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
Aug 19, 2013
On August 12, North Carolina, which up until then had established few restrictions on voting, passed a package of voting laws described as the most restrictive in the nation.
This came only six weeks after the Supreme Court tossed out the heart of the Voter Rights Act of 1965, a provision aimed at Southern states that historically had denied black people the right to vote and against some Northern counties and cities that also limited access to the polls–for example, Los Angeles County in California, and Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx in New York.
While most of the restrictions on voting were directed against black people, they also effectively disenfranchised poor white or immigrant workers and farmers.
Even with the Voting Rights Act in effect, states were restricting voting. Before the Supreme Court decision, at least 25 states had some kind of restrictions.
But the Supreme Court decision was an open encouragement to all those reactionaries who would place limitations on the right to vote.
Some of the existing restrictions cut down on the hours in which people can vote, or on early voting, both of which make it much harder for working people to register their opinion at the polls. We saw the result of such restrictions in 2012 in Virginia, in the District of Columbia and in Florida, for example. The Orlando Sentinel reported that more than 200,000 people who had lined up to vote in Florida waited so long, they finally gave up.
Some restrictions, such as the requirement for an official photo ID, simply eliminate all possibility for certain people to vote. Twenty-five per cent of the people in many jurisdictions do not have and do not have the means to get such an ID–older people, poor people, people isolated in rural areas, people in urban areas without cars.
Most, but not all, of these laws have been pushed through by Republicans for partisan reasons: to prevent poor working class people, often black, who usually vote Democratic, from voting. But Democrats have supported those laws also, including in states they totally control.
But whichever party pushed these laws through, the result is that they reinforce the rule of wealth over society.
Even if all such restrictions were removed, wealth would still dominate the political process in this country. At the very obvious level, candidates need money even to get a hearing. Usually, voters are choosing between two candidates who have amassed their funds from the wealthy who dictate to them.
But the rapid growth of restrictions on voting shows that at least a segment of the wealthy class wants to boot the working class out of the political process altogether.
Despite all the propaganda, there has never been a guarantee of “certain and inalienable rights” to everyone in this country. People got their rights when they took them.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 did not just appear out of the blue. It was the attempt of one section of the wealthy class to divert and keep the struggle of the black population within legal grounds.
Recall the time period. In 1963, in response to the firebombing of the movement’s headquarters, the people of Birmingham, Alabama went into the street–rioting, as some reactionaries called it. They were followed by the people of Harlem; Jersey City, Patterson and Elizabeth, New Jersey; Philadelphia; Chicago; and Rochester, New York in 1964.
The Voting Rights Act was signed on August 6, 1965, with a big fanfare, attempting to damp down the struggle. People were not to be bought off so cheaply. Just five days later, the Watts rebellion broke out on August 11.
It was those rebellions, and the ones that followed, that forced the racists to step back. It was in those rebellions that the black and other poor people took for themselves the rights that a racist society would not willingly grant them.
Frederick Douglas said, about the fight against slavery, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” It was a point well illustrated by the fight for simple democratic rights a century later.
Aug 19, 2013
GM insiders confided to reporters that GM would gradually close down its manufacturing operations in South Korea. They emphasized the high labor costs and the combativity of the unions.
GM is certainly unhappy with the Korean labor union. Members struck for 124 hours last year, including for such demands as higher meal allowances.
So, the company that shut down assembly plants in Detroit and spun off its parts operations, leaving years and years of unemployment, decay and debt in its wake, is now threatening to do the exact same thing to South Korea.
GM and all other global corporations claim such social power as their right. If they are unhappy with a workforce that might want better food, or any other betterment of conditions, the corporation pulls up stakes. Having sucked up the resources and the labor of large cities, even of whole countries, the corporation moves where it wants, when it wants. It cares nothing for the social consequences.
Such power is a social menace, wherever it goes. Like any worn-out part, it must be removed and replaced.
Aug 19, 2013
The “Affordable Care Act” is supposed to go into effect in 2014–but NOT for big companies. “Larger employers” got a break from the federal government–they will not have to offer health coverage to their full-time employees until 2015.
Plenty of large employers, both for-profits like Walmart and non-profit institutions like colleges have already made sure their part-time employees have fewer hours so they can never qualify for any benefits.
But there is more. The law’s limit on patients’ out-of-pocket costs (deductibles and co-pays) will also be delayed until 2015, so that individuals will have to keep paying some outrageous amounts. The insurance companies and large employers have declared they are “not ready” to implement this change!
In addition, 21 states have so far refused to expand Medicaid to all those with incomes under 133% of the poverty level–another part of the new law.
The politicians have managed to cut the three main provisions of the Affordable Care law that would have helped the poor or cut into the profits of businesses and big insurance companies. Yet they march full-speed ahead on the requirement for every individual to buy insurance coverage, whether they can afford it or not.
It’s obvious whose interests the politicians had in mind when they passed this fake version of “national health insurance.”
Aug 19, 2013
A study by a University of California researcher found that drivers of expensive cars were more likely to ignore pedestrians in an intersection than drivers of less valuable cars. The study had 152 pedestrians appear on the edge of the curb as a car approach and noted the cars’ responses. All the drivers of beaters slowed down, “but you see this huge boost in a driver’s likelihood to commit infractions in more expensive cars.”
We always knew the rich got that way by their willingness to run people down!
Aug 19, 2013
On June 28, the Los Angeles City Council granted Westfield a special tax break of 59 million dollars on a new shopping mall.
The L.A. City Council rushed to approve the tax break application within one week after it was filed, as if some financial disaster is at stake. Not a single committee reviewed the application. The Council President allowed only 10 minutes for comments. And the council approved the deal 10 to zero. What an efficient bureaucracy!
Thousands of such tax breaks are similarly extended to many businesses by the cities all over the U.S. Meanwhile, city officials lie about budget shortfalls, empty our pockets through many taxes, lay off workers and neglect public services. New schools aren’t built, roads aren’t repaired, parks are not taken care of or closed and so on–all so business can profit. What a backward system!
Aug 19, 2013
The U.S. Department of Education has given eight California school districts, including some large districts such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, Fresno and Long Beach, “waivers” from the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. The waivers free these districts from the unrealistic requirement that all students of a school score “proficient” on standardized English and Math tests by 2014. Schools “failing” on this basis can be shut down, and, their entire staff can be fired.
For these eight districts, the waiver will free up a total of about 150 million dollars in federal money–which, under NCLB rules, would have to go to outside companies for tutoring.
Why do these eight school districts get this break? Because, unlike other California school districts, these eight districts have agreed to include students’ standardized test scores in their teachers’ evaluations–the Obama administration’s key demand.
In other words, the Obama administration is willing to free school boards from the unreasonable punishments meted out by NCLB, but ONLY IF the school boards agree to punish their teachers based on … the same test results that NCLB uses!
Under the guise of a “new” policy, under the pretext of a “relief” from the Bush-era NCLB, it’s the same old attack on teachers–public school teachers–now carried on by the Obama administration. But an attack on teachers is an attack on the children they teach.
Aug 19, 2013
A Baltimore developer offered to buy 30 million dollars’ worth of bonds during an August meeting of the City Council. Does it sound like a good deal for the city? The bonds mean that he will be paid back principal and interest–worth more than twice what he is spending.
This same developer, Michael Beatty, is a little shark, and former vice president of one of the biggest development companies in Baltimore. His billion-dollar project, Harbor Point, has already gotten 300 or 400 million dollars worth of special tax breaks from the city taxpayers.
After a raucous city council meeting, during which some Baltimore residents criticized all the tax money being given away by the mayor and city council to Harbor Point, Beatty offered a little “gift” to the city: three million dollars toward low-income housing.
Let’s see–that’s barely one percent of all the gifts the city has given his project! This shark is tossing back a minnow–and he expects residents to be happy!
Aug 19, 2013
Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street banks are making billions on insider trading in the commodities markets–and it’s all perfectly legal.
Three years ago, Goldman Sachs began to buy 27 aluminum warehouses in the Detroit area. Today it controls one quarter of the world’s supply. This allows it to control how fast the supply moves through those warehouses, which affects the price.
Before Goldman Sachs bought the warehouses, it took six weeks for aluminum to move to users. Now it takes 16 months!
Goldman Sachs then speculates on the price fluctuations it causes by how quickly or slowly it releases aluminum into the market. It can make a killing because it knows what will happen.
There are regulations that are supposed to stop such hoarding: industry rules require 3,000 tons of aluminum must be moved out of each warehouse each day. So Goldman Sachs has a fleet of trucks moving the metal from one warehouse to another to another, in what one forklift driver called a “merry-go-round of metal.” The requirement is met–but no aluminum hits the market!
Goldman Sachs points out that it breaks no laws and complies with all industry standards. No doubt! These standards are set by the London Metal Exchange, which oversees warehouses around the world and receives one percent of the rent collected by those warehouses. So the delay in selling aluminum makes the London exchange some money–very nice for its members, such as Citigroup, Barclays Bank and Goldman Sachs!
Aluminum is only one of the many commodities the banks are playing with, as they buy up food, coffee–and oil. Goldman Sachs has itself suggested this speculation accounts for a third of the price of a barrel of oil. It may add 200 billion dollars a year to the cost of oil alone!
This is the reality of modern-day capitalism–where massive banks control all the goods they have no hand in creating, and make profits from speculation at every stage.
Aug 19, 2013
An item that costs $350 to make in the U.S. is put on hospital bills at prices one hundred times higher. In a New York hospital the item was recently billed to a customer for $37,000; in a Florida hospital recently the item cost more than $30,000.
This item, used a million times a year, is a hip implant. For hip and knee implants, the ones that cost a few hundred dollars to make, there are five U.S. companies charging anything they please.
One man desperately needing the hip surgery had it done for $13,660. That included the hip joint, the doctors’ fees, the operating room charges, a week in a hospital room, a week in rehab, crutches, medicine and a round-trip airplane ticket. Where did the surgery take place? Overseas in Belgium. What would he have been charged in the U.S.? $78,000.
Health care in the U.S. follows the formula of “big business”–take the customers for every penny you can get away with.
Aug 19, 2013
On July 7, 1953, a simple signature on the armistice agreement ended the Korean war. It established a peninsula cut into two territories. The war had begun three years earlier, when both North Korea and South Korea tried to impose the reunification of the country by force. In reality, this North-South conflict was dominated by other issues, the conflict between the U.S. and the USSR that threatened to turn the Korean War into a world conflict.
In 1916, the U.S. guaranteed its hold over the Philippines by abandoning Korea to Japan, which turned it into a colony. Japanese imperialism pillaged Korea for raw materials, but it also developed industry there, so that by 1945 the Korean peninsula had become the second most developed economy in Asia.
The Korean people, like other people coming out of World War II, hoped for independence. But at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, President Roosevelt forced on Korea “joint administration” by the U.S. and the USSR, which were then allies. Six months later, to limit the influence of the USSR, Washington imposed the partition of the peninsula into two zones, separated by a line, the 38th Parallel.
With Japan’s defeat, a “popular republic” was proclaimed in Seoul, the capital of the southern part. The U.S. took control of the South, where it reestablished the administration and police used by the Japanese. It prohibited popular committees, communist organizations and unions, and carried out mass arrests of their militants. It installed the Syngman Rhee dictatorship, in agreement with the big landowners. In 1946, the U.S. army brutally repressed an uprising of workers and farmers.
In the North, the Kim Il-Sung regime, supported by the USSR and then by China starting in 1949, launched agrarian reform and nationalized the industry Japan had controlled.
There were endless border conflicts between the dictatorships of the North and South. War broke out on June 25, 1950 with northern troops invading South Korea. The North Koreans justified their moves by citing an attack by South Korea a few days before and Syngman Rhee’s warmongering speeches.
The U.S. blew hot and cold. The Cold War between the U.S. and the USSR was beginning, so U.S. policy was containment, aiming to prevent any advance of so-called “communism.”
From June to August 1950, the North’s offensive swept away the South Korean and U.S. forces, pushing them to Pusan, a port in the southeast of the peninsula. The U.S. then got the endorsement of the United Nations to continue war on the Korean peninsula. On September 15th, at the head of a coalition of 16 countries, General MacArthur launched a counter-offensive. With the support of the U.S. air force and navy, he landed troops at Inchon, not far from Seoul. On September 28th, Seoul was taken back from North Korea’s troops, and on September 30th, the North Koreans retreated north of the 38th Parallel, pushed back to the Yalu River, the border between China and North Korea.
MacArthur saw in this easy conquest the occasion to inflict a total defeat on “communism.” He pleaded with the administration of President Truman for the right to cross the Chinese border and drop atomic bombs on China. At that time, people feared a new world war.
China and Mao Tse-tung reacted and mobilized hundreds of thousands of soldiers, pushing southward to Seoul. On January 4th, 1951, South Korean forces retook Seoul for a time. In March and April 1951, they were back to where they started. MacArthur was forced out. Negotiations that would last for two years began, while military operations were carried out by both sides. Finally, the armistice of July 27, 1953 confirmed the existence of two Koreas separated by a demilitarized zone at the 38th Parallel.
At least one million Koreans, and probably many more, died during this war. The peninsula was devastated, particularly the North, which suffered the incessant bombing of U.S. planes. Almost 9,000 factories, more than 600,000 homes, 6,000 schools and hospitals, as well as bridges and roads, were destroyed. It was estimated that 40% of the industrial potential of North Korea was destroyed, at a time when it was more industrialized than the South, which was more agricultural.
From that time, South Korea began to outdistance the North with massive financial support from the U.S. North Korea suffered from an embargo isolating it from the world market. It survived with the aid of China and the Eastern European countries. But the reestablishment of relations between China and the U.S., then the end of the Stalinist regimes in Europe, made the situation of the North Korean population tragic. A shortage of energy hindered the country’s functioning. Bad harvests led to serious food shortages.
To this day, Washington claims that North Korea, a country bled dry, is a threat to the entire world!
Aug 19, 2013
This article is from the August 16th issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
At President Putin’s urging, the Russian Parliament passed a law against “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations directed toward minors,” meaning a law against gay relations. Some Westerners proposed to boycott the upcoming Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, in protest of this discrimination.
Leaders of the Western powers are complete hypocrites, since they find nothing to say when certain allies throw gay people in prison or even kill them, like in Saudi Arabia.
Other voices raised a chorus of reactionary prejudices. The Russian State put forward a celebration of religious marriage, calling it the “Day of Family, Love and Faithfulness.” A right-winger in France congratulated Russia for setting an example by prohibiting “gay propaganda.” Putin, a former colonel in the KGB and re-elected president, gets the supporters he deserves.
In Russia, a few rare demonstrations defending gay rights have been severely repressed by the regime’s police and other thugs, with the blessing of officials of the Russian Orthodox Church.
In Russia, like everywhere, priests want to regulate people’s minds and private lives. For years, the Russian Orthodox hierarchy has endeavored to prevent the fights women have made for the right to an abortion. The Russian regime, which can’t do without the cops and the priests, is happy to support the church.
On the same day the Russian Parliament voted for this homophobic law desired by the Church and the Kremlin, it created the crime of “offenses against religion.” In addition to serious penalties for “gay propaganda,” offenses against religion can lead to three years in prison and a $15,000 fine!
In 1716, the Czar Peter the Great intended to modernize Russia, even if he had to bludgeon the population to achieve it. He decreed a law that beat suspected gay soldiers and sent them into exile. In the following century, Nicolas I, supported by the Orthodox Church, increased these penalties and extended them to civilians.
The revolution of October 1917 legalized abortion and de-criminalized homosexuality. The Soviet State was a pioneer in these domains as in so many others. But Stalinism negated these advances brought about under the Bolsheviks. In March 1934, Stalin decreed that gay people were criminals liable to four or five years in labor camps. This repressive legislation only disappeared in 1993.
But starting in 2000, in order to bolster the state, Putin, like Peter I and Nicolas I before him, based himself on the filthiest prejudices—chauvinism, hatred of foreigners—and on the priests who claim to speak for morality.
Today, the regime weighs all the more heavily in this direction since it is trying to impose religious conformism, sexism and homophobia. It hopes to gain the support of the most reactionary and backward sectors of society to make a counterweight to all forms of opposition, as its popularity crumbles.
Aug 19, 2013
The Obama administration might have condemned the brutal repression by the Egyptian military. But it also made clear that it will continue to maintain all its ties to the bloody regime, including 1.3 billion dollars in annual military aid. Some of the U.S.’s closest clients in the region, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, will also continue to funnel eight billion dollars annually to the Egyptian military.
The Egyptian military will remain an important pillar of support for U.S. imperialist interests. Much of the Egyptian officer corps was trained in the U.S., starting with General Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, the defense minister and military leader, who graduated from the United States War College in Pennsylvania.
Not only does the Egyptian military help safeguard U.S. corporate investments and interests in Egypt, but also in the entire Middle East region. The Egyptian military assures that U.S. naval ships pass through the Suez Canal, without having to wait their turn behind a bunch of oil tankers. During the Iraq War, the Egyptian military allowed U.S. military planes to pass through its air space. And, the Egyptian military and intelligence services partner with their Israeli counterparts against the Palestinian people.
U.S. imperialism is directly responsible for the blood the Egyptian military is now spilling.
Aug 19, 2013
In mid-August, the Egyptian military declared martial law and unleashed severe repression. Within a few days, the military killed more than a thousand people and wounded several times more. Much of this violence and repression seems to have been concentrated against the supporters of Mohammed Morsi, who the military had removed as president only six weeks before. But behind this repression is an effort to impose order over the rest of the Egyptian population, especially the working class and poor.
For the past two and a half years, the Egyptian military has posed as the supposed friend and ally of the Egyptian population. After all, the military had deposed two hated dictators, first General Hosni Mubarak, who had imposed his dictatorship over the country for 30 years, and then Morsi, a religious fundamentalist and leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who had tried to create his own dictatorship after succeeding Mubarak.
The reality, though, is that the military had never ceased being the main power and force of repression behind the rule of both these dictators. It has been the army that throughout these years has broken strikes, imprisoned, tortured and massacred working people and the poor. Only at the point that this repression failed to stop a rising mobilization of the working class and poor, did the military agree to remove first Mubarak, and then Morsi. In doing so, the military was attempting to defuse and disorient these mobilizations, therefore allowing it to reimpose order over the population.
But with the removal of Morsi, the Egyptian military has clashed with the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the oldest Islamic fundamentalist groups in the Middle East. For decades, the Muslim Brotherhood received financial support from various government intelligence services, as well as wealthy people in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East. The Muslim Brotherhood used this money to build up its own network and apparatuses around mosques, charities and schools. While posing as an opponent of the various regimes, it fomented the most reactionary ideas, and therefore stood as a bulwark against trade unionists, communists, even nationalist oppositionists.
In fact, the clash between the Egyptian military and the Muslim Brotherhood is between two virulent enemies of the Egyptian working population and poor that are in competition with each other for power. Both may claim the support of protesters and demonstrators. But the ones they both really represent are the Egyptian bourgeoisie and, behind them, U.S. imperialism and the other big imperialist powers, who are out to exploit and oppress the Egyptian masses for their own gain.
The only way forward for the working masses would be to fight for their own independent interests. Certainly, they have already shown that they are capable of confronting terrible dictatorships and organizing massive mobilizations. Different parts of the working class also have a history of organizing strikes despite terrible repression. But what the Egyptian working class lacks is its own independent party, a revolutionary, communist party, one that allows it to oppose not only the religious demagogues and the military officers, but the capitalists who stand behind them.
Aug 19, 2013
July 1913 marked the beginning of a massive copper miners’ strike in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula near the town of Calumet. The strike came to be known around the world.
Copper mining was dangerous work. At least 47 miners were killed on the job and 643 were seriously injured in the year leading up to the strike.
The company’s push to move from two-man to one-man drill teams was what sparked the strike. A single person had to operate each 154-pound drill! The workers called them “widow makers.”
Nine thousand copper miners walked out on July 23, 1913, out of a workforce of 15,000. Workers demanded the 8-hour day (instead of 10 hours), an increase in the minimum wage from $2.50 to $3.00 a day, two men on all drill teams, and union recognition.
Miners were organizing with the help of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM). Union speeches were given in English, Italian, Finnish, Croatian and Hungarian because there were many immigrant groups among the strikers. Workers participated actively, and there were daily rallies and parades during the strike.
The copper bosses, seeing the workers’ determination, decided on a strategy of violence. The company hired “gun thugs” from Waddell-Mahon, a company specializing in strike-breaking. Within days of the gun thugs’ arrival, two strikers were murdered. Not long after, during a Labor Day celebration, gun thugs shot the 14-year-old daughter of a miner in the head. She survived.
There were numerous more incidents after the bosses started promoting a vigilante group called “The Citizens’ Alliance.”
Strikers’ morale had remained strong even after five months on strike. A wonderful Christmas Eve party was organized for the children of strikers by the Western Federation of Miners. Held in the upstairs room of Calumet’s Italian-American Hall, more than 400 people attended.
Eight witnesses would later testify before the U.S. Congress that a man wearing a “Citizens’ Alliance” button went to the top of the stairs and shouted “Fire! Fire! Fire!” This FALSE statement sent 400 people–mostly children–running down the steep, narrow staircase toward the exit.
In all, 73 people died that day–bodies piled upon bodies at the bottom of the stairs. Victims suffocated from crushed lungs. Of those dead, 69 were children.
The next day, with the union trying to gather evidence about this crime, members of the Citizens’ Alliance, with the local sheriff watching, beat the president of the union. They then shot him and threw him on a train for Chicago, threatening him with death if he ever came back.
Folk singer Woody Guthrie later commemorated these events with his song: “1913 Massacre.”
Finally in April 1914, after nine months, the remaining 2,500 strikers decided together to end their strike.
Nonetheless, while not gaining union recognition, miners gained something from their fight. They achieved an official 8-hour day and a raise in wages–something the copper bosses had vowed they would never give up. Calumet mines would not be officially unionized until 1943–after many struggles.
Workers’ families in the area keep the memory of the strike alive. There was a special 100th year anniversary ceremony in Calumet this June, honoring the struggle that past generations went through to win better working conditions for copper miners 100 years ago.
Aug 19, 2013
Michigan legislators are considering a ballot proposal for next year to ask voters to approve raising the state sales tax from 6% up to 7%. They pose this as an alternative to Governor Rick Snyder’s proposal to raise vehicle registration fees and gasoline sales taxes.
They tell us most of the gasoline sales tax currently goes to schools and cities. Under their proposal, gasoline sales taxes would go to the roads, and the across-the-board sales tax increase would go to schools and cities.
The politicians want people to believe that unless they agree to raise taxes on themselves, there will be no other way to pay for roads that don’t destroy their cars, decent schools for their kids, or working street lights in their cities.
Many Michigan residents have seen this scam before, when we were promised lottery proceeds would go to improving the schools. That turned out to be a complete bait and switch when the politicians simply reduced the money the schools got from the state’s General Fund by the same amount the lottery took in.
Both Snyder’s and the legislature’s proposals are just more ways to make ordinary people pay for all the handouts and tax breaks they’ve given to the corporations and the banks. Working people should say, “Hell no!” to both.
Aug 19, 2013
UAW retirees received a mailing from the VEBA Trust that advertises “a new plan option” that can “save you money.”
The letter is being sent out to convince UAW retirees to switch to a Medicare Advantage PPO, that will replace Medicare A & B and the VEBA complimentary coverage.
It says 2014 monthly contributions will be waived, and promises more for less (although it does say we will continue to pay the Medicare B premiums).
Watch out for the hook! Depending on your usage, the savings quoted even for the first year could be deceiving. And what they don’t tell you is how much you’ll pay in succeeding years, which will be much more than what you pay through the VEBA. Medicare Advantage plans have been steadily increasing premiums over a five-year period–ever since Congress began cutting funding.
Aug 19, 2013
The Wayne County Building Authority has shut down construction of a county jail on Gratiot and Madison, in downtown Detroit. This huge 220-million-dollar plus project has racked up more than 90 million dollars in cost overruns.
But hoorah! The papers say that stopping construction will save the county millions! This is obviously some kind of math the bankers and crooked city officials have been using all along; this math put the city into bankruptcy proceedings.
Next they’ll be debating whether to tear down the carcass of this building or grow trees in it to encourage urban farming!
Aug 19, 2013
Kevyn Orr, Emergency Manager over Detroit, obviously says what he wants. After all, he has a BA and JD degree and is a big shot lawyer who earned $700 an hour for doing bankruptcies. After all, he was appointed to “take over” and “run the city” by Michigan’s Governor Snyder and the wealthy class he represents.
Orr recently said that, “For a long time, the city was dumb, lazy, happy and rich.”
If that wasn’t insult enough, he followed it up with “... that wealth allowed us to have a covenant [that held] if you had an eighth-grade education, you’ll get 30 years of a good job and a pension and great health care, but you don’t have to worry about what’s going to come.”
How dare he? Easy for him!
He is a servant of the upper class. He said exactly what he and his wealthy sponsors find useful to justify the planned robbery of Detroit’s city workers by Wall Street.
He uses all of the racist, anti-worker stereotypes that have been thrown around for years about Detroit and those who built it, and swaggers while doing it. According to Orr, the workers, the poor, the taxpayers of Detroit are the reason the city is in dire financial shape.
Yes indeed, the city is in trouble. But that has nothing to do with workers toiling for 30 years in the shops or with agreements signed by the bosses and authorities that guaranteed pensions after a lifetime of work to keep a city running or to build an auto empire.
Detroit’s financial problems were imposed by Wall Street, by the banks and corporations that paid no taxes, imposed predatory loans and most recently, took homes away from more than 100,000 families in predatory mortgage schemes.
“Lazy, happy and rich?” He must be talking about his bosses—the Ilitches, the Fords, the Morouns and the Gilberts; the very sharks who will benefit from a bankruptcy.
He sure as hell is not talking about us.
“Dumb?” He mocks those of us who had an eighth grade education. He would mock the slaves also: because it is all these laborers who built the basic capital that enriched the bourgeoisie of this country to the point of becoming rulers of the world. “Dumb?” those who made possible public education for millions by all they produced, including Orr and his generation?
“Don’t have to worry about what’s going to come?” Men and women who for 30 years worried about everything and everyone and built this city and built this economy and paid the taxes and fought in every damn, rotten war?
Orr should be mindful that dictators bigger and smarter than he have been deposed, debunked, exposed for the bagmen they are and run out of town. And none would be prouder to do it than all of us workers in Detroit, active and retired, who would find it most enjoyable to boot!
Aug 19, 2013
U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin formally recognized the racist manner in which the New York police have employed their policy to “stop and frisk” anyone who “looks suspicious.”
In the last 10 years, the New York cops have made more than 4.3 million such stops. In 2011 alone, they made almost 700,000 stops, 87 per cent of them against black or Latino people. Only 10 per cent of the stops result in any arrest, and in only a fraction of those do they find a weapon.
It’s nice that a judge finally said something about this practice, which amounts to harassment for “Walking While Black.” But it only happened due to the many demonstrations people have carried out against the policy. The politicians and the legal system feel pressure to appear to be dealing with the cops’ racist actions.
Whatever feeling of victory people might have from the ruling, it will likely be temporary. New York’s Mayor Bloomberg has already announced he will appeal the decision. In her ruling, the judge even said there was nothing unconstitutional about the stop and frisk policy and that only the way it was implemented was wrong. She set no standard for how the cops should correct their method of applying it.
The practice will continue, therefore, and young black people, immigrants and poor whites will continue to be stopped for no good reason. And the majority will be black.
Aug 19, 2013
The Baltimore City Housing Authority recently paid off court-awarded claims for 6.8 million dollars won by six people for lead poisoning they suffered when living with their families in public housing. When they were children, these people ingested particles of lead-based paint from trim work in these houses; they suffered permanent brain damage and have severe learning and behavior problems. This happened after lead paint was banned in Baltimore in 1950.
These claims are just part of 12 million dollars awarded years ago to former residents of Baltimore public housing. But for a long time the city refused to pay any of them.
So where did the housing authority finally come up with the funds to pay off these six claims now? From federal public housing funds that otherwise would be spent on providing 700 families with public housing! Who gave the city permission to do this? The federal government!
This is outrageous, particularly since Congress just cut more than 10 percent of the federal funding for Baltimore public housing when more affordable housing is desperately needed.
Where should the money for settlement of these claims come from? How about from the politicians and city officials who allowed this lead poisoning to occur in the first place!? How about from all the developers and corporations that cut corners with lead paint and have been getting hundreds of millions in tax breaks and other subsidies from the city and state, while the victims of lead poisoning have been waiting for decades for compensation!?