place in a civilized society.
This was certainly the reaction of many people in other industrialized countries, where Williams’ execution gained more attention than it did here. In countries where the death penalty has been abolished for decades, people expressed disbelief and disgust that a country that pretends to be civilized continues this barbaric practice.
In fact, Williams’ case shows what’s behind the death penalty, and it’s not the protection of society. There is no doubt that Williams was a notorious criminal, thrust into a life of crime at a young age. But in prison he had a chance to study and became articulate. He wrote books warning young people about the dangers of joining gangs. Even people who advocated Williams’ execution had to admit that he no longer was a danger to society. Killing Williams served only one purpose: revenge.
In the end, that’s what the arguments in favor of the death penalty boil down to–the right to exact revenge. Not just any kind of revenge but a medieval, indeed tribal-style, revenge that harks back three thousand years ago: “An eye for an eye.”
Politicians have pushed a vengeful blood lust on a population fearful about crime. The number of Americans who oppose the death penalty has been increasing however. This is in part because dozens of convicts on Death Row have been proven innocent thanks to new technology such as DNA testing. But hopefully it’s also because people in the U.S. are becoming more civilized!
Some politicians have responded to this trend, and several states have suspended executions by issuing “moratoriums” on the death penalty.
In California, some politicians now talk about a moratorium–mainly Democrats who control both chambers of the state legislature, and might pass it to embarrass Schwarzenegger.
But “moratorium” does not mean abolishing the death penalty. It’s just a way to push the issue out of the spotlight, as politicians have done before. In the 1960s, a mobilized black population, spilling into the streets, opposed the death penalty along with other reactionary practices. Many states stopped executing people in the late 1960s, and the U.S. Supreme Court issued a moratorium in 1972. But as the pressure from the streets receded, the death penalty came back with a vengeance. More than 1000 executions have already been carried out in the U.S. since the Supreme Court re-instituted executions in 1976.
The spokespersons of the U.S. ruling class always claim to represent the “free” and “civilized” world. But they don’t hesitate for a moment to push the death penalty, that barbaric relic of nomadic, tribal societies, as a way to manipulate popular sentiments and promote their own careers.
Jan 2, 2006
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin may claim he wants everyone who left the city to return. But barriers have been thrown up for working class and poor people who want to return.
Their jobs either disappeared or were handed over to companies like Haliburton, which have hired hundreds of immigrant workers, paying them low wages, giving them no protection against serious on-the-job hazards and no benefits. Then these workers are thrown out of the country when the companies are done with them.
There is no housing for workers either. Almost two-thirds of the city’s 145,000 homes were designated for destruction by city officials, with no provision for other housing. Rents for remaining houses have soared to levels unaffordable for ordinary people. Yet no rent controls have been set up.
As for the famous FEMA trailers–where are they? If the promised trailer camps existed in the city, workers could come back.
Insurance companies make it nearly impossible for all but the richest homeowners to rebuild. Workers who had insurance won’t come anywhere near to covering the cost of rebuilding. And FEMA’s maximum grant to owners of damaged homes is only $26,200 minus any insurance payments.
Furthermore, most applications to FEMA for aid in rebuilding have been turned down. By a slight of hand, the applications were sent to the Small Business Administration. Out of nearly two million applications for government loans to rebuild houses in the entire Gulf Coast region, only about 17,000 have been approved, while 77,000 were rejected. The rest of the applications still haven’t been processed. The vast majority of the few approved loans went to wealthy people.
Permits to rebuild in areas where most working class people lived are being held up by inaction of local officials. Electric service hasn’t been restored to many poor neighborhoods. Half of existing homes have no natural gas service.
Only 10% of pre-Katrina bus service is running. Even if workers’ children could get to school, there are no affordable schools for them to attend: Only one public elementary school is now open; a public high school is supposed to open January 9. These are the only public schools scheduled to operate this school year ... out of 116 before Katrina!
While government officials are welcoming the rich back to New Orleans, the people who once created the vibrant culture of New Orleans have been thrown to the winds, scattered in cities all over the country.
Jan 2, 2006
While the House and the Senate are still dickering over the final form of the federal budget (projected over the next five years), they have agreed on some things–how to cut more out of social programs.
At the very moment when more and more people are losing medical care at their jobs, Congress proposed to cut Medicaid. At the moment that more retirees than ever are losing medical care on their pensions, Congress cut Medicare. At the very moment there are fewer and fewer decent paying jobs for young people, while everyone says to the young they must go to college, Congress is cutting student loans.
What justification exists for government if it doesn’t meet the needs that the economy cannot provide for the population? In this day and age, health care and education are among those needs. Support for the population’s unmet needs is implied when we pay our taxes.
Instead this government provides less and less to the population in order to give more to the tiny wealthy minority. Specifically, Congress enacted these cuts in medical aid and education in order to pave the way for an extension of tax breaks favoring only the wealthy.
That tells us what this government intends for the new year.
Jan 2, 2006
The Medicare Part D prescription drug program started January 1. Enrollment for the program started November 15. It’s obvious, if people believed this were a real benefit, they would have rushed to sign up.
They didn’t.
Some people were automatically enrolled by the government if they were already part of other government health insurance programs. But 17 million people had to choose to sign up. So far, 16 million haven’t done it.
With good reason. No one can figure out what’s involved. And seniors have been around long enough not to trust the government–especially when something is as complicated as Congress made this plan.
Jan 2, 2006
The City of Detroit will be implementing budget cuts with the start of the new year. It plans to drop all bulk trash pickup, close nine recreation centers, transfer management of the Detroit Zoo to a private organization, and close the Detroit Historical Museum. In addition, there will be layoffs for at least 260 other workers.
What’s left in the city where people can take their families? The city already junked its participation in the Detroit Institute of Arts–meaning entrance fees go up. It moved a children’s museum out of its cultural center to a more dangerous neighborhood. It closed Fort Wayne and other rec centers. So this isn’t the first time the city has made this kind of cuts.
But the current cuts hit you in the face when you see the shiny new construction in the downtown area. Buildings that were dilapidated for decades were torn down and replaced–with the help of Detroit tax money. Old office buildings were given a face lift. There are two new stadiums, one for football and another for baseball, paid for directly or indirectly with city money. There is a brand new park in front of Compuware’s corporate headquarters, complete with a skating rink. Most residents of the city can’t afford to skate there, but it’s not there for them. It was built specifically so it can provide a few days of winter-style festivities for visitors to the Super Bowl. And all this was done for one baseball All-Star game and football’s Super Bowl.
Big hotels and restaurants in the whole region may benefit–for a week–from this extravaganza. But the city’s tax coffers will get little or nothing in return. So while the downtown has been all spiffed up, the rest of the city is allowed to rot.
Where will all the bulk trash go? It will pile up in the neighborhoods. When landlords evict people, their belongings will be put out on the curb, as they are now, only they’ll just sit there, collecting rats, not for a few weeks but until residents get fed up.
Detroit presents a perfect microcosm of class society, with nothing to do for the families of working and poor people, and a playground for the rich.
Jan 2, 2006
A restaurant in Florida received a $725,000 loan and a doctor’s office in the state of Washington got nearly two million dollars–each for land purchases and improvements. Twenty-nine Dunkin’ Donuts stores in nine states received a total of 22 million. Some of the stores were in Arlington, Texas; Essex Junction, Vermont; and Woodstock, Georgia.
The roughly 8,200 guaranteed loans approved under the government’s Supplemental Terrorist Activity Relief program were supposed to help businesses recover from the attacks of 9/11. Yet in a sample of these loans examined recently, auditors found that 85% had no relationship to 9/11 nor to New York City.
In reality, these government-guaranteed loans flowed like the flood waters of the Mississippi to virtually any businessman in the country who wanted one. Any excuse will work when it comes to the government subsidizing businesses with the taxes of working people.
Jan 2, 2006
The Alaska Gasline Port Authority filed suit against BP and ExxonMobil, two of the largest oil companies in the world, accusing them of conspiring to withhold natural gas from the mainland U.S. David Boies, a lawyer for the authority, said the two companies conspired “to preserve the scarcity that has driven natural-gas prices to historic highs.”
These two companies already produce 9% of U.S. heating gas in the mainland. Together they own 37 trillion cubic feet of natural gas on Alaska’s North Slope (unrelated to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge), enough to supply the heating needs of the entire U.S. for two years. But there is no production of natural gas going on now in Alaska. That gas which is produced in oil wells is injected back into underground reserves rather than being shipped to the mainland.
This withholding of natural gas from the U.S. is what is driving the price of gas up. In recent years many electrical generating plants have been built that burn natural gas, but no new sources of natural gas have been opened on the mainland to meet the increased demand.
These privately owned companies have a stranglehold over a commodity that is of vital concern to all of us. Just like the oil companies have gotten away with raising the price of gas for our cars to more than $2 a gallon, which they want us to think is fine after $3 a gallon, now these same oil companies are purposely holding back production of natural gas to gouge us during the winter.
Jan 2, 2006
On Monday, December 19th, following a night of zero degrees, a 92-year-old woman and her 63-year-old son were found dead, wrapped in blankets in their freezing cold house on Chicago’s Northwest Side.
The police came by, but told the press that the two had died accidentally, due to the cold and coronary arteriosclerosis. The spokeswoman for the police said they would not investigate further, since the house is the owner’s responsibility.
Peoples Gas was outside the house on Tuesday, but its workers refused to comment on what they found. Was the gas shut off, was the furnace broken, had they turned the gas off to save money? We aren’t told and the city could care less.
The deaths of these two people followed at least three other cold-related deaths. In Chicago, as elsewhere in the country, the price of gas has gone up sharply. Social workers have warned that the high price of gas and extremely cold temperatures could be deadly for the old, infirm and poor.
This is the same Chicago where 465 people died of heat-related causes in July 1995. The city did nothing then to see that those in a dangerous condition were supplied with air conditioners or moved to safer conditions.
Of course not–government is not run to protect the population. Chicago politicians have other priorities–there is a steady stream of developers who need tens of millions of dollars in subsidies.
Chicago is called the City that Works. It does for the rich, but for the elderly and infirm, you’d better have the money or you’ll freeze to death.
Jan 2, 2006
ConocoPhillips agreed to spend 36 billion dollars to buy Burlington Resources, a natural gas producer. This is the biggest takeover in the energy industry since 2001. A financial analyst said of the deal, “A buyout will signal that ConocoPhillips sees natural gas prices staying higher for longer than people expect,” which means it is betting we’ll be paying these outrageous prices for heating gas for a long time to come.
In a much smaller takeover, but important still, Southern Union bought the Bass family’s natural gas pipeline company for 1.8 billion dollars. This makes it the third biggest pipeline company in the country, and is added to its recent acquisitions of the Cross Country Energy pipeline from Enron and the CMS Panhandle Companies. Not surprisingly, the price of Southern Union stock has increased by more than 45% in the last two years.
Instead of putting their billions into quickly bringing more natural gas to the consumer, the giant energy companies use that money to buy up other companies, increasing their monopoly control still more, and furthering their ability to raise the price of gas.
That’s the rules of the capitalist game.
Jan 2, 2006
A federal grand jury recently indicted former Qwest Communications Chief Executive Joseph Nacchio on 42 counts of insider trading. Qwest is the Baby Bell based in 14 Western and Midwestern states. In 2001, months before the telecom stock market bubble burst, Nacchio urged employees who depended on Qwest stock for much of their retirement savings to buy more stock. At the same time, he sold 101 million dollars worth of his own shares, faking both the company’s profits and sales in order to boost the stock price. When the telecom stock market bubble burst, Qwest’s stock lost about 75% of its former value, costing most of the employees the bulk of their retirement savings.
According to U.S. Attorney William Leone, Nacchio’s indictment finishes the government investigation of Qwest. This means the government let other executives involved in this scam off the hook.
Nacchio’s boss, Philip Anschutz, the corporate chairman and biggest stockholder of Qwest, sold off four times as much stock as Nacchio right before the bubble burst, while issuing the same lies to the company’s employees and the rest of the public. But he wasn’t indicted.
Apparently the government didn’t want to touch Anschutz, who is one of the richest billionaires in the country, with vast holdings in the oil and gas industry, railroads, telecom companies, newspapers, sports arenas (including the Staples Center in Los Angeles), professional sports teams (including the L.A. Kings hockey team), the Millennium Dome in London and the largest U.S. movie theater chain.
This has left Anschutz not only free to continue to accumulate ever more wealth. It also leaves him free to push a right-wing political agenda under the guise of religious piety. Anschutz has showered money on organizations that preach intolerance against homosexuals and attack single women with children, not to mention a campaign to make abortion illegal–all in the name of so-called “family values.”
Anschutz’s media company has also set up a new division to market its religious-theme books and films to public schools, pushing religion on the public schools while attacking science.
What better cover for a multi-billionaire than “religious piety” and “family values” while he gains his fortune by, among other things, robbing his employees of their savings!