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
Jun 8, 2009
GM’s pre-planned, government-managed bankruptcy has one clear aim: to extort enormous sacrifices from current and future generations of auto workers. While auto workers are targets today, tomorrow the crosshairs are on every worker.
It’s by design. And it’s from the top. President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said in an interview late last year, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What I mean by that is, it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you couldn’t do before.” When the auto companies were caught in the banks’ financial meltdown and could not get their essential loans, the government took the “opportunity to do things it couldn’t do before.” It set up an auto task force manned by Wall Street wizards, whose job was to blast away at workers’ wages and conditions and, by doing so, protect the interests of the biggest banks and investors.
The scale of the cuts at GM and Chrysler is beyond what any CEO could imagine extorting in any ordinary period. Work is speeded up. Workers must put in more weeks, more days, more hours, with less rest and less pay. Hourly wages are frozen and yearly lump sums are eliminated. Workers’ protections are wiped out in many situations, ranging from the way checks are paid, to the assignments they must accept, to the jobs that will be resourced to contractors.
Already, these changes lead toward what the new contract calls an “all-in labor cost” of $35 an hour–compared to what the companies said it was just a few years ago, $75. Compensation for labor is to be sliced by more than half! At one blow.
But there is even more to come. First, every future new hire will be paid less than half of today’s standard wage, and have only minimal benefits. Second, the government task force cancelled workers’ right to vote on their 2011 contract. Instead, the government imposed binding arbitration–and the arbitrator is instructed to use the industry’s lowest wages and benefits as a benchmark. By 2011, how low will the non-union car companies set their wages? $10? $8?
The stage is set to wipe 100 years of workers’ gains completely off the map.
The standard of living of auto workers will fall dramatically, and every other boss in every other industry will try to reset their workers’ standards accordingly. The ripple effects will put the entire working class into poverty.
By these measures, the Obama administration expects to protect not just the GM and Chrysler companies, but the whole capitalist class. The government began by suggesting that it would provide only a few billion dollars to Chrysler and GM. Now the total committed to these companies and their financial arms controlled by Cerberus Capital is 100 billion dollars. The government fully intends to protect the interests of the dominant capitalists–not least by ensuring that in the future, they will be able to reap richer profits by paying workers far less while pushing them harder and harder.
This is the future that the capitalists and their government are preparing for us. When the Obama administration says that things are getting “better,” this is what they mean–much better for the wealthy class that owns and controls the production apparatus of this society.
For the working class, “better” can only depend on the workers’ beginning to fight for the interests of themselves and the whole laboring population.
Jun 8, 2009
The jobless rate hit 9.4% in May. But reading the headlines makes it sound like losing 345,000 jobs in one month is “hopeful.”
It’s true that losing 700,000 jobs a month is worse. But the slowing pace of job loss has not changed the fact that the economy is very weak–and expected to get much weaker when the fall-out from the auto bankruptcy hits. Already, the economy has lost six million jobs since the recession began in December 2007.
This is the highest official unemployment rate in more than 25 years. The rate of unemployment is much higher for black and Hispanic people (14.9% and 12.7% respectively). The highest rate is teenagers looking for summer jobs, who now have to compete with a huge pool of jobless for low-paying jobs. And, of course, these are only the official figures, which severely hide the real extent of joblessness.
Behind the ever hopeful headlines that unemployment was not as bad as it could have been are the harsh economic realities that ordinary people are facing every day. Unemployment checks don’t pay the mortgage and buy food and pay for doctors.
Something even more insidious is behind those headlines–the lie that it’s getting better–just hold on a little longer.
In other words, we are supposed to believe that it is not necessary to organize, protest and fight against all these attacks. The reality is that working people will continue to be forced to pay for this crisis until we do fight back.
Jun 8, 2009
Barack Obama signed into law the “Helping Families Save Their Homes Act” on May 20. By the time Obama signed the bill, Congress had stripped it of the provision that would have helped families “save their homes.”
Obama had promised during his election campaign to fight to let bankruptcy judges modify terms of mortgage loans, saying, “We should also change the unfair bankruptcy laws that allow judges to write down your mortgage if you own six or seven homes, but not if you have only one.” Strangely enough, Congress as far back as 1978 gave bankruptcy judges the power to modify mortgages, but only on loans for things like vacation homes and luxury yachts, not for primary residences of people who owned only one home.
Democrats, with their 60-vote majority in the Senate, could easily have insisted the bankruptcy provision remain in the bill. On the contrary, 12 Democrats sided with 39 Republicans to keep it out.
And Obama could have campaigned for it–he didn’t. His advisers didn’t think it was “worth the cost” to lead a fight against the banking industry. “The fact that Obama effectively sat it out helped us out a great deal.”–that was the opinion of Camden Fine, the head of the Independent Community Bankers of America.
The bill that remained gives money to banks that modify mortgages, but leaves it to them to do so on a purely voluntary basis. Obviously, they will do so only if there’s a profit in it for them. The bill also provides even more bailout money to the banks. It saves banks and credit unions at least 13 billion dollars in special fees they would have otherwise been required to pay into shrinking deposit insurance funds.
Its name to the contrary, this bill provides little relief at a time when the number of homeowners facing foreclosure is growing.
A record 800,000 homes received a default or auction notice in the first quarter of this year. And foreclosures are by no means limited to people with subprime adjustable-rate mortgages. Homeowners with fixed-rate mortgages made up a greaterpercentage of foreclosures than those with subprime loans in the first quarter of this year. As job cuts and layoffs increase, many more people are finding it impossible to pay their mortgages.
The foreclosure crisis is growing–and thanks to politicians, Democrat and Republican, the banks are benefitting from it.
Jun 8, 2009
In most Western European counties, the state replaces on average 60% to 80% of a laid off worker’s lost salary. In the United States, it’s just over half. European unemployment benefits also tend to last longer. In Belgium, for example, jobless benefits have no time limit at all. In Denmark, the state replaces up to 90% of lost wages and invests more than 4% of GDP every year in supporting and retraining the jobless. On the other hand, the U.S., before the current crisis, spent about 0.4% of GDP on retraining and benefits.
Are European workers getting all this because Europe has accumulated more wealth than the United States? Obviously not. But it does show how barbaric this country is that it does not do what it could absolutely afford to do.
Jun 8, 2009
“As a result [of state budget cuts], I have made a difficult decision and I have announced the cancellation of this year’s summer school and intersession for elementary and middle school students.”
These are the words of Ramon C. Cortines, the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Other school districts in the state have made similar announcements.
Who will suffer the consequences of this “difficult decision”? Students who are falling behind and need extra instruction; school employees who have lost employment, and income they had counted on in this time of economic hardship; parents who will have to resort to day care–unaffordable for working-class parents, especially those who have been laid off, or had their hours cut, by their bosses.
It’s true that the politicians in Sacramento want to impose huge cuts on schools. But Cortines, who is in charge of the second-largest school district in the country, could have made another decision: to stand up for the children whose education is supposedly entrusted to him, and tell those politicians that it’s impossible to run schools with the cuts they are proposing.
And as for the state politicians, both Republican and Democrat, last February they included two new corporate tax loopholes, worth billions of dollars in tax cuts for big companies, in the state budget–in the middle of a supposedly huge “budget crisis.”
There is no reason why anyone should believe a single word that comes out of the mouths of these rotten liars. If they are busy dropping their big ax on public schools, it’s because they think they can get away with stealing money from children to give to greedy capitalists.
Jun 8, 2009
Out of 787 billion dollars promised in stimulus money, the Obama administration has sent out 19 billion dollars–or two%.
Too bad for the unemployed hoping for more in their pockets. Too bad for the states hoping to repair some roads and gain a few jobs that way. Too bad for the medical programs or food stamps or school systems that have already cut back. Too bad for state workers who have already taken unpaid furlough days. That money just never seems to get spent.
700 billion dollars were also promised to bail out the banks. They got that–and much, much more. 2.5 trillion dollars have already been handed out, and 12.2 trillion more have been made available!
Do you hope to see some stimulus money? Better change your last name to Citibank!
Jun 8, 2009
Even before medical researchers have had the chance to figure out much of anything about the new form of swine flu, anti-immigrant right-wingers grabbed hold of the issue to spew out racist drivel.
For example, nationally syndicated radio show host Neal Boortz said, “What better way to sneak a virus into this country than give it to Mexicans? Right? I mean one out of every 10 people born in Mexico is already living up here, and the rest are trying to get here.”
Researchers suspect, but do not yet know for certain, that the swine flu originated in Mexico. Certainly, in the past, new flu strains have started in many countries, including the U.S. But, even if it did start in Mexico, researchers are focusing on a big U.S. corporation–Smithfield Farms that operates in Mexico–as the source.
Smithfield runs a million-pig farm (actually 16 farms) in an area of Mexico where researchers know one of the first documented cases of the new swine flu occurred. Residents of the area have been protesting unsanitary conditions caused by the way Smithfield keeps the pigs and disposes of their excrement–in huge open pits with leaky liners and massive swarms of flies that cause health problems.
Smithfield has faced similar protests over its practices in the U.S. In North Carolina, waste overflows from Smithfield operations and its contractors. One spill killed millions of fish.
The aim of all the anti-immigrant drivel is to divert attention away from the corporate operations that breed and spread the disease.
The interest of workers–native-born or immigrant–is to oppose the big corporations whose drive for profit causes the problems. And to oppose all this racist garbage used to divide us!
Jun 8, 2009
President Obama’s latest trip abroad was a carefully thought-out and orchestrated public relations event.
The first stop was Saudi Arabia, a staunch U.S. ally for decades. The Saudi kingdom also happens to be one of the most backward regimes in the world. The law of the land is a very narrow, reactionary version of Islamic law, which the Saudi regime enforces strictly. For example, women are excluded from public life–they are not even allowed to drive, and they have to cover themselves completely in public. A religious police patrols the streets, commonly beating up women who don’t adhere to this rule.
Much of the work in the country is done by foreigners who are denied full citizenship status and rights. The oil wealth of the country is controlled by big international corporations in partnership with members of the ruling Saudi clan, who invest this wealth abroad–while a big part of the population live in poverty.
In Saudi Arabia, Obama affirmed the U.S.’s continued alliance with this brutal, backward regime. That alone puts the lie to many of Obama’s claims in his big speech in Egypt the next day–that the U.S. stands for freedom and democracy, women’s rights and religious tolerance!
Egypt, the most populous Arab country, was chosen for Obama’s well-publicized speech–a message intended not only for governments but for people as well. Obama is busy expanding the war in Afghanistan–a war started by Bush on the pretext of “fighting terrorism.” Yet, in his speech, Obama managed to mention the words “terrorism” and “terrorist” ... not even once! Obama knows that, to the mostly Muslim populations of Middle Eastern countries, the word “terrorist,” coming from U.S. officials, means “Muslim civilians”–understandably, considering how much destruction and misery U.S. missiles and bombs have wrought on the populations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
After Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Obama reassured another U.S. ally in the Middle East, Israel, that “America’s strong bond with Israel ... is unbreakable.” But Obama was also very careful to extend a hope to Israel’s adversary, Hamas, making the vague promise that “America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.”
Of course, even a vague, empty sentence like that draws a reaction from Israel’s rulers who, by brute force, have always suppressed those very aspirations of the Palestinian population. So, to further drive home the message that the U.S. has no intention to change its special alliance with the state of Israel, Obama visited next a former concentration camp in Germany, where, during World War II, Jewish people were killed.
Finally, Obama made another well-staged appearance, in France, on the very day of the anniversary of D-Day. Once again, he pretended that the U.S. is fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for “freedom and democracy.” Never mind that Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world; where the U.S. regularly bombs villages; and where women can’t work, and girls can’t go to school, for fear of being attacked and killed by religious fanatics–some of whom happen to be U.S. allies! And never mind that Iraq today is a country where chronic unemployment and a bloody civil war have left the population desperately impoverished and ethnically segregated–not to mention that the U.S. war and invasion have turned millions of Iraqis into refugees.
With his well-educated, smug, clever and media-savvy manners, Obama has used every opportunity to pretend that his presidency represents a change from the policies of Bush. But actions speak louder than words: on every major issue, whether domestic or foreign, the Obama administration has continued, and even expanded, Bush’s old policies.
Jun 8, 2009
The disappearance of the Air France plane flying between Rio and Paris cost the lives of more than two hundred passengers and 12 crew members. It was the worst airplane accident in the history of Air France.
The directors of Air France quickly announced its Airbus 330 was very new, that it had just gone through maintenance checks, and that there was a very experienced pilot in charge–and all this they quickly documented. But then Air France went on to float the idea that the plane had been struck by lightning during a violent tropical storm.
Perhaps. But each year, thousands of airplanes are hit by lightning without such a disastrous result. Experienced pilots know that they have to go around violent atmospheric disturbances, like those commonly encountered going across the oceans at the equator.
Something more was involved. Now it seems that an air speed sensor malfunctioned. It has been known since 2001 that these sensors, under certain conditions, can get blocked by ice at high altitudes, failing to measure air speed–which can be deadly under certain difficult circumstances, like a severe storm. In the case of this flight between Rio and Paris, no less than 14 warning messages about sensor problems were recorded during the last four minutes of its flight!
In any case, aviation authorities had already recommended that Airbus make certain costly modifications. Those modifications had not been done on this plane. Airbus is now blaming Air France for not doing them, and Air France is blaming Airbus.
Furthermore, there is the whole issue of how well planes like this Airbus 330 can withstand the pounding force of tropical storms as they do go near them–which could be particularly problematic if the speed was wrong.
An internet site, EuroCockpit, maintained by volunteers working in the aviation industry, issued the following warning about such problems: “The safety standards, which include the breaking points of the wings, have not changed despite the growing size of aircraft bodies. The use of composite materials, whose resistance is calculated to barely meet certification standards, is dictated by the concern for ‘economic performance,’ that is, to economize on weight and thus save fuel.”
In other words, caught in high winds–particularly if the speed of the plane is affected–a plane could fall apart.
All of this is known. But airlines, like aviation companies, cut closer and closer to the margin of safety in the chase after profit.
This time, it seems they may have cut too far.
Jun 8, 2009
“It is easy to point fingers–for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought by Israel’s founding, and for Israelis to point to the constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders as well as beyond.”
This is how President Obama described the decades-long, bloody conflict in and around Israel in his well-advertised speech in Egypt–a quarrel between two peoples who can’t learn to get along.
Obama went on to say that “Palestinians must abandon violence,” but he didn’t utter a single word about the enormous violence coming from Israel: its total blockade of the Gaza Strip that has been starving about a million Palestinians for almost two years; the bombing of Palestinian homes by Israeli warplanes; the Israeli army’s regular invasions of the Palestinian areas, and on and on.
One of the most modern, best-equipped and best-trained armies in the world is waging an all-out, brutal war against a whole population, which is penned within apartheid-like settlements. But Obama didn’t notice the violence involved in this.
More than 60 years ago, the founders of Israel claimed that the new state would provide a home for the Jewish people, a people without a land, after the horrors of the Holocaust. But these founders established Israel as a purely “Jewish state,” using religion to define “Jewishness”–thus discriminating against Arab residents, and pushing most of them off the land Israel was founded on. The majority of Palestinian Arabs were forced to flee their homes by campaigns of violent terrorism. Today, three generations later, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians still live in refugee camps.
Thus, Palestinians have become a people without a land. But the Jewish people of Israel also have not found a safe home, because they are locked in an endless, bloody war with Palestinians–who have no future, and blame Israel for it.
Indeed, the founders of Israel and all Israeli leaders ever since, who have violently defended Israel’s exclusion of Palestinian Arabs, are to blame. But backing Israel are the big imperialist powers, and especially the U.S. The U.S. has squarely stood by the Israeli leaders and their policies–giving them money, and arming their military.
The U.S. has long used Israel to protect the profits of big U.S. corporations in the Middle East.
Today Obama may issue moral exhortations about getting along–but that’s only to hide the U.S.’s responsibility for creating the bloody impasse, in which Palestinian and Jewish people find themselves today.
Jun 8, 2009
The chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Stephen Friedman, also sat on the board of Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. when the Fed quickly approved Goldman’s application to become a bank holding company–helping Goldman immensely.
Conflict of interest?
That’s not all. Friedman was also responsible for finding a replacement for himself as chairman of the Fed Bank of New York–a former Goldman executive! No surprise here.
Why not keep things simple and honest and let Goldman Sachs openly run the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. They do anyway.
Jun 8, 2009
For months, top UAW leaders have been organizing and participating in petition drives and rallies throughout Michigan and around the country urging people to “save American jobs” and “buy American”–and to “Keep jobs in the U.S.”
In recent weeks they were backed up by local union leaders, like Bill Parker at Chrysler’s Sterling Heights Assembly Plant, who called on Chrysler to close plants in Mexico and Canada instead of in the U.S.
What could be more outrageous and cynical than UAW leaders who just agreed with the auto companies and the government that more factories will be closed as part of the concession agreement? Or who agreed to let auto companies junk work rules–which will cost many thousands more jobs. Suddenly they pretend to be concerned about saving “American” jobs!
And what could be more of a lie than to suggest that the problem is that auto workers in Canada or Mexico are taking the jobs of American auto workers? Yes, the number of jobs at Ford, Chrysler and GM has been drastically reduced. Over the last decades, most of these jobs have not been shipped outside the U.S. Some have been lost to speed up and changes in work rules, squeezing more work out of each worker, with the companies taking all the benefits of the increased productivity. Some jobs have been shipped to small parts plants INSIDE the U.S., where workers make half the wages or less.
The jobs that GM, Ford and Chrysler workers used to do were first outsourced to Delphi and Visteon and Mopar, where wages and benefits were reduced. Then Mopar and Delphi and Visteon outsourced work to even smaller parts suppliers, most of them in the U.S., at even lower wages. This has been going on for years with the acceptance of the union leaders. In fact, in some of these deals, the UAW got the right to represent the workers at these low wages plants and to collect their union dues!
Today the jobs are being lost to an economic crisis–caused by the insatiable drive for profit of the whole capitalist class, which owns not only companies like GM and Chrysler, but the big Wall Street banks. But the government and the companies demand that workers pay the cost. And top UAW leaders agree!
Where did the jobs go? They disappeared in the drive for concessions–in the companies’ drive to amass profits at the workers’ expense.
Workers can’t let themselves be fooled by these rallies and petitions diverting us away from the real problems–and organized by some of the same people who told us we have no choice but to accept concessions.
Jun 8, 2009
At the end of May, 3450 families were still in trailers or temporary housing, victims of Hurricane Katrina. At first they were told they would have to get out of the trailers by May 31, although they had no place to go. Most of the homes destroyed by the hurricane in the poorer districts have not yet been replaced or repaired.
Next housing officials announced that families could buy their trailers for $5.00. Five dollars? There has to be a catch–and of course, there was. In order to stay in a trailer, a person would have to have the money to pay for a septic system and insurance. These Katrina victims are still here precisely because they are the poor. Rich people in New Orleans already are back in their homes with insurance settlements.
But the great sale deal only applies to 1160 of the 3446 trailers now in use.
FEMA made all kinds of promises to assist the poor of New Orleans. Some 16,000 families were supposedly assisted by their housing assistance program. But thousands more have nowhere to go because FEMA didn’t have enough help at the housing authority to process all the applications.
In other words, some New Orleans residents were swept up by a hurricane but–even worse–swept under the carpet by the government.
Jun 8, 2009
UAW workers at New Process Gear, a Syracuse area parts plant owned by Magna International, voted down a concessionary contract for the third time in a row–even though the company threatened to close the plant if they did.
The contract included work-rule concessions, and pay cuts to $16 an hour or even a plant closing–unless the company declares a profit in the fall.
The workers rejected the contract–by 68%–even though the local president and the International tried to pressure them into it, and even though the company laid them off for two months between the second and third votes. The No vote was actually higher the third time around!
Workers felt insulted when the union and the company told them they had no other choice.
As one worker put it, “I don’t want to lose my job.... But I don’t want to be treated like a nobody.”
Workers said they’d rather be laid off at their old wage of $20 an hour, than be blackmailed into a pay cut that guaranteed nothing.
Jun 8, 2009
Ford CEO Alan Mulally says that he expects Ford workers to give up even more concessions, on top of the concessions Ford took just three months ago. Mulally now wants the UAW to match the concessions the union just gave to GM and Chrysler, which were even more outrageous than the Ford concessions.
At GM and Chrysler, retirees’ dental and vision coverage will be eliminated July 1, VEBA funding was cut further, all new hires were allowed to be low wage. Most importantly, the UAW leadership agreed to give up the union’s right to strike in 2011 and to let an arbitrator bring down wages and benefits even further.
Certainly Ford wants to take every concession they can get from the workers. And the top UAW leaders have demonstrated their willingness to agree to the concessions that the auto companies and the government have been demanding.
But they have a problem: Ford workers did not quietly accept the last set of concessions. In some plants where workers organized against the concessions, the contract re-opener was voted down. Overall the Ford contract was passed by only a reported 59% to 41%, and the real vote was certainly closer than that.
Ford and the UAW leaders understand they may have a problem trying to get the Ford workers to accept more concessions. When Ford complains that the government’s role in the GM and Chrysler concessions gives those companies an advantage over Ford, it means Ford wants the government to try to help force more concessions on the Ford workers.
But Ford workers, who showed an opposition to concessions this year and also in 2005, will be the ones to have something to say about that. And if Ford workers, or any other group of workers, takes a stand against concessions, it would open up possibilities for the working class to start to turn back all these demands for sacrifice.
Jun 8, 2009
George Tiller, one of only three doctors in the U.S. still providing late-term abortions to women who need them, was shot and killed outside the church he attended on Sunday, May 31. It’s an unspeakable outrage.
Tiller’s murder was quickly declared to be the act of one lone crazy person, Scott Roeder. He may be mentally unstable, but this particular craziness was created and fed by a whole campaign, stretching over decades, against the women who seek an abortion and the health care professionals who help them.
For years, Operation Rescue had distributed pictures of Dr. Tiller and others, made to look like “Wanted” posters. “Hit Lists” were posted on websites of Operation Rescue and other anti-abortion organizations. Bill O’Reilly, the conservative talk show host, had mentioned Dr. Tiller 29 times in the past four years, almost always as “Tiller the Baby Killer.”
These are nothing but incitements to violence, just like many others aimed at abortion providers. And they’ve had the effect they were looking for. Eight clinic workers have been murdered in the United States since 1993; in that time, seventeen attempted murders have taken place. Over 5,800 acts of violence against abortion providers have been reported since 1977, including bombings, arsons, death threats and assaults, as well as more than 143,000 other acts of disruption, including harassing phone calls, fake anthrax attacks, stink bomb attacks and bomb threats.
Dr. Tiller was himself the target of a sustained series of attacks. His clinic was bombed in 1985; he faced massive protests at his clinic in 1991; and he was shot in both arms by an abortion opponent in 1993. His clinic had to be fitted with bulletproof glass and security cameras. He traveled with a body guard, and regularly wore a bulletproof vest.
Tiller also faced baseless legal claims he had to defend himself against. Even though he was acquitted of every one, they still ate up years of time and lots of money.
Most recently, his clinic was vandalized in early May: wires to the surveillance cameras had been cut, and a hole was punched in the roof, causing water to pour into the clinic. The vandalism was reported to the FBI, which did nothing.
Tiller’s killer, Scott Roeder, was even spotted attempting to vandalize Tiller’s clinic and another one in Kansas City, Missouri, several days before Tiller’s death. The FBI didn’t show up until AFTER Tiller’s murder.
Anti-abortion leaders tried to disavow Roeder’s act, but it was too little too late, and filled with double-talk. Troy Newman, the president of Operation Rescue, tried to say that his group had always sought “non-violent” methods against abortion; but his friend Randall Terry justified the murder, calling Dr. Tiller a “mass murderer” whose “hands were covered with blood.” Dave Leach, an anti-abortion activist from Des Moines, who had published articles from Roeder in his newsletter, said, “To call this a crime is too simplistic.”
This is, in the most direct way, a sustained campaign of terror, carried out by the religious Right in order to deny women access to abortion.
And it’s been carried out with the complicity of the news media, which treats Dr. Tiller’s murder as if it were only an isolated incident.
The politicians have been no better. They cover up the true nature of this act. President Obama issued a statement saying, “However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence.” As if this were simply an isolated act of violence; as if this were simply a difference of opinion that got out of hand; as if these acts of violence have been carried out equally on both sides!
No–it’s terrorism, pure and simple. Terrorism tolerated by the media and politicians in this country, even those who claim to support abortion rights.
Jun 8, 2009
Despite the 1973 Supreme Court ruling, Roe v. Wade, forbidding states to deny women’s access to abortion, the reality in the U.S. today is that access to abortion is severely limited.
Both state and federal laws have been attacking the right of women to choose, whether abortion or even contraception, from the moment Roe v. Wade was issued in 1973.
First came a Missouri law that would force a married woman to get her husband’s permission before she could gain an abortion. Other states added different restrictions.
The Hyde Amendment, perhaps the worst attack, was passed in 1976, with a Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate. In it, Congress stopped federal Medicaid funding of abortions. So poor women were almost always prevented from access to legal abortions. In 1977, the state of Connecticut passed a law to ban state funds from being used for abortion. The Supreme Court upheld this ban, and other states signed on to this. Today thirty states pay for Medicaid abortions in only a few exceptional cases.
For the last 33 years, every new Congress, Republican or Democratic, reauthorized the Hyde Amendment. That same amendment is included in Obama’s 2010 budget.
Under pressure of right-wing forces, politicians in the 50 states have adopted a multitude of rules which, taken together, severely limit access to abortion. The Supreme Court has upheld most of them. For example, in 1989, the Supreme Court upheld a Missouri law that prevented the use of any public facilities for performing abortions, except in the case of medical necessity. Other states have stopped abortions by insisting that women under the age of 18 must have parental or guardian consent before they can obtain an abortion.
Legal restrictions have been reinforced everywhere by the murderous right-wing campaign that has resulted in death and injury to abortion providers and clinic workers, and harassment of women entering the clinics. In addition, there is a nationwide propaganda against abortion, decrying women who choose abortion as “baby killers.” These factors together mean that, in almost nine out of ten counties throughout the country, there is not a single doctor who provides abortions. A woman who wants an abortion must find another doctor, in another place, often quite far away, causing considerable expense. And to make the situation worse, many states require a waiting period, so after a woman sees a doctor, she still must stay somewhere for days before having the procedure.
Because doctors who offer this safe medical procedure are prevented from doing so, women are denied the right to choose, even though in theory Roe v. Wade gave them this right.
Whether Democrats or Republicans controlled Congress and the White House, the legal attacks on Roe v. Wade have never stopped. In 2003, the House of Representatives passed a bill to define a fetus as a “person,” in an attempt to stop abortions. The bill was passed thanks to support from 17 Democrats.
Local, state and many federal politicians, Democrat and Republican, would return us to the time when thousands of women died every year because abortions were performed under unsafe conditions. Politicians pander to religious extremists, who are willing to use terror against any woman making a choice they disagree with or against any doctor trying to help them.