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
Jul 28, 2008
Had a vacation lately? Not likely. Even AAA estimates that vacation trips are way down this summer.
Bosses are cutting vacations and holidays. Even when we do have time off, more of us feel the pressure to work right through it, because we can’t pay the bills. Or when we do try to get away, we can’t afford it. The skyrocketing prices for gas, food, flying, come to a small fortune, especially for an entire family.
So, when we do get a few days off, more of us are just staying at home. Some clever journalist even invented a new word for it–a “stay-cation.” Obviously, even if you don’t have to go to work, a “stay-cation” is not the same thing as an actual “vacation.”
But even when we take them, our vacations are being downsized. We have less time, stay closer to home, and cut back on all the little things that make a vacation a little more special.
Needless to say, there are more and more of us who are getting plenty of time off. But then we have no way to go on vacation, because we lost our job and have no money. Feeding the family and keeping a roof over your head takes precedence over a vacation.
Yet, vacations are not a luxury or a frill.
With all of the tensions and pressures on the job, the longer and more aggravating commutes, everyone needs time to get away. We need to decompress. There is less strain and fatigue. It’s good for the heart and health. Doctors recommend it.
Vacations allow people to live longer. That’s a simple fact.
There’s also more to enjoy. On vacation, just buying food can be different. Instead of dashing through the same old super market, there is time to stop and savor different tastes and smells.
A change in scenery is a time of discovery. It also opens up conversation between loved ones and friends. We make new friends, or discover relatives we didn’t know even existed.
Yet, today, bosses are tossing our vacations in the trash can. Just like the cuts to our jobs, wages, health care and pensions, the bosses expects us to sacrifice our vacations, too.
Sure, the bosses have an armful of excuses to justify these attacks: “competition,” “China,” “globalization,” “rising energy costs,” “ the credit crisis.”
But it all boils down to one thing. They tell us over and over that it’s just the way things have to be.
That’s dead wrong!
Workers are not losing out because of a lack of wealth or possibilities in the society. Workers have never been more productive. Society has never been wealthier.
No, the ruling class, boss and company, are keeping more and more for themselves. And they are getting it from what the working class produces.
There’s more to life than what the boss says. There’s plenty to do, to learn and to enjoy. But it should be open to everyone, especially all of us, whose labor makes it all possible.
We need the time to do it. We need the money. And when the boss doesn’t give it, we have to be ready to fight for it, and fight for it together.
Jul 28, 2008
On July 21, police officer Brian Ragan gunned down 38-year-old Kevin Wicks, a postal worker, at the door of Wicks’ apartment in Inglewood, near Los Angeles.
Wicks is the second black man Ragan has killed in less than three months. On May 11, Ragan and another cop riddled a car with bullets, killing 19-year-old Michael Byoune and wounding two other young men. The four young men in the car were unarmed.
In fact, even police officials admitted that the May shooting was “unjustified,” that is, murder. Ragan was put on leave, but not for long. Even while still “under investigation,” he was put back on street duty–armed and ready to kill again. And kill he did when he was sent–by mistake–to the wrong apartment.
Neighbors say that four cops came pounding on Wicks’ door at 12:30 a.m., without identifying themselves. The cops also claim Wicks opened the door with a gun in his hand. That’s such an old lie–why would anyone believe them? But even if he had, anyone would be worried about their safety in that situation when four strange men show up at your door like that.
In working-class neighborhoods, especially if the residents are black, cops shoot first and ask questions later. The fact that Ragan was put back on the street after the first murder shows that the powers that be have given them free license to do so.
Jul 28, 2008
The Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Board voted to put a half-cent sales-tax increase on the ballot in November. They say the tax will last for 30 years and will generate between 30 and 40 billion dollars. Supposedly, the money will be used to fund the construction of new mass transportation lines, as well as some highway improvements. At least that’s what they say.
No doubt, L.A. needs enormous improvements to its transportation system. L.A. traffic consistently ranks as the most awful in the country. And it is getting worse, with traffic delays doubling over the last 25 years.
But why are voters being asked to pay for yet another sales-tax hike? The sales tax already went up by a half-cent in 1980, and another half-cent in 1990. People are still paying those increases! If the new tax goes through, the sales tax will be the highest in the state, 8.75%.
Since the sales tax is extremely regressive, the burden falls disproportionately on the working class and poor. With all the high prices these days, the new tax will be like pouring salt on the wound!
Besides that, there is no way to know if the tax money will be used the way the MTA and the mayor say. When they try to “sell” a new tax, they make it seem like the money will go directly to the new projects.
Since the MTA never provides adequate financing for all its operations and capital improvements, it is always being forced to borrow more money. Currently, the MTA’s debt is almost four billion dollars. And it’s only going to increase with the new round of projects, especially since the final price tag for construction is always much higher than the original estimate.
That means more and more of the budget goes to pay back the loans. According to a 1998 report in the Los Angeles Times, the MTA spends 30% of its budget on “servicing” its debt, including interest and principal. So, wealthy investors and financial companies pocket almost one-third of the entire MTA budget, before any money is spent on operations and construction!
This whole mess doesn’t have to fall on our shoulders. We could fix it by taxing the corporations! The same Wall Street companies that make a profit off the MTA and our taxes should be paying for these projects in the first place. In the last 30 years, the tax burden in California has increasingly shifted to the workers and poor people.
But for corporations, tax breaks are a way of life! Don’t believe anyone who says that California is a “high-tax” state that drives out big business. It’s a myth! A couple of years ago a study found that some of the biggest companies like Walt Disney and Fluor, the big engineering company, paid no state corporate income tax beyond the $800 minimum. In 2007-2008, 12 billion dollars in corporate handouts could have been used to pay for transportation and other services we need.
Instead, the politicians make sure that their buddies and business partners reap all the benefits and pay as little as possible.
And they’ll keep on doing it until working people call them out.
Jul 28, 2008
The U.S. military has spent nearly as much on the war in Iraq, 648 billion dollars, as it did in Vietnam, 686 billion, when the figures are adjusted for inflation. Soon, the Iraq War will become the second most expensive war in U.S. history, behind only the Second World War. When spending on the wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere are added in, the U.S. has spent 860 billion dollars on military operations since 9/11.
When the war in Iraq started, in order to convince the population to support the war, the White House reassured everyone the war would cost no more than about 50 to 60 billion dollars. Not to mention the fact that they never spoke of the more than a million Iraqis who would lose their lives, or the over 4,000 U.S. soldiers–not counting those who killed themselves when they came back.
Even after the war’s first year, Paul Bremer, then overseeing the US. occupation of Iraq, predicted the price tag would be no more than 100 billion dollars. So much for politicians’ predictions! And the war is not over yet, not by any stretch of the imagination.
When it comes to money for health care, schools, housing, or transportation, there is never any money to be found. But when the politicians need taxpayer money to expand the American empire, the sky’s the limit!
Jul 28, 2008
For at least fourteen months, undercover agents of the Maryland State Police spied on legal protest organizations: Activists against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and groups opposing the death penalty.
The police spies documented such “criminal activity” as organizing protests and making up fliers. The former state police superintendent claimed the spying was legal. As a result of this spying, a few of the protesters got their names put on a list of potential “terrorists”!
After September 11th, new laws and new funding from Homeland Security were supposedly going to keep us safe from “terrorists.”
Such spying shows how the government-created hysteria about “terrorism” is being used to block considerable opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan among the U.S. population, and opposition to the death penalty as well.
Jul 28, 2008
GM recently eliminated paid health care coverage for almost 200,000 retired salaried workers and their spouses, throwing the responsibility onto these retirees to pay for costs that Medicare will not pick up. This means that at least 20% of medical costs will now fall to each individual to pay.
Of course, the “experts” say that salaried retirees can afford this as long as they shop around for “the best deals.”
What BS! 20% of a hospital bill totaling $60,000 would come to $12,000! How is that affordable for any ordinary retiree?
It is truly a demonstration of whom all these companies and government agencies work for and serve–the rich and super-rich.
Otherwise, GM officials would be in jail for robbery!
Jul 28, 2008
Zoriah Miller, a U.S. freelance news photographer, was recently forced to leave Iraq because he posted pictures on the internet of the gruesome result of an act of violence in Iraq, the kind of violence which takes place every day.
Miller is just the latest in news media to be pushed aside by the military after showing certain aspects of the destruction, death and human suffering caused by the war. News organizations in the U.S. and allied countries recently reported that they have a combined total of only a half dozen photographers in Iraq, even though over 150,000 U.S. and allied troops and tens of thousands of contractors are engaged in the war there!
Among the important things that brought the terrible cost of the Viet Nam war home were the televised reports on the war. The U.S. military obviously drew the lessons of Viet Nam and has worked to control access by the media in this war.
According to some reporters and cameramen, U.S. manipulation of news coverage is getting worse. The U.S. government and military are trying to sanitize this deadly war so they can continue to carry it on.
Jul 28, 2008
The 110, one of the busiest freeways in the Los Angeles area, was shut down for a whole day due to a massive sinkhole.
Unexpected? Not really. There was a sinkhole in the same area of the 110, three years ago, caused by corroded drainage pipes under the freeway.
The faulty pipes have never been replaced since 1940, when the freeway was built.
Does it sound like it’s time to replace the pipes? “No funding” is the answer–in the richest state of the richest country in the world!
They may as well put signs up on the freeway saying “Watch for Sinkholes”–if there is funding for it.
Jul 28, 2008
Ten former O’Hare airport workers are suing Ideal Staffing Solutions because the company didn’t pay them overtime, paid less than the minimum wage, and sometimes didn’t even give out paychecks! Working for Ideal Staffing Solutions, they were leased out to different airline companies.
Ideal Staffing hired immigrant workers, in some cases gave them fake badges, and exploited their fear of the government to keep them from complaining.
The airlines benefitted from the low wages paid to these workers to keep everyone else’s wages low.
It’s why every worker needs full legal rights, no matter where they come from and how they get here.
Jul 28, 2008
Some Jewish anti-apartheid activists from South Africa said they were “shocked,” after a visit to the Occupied Territories in Israel. They noted the violence of the Israeli settlers, living, for example, in Hebron. One said, “How is it possible to turn the commercial Arab quarter into a ghost town in order to protect a few hundred Israeli settlers?”
Obviously the situation they observed in the Occupied Territories recalled the apartheid they knew in South Africa. The South Africans saw that the “Wall of Separation” and the roads reserved only for Israelis take up much of the territory there; they were created solely to protect Israeli settlers dispersed throughout the territory.
They also saw that Palestinians needed permits to move around, recalling the situation of black people in South Africa under the so-called “pass” system. But some members of the delegation pointed out that the South African system didn’t go as far as the Israeli system. In South Africa, said the visitors to Israel, “There were no separate roads, security checkpoints, different vehicle license plates denoting the different groups, or long waiting lines at the security checkpoints. And the raids by the [Israeli] soldiers are worse ... than they were under apartheid.”
The testimony of these South African militants is shocking. Some of their struggles against apartheid cost them several years in prison, and yet they find the Israeli situation worse.
Jul 28, 2008
The Western press reported on a riot in a Chinese village, in Guizhou province. A 15-year-old girl was raped and murdered by the relative of a high official.
When authorities tried to cover up the crime, pretending she committed suicide, the girl’s uncle, a teacher, protested against the dishonest inquiry. He was then beaten and killed.
His students and the entire population were enraged and demonstrated by the thousands in front of the police station, burning several administrative buildings and police cars. The government sent reinforcements to repress the demonstrators.
For once, the press picked up the story because of the coming Olympic Games–and because some riot scenes were videotaped and put on the Internet despite the censorship.
But for years now, such revolts have broken out in one region of China after another. The population has become infuriated by the behavior of corrupt and arrogant local authorities, who extort and rob them. The market economy in China, highly praised in the West, has severely impoverished the majority of the population, in particular in the countryside. Some 900 million peasants are left to fend for themselves by so-called economic development, which only enriches a small minority of wealthy people, foreign investors and companies like Wal-Mart.
The exasperation of the population is such that massive revolts can break out at any moment. For example, in December 2004 in Guangdong province, some 50,000 people demonstrated against police who had beaten to death a young migrant worker accused of stealing a bike. The repression that followed left four dead and a hundred wounded.
In 2006, thousands of peasants demonstrated for several days because the authorities had leased their land to a Hong Kong company. In fact, there are tens of thousands of such illegal land seizures each year, about 80,000 in 2004 alone. Some 40 million peasants lost their land in this way during the last ten years.
In response, there have been tens of thousands of protest movements each year, even though we hear about very few of them. The peasants defend themselves and resist. The government doesn’t hesitate to repress them, throwing them in prison, shooting into crowds.
Of course, with the coming Olympic Games, the local authorities were ordered to “protect social harmony and stability and to assure that the Olympic Games take place in safety and serenity,” according to an official slogan.
Safety and serenity–but not for the Chinese population!
Jul 28, 2008
The Olympics are presented as a festival of brotherhood among nations, something that brings about the friendship of people all over the world. The reality is that the games have always been a faithful reflection of the tensions and political conflicts that exist between countries and blocs.
It’s enough to cast a glance at what has happened since World War II to understand this.
For over 30 years, for example, China, the largest country in the world, was excluded from international sports competition because the imperialist powers, with the U.S. in the lead, refused to recognize its existence. In the London Olympics of 1948, the Russians, Germans and Japanese were excluded as undesirables. For years, East Germany and West Germany, as well as North Korea and South Korea, presented separate teams, not because the people in these countries felt themselves members of split nations, but because the victorious U.S., British and French imperialisms had divided these countries with the aid of the Russian bureaucracy at the end of World War II.
In 1956 at Melbourne, the games were disturbed by strong international political tensions. A month before the celebration, the French government had ordered the hijacking of the plane in which Ben Bella and other Algerian leaders traveled. At the same time, the student revolt in Budapest broke out, serving as a prelude to the Russian intervention in Hungary. Finally, French and British troops parachuted into Suez in an attempt to prevent Egypt from nationalizing the canal that ran through its country.
Under such conditions, Egypt and Iraq decided to boycott the Olympics in Melbourne since, they said, “the nations guilty of aggression against Egypt aren’t excluded from the games.” Holland, Switzerland and Spain chose to stay away to protest the events in Budapest, Hungary.
In 1968, a week before the games held in Mexico City, the police and army cold-bloodedly fired on a demonstration of unarmed strikers and students in the Plaza of Three Cultures, killing close to 1,000 people, among whom were many women and children. This didn’t bother Avery Brundage, then president of the International Olympic Committee, who affirmed that the games were a “true oasis in this so disturbed world.”
This “disturbed world” included the severe racism of the U.S. which had led to the struggle for Black Power in this country, and the support by all the big imperialist countries for the apartheid regime in South Africa–not to mention the American war on Viet Nam. So, of course, politics sprang up in the very center of the “oasis.” When two black U.S. athletes–Tommie Smith and John Carlos–demonstrated their support for Black Power from the height of the podium, they were immediately expelled from the Olympic village by order of the International Olympic Committee.
In 1972 during the Munich Olympics, a Palestinian commando unit kidnapped Israeli athletes. This event ended in bloodshed when the German police entered, firing on everyone. There were 18 dead, among them eleven Israelis, five Palestinians, and two Germans. The German and Israeli governments preferred to sacrifice the athletes rather than let the Palestinians appear victorious in the situation.
A few days later, U.S. black athletes Matthews and Collins were excluded from the games for having exhibited an attitude called “disrespectful” to the U.S. national anthem.
For the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, the African countries boycotted the games as a sign of protest against the apartheid regime in South Africa. When the Organization of African Unity petitioned the International Olympic Committee to exclude New Zealand because it had recently sent a rugby team to South Africa, the leaders of the International Olympic Committee refused to hear them, alleging that the Committee couldn’t discuss with a political organization.
In 1980, the United States recommended the boycott of the Moscow games and was able to get about 60 nations to refuse to participate. They denounced the USSR’s war against the people of Afghanistan and proclaimed they couldn’t go to Moscow under these conditions. Does anyone believe these same leaders who intervene to oppress people in countries all over the globe pitied the fate of the Afghan people? They used the occasion to score a goal against the Russians; that’s all.
The Russians tied the score with their own boycott of the Los Angeles games in 1984. The Soviet leaders said the organizers of the games violated the “Olympic Charter,” so the Russians stayed away, they said thanks to the lack of security for their athletes in the face of an “unfettered anti-Soviet campaign on the part of U.S. reactionary circles.”
The 1988 Olympic games were held in South Korea. The North Koreans boycotted the games because they weren’t co-sponsors. Ethiopia and Cuba joined the boycott out of solidarity.
In Barcelona in 1992, the German team was united after the fall of the Berlin wall. But war was already breaking out in Yugoslavia. That country was banned from taking part, while athletes from Serbia and Montenegro were allowed to compete–but only as individuals.
In the 1996 Atlanta games, an American terrorist placed a bomb in Centennial Park, which killed two people. The media was quick to blame a security guard who had intervened to defuse another bomb. But in fact the killer turned out to be the same fanatic who had also assassinated a doctor in Buffalo because he performed abortions.
In the 2000 Sydney Olympics, athletes from South and North Korea carried a joint banner at the opening ceremony but competed under the separate flags of their divided nation. The same week, the Pentagon said that it considered North Korea a major threat. U.S. imperialism still props up the division of Korea despite the wishes of the Korean people.
The 2004 Athens Games, the first Olympics after September 11th, might as well have been called the Police Olympics. About 70,000 cops were deployed to patrol Athens and the Olympic venues. Before the games, police rounded up homeless people, locking them up in psychiatric hospitals. Refugees and asylum-seekers from countries where wars were going on were detained or deported.
As long as imperialism rules, there will be poverty and oppression in the world. As a consequence, the Olympics will not be free of politics.
Jul 28, 2008
Accompanied by two senators, one a Democratic and one a Republican, as well as dozens of advisers, Barack Obama threw himself into a whirlwind international tour, trying to show he had experience in foreign relations. What he actually showed is that there is little difference in his policies from those of his Republican rival John McCain, or from those of President Bush.
The first stage of this tour was Afghanistan. When he met Afghan president Kharzai, Obama repeated that it was necessary to bring in an additional 10,000 U.S. troops. Taking up a formula dear to George W. Bush, he declared that Afghanistan was the “central front in the war on terrorism.” And he insisted the situation in Afghanistan, “is perilous and urgent” and troops must be sent immediately.
When he got to Iraq, Obama spoke of withdrawing troops in two years. But, as usual, he didn’t mention that his withdrawal plan counts on leaving troops behind to “continue fighting against al Qaeda, protecting service members and diplomats, while training and supporting Iraq’s security personnel,” as he’s admitted elsewhere. And that’s only if things don’t change!
In any event, the troops withdrawn from Iraq would be redeployed to Afghanistan. On this point, Obama agrees with Mike Mullen, the head of the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, appointed by Bush, who declared at the beginning of the month, “Until we get to a point where we reduce the commitment in Iraq, we won’t have enough additional troops to add to Afghanistan.”
When Obama visited Israel, he reiterated a statement he made earlier to the major Israeli lobby group in the U.S., AIPAC. He said he thought that Israel’s capital should be moved to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is part of the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967. Making Jerusalem the capital would mean taking even more territory from the Palestinian people, and pushing even more Palestinians out of their homes and neighborhoods.
With this kind of statement, Obama is making it crystal clear that, like President Bush, he completely supports Israel against the Palestinians. Yet the Palestinians are a people under a permanent and bloody occupation, a situation not that different from what black people face in the United States.
The image of Obama, the first black candidate for the presidency having some chance of winning, certainly excites illusions. But his declarations–even before he is elected–certainly puncture them.
A cigarette seller in a working class neighborhood of Baghdad, interviewed by the press during Obama’s visit, had no illusions: “American politics isn’t going to change with the change in the American president,” he said to a journalist who questioned him. Everything Obama said only confirms this view.
Jul 28, 2008
This new book, co-authored by the physicist Stephen Hawking and his novelist daughter, Lucy Hawking, is aimed at young people. It’s a story about George, an inquisitive adolescent searching for excitement in his humdrum life. At the same time, it’s also a science-fiction adventure used to illustrate some scientific principles.
George’s parents, environmental activists, shun technology: no washing machine; no electric lights; no car; no TV. Certainly no computer, though George longs for one.
Excitement comes to George when he makes friends with new neighbors: Eric, a scientist who thrives on technology and space exploration, and his daughter Annie, who lives more in the fantasy world than the real.
Eric has a computer, Cosmos, that talks. And, in the story, Cosmos lures Eric, Annie and George into outer space. Their adventures include getting lost in cosmic clouds of dust and gas, passing stars, moons, planets, comets, nebula, asteroid belts, galaxies, and falling into a Black Hole. Black Holes are not as terrifying as they sound. Eric discovers an exit out... IF you are patient enough to wait thousands of years.
Although the book is intended for younger readers, adults could also find interesting the explanations about physics, astronomy and the universe in George’s Secret Key to the Universe.
Jul 28, 2008
Sometimes a family business can really pay off–especially when you’ve got friends in high places.
Julie Nguyen Brown knows this very well. She’s the owner of Plastech, a parts supplier for the Big 3 that recently went bankrupt. Plastech was a part of the whole process the Big 3 did to spin off parts plants into separate companies over the past 30 years. It’s an extremely inefficient way to make cars, and many of those companies went bankrupt over the years, gobbled up by other companies like Plastech, before THEY went bankrupt. But they provided cheap parts to the Big 3 by hiring workers at incredibly low wages. And SOME people, like Brown and her family, were able to make big bucks–even as their companies were going under.
After Plastech declared bankruptcy in February, it cut a deal with Johnson Controls to have that company buy up the majority of Plastech’s business assets. Once the deal was finished at the end of June, some interesting facts came out.
Johnson Controls will pay Brown a total of 9.25 million dollars after the sale, and the “Plastech Holding Company” will continue to exist, 100% owned by Brown–and it will continue to own residences in Arizona and Rhode Island. Any guess who will be using those residences?
Another fact: Plastech had 10 members of Brown’s family on the payroll–and in total, they received 6.4 million dollars from the company in 2007. In addition, Brown’s personal driver, cook and two housekeepers were paid by the company.
Crain’s Detroit Business wonders why Brown tried to keep these facts secret... after all, it says, such numbers are “not out of line” with other companies!
Jul 28, 2008
The recent images of Indy Mac depositors in California lining up to withdraw their money made the international banking crisis very real to millions of TV viewers.
Indy Mac went bankrupt when its depositors lost confidence in its ability to redeem their deposits. In a few days, they withdrew 1.3 billion dollars of deposits out of the 32 billion dollars in the bank. Following the bankruptcy, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation took it over, covering losses amounting to eight billion dollars.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts that the ongoing crisis will result in one trillion dollars in such losses. Specialists foresee the bankruptcy of 150 banks and financial institutions worldwide. The financial system hasn’t collapsed until now because different nation states, primarily through the central banks of the richest countries, like the U.S. Federal Reserve, have provided hundreds of billions of dollars in public money to the banks.
But still the crisis continues and gets worse.
When the mortgage crisis began to unwind, capitalists withdrew their money from real estate and, searching for places to profit, fed speculation in other sectors. They put their money into oil, raw materials or food products. They provoked a general price explosion in all these sectors. It’s estimated that the sum of money that flooded into oil speculation is 30 to 35 times higher than the total that all the oil in the world will actually sell for even at those high prices. This means speculators were buying, selling, buying again, selling again, etc.
In all the countries, including the U.S., working people are suffering a sometimes considerable cut in their standard of living from these price increases.
These trillions of dollars that the bourgeoisie uses for speculation did not come out of thin air. This money was accumulated through dozens of years of sacrifice and exploitation imposed on all the working class and all people. It was produced by layoffs, plant closings, wage and benefit concessions, the economic destruction of entire regions and countries, and an explosion of misery everywhere.
The workers are paying doubly. First, by the degradation of their living and working conditions. Then, even more seriously, because the money accumulated off their labor will have been used for more speculation, thus further destabilizing an economic system that is unstable by nature.
This is the umpteenth variant of the crises which regularly punctuate the functioning of the capitalist system, in which production isn’t carried out to satisfy needs but to generate profits. For decades, the capitalists figured that since the market for consumption was saturated, reinvesting their profits in industry wouldn’t bring a big enough return in profits. As a result, they diverted an ever bigger part of their profits toward the financial sphere and speculation.
The working class will end this never-ending crisis only by taking away control of the economy from this parasitic class, by making sure the economy finally meets the needs of everyone. All wealth is created by the working class. Without it, nothing works, nothing is produced.
The immense force of the workers is simply asleep today. If it is put in motion, the workers united in a common struggle easily have the force and the means to ensure everyone can finally live in a fashion worthy of their labor.
Jul 28, 2008
Politicians and the news media have justified the enormous housing bailout bill that is about to become law as a way to help homeowners threatened with foreclosure.
What they don’t say is that only a very small minority of the millions of homeowners at risk of foreclosure will get this mortgage relief. And whatever reduction they get will be so small, even the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 40% of those holding these new mortgages will still lose their homes.
In fact, the bill was really set up to funnel countless billions to the banks and Wall Street companies. It will allow them to unload hundreds of thousands of bad mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration. When those mortgages default, it will be the taxpayers who pay the tab.
President Bush had earlier threatened to veto the bill over one provision that provides grants of four billion dollars to local government to buy up vacant foreclosed homes. Certainly, this provision is nothing but a bailout of the banks that own the foreclosed property. But obviously Bush threatened a veto as a way of distancing himself a little from the bill, to blame the Democrats, especially if the cost of the bailout skyrockets, which is very likely given the collapse of the housing market.
The bill also gives the Treasury Department the authority to shore up two mortgage company giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Today, over five trillion dollars of the nation’s 12 trillion dollars in mortgages are either owned or guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie.
Ever since the housing crisis broke open, a growing proportion of those mortgages have gone bad. Publicly, the politicians and government bureaucrats claim that it might cost 25 billion dollars to bail them out. That’s already a huge amount of money. But most believe that the real cost of the bailout will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. This is confirmed by the new bailout bill itself, which gives the U.S. Treasury the authority to borrow up to 800 billion dollars to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac! That is bigger than the entire economy of most countries!
Thus, the very same banks and Wall Street financial companies that profited so much from the housing bubble are now bailed out by the taxpayer–first and foremost, by the working class.
Big surprise!
Jul 28, 2008
On July 24, the U.S. minimum wage increased by 70¢ to $6.55. What does that mean for anyone trying to survive in an economy costing us more every day? Barely a drop in the bucket.
How many people can pay rent, food, gas and electric, telephone and transportation to work on wages like those–plus raise a family?
The new minimum comes to less than $1200 a month–if you’re working full time.
Minimum? No, it’s pitiful!