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
Apr 30, 2012
The November election campaign has begun. Not formally, not officially. The Republicans haven’t even finished the primaries. But it’s obvious to everyone that Mitt Romney, the Republican challenger, will oppose Barack Obama, the Democrat installed in the White House.
What interest is there for the workers in this election? The only choice we are offered is between an open enemy and a false friend–millionaires both of them, defenders of the capitalist system, enforcers of exploitation. The choice we are offered is between a party that speaks for the big banks and the big industrialists–and another party that, while it gets some of its money from the unions, acts for the big banks and the big industrialists.
Here is the plain and simple truth: there is no party of the working class. And has not been for decades.
One hundred years ago, in 1912, Eugene V. Debs ran for the presidency on the Socialist ticket. He did not expect to win, knowing then, just like today, that money controls the outcome of elections in capitalist society. But he ran to let speak all those who otherwise would not be heard.
Six years later, he was put on trial for supporting the Russian Revolution and opposing the first big imperialist war, World War I. Two years later, while behind bars in federal prison, he won nearly a million votes in the 1920 elections. It was only 3.4% of the vote, but it showed that in the working class there already was a sizeable current who agreed that it was necessary to “organize not to conciliate but to fight against the capitalist class.”
Debs was not a “politician,” not someone whose aim was to fool as many people as he could. He used the electoral platform to speak the truth about the capitalist system, a system in which we are still trapped: “I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.”
He was truly a militant of his class–having led the great railway strike of 1894, spending time in prison for that also, declaring, along with Marx, that the emancipation of the working class can be carried out only by the working class itself.
If we want to go forward, we have to resurrect our history–a history filled with working class militants like Debs, or like the many devoted, and often nameless revolutionary syndicalists who made up the IWW, or the selfless and committed activists who made up the Communist Party or the Communist League.
But it’s not just militants, individuals. The working class needs its own party, built around the conviction held by all those revolutionaries that “the working class and the employing class have nothing in common”–in the words of the IWW.
That’s never been more true, perhaps, than today. The capitalist class has engaged itself in a great war, a class war against all of us who do the work necessary to make this society run. Up until now, it has been a very one-sided war, because workers have not found the way to join together in a common struggle against our enemies–against the bankers, the big industrialists and the politicians and governments that serve the capitalists.
But we could. We don’t need saviors to come defend us. We have the forces to defend ourselves. We make the whole economy run. Not only can we make it stop running, in order to defend ourselves. We have the power to put it back to running in a way that can serve all of humanity.
Apr 30, 2012
The Baltimore Business Journal list of greater Baltimore’s 20 biggest companies shows that in recent years profits are increasing with these companies piling up cash. At the same time, the total number of employees has gone down from around 82,500 to 67,500–a reduction of 15,000 workers.
These companies have been reducing their workforce and forcing the remaining workers to pick up the slack. The workers’ increased productivity has not benefitted them–either through higher pay or reduced hours of work. The companies and their owners have taken it all at the workers’ expense.
Apr 30, 2012
“This is war. And I know that war is ugly and violent.”
These are words that U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta used when he spoke about two photos published by the Los Angeles Times. The photos show U.S. troops in Afghanistan posing jokingly with body parts, and the Times says 18 such photos were leaked to the paper.
The Pentagon, headed by Panetta himself, demanded that the Times NOT publish any of the photos. The public should not know that the war these officials are presiding over is “ugly and violent.”
Panetta declared that the photos depicted actions against the “regulations” and “core values” of the U.S. military.
In fact, that’s exactly what these photos show: the “core values” of U.S. imperialism. For more than 10 years, the biggest, most advanced military machine in human history has used all its might and state-of-the-art weapons to rain destruction on Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world–at the cost of death and suffering to Afghan people and U.S. troops.
Disturbing? These photos? No, what is disturbing–violently disturbing–is the war.
Apr 30, 2012
The Obama administration announced that NATO will hold a summit meeting in Chicago with the Afghan government on May 20. Supposedly the summit will finalize a plan to end U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan over the next two years.
In fact, this summit is little more than an election-year stunt. British newspapers are reporting that the agreement will allow thousands of United States troops to remain in the country until at least 2024! These would include American Special Forces soldiers and air power, practically guaranteeing that the war will continue to rage for a long time.
The U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is already the longest war in U.S. history. Since it began in October 2001, the U.S. has carried out bombings, nighttime raids and search and destroy missions that have killed tens of thousands of Afghans, destroyed much of the country, and turned most of the population against the U.S., thus swelling the insurgency.
On a regular basis insurgents carry out attacks inside the most fortified parts of Kabul, called the Ring of Steel. These attacks are only possible with the cooperation and collaboration of parts of the Afghan police and army. Only days before the announcement of the U.S. plan, heavily armed insurgents attacked several embassies and the Parliament plus three provincial capitals and a U.S. air base–all at the same time.
The Afghan military and police also regularly attack U.S. and NATO troops as well. Rather than getting smaller, the U.S. war is feeding on itself. It is sowing ever more death and destruction, turning not just Afghanistan, but the whole region around it, into a more and more dangerous and explosive hell.
Apr 30, 2012
ACT College, a for-profit vocational college in Northern Virginia, suddenly shut down in early April. Some students were left weeks away from graduating, unable to transfer their credits to other colleges, and tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
A letter to the students had been taped to the door in the early morning hours. The letter said that the school had lost its federal financial aid certification, and therefore there was “no choice” but to close.
One student was $21,000 in debt after five months at the college. She said, “We’re out of our financial aid …. People are not accepting our credits from here to transfer (to other colleges), so we have to start all over.”
Like all for-profit colleges, ACT College receives the majority of its revenue from federal financial aid.
The U.S. Department of Education says that this college currently owes students more than $250,000 of unused financial aid that should have been refunded to them. And that the college changed and destroyed records to cover up this theft.
So is the U.S. Department of Education forcing the school to return the $250,000 to the students? Or prosecuting those responsible?
And what about reimbursing the students for classes that they took–but which won’t lead to a degree because the school’s credits won’t transfer?
No, just the opposite! The U.S. Department of Education simply cut off future financial aid payments to ACT. The college could even open up again using a different name and location.
The government knows very well that corruption and outrageous profits at the expense of students are rampant in this industry. It’s the very reason for-profit colleges exist. The U.S. Department of Education simply hands the owners fistfuls of money, letting them charge whatever they please as tuition. The government looks the other way as working class students receive a substandard education, with credits that won’t be accepted at accredited schools like private universities, state colleges and community colleges.
The students, on the other hand, will be chased down and their paychecks garnished if they fail to pay back their loans. A hard lesson learned for 300 students at ACT College.
Apr 30, 2012
Rahm Emanuel’s budget calls for closing six of Chicago’s twelve mental health clinics. Two have already closed; the other four are scheduled to close at the end of April.
Even a politician like Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart noted that cuts like these have made the jails into “the largest mental health provider in the state of Illinois.”
But all of this will supposedly save two million dollars.
Ha! Emanuel’s same budget includes four million dollars to build four boathouses along the Chicago River. That’s right, boat houses for Chicago’s wealthiest residents are at least twice as important to the Mayor than mental health services for the city’s population.
In protest, a group of two dozen patients and activists occupied the Woodlawn clinic, which is scheduled to close. The police arrested them, charging twelve with trespassing. But the protests continue, with an Occupy encampment around the clinic and a rally at City Hall.
Apr 30, 2012
Hospital patients waiting in emergency rooms or convalescing after surgery are sometimes unexpectedly visited by debt collectors instead of doctors.
Debt collection companies embed their agents in emergency rooms and demand that patients pay outstanding bills before they receive treatment.
One debt collector agency, Accretive Health, instructed its employees to tell incoming patients that, in case they don’t have credit cards, “if you have your checkbook in your car I will be happy to wait for you.”
Hospitals in collusion with these agencies allow debt collectors to have access to patients’ records and to pose as hospital staff. Both are violations of government laws and regulations. Not to mention, it prevents people from getting proper medical treatment.
It’s just a small corner of a medical system based on profit!
Apr 30, 2012
On April 19th, a 51-year-old man collapsed while riding the D.C. Metro. Several passengers came to his aid. One person started CPR. Another person ran to get a defibrillator from the Metro kiosk when the train stopped. But the device did not have enough charge to deliver the potentially lifesaving jolt of electricity.
The man died.
Everyone with a cell phone knows you have to regularly charge it.
Did Metro skip that part of the instructions?
Apr 30, 2012
To say that Rush Limbaugh has a lot of disgusting, rancid ideas in his head surprises no one. He has long acted as the attack dog and spokesperson for the most reactionary layers of the ruling capitalist class.
His target recently has been working women, young women, poor women–that majority of the female population who are not independently wealthy, the women for whom health insurance and healthcare clinics boil down to a matter of life and death.
The war on women is aimed at limiting women’s reproductive rights–meaning that women will remain a cheaper source of labor for the capitalist class.
In capitalist society, the labor of women is undervalued, and overall, women earn less than men for doing the same type of work.
Women give birth to and raise children. But capitalist society puts no monetary value on this very important work. Other industrialized countries at least have some type of government paid maternity leave and/or family allocation. Not the United States.
Because women care for children or care for other sick family members, they go in and out of the workforce. They start out at new hire wages over and over again. They end up accumulating fewer credits toward Social Security. They end up with a smaller pension or less in their 401K.
Because women earn less in this society, that creates a wedge that can be used to drive down everyone’s wages.
Apr 30, 2012
By age 45, 30% of all women will have had an abortion.
Abortion has always been legal for wealthy women, regardless of what the law said. They had the financial means to discretely pay for the procedure with a trusted doctor. Working class and poor women have gotten abortions too, but much more dangerously when they were illegal. And it has never been widely publicized, but the number of abortions performed has remained fairly steady, whether the procedure is legal or illegal. It shows there is a very human problem underlying the abortion question.
So many of the women who required abortions were denied access to simple, safe and sure contraceptive methods–whether for economic or political reasons. That goes double for teenagers, who are also denied access to adequate education about their own bodies and their own sexuality.
Abortion, like all issues concerning women’s reproductive system, is a health issue. Yet reactionaries turn it into a religious issue, trying to impose their own warped views on everyone else.
The right wing speaks of abortion as the destruction of human life.
Yes, an abortion destroys a potential human life. A fetus, while not yet a person in the same way as a newborn infant, is a potential human being. But the fetus is only part of the broader picture of human life.
Women chose abortion even when it was illegal, and they choose abortion today even when it is difficult to obtain–because they may be facing alternatives even more destructive to human life.
The birth of a child that a woman cannot provide for involves the destruction of human life. She may have to work herself literally to death trying to provide for that child. Any future for her children who are already born may become impossible once she has more children than she can handle. High unemployment rates and laws restricting eligibility for public assistance have left 1.5 million single mothers without jobs and without cash aid, according to the Urban Institute.
There is also the sad reality that the birth of emotionally unwanted children can lead to the destruction of human life. Newspapers are full of stories about the death of children from abuse and neglect.
It is for these reasons and more that we say that it must be the woman herself who makes the choice–not her parents, not her husband or companion, not the government nor legislators, and certainly not the churches.
In making her choice, a woman should not be pressured legally or morally, nor have to face right wing fanatics, those dirty old men who hang out outside women’s clinics.
Apr 30, 2012
One of the first restrictions on the availability of abortion was the Hyde Amendment, passed less than three years after the original Supreme Court decision that struck down state laws prohibiting abortion.
The Hyde amendment got around the Supreme Court decision by pretending to cover simply a matter of funding for Medicaid. The Hyde amendment says that federal funds cannot be used when a state’s Medicaid plan covers abortion. At that time, President Carter was asked if this legislation discriminated against poor women. He replied, “Life isn’t fair.”
Today only 17 states use state funds to provide all or most medically necessary abortions.
Every year since 1976, more restrictions have been put on women’s access to abortion. But 2011 was the worst year by far: 92 provisions restricting abortion were passed either by Congress or state legislatures.
Many of the specific restrictions on abortion have been portrayed as insignificant. But the chipping away has now reached the point that over half of all women live in states where there is little or no access to abortion. For women in their teens, the situation is much worse.
Apr 30, 2012
A big source of the organized attack on women has come from the churches. There are lots of fundamentalist churches that oppose both birth control and abortion, and they have often provided the troops for violent attacks on women’s clinics. But it is the Catholic Church that plays the biggest role because it controls so much of the medical system.
Because of the worsening economy, more and more public hospitals have closed, either replaced by or taken over by the Catholic Church. In huge parts of the U.S., the only healthcare facility for miles is a Catholic hospital–a hospital which follows church dogma about women. That means, in large parts of the country, there is no medical facility providing access to birth control or abortion.
“Americans United for Life” is another force in this attack on women’s rights. It is an old organization, founded in 1971, but only recently it experienced a phenomenal increase in funding. Last year it joined with a right wing group that lurks in the shadows, the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, funded by some of the biggest corporations in the country, including AT&T, Coca-Cola, Exxon Mobil, Johnson & Johnson, Koch Industries, Pfizer, Reynolds American, State Farm Insurance, United Parcel Service and Walmart.
In 2011, AUL worked with ALEC to draft 28 anti-abortion bills introduced last year into state legislatures.
AUL was also the primary engine behind the targeting of Planned Parenthood, whose clinics are the only place where many women can go for family planning and other health issues such as screening for breast cancer, cervical cancer and sexually transmitted diseases.
In the fall of 2011, intentionally falsified allegations in an AUL report were used as a pretext by Republican Florida Congressman Cliff Stearns to investigate Planned Parenthood.
That investigation was then used as the pretext by the “Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation,” the pink ribbon breast cancer charity, as its reason for cutting all funding to Planned Parenthood.
Komen, masquerading as an organization that raises money for breast cancer research, in reality is the third big force behind the attack on women’s reproductive rights.
Komen’s CEO, Nancy Brinker, is a major Republican donor who held several positions under George W. Bush, helping to promote anti-abortion legislation.
Faced with real outrage, Komen was forced to reverse its decision. But the whole ordeal exposed top officials of the Komen foundation for what they are: a bunch of right-wingers, virulently opposed to women’s rights.
Some of this country’s wealthiest capitalist families fund reactionary ideas: billionaire families like the Waltons of Walmart, the Koch brothers with oil refineries who now fund the Tea Party movement, the Devos family of Amway fame who push charter schools.
These wealthy families, with deep links into the banking system and control over industry are also behind the attempt to destroy public schools so that charters can replace them and produce profit for businesses. They are behind attacks on cities and unions as a means to privatize all city services, so new business opportunities can be opened up for the wealthy.
What kind of a society are these wealthy families creating for us? A world where schools are less and less able to mention contraception. A world where family planning clinics will either have their funds removed or will be terrorized out of existence.
Apr 30, 2012
The Republican Party, going back to the 1990s, has used reactionary ideas as an election strategy, appealing to that part of the population drowning in reactionary attitudes.
Using the war on women as an election strategy seems like it might backfire this time for the Republicans. Normally, if an economy is really bad, like the one we are in right now, the sitting president does not typically win reelection. If Obama wins after four years of a bad economy, and with a level of unemployment greater than when he took office, it will be because of the Republican war on women. Women are saying in poll after poll that if the election were held today, they would vote for Obama.
But no one should believe that women’s rights would be safe if Democrats are put in office.
Despite Democrats posing as strong defenders of the right to choose, the Hyde Amendment passed in 1976, when Democrats had an enormous 291-144 majority in the House, and a 60-40 majority in the Senate. And it was signed by Democratic President Jimmy Carter.
Democrats haven’t even been weak defenders of women’s right to choose.
One of the quirks of the Hyde Amendment is that it is a “rider” to an annual appropriations bill, which means it must be renewed by Congress every year. So each year, enough Democrats have supported it to get it passed.
A 2010 deal between Democratic President Obama and a group of anti-abortion Catholic Democrats produced Executive Order 13535, which is aimed at permanently continuing the Hyde Amendment’s policy of restricting federal funds for abortion.
What’s for sure is that after the elections are over, attacks on women will become fiercer again. Women must organize to defend themselves.
Apr 30, 2012
Reactionaries like Rush Limbaugh attack working women, the black population, unions, immigrants, the poor–any group in this society that dares to try and organize for improvements and speaks out against injustices.
In order to pit one group against another, and turn potential allies into enemies, lies get peddled. Reactionaries repetitively push insane lies like: women who use birth control are “sluts,” poor people are just “complainers,” trade unions “created the financial crisis,” black people are “criminals,” and immigrants take “our jobs.”
Reactionary ideas are sold as a solution to workers’ problems. But it doesn’t take much to realize that the capitalist class will not solve workers’ problems. The capitalist class is organized only to solve the problem of making more money in the next quarter.
In order for society to move forward, the working class must lead the fight to take on our worsening problems and in so doing, open the door to another society.
In 1871, men and women workers took control of Paris, France, and held it for 10 weeks against all the reactionary forces in French society. This historic struggle became known as the Paris Commune. In 1917, faced by economic hardships that had become unbearable, Russian women took to the streets demanding bread. This led to the overthrow of the czarist regime, to the sweeping aside of all reactionary forces and to the establishment and defense by the working class of its own power–the Russian revolution.
Was it just a coincidence that fights set off by the protests of women led directly to the two most important political struggles of the working class known so far? Perhaps. But it has often happened that women push other oppressed layers of the working class into struggle.
But however it starts, the sooner the working class begins to flex its political muscles, to put itself forward as the new leader of society–what could eventually become a socialist, a communist society–the better off working people will be.
Apr 30, 2012
Twenty years ago, many big companies had pension plans with huge surpluses—nationally, 250 billion dollars in surpluses. So the bosses raided pension funds to pay for retiree health care. They shifted money from rank and file benefits to executive plans. Then they began to cut workers’ pensions. Some bosses started with small cuts, and when workers didn’t react strongly, the bosses moved on to make bigger cuts.
In Retirement Heist the author interviews many retirees from auto, rubber, steel, mining and other industries, and their family members, who fought to keep their benefits. Sears retiree Elaine Russell got sick and tired of using her grocery budget to buy prescriptions. Iron foundry retiree John Galloway had enough when hundreds of retirees were told to provide notarized affidavits proving they weren’t dead. Pilot Chuck Ackerman refused to have his pension taken back. Former NFL running back Victor Washington demanded treatment for his concussion and degenerative joint disease. Some of these retirees sued the companies. These stories make the conflicts personal.
The author is an award-winning Wall Street Journal reporter and watchdog. Her book shows companies do not cut retiree pensions and health benefits because they are broke or going bankrupt. They do it to increase profits. Read this 2011 book, and you’ll see that your family is not alone.
Apr 30, 2012
Over the last few months, Los Angeles County’s most-used light rail system, called the Blue Line, has been breaking down at an alarming rate, leading to long delays for the half a million people who ride it every week.
The L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is called Metro, admits it has not been doing hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs of signals, tracks and passenger cars on that line. And that is only part of the 1.3 billion dollars in the deferred maintenance backlog throughout the L.A. bus and rail system.
This is not because of a lack of money. Metro’s budget is bigger than ever. But most of that money goes into the pockets of private contractors and subcontractors building–very slowly and very profitably–a few new transit lines.
Apr 30, 2012
Austerity plans are spreading throughout Europe. Supposedly, they are needed to let the nation states pay back the loans they took out from the banks in 2008 and 2009–loans they immediately handed right back to the banks as “bailouts.”
The banks pocketed the money, but the workers are now paying for it.
The workers are paying most heavily in Greece, Ireland and above all Portugal, but also, more recently, in Italy and Spain. But no state and no population is spared, nor are they protected from going through the same thing.
The same measures have been applied practically everywhere, with more or less severity, according to the situation, by left wing administrations as well as right wing ones. These measures include lowering or freezing wages; cutting the number of public workers; increasing the value-added tax (the national sales tax, the tax that weighs most heavily on the poorest layers); increasing the number of years of work before workers can get full retirement; increasing health care costs.
No matter what the form, no European state and no population escapes these plans. The result is that the banks continue to receive interest on their loans, but the European economies are sunk in recession and the population is hit with unemployment and growing poverty. It’s no different in the U.S.
Today, the recession seems to be worsening. Almost all the European states are affected–including those, like Holland, which appeared up to now to escape it. Some economists call in the media for “limiting the brutality of these austerity plans.”
But, in fact for political reasons, this “brutality,” this policy of “generalized austerity” is nothing other than the struggle led by the rich classes, by the bourgeoisie of finance and industry, to make the poor classes, the workers, pay for their crisis. Meanwhile they continue to get rich, despite the crisis, and even thanks to the crisis.
Apr 30, 2012
Two Western High School students have started a “Freedom School” across the street from their high school. Why? As many as 180 Detroit High School students were slapped with suspensions and some threatened with court fines for demanding an education and walking out of classes on April 25th.
Suspended students are invited to attend the Freedom School and two university professors have volunteered to teach.
This sudden escalation of punishments seems to indicate that school officials are a bit panicked by the third student walk out–and 5th demonstration–at a Detroit public school in the last two months.
Said one Western freshman of administrators: “You are basically keeping us out of school for wanting to better our school.... I was worried the day of the walk out. I’m not now. I’m angry.”
The most recent walk out involved unified actions by students from two schools: Western and Southwestern High Schools. Students are worried about the planned merger of their two schools, pointing out that Western is overcrowded already.
Recently about 50 high school students at the Frederick Douglass Academy protested a lack of teachers, and were given one day suspensions. Before that, hundreds of students at Denby High staged a demonstration against their school being thrown into a state wide failing district. And hundreds of students, teachers and parents protested outside Mumford High School. Two demonstrations have been held to protest the closing of the Detroit School for the Deaf.
Any chance of Detroit Public School students receiving an education will come from more students, parents and teachers getting on board with the fight these students have started.
Apr 30, 2012
“Pay our teachers!” shouted more than a hundred Madison Heights high school students, picketing on April 23rd. They had walked out in protest of 10% pay cuts, unilaterally imposed on their teachers by the school district. These pay cuts, retroactive to September, chopped 25% from teachers’ most recent checks!
Cuts were imposed in retaliation for union teachers voting NO! on concessions in March.
Students are learning a valuable lesson in solidarity. They are giving themselves an excellent preparation for their own future.
Apr 30, 2012
Detroit’s mayor has cut a secret deal to hand over the Public Lighting Department (PLD) and the city’s electrical utility to DTE Energy, one of the most profitable energy companies in the country. Just like every privatization scheme, it will cost the city and its residents far more. But it WILL make DTE a lot of money!
Right now, Detroit supplies a lot of its own power. After this plan, that electrical grid will be transferred to DTE. Right now, Detroit city agencies pay for their power, to the PLD, at a very low wholesale rate. (And, that payment stays within city government.) After the transfer, they will pay DTE–at a much higher retail rate, 50% higher than the current rate.
The city claims this will save money because DTE will be paying to renovate the system. But their plan calls for the CITY to take on 160 million dollars of debt in order to renovate the system–BEFORE giving it to DTE! By the time the city finishes paying off this debt twenty years later, the cost will be twice that much–320 million. The city will be paying, so that DTE can reap the profits from a renovated system.
Detroit politicians are lying through their teeth if they say this deal will save the city money.
And, this plan will leave many residents even more in the dark. The plan calls for the number of lights in the city to go DOWN by the end of the renovation, almost by half.
But it won’t be happening everywhere equally. The new plan rates neighborhoods from “steady” to “transitional” to “distressed” to justify leaving poorer neighborhoods without lights while giving richer neighborhoods 100% lighting. So much for helping residents!
And the city says 20,000 lights will be removed from alleyways. Darkened alleyways behind people’s houses will surely make those homes and streets even more dangerous for the residents than they already are. But the city acts as if those lights are completely unnecessary. Sure–because the politicians aren’t living in those neighborhoods!
But don’t worry–citizens will have the ability to “purchase and fund additional lights if they desire more lighting than their allotment.” So–the neighborhoods with the LEAST ability to pay will have to pay MORE if they want the full lighting that the wealthier neighborhoods will enjoy automatically!
For decades, one city administration after another let Detroit’s electrical grid and lighting system fall apart. It shut down its power plants, letting DTE take over. It reduced maintenance, and let its substations rot. Now the current crop of politicians says it’s too far gone for them to be able to afford to fix it. So they propose to hand it to DTE for nothing–AFTER they go into debt to fix it.
This has been nothing but a protracted campaign of malicious, contrived neglect.
The deal on Public Lighting is only the first of many to come under the new “consent agreement.” This is NOT “fixing” the city. It’s not a bailout by the state. It’s gutting the city even further–to “fix” and bail out private industry!
Apr 30, 2012
In Michigan, the State Board of Canvassers refused to acknowledge a citizens’ petition. The petition was to allow the population to vote whether to repeal a hated new “emergency manager” law.
The petition had 203,000 valid signatures–40,000 more than needed. But right-wing challengers claimed that the type in the headline was one-eighth of an inch too small.
Two Republican board members voted to block the petition. Two Democrats voted to accept.
It’s a tidy little package. The Republicans provide the dictators to turn the screws on workers, while also turning over public resources to banks and corporations. The Democrats win credit for their vote, but Democratic mayors break union contracts, cut services, impose wage and benefit cuts.
The workers and the communities are left holding the bag.
If the activists who devoted themselves to the huge and difficult task of successful petitioning don’t want to be left high and dry, they had best ignore the games of both parties, and take their cause directly to the streets. There, they would have far more chance of success.