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
Dec 21, 2009
During this holiday season, there’s a lot less money for presents under the tree. This year’s most popular gift is said to be an $8 toy hamster!
But for the elite, the 1%, the upper class, it’s Christmas every day. Even in bankruptcy, Lehman Brothers of Wall Street is paying executives a year-end bonus pot of 50 million dollars. Warren Buffett buys his own personal train set, Burlington Northern, for 34 billion dollars.
The holidays are supposed to be about family, but what condition are workers’ families in? Those still working are under the constant threat of pay cuts, short hours, layoffs. Those already laid off–a great many laid off for over a year now–can’t find any work. Thirty-six million are on food stamps. Forty-nine million people in this richest country in the world are not sure of their next meal.
Foreclosures and evictions have soared. One and a third million children were homeless at some point in 2009.
The real value of wages keeps falling. Prices for the bare essentials–heating and lighting your home!–keep rising. And winter has only begun.
Meanwhile, the suppliers of gas and oil wallow in fabulous amounts of wealth. Exxon just made a 41-billion-dollar deal to buy natural gas company TXO.
Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo are eager to repay the government bailouts–using taxpayers’ money from a different account!–so they can evade all limits on their executives’ pay and bonuses for this year.
The media report the claims of lying politicians that things are bottoming out, that there is light at the end of the tunnel. All lies. They report that joblessness is getting better. But those figures are as fraudulent as a sub-prime mortgage, hiding over half of those who are unemployed. Nearly one quarter of the work force–one half in industrial cities like Detroit–is without a job.
Stimulus? For the banks, maybe. But for us, another fraud! Can we wait and hope for stimulus programs designed by rich people for rich people? A New York parking garage will be replaced with a newer one. The old one employed 25 people; the new one will employ six. A Michigan engine plant will receive over five million dollars in state aid–after promises to create, maybe 157 jobs.
Ten trillion dollars or so–that’s TRILLIONS–are at the beck and call of the biggest and wealthiest banks. But the dollars promised for programs for real jobs? Still locked up.
Workers’ labor has built this society, and sustains it. It’s our right to live well, and not starve, in the midst of the wealth that we in our vast numbers have produced. Take it back from those who have too much under their tree.
Dec 21, 2009
The Michigan legislature put together a deal to “reform” public schools in the state. In truth, it’s a plan to further dismantle already impoverished school systems.
The proposal, a response to Obama’s “Race to the Top” requirements, expands the number of charter schools in the state; it institutes merit pay for teachers based on the academic performance of their students; and it allows public schools to hire teachers who receive an “accelerated teaching certification” without a teaching degree, among other things.
If you’re in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging. But Michigan legislators and the Obama administration propose to get poor students out of a hole–by digging deeper still.
Having merit pay for teachers, without first flooding poor school districts with the resources they need to improve, punishes the teachers who are willing to teach there.
Increasing the number of charter schools means further draining the resources of impoverished public schools, into private hands–with no oversight and no need to meet the same public requirements–giving an even worse education.
Fast-tracking instructors for public schools means giving teaching jobs to applicants who are not even out of college yet–and who, by the way, can be paid much less.
All this won’t help the achievement of struggling students. But it will drain more money from public schools, pouring it into private hands.
Dec 21, 2009
Retirees were amazed to read in a letter they received this month that their Social Security payments would not increase this year because there has been no inflation.
No inflation? The price of health care just jumped up 10 to 15%, not to mention gasoline, heat, electricity, water bills, taxes....
Yes, there’s inflation–everywhere except in the government’s Consumer Price Index, which has been cooked to make inflation disappear. The changes were implemented under the Clinton Administration, after some smaller changes had been made under Reagan and Carter. They have been cheating workers and retirees of their COLA payments ever since!
According to economist John Williams, if the CPI were calculated using the same methods existing in 1980, annual inflation based on November data would have been nearly 9%.
And don’t we know it!
Dec 21, 2009
On Sunday, November 29 there was another collision on Metro (in greater Washington D.C.) This time it was in the West Falls Church rail yard and no passengers were on board. But three workers were injured. All 12 cars involved were damaged. Three cars were totaled.
Two of the totaled cars were series-1000 cars that were sandwiched between newer cars. These series-1000 cars actually derailed! These are the old cars that the NTSB told Metro to replace.
This sandwiching of the older cars between the newer cars was Metro’s solution to the June 22nd crash that killed 9 and injured 80 people.
An equally unsafe solution!
Dec 21, 2009
On December 17, the sudden rupture of a 70-year-old 42-inch cast-iron water main turned a Baltimore residential street into a surging river. The flood caused a gas line to break, cutting off service to about 80 homes. When water pressure fell and the flow to a nearby filtration and chlorination plant dropped, all 1.8 million customers of the Baltimore system were ordered to restrict their use of water for about a day.
There have been half a dozen major breaks in the Baltimore area water system this year. There have been more than 5,000 water main breaks both big and small during the last five years. Not even counting these breaks, one fifth of all the water in the system is constantly being lost through leaks.
The main practical problem is lack of sufficient regular maintenance and upgrading of old and sometimes defective pipes. Instead of using money from Baltimore’s rapidly rising water rates for maintenance and upgrading, the city gives big businesses a big break on what they are charged for the huge amounts of water they use. Today they pay less than half as much as a typical homeowner per gallon.
The city has also spent hundreds of millions of dollars for free water main upgrades for expensive new office buildings, retail stores, condominiums and apartments in areas such as those surrounding the city’s harbor.
There is plenty of money to keep Baltimore’s water mains in good shape, but it is being diverted to subsidize big businesses and developers.
Dec 21, 2009
After months of wheeling and dealing, Senate Democrats lined up their last member to vote for so-called medical “reform.”
Bad enough as the original Senate bill had been, this version, after “insertions” and “deletions,” was worse.
The weak public option was made weaker still–by being stripped out.
Stripped out of Medicare was full coverage for home health care for home-bound beneficiaries.
And inserted into the bill was a “commission” set up to make future cuts in Medicare.
Also inserted were some very big gifts to insurance companies. They will be allowed to write policies in one state to sell to consumers in every other state–settling on the state with the weakest regulations. They can charge you 50% higher if you have “certain health factors,” like high blood pressure, or high cholesterol. They can set annual limits on how much they pay out when you have a serious illness.
Even Howard Dean, the former Democratic Party leader, called this bill a gift to the insurance industry.
It certainly is! And not only that, it’s another attack on women. While all these insertions were being made, Democratic Senator Ben Nelson, former insurance industry executive, held out for his demands for the de facto elimination of insurance coverage for abortion.
This isn’t the end of it. The bill now goes to the Senate-House Conference Committee where, behind closed doors, more “insertions” and “deletions” can be made.
The overall consequences of the reform–even as it now stands–will be monstrous. Those without insurance will be forced to buy overpriced, nearly useless policies, or pay a big fine for nothing. Those with insurance will see more limits put on them, and many will be taxed on their policies. Those on Medicare face steep reductions. Those on Medicaid face more cutbacks. And women will have still more difficulty gaining access to an abortion should they need it.
Reform? No–it’s an outright attack!
Dec 21, 2009
The Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change closed with Obama’s claim of “an unprecedented breakthrough.... For the first time in history, all major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront the threat of climate change.” But this 15th international U.N. conference did not produce any more substantive results than those that came before it. The so-called “breakthrough” clearly did not impose a real limit on how much carbon dioxide (CO
One of the questions up for debate was which countries would have to make the financial and industrial efforts needed to reduce CO
In fact, in the years to come, hundreds of millions of people in the poorer countries are going to be plunged into still greater misery than they know today, thanks to global warming, caused by a century-and-a-half of activity by industrialized countries.
The big powers argue that the “emerging” countries are helping to create greenhouse gases, because they are trying now to develop industry in their countries!
The rich countries point the finger at uncontrolled deforestation in the tropical zones of Brazil, Asia and even Africa, as well as the economic development of India and China. It’s true that China has become the leading emitter of CO
And the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere didn’t just begin today–it began with the industrial revolution, with the rich countries polluting ever since.
Over the past 150 years, the U.S. has emitted four times as much overall as China. The responsibility of the capitalists of the rich countries is overwhelming: first of all, because their industries never tried to control pollution. Next, because their society is organized around commuting to work. Workers certainly aren’t responsible for the lack of public transit that compels them to use a car to get to work, or for the high cost of housing that forces them to live a long distance from work. But these things create much more CO
There is no reason for the workers of the rich countries to pay the cost of atmospheric pollution, as they pay through a carbon tax, nor for the population of the poor countries to pay.
Finally, the great industrial powers agreed to contribute about ten billion dollars per year for the next 10 years to work on the problem. But it’s already known that six to ten times as much money is needed.
This conference produced–like those before it–nothing but pious vows and ineffectual recommendations.
And none of it is addressed to those mainly responsible, the industrial capitalists of the rich countries.
Dec 21, 2009
Copenhagen isn’t the first forum filled with promises to take on the problem of global warming. There have been many others before: the Rio Summit of 1992, Kyoto in 1997, Johannesburg in 2002, Poznan in 2008. In all of them, there were speeches and commitments–which produced no real reduction in pollution.
The problem is real enough. There have already been catastrophic effects over a large part of Africa. And there is the near-term risk of major problems for all those who live near the oceans as water levels rise.
But that doesn’t matter to the masters of the world economy. These are the same people who threw the world into an economic crisis unlike any seen for 80 years–and then demanded their countries’ governments bail THEM out!
Why should we believe these same capitalists would voluntarily agree to limit global warming for the common good? Why should we believe that their respective governments will impose requirements that limit their profits?
Oh, yes, they are all very good with words–demanding subsidies to make less polluting cars, or sell less polluting fuel, or study new sources of energy.
We see agribusiness in the U.S. getting subsidies and tax breaks to grow corn to produce ethanol. They drive up the price of corn for food, while we actually get less energy from the ethanol than they use in producing it!
We know that the capitalists look for ever new ways to make profit–to the detriment of the great majority of the population.
The struggle against the climate crisis, like the struggle against the economic crisis, won’t be truly effective unless we take away the power of this tiny minority, which exploits labor and pillages the world for its own interests.
Dec 21, 2009
The Obama Administration has called for cap-and-trade legislation in the U.S., and it is currently under debate in Congress. Cap-and-trade is promoted as the means to cut back on the emission of greenhouse gases.
But for some time this system has been established in Europe and hasn’t done what it promised. In Europe, there are about 12,000 businesses involved in this program, accounting for 45% of European CO
Under “cap-and-trade,” each nation and business is given a certain quota of CO
Allowing industrial companies to pollute according to the “laws” of the market–including speculation–is the perfect image of the capitalist world, in which everything is bought and sold. This pollution market is supposed to be a way to get businesses to invest in controlling their pollution. But this works only if the price of a ton of CO
From 2005, when this market was established in Europe, until today, the price of a ton of emissions has never gone high enough to force companies to add pollution controls. Of course! The different countries have given a multitude of exemptions to their respective industrial companies, allowing them to go on polluting without buying more permits.
The emission quotas given to each polluting enterprise were much higher than their actual emissions–so much so that in the first years, the majority of industrial companies emitted less CO
The industrial companies have also profited from the so-called “Mechanism of Proper Development.” When a capitalist invests in an “ecological” industrial project in an underdeveloped country, he gets an additional emission quota for the plants in his own country, corresponding to the tons of greenhouse gases that will be saved by this new project elsewhere!
So the price of CO
Dec 21, 2009
While top government officials continue to spout assurances that the economic crisis is easing, an entire country almost went bankrupt, setting off a minor panic on stock markets around the world. That country is Dubai, a very tiny emirate that, on paper, is one of the richest countries of the world. Its emir, who considers Dubai to be his own personal property, is also a businessman who compensated for his country’s lack of oil with speculation in Britain’s real estate market.
Dubai is one of those countries to which the bankers of the entire world have willingly lent money. Investments include the construction of the tallest building in the world, artificial islands built in the shape of a palm tree, luxury hotels with rooms that have direct views of underwater animal life, an indoor ski slope and a canal for luxury yachts in the middle of a desert! This country imitates Disneyland to attract rich tourists with enough money to pay for one of the luxurious villas that have sprung up like mushrooms. Real estate speculation has been especially lucrative in Dubai.
Those with money fought to lend to Dubai, for the good reason that money attracts money. They hoped for a good return on their investment.
Then, lo and behold, Dubai announced that it could not make the payments on its colossal debt. For a few days, the entire financial world trembled. The banks, of course, who lent a lot of money to this state, and the stock markets where these banks are listed, were shaken. So were all the big construction and engineering companies, who had hoped to make a fortune from the frenzy of the emirate’s building plans. One-third of all the world’s construction cranes have been sitting on Dubai’s soil! Boeing and Airbus were concerned that Emirate Airlines wouldn’t honor its promises to buy their planes.
In Dubai, construction sites are silent now, and countless thousands of workers who came from Asia and Africa have been sent home.
Will the consequences of Dubai’s near bankruptcy stop there? No one knows how many larger countries will turn out to be as incapable as Dubai of honoring their debts.
Is the Dubai crisis over? It isn’t even the end of the international financial crisis. All the big governments of the world have spent hundreds of billions of dollars, taking it from hospitals, schools, infrastructure and public transit. They have run up enormous debts to the same bankers whose banks they saved with public money. They all did it while proclaiming it was necessary to save the economy!
But money given to the bankers doesn’t go to production, to the creation of useful jobs. It has only restarted the speculative machinery. Money has flooded out, but production continues to retreat, businesses lay off and the number of the unemployed rises.
Dec 21, 2009
Another proposal to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming is the carbon tax. It’s a tax applied whenever fossil fuels are burned to produce a product or service. That is, it’s a tax on almost everything.
It won’t reduce global warming. But it will use global warming as an excuse to impose higher taxes on everything we consume.
Dec 21, 2009
Cheers of excitement rang out amongst protesters as passing motorists honked their horns in support or stopped to talk. Department of Human Services (DHS) workers at the Sterling Heights, Michigan office demonstrated on December 18 to publicize the desperate need for more human services workers to be hired immediately.
Favorite chants at the spirited rally were: “D-H-S, WHAT A MESS!” “HELP THE CLIENTS FEED THE KIDS!” and “NO MORE THREATS!”
Workers have had it with the threats of discipline for not keeping up with their caseloads of more than 1000 people/families.
Frustration morphed into action at this office as workers put together this well-organized protest.
A simple fact illustrates the depth of the problem in Michigan. Food assistance cases have INCREASED 205% since the year 2000. Over that same time period, the number of DHS workers has DECREASED 28%.
As a father of four who joined the protest said: “The system is broken.”
More than 60 DHS workers participated, a highpercentage at this small office.
Almost 20% of the population of Michigan is now receiving some type of DHS assistance. The politicians are without shame for not funding more workers in this Hurricane Katrina-like situation.
Hopefully this will be the first of many demonstrations.
DHS workers taking to the streets could give the politicians the kick in the pants they need to fund the thousand or so more workers that are needed.
Dec 21, 2009
The Detroit News (11/17/09) reported that the Michigan Economic Development Corporation just approved the SEIU for a two million dollar tax break on a three million dollar investment in a brand new office in Redford, MI.
Just a few weeks later, leaders from this same union told the State of Michigan workers they represent to accept horrible healthcare cuts that the state will benefit from–thus breaking a united stand with three other state unions who are refusing to negotiate concessions.
Coincidence?
In any case, SEIU leaders can negotiate rotten contracts all they want. Their problem is to get union members to vote for it.
To help them do that, the state and the union leadership came up with a clever plan to take the vote. The state “thoughtfully” agreed to allow internet voting–from work, on the state’s own computer system. The state ALSO said, “The State’s computer system is not private and may be monitored at any time.” In other words, the state reserves the right to keep track of who votes–and HOW they vote! And the union leadership signed off on this!
Well. At least now, the battle lines are clearly drawn. And the SEIU leaders and the state seem to be on the same side!
Dec 21, 2009
Civil liberties attorney Lynne Stewart was sent to prison on November 19, to begin serving a 28-month sentence for “conspiracy to provide material aid to terrorist activity.”
What she had done was to defend a client both poor and unpopular, Sheik Omar Rahman–someone the U.S. government did not want to have a good defense. Secretly, the government recorded Stewart’s meetings with her client in order to find a way to prosecute her. The U.S. broke the law to frame up a lawyer doing her duty. The crime they charged her with was releasing a statement Rahman made for the press.
Now this 70-year-old woman, a former cancer patient with health issues, will go to jail for more than two years.
Freedom and justice for who?
Dec 21, 2009
The Messenger is another Iraq war movie. But it takes place here in the U.S. Will Montgomery (Ben Foster), a staff sergeant, returns home from Iraq wounded physically and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. While he is struggling to recover from his physical and psychological wounds, he is assigned to the Army Casualty Notification team for the final three months of his enlistment. These are the guys who inform the next-of-kin (NOK) that someone close to them has been killed.
He is paired with Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), a soldier who has been doing this grueling job for quite a while. He is as hardened and traumatized as anyone on the front lines. Together Will and Tony deliver the bad news to hysterical and angry families. They do it while trying their best to maintain emotional detachment and a stoic demeanor, sticking with the script and the rules that forbid physical contact and involvement with the aggrieved.
Both these soldiers are a mess. They both suffer from insomnia and both drink–a lot. Tony instructs Will on how to perform the job. An example of one of the many instructions he provides is “Don’t ring the doorbell of NOKs. Sometimes you get one of those god awful chirpin’ doorbells, some sing-songy shit, throws you right off your game: “Yankee Doodle went to Town riding on a Pony” and “Sorry your husband is dead” doesn’t flow. So I like to knock.”
Will doesn’t waste time before breaking the rules. He gets involved with a widow he notified and later has physical contact while notifying an elderly man, trying to comfort him. The interactions between the men and the families are gut-wrenching. There is one particularly memorable interaction involving a father who reacts with anger.
The movie shows how the wars the U.S. fights abroad in distant countries come home every day ... wounded, disabled, dead soldiers and grieving, broken families. Tony sums up the movie when he says, “Soldiers go to war, everyone waves flags and applauds ... and then bullets fly and soldiers die and it’s such a shock.”
Dec 21, 2009
On December 17, President Barack Obama ordered the U.S. military to launch cruise missile attacks against two different parts of Yemen, where U.S. authorities claim there are bases set up by al Qaeda terrorists, who had supposedly fled to Yemen from Saudi Arabia, and even Afghanistan and Pakistan. The U.S. bombing raids were accompanied by coordinated attacks by the Yemen military. Afterwards, there were news reports that the Obama administration openly “congratulated” the President of Yemen, Ali Abdallah Salih, for his tireless efforts against al Qaeda.
Yemen President Salih is another of those corrupt and brutal dictators the U.S. uses against populations around the world. He has held on to power for almost two decades by pitting the different ethnic and tribal groups against each other. But this hasn’t stopped the authority of his government from “crumbling,” as The New York Times recently wrote. Currently, there are at least three separate armed insurgencies in Yemen, and big parts of the country are outside the government’s control.
Under the guise of fighting against “terrorism” in Yemen, which is located on the far corner of the Arabian peninsula, thousands of miles from Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military is propping up another brutal and corrupt regime in an ever widening U.S. war in the Middle East and Central Asia.
The U.S. began this war more than eight years ago when it invaded and occupied Afghanistan. That war then served as the prelude to the bloody U.S. debacle in Iraq. Now, the U.S. is spreading those wars to Pakistan.
And that’s not the end of it!
In his December 1 speech at West Point announcing a big escalation in the U.S. war in Afghanistan, Obama had already held out the possibility of also attacking Yemen ... and other countries. “Where al Qaeda and its allies attempt to establish a foothold–whether in Somalia or Yemen or elsewhere–they must be confronted,” said Obama.
In other words, the U.S. is ready to spread its wars, like wildfires, from one end to the other of the Middle East, Central Asia, and even into Africa!
Over the last eight years, the constant refrain from the U.S. authorities has been that the U.S. will not get bogged down in another quagmire, like it did in Viet Nam. In his December 1 speech, Obama even had the nerve to make the false assurance that the U.S. military intervention would be short and limited.
Of course, the length of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan are already beginning to approach the length of the U.S. war in Viet Nam, which lasted from about 1962 to 1973. And the U.S. has already inflicted casualties, death and destruction on the people of these countries at least as much as it did during the wars in Viet Nam and the rest of Southeast Asia.
Moreover, the current U.S. wars are potentially more dangerous and explosive than Viet Nam ever was. For the U.S. is now waging wars in regions that are more vital strategically, especially since they contain the richest resources of oil and gas in the world, and that are also much more riven by competition and rivalry for the U.S. superpower, as well as all the other competing lesser powers.
The working class in this country cannot let itself be lulled by the false promises and assurances from the Obama administration, any more than the Bush administration before it.
U.S.–out of Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and everywhere else!