The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

Issue no. 832 — October 20 - November 3, 2008

EDITORIAL
Damn the Capitalists Who Created This Crisis!

Oct 20, 2008

The U.S. government has been carrying out an enormous operation to bail out the financial system, centered in Wall Street.

Last March the Federal Reserve provided 29 billion dollars so Bear Stearns, one of the big investment banks that was failing, could be bought out.

In September the bail-out speeded up. 200 billion dollars went to prop up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage companies. 85 billion dollars and another 38 billion dollars went to AIG, the big insurance company. 700 billion dollars is going to bail out nearly anyone who asks–that is, anyone except the population.

Yet the government’s enormous bailout hasn’t cured the crisis. The credit markets remain frozen. Financial companies continue to go broke. The crisis has gotten worse.

This crisis has been building for the last 30 years. For decades, capitalism rapidly increased its profits by severely lowering the purchasing power of the whole working class–cutting the number of jobs, pushing through a vicious speed-up, cutting wages directly and through all sorts of two-tier and three-tier schemes, turning to part-time workers, temporary workers. It was a real war carried out by the wealthy class against all those who work for their living.

Ordinary people tried to keep their heads above water–by working more hours and more jobs. They also began to rely on the greater amounts of credit that capitalism began to push. Sub-prime mortgages are only the most well-known example of all the means by which the financial system wrung more money out of the population, misleading people into loans that were sure to explode on them.

For most of the last 15 years, capitalist profits skyrocketed. But they didn’t reinvest most of these profits in production of consumer goods, because ordinary people were tapped out and the market was stagnating.

Instead, the capitalist class placed an ever larger mass of profits into financial speculation which created bigger and bigger financial bubbles.

Inevitably, their speculation led to a collapse of their whole financial system.

So here we are today, in the midst of a financial crisis worse than anything since the 1930s. The expansion of this crisis–for surely it is expanding–will lead to a worsening war carried out by the capitalists against the working class, resulting in still more layoffs, still lower wages, still more poverty and homelessness.

The government bail-out of the financial system will not stop that. It only will aid the biggest companies to carry it out. And the government, no matter which party controls it, will come back to demand that we pay for the bail-outs.

We have already paid for the capitalists’ speculation–in the loss of jobs, the lowering of wages, the reduction of benefits, the worsening of public services, social programs and education.

The only question for the working class today is how to defend ourselves–and damn the capitalist class and all their Wall Street bankers who have brought this crisis down on our heads.

Pages 2-3

AIG:
The Biggest Free Loaders of Tax-payer Money

Oct 20, 2008

Within three weeks of getting the 85 billion dollar government bail out, AIG, the largest insurance company in the world, admitted that it had run through all the money without even beginning to unwind its debts. So the government gave AIG another 38 billion dollars.

Now the company is fighting tooth and nail to stop even the appearance of government regulation or oversight.

Obviously, AIG executives want to keep secret how they are spending the bail out money. Why? One can only imagine that they are funneling the money into all kinds of pockets of wealthy people and rich companies.

Certainly the recent scandals, after the bailout, show what kind of attitude these executives have. They went ahead with the all-expense-paid vacation to a California spa at a cost of $440,000 and a partridge hunting trip to England that cost almost as much.

These top AIG guys think they can do what they want with tax-payer money. And so do all the rest of the top executives of all the big financial companies.

California’s Prop 6:
Attacking the Poor

Oct 20, 2008

This November, California has Proposition 6 on the ballot in which 14-year-olds can be tried in adult courts and sent to adult prisons, if the accused are called “gang members” by the prosecution. And who is a gang member? California already has over 100,000 names on an existing “gang database.”

The proposition also goes after poor families. It would require local governments to run criminal background checks on recipients of federal (Section 8) housing aid every year–and evict a whole family if one member is convicted of a “drug-related” or “violent” crime.

This proposition also suggests pouring one billion dollars into law enforcement–and thus reducing what is available for education, health care and other public services.

Certainly, crime and gangs are a huge problem. But all this proposition does is take young people and put them in prisons, where many will no doubt turn into even bigger criminals.

At the same time, it is taking away the little money now spent on education, housing and health care–for ordinary people. In other words, it will only create worse social conditions–which will no doubt result in even worse crime!

What the Bailout Money Could Buy

Oct 20, 2008

Since the financial crisis began, the Bush administration, Federal Reserve and Congress have committed almost one-and-a-half trillion dollars of our tax money to the same Wall Street bankers, speculators and corporate tycoons who created the crisis. Some of the most noted of the government bailout operations went to Bear Stearns (29 billion dollars), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (200 billion dollars), AIG (123 billion dollars) and the 700 billion dollar Paulson plan to buy up bad debt from financial and other companies.

So what could one-and-a-half trillion dollars buy, if it were spent on things that ordinary people and the general society need? According to the National Priorities Project, it could buy all of the following:

  • 4 years of health care for all the 50 million people in the U.S. who are currently uninsured;
  • 2 million affordable housing units;
  • New or rebuilt schools to replace all substandard schools in the U.S.;
  • 4 years pay for one million additional public school teachers;
  • Repair or replacement of all 77,000 deteriorated U.S. bridges.

By using this money to bail out a tiny handful of already incredibly wealthy bankers and financiers, the government is putting their fortunes ahead of the interests of everybody else.

A Single Bank, so That the Population Can Control the Banking System

Oct 20, 2008

The following is translated from the October 17 issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), published by the revolutionary workers’ group of that name active in France.

Given the complete chaos in the banking and financial sectors, even government officials who formerly opposed government intervention now favor it. But to impose order out of this chaos, the competition at the heart of the financial system would have to be eliminated. If this is not done, then all the measures that the different governments are now taking will change nothing.

Certainly the banking landscape has changed over time, in very big ways. Many financial companies have gone under and been swallowed up by competitors. This transformation is speeded up by each big crisis, resulting in much greater concentration.

This concentration does not end the economic war between the remaining large financial groups. The fact that financial giants have grown into even bigger monsters has not made their battles any less destructive or less ferocious, even if there are fewer of them....

Each new giant conducts business according to its own private interest. In the name of this single and sole objective, each company tries to increase the interest of its stockholders and its big clients, while battling its rivals for a bigger share of the financial market.

As long as the financial system remains in the hands of private interests, divided up among rival groups, neither can the financial system function in a harmonious fashion, nor can it operate for the collective benefit of everyone.

For things to be otherwise requires, first of all, removing the control of private capital on the economy. In one word, this capital must be expropriated. The different components of the financial system must be fused into one institution, one, and only one, bank in which all financial operations would be centralized.

By centralizing the financial system, the economy could be managed in a coherent fashion that would be simpler, clearer and much less expensive compared to the one that exists today. Then a single accounting system could be put in place, that records all financial operations and the movement of capital. This would include the sales and the purchases of the large companies, so that all the operations and exchanges can be seen. This would make visible all the elements necessary for the real control and management of the economy.

This control must be exercised by the workers, beginning with those who would work in this single bank. These workers are in the best position, at all levels, to be informed of all that is decided, and to raise the alarm and alert the population when they see decisions being made that go against the common interest.

Additionally, it is necessary that the workers’ organizations and the public be made aware of the choices and measures taken by this bank and that they are informed of the implications of these choices. There must be the full freedom and means to expose to the public what has been learned, which implies doing away with the laws that protect banking and trade secrets.

This is an ambitious objective, no doubt. Some will say it is unrealistic. But it will be within the power of the population, once it decides to take its own future in its hands.

Bailout Hides Even More Big Tax Breaks

Oct 20, 2008

When Congress passed the 700 billion dollar bailout, they also included extra tax breaks for financial companies and speculators which no one is talking about, but which will save them hundreds of billions of dollars.

One new change in the tax code allows financial companies buying banks to write off those banks’ losses as their own.

So, now that Wells Fargo has bought up Wachovia, they can declare Wachovia’s 74 billion in losses as their own. That will give them a total tax break of 19.4 billion dollars–more than the 14.3 billion dollars they spent to buy Wachovia.

Not a bad deal–get a bank for free, plus have the government hand you five billion dollars more!

Imagine how many banks are being bought up–with all the money, plus a huge profit, paid for by taxpayers–that is, us!

No Child Left behind Is Blowing Up the School System

Oct 20, 2008

Forty% of all schools are falling short of No Child Left Behind testing targets this year.

No Child Left Behind was sold as a way to improve the public schools. But in fact, it was always a scam. It was always a way to justify cutting off funds for public schools.

Study after study has shown that the formula to improve schools is very simple: lower class size and increase the amount of attention teachers can give to each student. The success of the Head Start program has shown this. In other words, give schools more money. Give them more money for more teachers, for books and supplies they don’t have, and to fix buildings that are increasingly falling apart.

No Child Left Behind does the exact opposite. It not only gives no money to schools to help improve their situation; it also does not even give any money for schools to administer the tests the law demands–so schools have to take from their already overworked budgets to pay for those tests. It ends up taking resources away from instruction, from schools that need them most–schools in working class and impoverished districts–and then punishes those schools with further cuts, if students don’t meet certain goals for test scores.

When schools do not meet a yearly improvement goal, they are punished with everything from cuts in aid money to reorganization and even closings.

The results are not surprising: instead of more schools improving each year, more and more schools fail to meet the law’s requirements every year.

This disgusting law was put together by the Bush administration–working closely with Senator Edward Kennedy, supposedly one of the most “liberal” members of Congress. It passed overwhelmingly, with broad support from Republicans AND Democrats. This year, both John McCain and Barack Obama say they support the law.

Now, as almost half of all schools in the country are “failing”, the goals of “No Child Left Behind” are clear: to leave workers’ children behind and deprive them of an education.

Try to Save, if You Can

Oct 20, 2008

More and more people are losing their life savings to the financial crisis. Everything is dropping fast, house values and 401(k)’s. Even pension funds, which are invested in all kinds of risky stocks, bonds and property, are taking a great big hit and might, one day, go under. As for bank accounts, they pay almost no interest–and they are not even really safe in a financial crash, despite all the talk about government “guarantees.”

We’re going back to the way it was in this country a century ago, when the bulk of the elderly lived below the poverty line, depended on family or lived in the poor house.

Social Security under the Gun

Oct 20, 2008

During the second presidential debate, the moderator, Tom Brokaw, as well as Obama and McCain, all agreed that Social Security and Medicare are becoming too costly, and that they will have to be cut.

What a lie! Social Security is running a great big surplus every year, and its trust fund has more than two trillion dollars in it! As for Medicare, the big problem is that money that should go to pay for health care is increasingly being eaten up by the health care companies and insurance companies, just like the rest of our health care dollars.

As pensions and life savings go down the tubes in the financial crisis, all the politicians can think of is finding a way to cut Social Security and Medicare, the only support that many of the elderly will have left.

Chicago Evictions

Oct 20, 2008

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart declared that he would no longer carry out any evictions of renters in apartment buildings that are in foreclosure.

Obviously, Dart’s decision reflects the deep anger among ordinary people. For these renters have been paying their rent every month on time. It was the landlords of the buildings who had defaulted on the mortgages.

The banks and mortgage companies took Dart’s decision to stop evictions to court. And the courts ruled in the banks’ and mortgage companies’ favor–ordering Dart to continue the evictions.

Obviously, the banks and mortgage companies want the apartment buildings vacant so they can resell them quickly and get a lot of money back.

Thus, the courts took the side of the banks and the mortgage companies against the right of people to have a place to live without being thrown in the street.

Pages 4-5

After the Elections Watch Out!

Oct 20, 2008

The following is the presentation given at a Spark public meeting in Detroit on October 19.

Many people have said that this election will be a “transformational one.” Well, if there was ever a time when this country needed “transforming,” it’s now!

And the two essential transformations the working class needs are 1) to end the decades long U.S. wars in the Middle East, and 2) to force the people who have caused the economic crisis to pay for it.

So let’s see how the election plays out in relation to these two major crises facing us.

Expanding War in the Middle East

The latest edition of the U.S. war in Iraq, going on now for five and a half years, has given U.S. oil companies a free hand to exploit Iraq’s oil resources–by destroying the fabric of Iraqi society.

What the Bush administration called “the surge” was nothing but “ethnic cleansing.” John McCain and Barack Obama both say that the “surge worked”–McCain claimed the credit for it and Obama recently said it worked “beyond our wildest expectations.” Well, this “surge” that they were so happy about, was nothing but a vast and violent campaign carried out by ethnic and religious militias, backed up by the Iraqi army and the U.S. army, which ended up herding the Iraqi population into veritable prisons, divided along lines of ethnicity or religion.

The war in Afghanistan, which McCain and Obama both want to expand, has been going on now for almost seven years.

This is the result: for all practical purposes, there are no jobs. Half the population of the country cannot buy enough food to today to keep from falling ill. Families have been reduced to selling one child so the rest of the family could survive–for awhile. Oxfam, the humanitarian organization, has said that the situation is so grave that in some northern provinces 80% of the population may die of hunger this winter.

We can measure in cold statistics the enormous human cost brought home to this country by the wars. First, the troops: 4,800 killed, and many more than that who have killed themselves after returning, destroyed by the barbarism of which they were part; another 60,000 seriously wounded; at least one in five already suffering the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)–that is, over 320,000 people.

And then the other human cost: all those needs that could have been met with this enormous amount of money, but weren’t. The government reports it has spent 656 billion dollars so far for the war in Iraq. Joseph Stiglitz, the former economist for the World Bank, estimates five times that much, three trillion dollars, when long term costs are counted. And this doesn’t count Afghanistan, whose costs are rapidly escalating.

Think what 656 billion dollars could buy. It could double the number of elementary school teachers for the next seven years–that is, doubling the number of teachers in the grades which are most critical for children’s education. It could buy four years of health care for all the uninsured people in this country. These wars devastated other countries; created animosity throughout the world and especially in the Middle East toward the United States–including toward all of us; laid waste to a generation of young men and women who volunteered for the army–out of a mistaken sense of service or because they could not find a job. And they grabbed the resources that should have been used to improve education, public services and medical care for the American people.

John McCain says quite openly what he would do about these wars: keep the Iraq war going as it is, while stepping up the war in Afghanistan.

Barack Obama, by contrast, has campaigned saying he would reduce the war in Iraq–reduce, not end it–but he also says he wants to increase the war in Afghanistan more rapidly than Bush is doing it. And even before the Bush administration sent troops from Afghanistan into Pakistan, Obama called for doing that, and still calls for expanding the war into Pakistan. That is, he doesn’t propose to end the wars–only to shift the center of the wars.

We have never yet seen a war in this country that was stopped by an election. But we’ve seen quite a few times when illusions in a candidate’s promises have diverted people from organizing opposition to a war. Woodrow Wilson campaigned in 1916, claiming “he kept the country out of war,” only to immediately plunge into war after the election. Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964 opposed himself to the supposed warmonger, Barry Goldwater–only to throw the country head first into the war in Viet Nam right after his election. And Richard Nixon in 1968 said he had a plan to stop the war in Viet Nam–only to extend it into Laos and Cambodia, while increasing the bombing of North Viet Nam.

If we want an end to these wars, if we want to prevent them being extended into other countries–we must conclude, as with everything else–we have to depend on ourselves, our own forces, our own readiness to fight for what we want.

The Financial Crisis

The same is true, concerning the other big issue we face today, the rapidly unfolding financial collapse.

Today’s crisis is the direct consequence of policies carried out by the biggest capitalists for the last 30 years. When their economy began to contract toward the end of the 1970s, they pushed to increase their profits, by cutting wages and cutting jobs. Meanwhile the government also cut funding for education, social services, public services, and it let bridges, levees and dams collapse–at the same time, whether under Democrats or under Republicans, diverting more and more money to the big corporations and the wealthy who stood behind them. But in so doing, overall cutting the standard of living of the working class and other poor layers of the population, the capitalists vastly reduced the possibility of selling the goods and services their industries produced. Thus, the very thing the capitalists did to prop up their profits only circled back around, threatening to reduce their profits all over again.

To make up their lost profits, the financial sector pushed more and more credit on people. The profits made on this vast expansion of credit were not plowed back into production–they went into financial speculation, which has ballooned into one field after another for more than 15 years: first, an earlier oil crisis; then the so-called high tech development, which ended up in the dot-com bubble; then into real estate, which ended up vastly increasing the cost of housing–in many areas of the country, housing prices doubled or even tripled in less than five years time; then into commodities, pushing up the prices of oil, potatoes, grains, milk, meat, etc.

GMAC, which made its money off the cars produced in GM’s auto plants, ended up plowing the profits from auto into mortgages and real estate, and then it took the mortgages and transformed them into those completely indecipherable financial instruments called collateralized debt obligations. Who knew what they contained, or what any of those other esoteric financial instruments contained–or even what they were?

Most of the capitalists who bought and sold occult pieces of paper like this had no idea what they represented–and they admitted it. But they continued to sell and buy and sell and buy a vast number of such fictitious pieces of paper, making more money off each succeeding sale. It was a virtual pyramid scheme, which pulled the whole financial system along with it.

When some of their own advisers told them the scheme could collapse, they said, “don’t worry.” We’ll make lots of money before then, and if it does collapse, the government will bail us out.

Well collapse it did, and bail them out the government did!

The Bail Out

The bail out costs–if the economists can be trusted–the stupendous total of 1.5 trillion dollars the government has already disbursed or committed–and another 3.6 trillion it has guaranteed. All told it comes to 5.1 trillion dollars–so far.

The total GDP–that is the amount of goods and services created in this country–was 14 trillion dollars last year. The government has handed over to these sharks more than one-third of the wealth produced by all the work of all those who toil in all the workplaces of this country.

Where is all this 5.1 trillion dollars, which the government doesn’t have, going to come from? That’s right–it’s going to be paid for by every working person in this country, through taxes, huge cuts in social services, and inflation, which will eat away at workers’ standard of living every day.

In the face of this attack, the leaders of both parties and their presidential candidates have worked to convince us that we must go along with bailing out the criminals whose grasping after profit is at the root of the crisis.

If there is anything that should give us a great big warning about the future, it’s this: even while running for election, trying to grab our votes, not only would they not rock Wall Street’s boat, they were ready to give Wall Street and the whole capitalist class that stands behind it every single thing it demanded. And neither party bothered to extend unemployment benefits–when the whole country was watching what they were doing. Just this little pittance, and they wouldn’t do it!

Wall Street certainly knows it can depend on either one of them–it’s why it lavished so much money on the two campaigns–just as it did with Hillary Clinton’s campaign before she lost the nomination.

The worsening of the economic crisis is only going to make every other ill in this society worse–look at the racist comments that have surrounded the Obama campaign. Look at the sexist ones concerning Clinton, or for that matter Sarah Palin. But much worse than anything thrown at these candidates, who after all, every one of them, represent the capitalist class in this country, is the way that the institutionalized racism of this society will make the black population pay a disproportionate share of the cost of the crisis–as the whole working class gets hit by it. And almost certainly, we will see an increase in racist violence–we already are, including against immigrants.

We are truly standing at the edge of a precipice, in a situation where our future has already been battered. We have to be ready to fight–and those fights have to go up to a social explosion. We have to start fighting against all the attacks that come down on us–without waiting for someone else to do it for us.

If we wait on the results of these elections to solve our problems, we are going to give up valuable time. When we see how fast things are moving in this bail-out, which was nothing but the most enormous attack on working people, an attack for which the bill will be rendered after the election, we better start preparing ourselves to move fast. There is no magic formula for what we have to do. The fact is, we have to decide to respond, we have to convince others, we have to stop kidding ourselves that someone else will do it for us.

No matter who people vote for, no matter who wins, understand this: we are going to come under attack, with the government leading the charge.

Pages 6-7

African Rulers Take Timid Measures to Avoid Anger of Their Starving People

Oct 20, 2008

From the September 15th issue of Le Pouvoir Aux Travailleurs (Workers’ Power), the journal of the militants of UATCI (the African Union of Communist Internationalist Workers).

Rulers in several African countries still remember the hunger riots this past February and March. Such riots could happen again, thanks to the brutal increase in the price of basic foods.

Those in power, and food merchants, are haunted by scenes of shops looted by an upsurge of anger from those who are hungry.

The Niger government has taken certain measures to avoid the repetition of such scenes, which they officially refer to as protecting the population from high taxes on consumption. The government started an operation to sell rice and sugar at a lower price than the price in the shops. But these products are sold only to families that can present proper documents, including a list of family members, a marriage certificate or even the latest census card. Those who don’t have such documents, most often those most in need, are turned away.

This measure only benefits the middle class because they are the ones who can produce the necessary documents.

In Mauritania the military junta that just took power from Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi is taking similar measures. The poorest can get food in certain shops throughout the country. Eight kinds of products are being sold in several hundred shops for about 20% less than what they would cost in the market. Such measures are designed to calm the poor population, to show good intentions, to gain a little credit with those most dissatisfied.

The African countries are poor, dependent on the international market dominated by the richest multi-nationals. Rice is the basic food, but the African countries have to import it because they don’t produce enough. Some African countries grow green beans or flowers for export to Europe. Some grow cotton which is sold to the world textile industry.

And in Niger they take from the earth huge amounts of uranium, a raw material used in the rich countries of the world. The piles of waste are left behind, a source of radioactive pollution for all those who work or live nearby. All such activities make a fortune for the shareholders of the multinationals, companies perfectly willing to use bribes or encourage embezzlement by local officials, all coming from the labor of poor workers and farmers.

In Senegal, all the government does is talk. Official statistics say that more than two million people in the country are threatened with “food insecurity.” These figures are far below the reality, especially given the latest explosion in food prices. Even those with a regular salary can’t get proper nourishment because their salaries fall far behind the enormous escalation in prices. Small farmers who grow peanuts, millet or cotton get such a low price for what they sell, yet have to buy food at high prices.

Famine threatens these small farmers. World organizations have arranged far too little aid.

In the face of this catastrophe, the Senegalese government has to show it is doing something. The latest new idea of the current president of Senegal is pompously called “the Grand Agricultural Offensive for Nourishment and Abundance.” This plan, which should be called “the Grand blah-blah,” claims there is food abundance on the horizon for Senegal. But meanwhile, salaries are frozen and nothing is done to prevent the big merchants and chains that distribute food from speculating in prices that make them big profits off the backs of the poorest.

In the end, it is workers and poor peasants who, once organized, will help to install a more just social system that satisfies basic needs and puts an end to hunger.

They’ll Be Back!

Oct 20, 2008

Maryland’s Board of Public Works recently approved 349 million dollars worth of budget cuts. The cuts include hundreds of state positions, plus cuts to schools, colleges, health care, roads–everything.

State officials say this is only the beginning of their cuts. They say they will be back with much deeper cuts in December and even more during the next legislative session in the middle of January.

No state job is safe and every vital social program is threatened.

Page 8

Will GM Absorb Chrysler?

Oct 20, 2008

After months of speculation about which parts of which auto companies might be sold off, or which companies might declare bankruptcy, the picture changed on October 11. Surprise! GM and Chrysler might merge! That is, GM might add Chrysler to its empire.

Analysts speculated that GM was after Chrysler’s stash of 11 billion dollars cash, while Cerberus–Chrysler’s private-equity-fund owner–might get the rest of the financial unit GMAC, which is in line for the federal sub-prime-mortgage bailout.

The calculations of the companies certainly include their chances of squeezing more money out of workers and small suppliers. As Daniel Howes of the Detroit News explained: “GM, Ford and, presumably, Chrysler LLC could use the courts to radically restructure their U.S. operations even more than they already have. Wages, benefits and work rules in union contracts would be streamlined, brands could be killed and dealer networks rationalized; supplier contracts could be renegotiated and the network of parts makers winnowed.”

In other words, buying up Chrysler might give GM the same weapons as if GM declared bankruptcy, but without the problems of bankruptcy–a sticky long-drawn-out legal process that GM is still muddling through at Delphi. Also, GM could cut out a slice of its competition in the quest for market share.

Chrysler’s owner, Cerberus Capital, for its part, originally bought Chrysler with the goal of “stripping and flipping” the manufacturer. Today’s frozen credit markets mean that no buyer will be able to finance such a deal for the foreseeable future. Cerberus may simply be looking to dump a lost gamble.

And behind the scenes are the banks. Holders of billions upon billions of dollars of auto-industry debt, banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo and Bank of America are summing their sums and pulling the strings of everyone involved. After all, 25 billion dollars of federal auto-industry bailout money is soon to fall from the tree. And more is expected after that!

Whatever mega-deals finally result, auto workers will pay for it with more so-called “restructuring,” which means more plant closings, mass layoffs and more demands on those left on the job. Corporate greed has already laid waste to whole cities and towns in Michigan, in Ohio, in Indiana. The auto-producing region has already been in five years of depression. Now, the companies in their new crisis will go on a renewed offensive, trying once again to shift the burden onto the workers.

No, workers have already paid too much! Workers–the employed and the unemployed!–have every reason to launch their own counteroffensive, using all the means at their disposal, to make sure that the banks and corporations which have created this crisis are the ones to pay its full cost.

Cops in Prince George’s County, Maryland:
“Just Doing Their Job”

Oct 20, 2008

On August 16, Prince George’s County cops shot and killed Manuel de Jesus Espina in Langley Park. Espina was unarmed and the cops executed him. Hundreds turned out for a vigil. This was the seventh killing this year by PG County police and the year isn’t over yet.

In June, 19-year-old Ronnie White, whom the cops arrested under suspicion of killing a PG cop, was found strangled to death in the county jail. The cops obviously executed White without a trial.

In July, sheriff’s deputies and police narcotics officers raided the home of the mayor of Berwyn Heights (a town in PG County), claiming that he was a drug courier, and killed his two dogs, only to apologize later for making a “mistake.” This made national news because it was a mayor.

The cops have been carrying out these kinds of killings for a long time. In 2000, a Prince George’s undercover cop shot a black Howard University graduate student four times in the back and killed him.

These cops have been killing people in a county where 66% of the people are black. They can turn even a routine traffic stop into a major tragedy.

The anger is so high against the cops, the federal government has had to step in to investigate the 800 biting incidents in a seven-year period ending in the mid-1990s. This includes an incident of a police dog mauling and disfiguring an innocent woman sleeping in her bed. Obviously, the federal government has done nothing - as usual.

The only force that can stop these violations is the population.

Troy Davis:
Supreme Court Gives Okay to Execute an Innocent Man

Oct 20, 2008

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up the death penalty appeal of Troy Davis. The State of Georgia rushed to quickly set a new execution date for the week of October 27.

Davis, a black man with no previous criminal record, was convicted in 1991 in Georgia of killing a white off-duty cop working as a security guard. The evidence was flimsy. Prosecutors presented no physical evidence linking Davis to the crime and no murder weapon.

Instead, he was convicted based solely on eyewitness testimony. Yet, seven witnesses who testified against Davis later recanted their testimony. Two of them say the cops forced them to lie in court. Three witnesses say another man admitted shooting the cop. That man, Sylvester Coles, is the person who first went to the cops with his lawyer and fingered Davis as the shooter.

Even former president Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, and Pope Benedict XVI have publicly challenged the conviction.

If the state of Georgia and the U.S. Supreme Court go through with this, they are the worst murderers of all!

Saving the Companies, Losing the Jobs

Oct 20, 2008

What does the United Auto Workers’ union president have to say about GM buying Chrysler? Ron Gettelfinger on a radio interview said he understood what would happen. “That would mean the elimination of additional jobs.”

But what does Mr. Gettelfinger want to DO about it? “We’ve done a lot of things to help all of these companies survive. That’s one issue I’m ready to debate with anybody.”

Help the companies survive?

The UAW leadership’s “helping the companies survive” has been a disaster for the membership. In 1979, there were about 720,000 jobs at GM, Ford, and Chrysler. In l980, the union officially shifted into “help the companies survive” mode. In 2007, there were about 180,000 jobs left, at GM, Ford, and Chrysler–and they’re still cutting!

How about helping the workers survive? Only the workers’ own organization and struggle can assure that!

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