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
Sep 30, 2013
In San Jose, California, the third largest city in California, public workers are currently facing drastic cuts in pensions and health care. These cuts were planned out by their Democratic mayor, who placed a referendum on the ballot last year to allow him to reduce benefits. The referendum passed with a 70 per cent approval rate.
The proposed cuts will devastate public workers’ incomes, forcing existing public workers to choose between second tier, 401(k) type benefits or paying significantly more out of pocket to preserve their existing pension. Any new city worker hired will automatically go into the second-tier plan.
One politician said this shouldn’t be happening, that after all, “We’re Silicon Valley, we’re not Detroit.” Silicon Valley, home to Apple, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft; home to the largest, most profitable high-tech companies in the world.
No, Silicon Valley is not Detroit, where public worker pensions are being threatened by a contrived bankruptcy; where auto industry magnates and the banks are speaking through Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr to insist on cutting city workers’ benefits. In Detroit, these forces have proposed to freeze the two pension funds at the end of the year; to stop city workers from accumulating any further pension benefits; and to force workers into a 401(k) style plan of lesser value along with any new hire.
If San Jose is not Detroit, it sure does look like Detroit when it comes to attacks on pensions. Why? Quite simply, because it is, like Detroit, targeted by the bourgeoisie as part of a strategic attack to reduce payouts for pensions and other benefits so that income can be used for other things, like debt service to the banks or stadiums.
In Detroit, their strategy is to claim that the city is broke and that there is no choice but to declare bankruptcy. In San Jose, they have a strategy of frightening the public into believing that necessary city services are not obtainable unless pension and other employee benefit costs are drastically decreased. In both cases, they have created lie upon lie to carry out their strategies.
In San Jose, as in Detroit, residents have paid and paid into the public funds. In San Jose, like Detroit, city politicians were allowed to give huge tax breaks and outright gifts to the corporations while underfunding the pension programs. Banks benefitted from predatory loans while cities gave corporations their money. In San Jose, the “capital” of Silicon Valley, the 47 largest high tech companies paid NO taxes on most of their earnings. In Detroit, the auto companies were given million-dollar gifts; Compuware paid $1 for its current location.
It is more convenient for Wall Street to call upon the populations of cities and states to impose cuts on their public workers, if they can, than to go through bankruptcy. In a city like San Jose, they count on a wealthy upper middle class to support their ballot proposals.
But if need be, in cities like Detroit, where the majority of the population is opposed to the pension cuts, they will impose bankruptcy to get what they want.
San Jose and Detroit are two sides of the same coin. And politicians are promising more attacks on pensions to come. There are already at least 10 states where pension fund payments have been systematically withheld and used for other purposes–cheating workers’ pension funds of agreed-to funding. Wall Street think-tanks are already moving to put pension cuts for state and municipal workers up for statewide votes across the country.
Will they get away with this massive attack on public workers? Will they be able to use one section of the population against another to succeed in lowering everyone’s standard of living?
If they succeed at this, no one is safe. The assault on workers’ pensions, which began in the private sector, will spread across the country to take down city and state workers’ pensions and then finally any private business holdouts.
Then again, the result could be very different. Workers across the country are already demonstrating and protesting this latest series of attacks. Organized city and state workers could lead a fight-back that could mobilize the entire working class.
Workers don’t have to accept Emergency Managers or so-called “democratic votes” engineered by the upper class to eliminate workers’ rights. Those that are leading the attack aren’t giving up their retirement rights, and we shouldn’t either!
Sep 30, 2013
Baltimore City Council just gave final approval to the third special finance deal for Harbor Point, a large development soon to be built near the harbor.
Harbor Point will receive 107 million dollars in tax increment financing (TIF), a way in which the city sells bonds and goes into debt to pay for infrastructure for a project.
Harbor Point has already received another special deal worth 88 million dollars, because the project is in an “enterprise zone,” as well as 25 million dollars more because the project will be built on a “brownfields area,” a polluted site.
All together, taxpayers of Baltimore may end up contributing about 400 million dollars out of the billion dollar-plus-cost for Harbor Point’s new office buildings, apartments and retail space.
Politicians have spent decades promising in every city and state that use of TIFs and “enterprise zones” for development will help the city.
Harbor Point shows pretty well how these deals help the developer, Michael Beatty. With the TIF and enterprise zone status he arranged, Harbor Point delays paying taxes on the value of the property for the next 10 to 12 years.
Beatty learned about such deals from one of Baltimore’s master developers, John Paterakis. Beatty was his vice-president before splitting off as president of Harbor Point, when Paterakis got his own special deals from the city. For example, he owns the Marriott Waterfront, close to the new Harbor Point. Baltimore officials gave him a 25-year deal to pay $1 per year in property taxes. Yes, $1 per year on this very valuable property on the waterfront!
Baltimore’s politicians parrot what the developers claim about creating jobs–supposedly 6,000 permanent ones at Harbor Point. In fact, of this 6,000 Beatty counts 900 employees of Morgan Stanley and 1,400 from Exelon, who are simply moving from another area of downtown to the new waterfront.
Such tricks and deals are carried out around the country. An organization called “Good Jobs First” recently studied the whole country for these multi-million-dollar deals. Its report said states and cities have given away 64 billion dollars as subsidies to the largest corporations in the country.
Baltimore may only have two or three mega-deals, but New York has provided eleven billion dollars to corporations located there. The state of Michigan has done seven billion dollars’ worth of such corporate deals.
While politicians today say they cannot find money needed for schools, health care, or other services, they always seem to find money to line developers’ pockets. Politicians and developers–twin vampires, with fangs stuck deep in the taxpayers’ necks!
Sep 30, 2013
A journalist for Baltimore’s newspaper found what city officials never seem to find–big tax mistakes.
It was three hundred thousand dollars here, two hundred thousand dollars there. The miscalculations are based on special tax deals for “enterprise zones,” which already are huge tax cuts over a 10-year period that go to corporations and property developers.
And who benefitted from these tax “mistakes”? Peter Angelos, owner of the Orioles, one of the biggest property developers in Baltimore. Another beneficiary of the mistakes: W.R. Grace, a three billion dollar a year corporation, a leader in chemical engineering, with headquarters in Maryland.
How convenient! As if their taxes weren’t too low already. Meanwhile, the mayor of Baltimore keeps raising fees and cutting services for residents, claiming no money exists to maintain parks and keep open recreation centers for young people.
Clearly, the city needs someone to check their books!
Sep 30, 2013
Wayne County, in Michigan, auctioned off more than 18,000 properties in the last two years; these are properties it had seized due to delinquent taxes. The purchasers of 80 percent of those properties are now behind on THEIR taxes.
These properties are often bought up by speculators, sometimes for as little as $500 each, who either sit on them hoping to flip them or rent them out for three years until the county, in turn, forecloses on them.
What a scam these thieves have going! Some of these thieves are small time; others, not so small. But whatever their size, they are only following the lead of even bigger tax rip-off artists–big corporations like General Motors.
GM just announced it wants yet another tax abatement of 1.8 million dollars from the city of Detroit to build two logistics facilities at its Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant. This is the same plant the city spent 250 million dollars on for acquiring the land in 1980; it then gave GM a 50 percent tax abatement on the property for the next 12 years. GM claims the tax breaks will provide jobs–just like it promised the earlier ones would provide 6,000 jobs at the plant. In reality, it now employs only 1,600 workers there.
Detroit’s Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr claims the city is bankrupt and is threatening to cut city worker pensions and retiree health care benefits. If the city is broke, it should make the big tax cheats like GM pay back the money they’ve stolen for decades!
Sep 30, 2013
The politicians have been playing political football with the mandate for implementing national health exchanges. Republicans have even clowned about shutting down the government for not passing the budget, all in order to block any funding for anything that even smacks of “national health care.”
This is just another step down the road toward sabotaging any help with health care for poor and working people. Already, all of the parts of the health care bill that benefitted us in any way have been delayed. What is left are all the gifts to the bosses and big insurance companies.
So what if there is no funding? What is left is a law that requires the poor and working class to buy expensive health care that doesn’t cover anything much, or pay fines for not doing it!
Sep 30, 2013
Supporters of the federal mandatory health insurance law claim it will lower insurance costs for individual subscribers. What they don’t say is that companies plan to make that possible by restricting the provider networks they offer for lower cost plans. Blue Cross even has the nerve to talk about an “enhanced” network.
If a subscriber needs to see a doctor outside their network, too bad. They’ll have higher out-of- pocket costs. Since the new law prohibits insurers from denying insurance because of pre-existing conditions, one way to discourage such customers is to make it less possible for them to see their own doctors. People on Medicaid have already seen what limited access to doctors means.
This is what “compulsory health insurance” looks like when health care remains organized for profit.
Sep 30, 2013
City of Detroit Bus Drivers and riders rallied downtown on Tuesday, September 17 to urge Detroit leaders to improve bus service and safety. A union spokesperson reported eight bus drivers have been hospitalized from attacks by passengers in the past nine months. He added: “People are mad [about late busses.] Drivers are stressed. They can’t take it....”
The public was told having an emergency manager would be about “speed.” It is with great “speed” that city services and life for workers are becoming worse. Protesting is the right step to take!
Sep 30, 2013
Proposed “religious exemption” legislation in Michigan would make it legal for faith-based adoption agencies to put their religious beliefs and standards ahead of the best interests of children.
A set of three bills moving through the legislature, backed by the Michigan Catholic Conference, would allow adoption agencies to refuse to place children in qualified homes if the placement went against the agency’s “sincerely held religious beliefs.”
WHAT does THAT mean?!
The religious beliefs of the adoption agency would be “protected” from cuts in government funding. Blatant discrimination could be practiced, legally. Parents seeking to adopt could face discrimination based on religion, nationality, race or for being gay.
These laws would put the best interests of 1,400 foster children in Michigan in need of a loving home BEHIND the “right” of religious agencies to “morally” discriminate against others who believe differently from them.
Another level of hell on earth will be created if one religion’s standards become more important than the welfare of children!
Sep 30, 2013
Forty years ago, on September 11, 1973, a military junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet took power in Chile, overthrowing the Popular Unity government led by the Socialist Salvador Allende.
Allende came to power three years before, on September 1970, at the head of an electoral alliance called Popular Unity, whose main members included not only the Socialist Party and Communist Party, but two bourgeois parties.
Worldwide, many on the left hailed Allende’s rise to power as the proof that it was possible to achieve socialism through the ballot box. One slogan from those days that became popular was: “The people united will never be defeated.”
Reality started showing otherwise. The newly elected Allende government might have promised reform and change during a time of economic crisis and a mounting working class movement, but it quickly tried to tame that movement and safeguard the profits of the ruling classes.
By the mid-1960s, the looting of the Chilean economy by the big U.S. companies and the rich Chilean families that owned the mines, industry and banks had plunged the country into a desperate economic crisis. And the working class bore the brunt of the crisis, through mass layoffs and pay cuts.
The Chilean working class was one of the best organized in Latin America, with a long tradition of struggle and building organizations. By the mid-1960s, the number of strikes had increased considerably.
To quiet that movement, the Allende government instituted a series of social reforms. Every child was given one half-liter of milk a day; wages were increased by 35% for white collar workers, by 70% for soldiers and state employees, and by 100% for blue collar workers and farm workers. More than 200,000 jobs were created. The Allende government also carried out a land reform, breaking up some of the big landholdings held by the wealthy.
But at the same time, Allende told the workers, the miners and the peasants that they had to limit their demands in order to not “provoke” the ruling classes or the military.
But the economic crisis worsened. The price of copper, which was Chile’s main export, fell on world markets. Food shortages and inflation grew worse.
The right wing and the far right exploited the discontent of the middle classes. They organized demonstrations by the privileged layers of society hostile to Allende. On October 10, 1972, all of the forces of reaction–the Chilean bourgeoisie, the management of companies tied to U.S. capital, as well as the far right and part of the military–supported a big strike by independent truckers, shopkeepers and professionals, the so-called bosses’ strike against the Allende government.
This triggered a massive counter-offensive by workers and peasants. Workers re-occupied the factories and restarted production. Everywhere workers organized food distribution, setting up their own rationing system. Thanks to voluntary labor, public services, particularly hospitals, kept operating. Self-defense militias were set up to protect working class districts from far-right gangs and the police. Committees of all sorts sprang up everywhere, formed by delegates of local factories and peasant councils. The same thing happened in rural villages, with committee members elected by the villagers. The masses were beginning to feel their strength, and their mobilization was beginning to weaken the bosses’ strike.
Instead of resting on what the working class had done, the Allende government declared a state of emergency and called in the army to restore order. Just as the bosses’ strike was beginning to collapse, Allende invited the army’s three most prominent leaders to join the government. Since the president and general secretary of the biggest workers’ union, the CUT, were also offered posts in the Allende government, the CUT called on workers to end the occupation of workplaces.
But the working class continued to fight. The courts and the government failed to get workers to leave the occupied factories. The military was unable to take away control of food supplies from the workers’ committees. Many of the committees set up during the October strike continued to operate.
Far-right vigilantes and the army carried out increasing numbers of attacks against the population in the countryside and in working class neighborhoods. The workers and peasants organized and defended themselves against these attacks.
But Allende demanded moderation on the part of the working classes and efforts to increase production that he claimed were necessary to “fight fascism.” The Communist Party launched a petition campaign called “No to Civil War.” The leaders of the Popular Unity government disoriented and thus demobilized the working class.
The army first tried to carry out a coup d’état on June 29, 1973, but failed. In response, Allende sought to placate the army by bringing several generals into his cabinet. The army, backed by the far right, began to take control of entire regions.
Faced with the impending army takeover, the working classes waited in vain for arms and direction from Allende and the other leaders of the Popular Unity government.
On September 11th, the military, under General Augusto Pinochet, carried out its takeover. In a matter of days, tens of thousands of people, workers, peasants, and militants were arrested and tossed in stadiums and vacant property. Many were tortured, thousands were executed. Among those killed was Salvador Allende, who was said to have committed suicide.
In a month of blood and terror, the military dictatorship completely destroyed the complex of organizations which the Chilean labor movement had built through a half-century of struggles and efforts.
Salvador Allende is today celebrated as the victim and martyr of reaction and military violence. But this hides the reality of what happened to the working class. Allende and the reformist parties of the “Popular Unity” government bowed down to the bourgeoisie and the army. They refused to call for a social mobilization that could have become revolutionary. Thus, they led the workers to the slaughterhouse.
Allende, who preferred to commit suicide rather than organize a major struggle of the masses, remains the symbol of the dead end of reformism.
Sep 30, 2013
A large group of men identifying with the Somali Islamist group Al-Shabab entered a shopping mall in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, and took control of it for several days, holding dozens of people hostage. After a series of violent clashes, the death toll stood at 68, with more than 200 wounded.
Westgate Mall, Al-Shabab’s chosen target, is an enormous luxury shopping mall, a window display of U.S. and European wealth situated in an ocean of misery. Each day, thousands of people from Kenya’s most privileged social layers and numerous foreigners go there to shop.
The terrorists claimed to be carrying out jihad and acting for Al-Qaeda. They targeted Kenya because, since 2012, 5000 Kenyan soldiers have been stationed in Somalia. For twenty years, Somalia has been in the grip of fighting between rival militias organized on the basis of religion and clan identity who are competing for power. This fighting has led to the collapse of the central government. On several occasions, neighboring governments have intervened to support one or the other of the rival factions. Their interventions have also been pushed by the United States, which does not look favorably on this permanent instability and on the 2006 installation of a hostile Islamist power. To counter the Islamist militias, the U.S. strongly supported Ethiopia’s intervention from 2006 to 2009, then that of Uganda under the cover of an African force of the United Nations, and then that of Kenya.
In the past, the imperialist powers–particularly the U.S.–have themselves contributed to the development of the Islamic terrorism that they now confront in this part of Africa. In 1977, the U.S. backed Somalia in a war against Ethiopia, which was then supported by the Soviet Union. The money sent by the monarchies of the Persian Gulf as part of this support greatly benefitted the Islamist movement. As happened in many other regions of the world–in Afghanistan in particular–these Islamist forces created armed groups who turned against their former protectors. This was what happened when a U.S. expeditionary force was sent to Somalia in 1993.
Since then, this situation of permanent civil war has been worsened by poverty and under-development. For many, the only hope of survival is to belong to a militia and have arms to extort money from the population. And here again imperialism is entirely responsible, because it maintains this unjust social order that condemns countries like Somalia to such appalling underdevelopment.
Al-Shabab uses blind violence and nurtures a reactionary ideology. However, the big powers that ravage and pillage this region of Africa and play off religious, ethnic, and clan differences, bear an equal responsibility for these attacks. They practice the “civilized” form of barbarity.
Sep 30, 2013
On December 16th, 2012, a 23-year-old physical therapy student was tortured and raped in Delhi, dying of her injuries. After eight months of trial proceedings, a tribunal has called for the death penalty for four of the men accused of this crime. A fifth man–the main defendant–hung himself in prison last March in conditions that remain unclear.
Last December, tens of thousands of young people, mainly students or those from well-off backgrounds, went out into the street to demonstrate their anger at this disgusting murder, whose victim was one of their own. But behind this legitimate indignation, there were forces whose objectives were anything but legitimate. The November elections to the regional assembly of Delhi were less than a year away. The two major rivals in these elections, the Congress Party (currently in office) and the BJP (a far-right Hindu nationalist party), tried to outdo one another–pretending to defend women by calling for the death penalty for this rape.
A human rights activist, Tara Rao, one of the rare people who publicly criticized the death penalty in this case, said that this kind of sentence “will accomplish nothing except short-term revenge … and its use will not eradicate violence against women in India.”
It will not because the violence against women is a product of the social servitude imposed on Indian women.
The most recent official statistics, from 2011, record 24,200 cases of rape. Landowners who are members of the “superior” castes commit the large majority of these rapes. They believe they have the right to rape the wives and daughters of their farmworkers and tenants, who often come from the supposedly inferior castes–the Dalits or Untouchables. While the two big parties have made such an outcry over the rape of a young student on December 16th, they said nothing, for example, about the 19 rapes of Dalit women during the single month of October 2012 in Haryana, the state that surrounds Delhi, where the Congress Party is in power.
In 2011, almost 9,000 young married women were killed because their families had not fulfilled the conditions of their marriage contracts. This ancient practice is supposedly forbidden in modern India, but its practice shows that women continue to be treated as merchandise in relations between families.
Ninety percent of rapes go unrecorded, sometimes because the victims don’t dare to press charges, and sometimes because the police refuse to take down their complaint so as not to upset the accused.
These rapes and murders, like the other forms of violence of which women are victims in India, have in common that they are the byproducts of endemic poverty and a class society. The crying inequalities in Indian society feed such barbaric practices and prejudices inherited from an ancient past, practices that the ruling classes and its political parties keep alive. In a social order like this, the life of the poor, particularly of poor women, is not valued highly.
That social order was kept in place for at least 150 years by British colonial rule. Since 1948, the major Indian political parties have done little to end these centuries-old practices.
Sep 30, 2013
The California legislature passed a bill that allows two-year colleges to charge students more for high-demand classes during summer and winter terms. If Governor Brown signed the bill, community colleges would charge as much as $200 per unit for some classes–more than four times the $46 they currently charge per unit!
Last year California passed Proposition 30, with the official title “Temporary Taxes to Fund Education,” allowing the state to increase the state sales tax by 0.25 per cent over four years. When advocating for this ballot measure, Governor Jerry Brown promised that this tax increase would provide enough funds for education, and that there would be no further education fee increases.
But, as this tuition increase shows, the state IS asking for more money. Their appetite for our money continues to grow.
Bourgeois politicians have no qualms about lying, particularly when it comes to putting their sneaky hands into our pockets. Enough of them and their tricks!
Sep 30, 2013
JPMorgan Chase (JPMC) sent its top three executives to the White House on September 26 to cop a plea and swing a deal. Morgan wants to pay MORE THAN TEN BILLION DOLLARS to get out of several state and federal criminal charges against it and its executives.
JPMC is one of the very biggest of the “too-big-to-fail” banks. The banks sucked millions of people into fraudulent mortgages, then foreclosed on them as the banks’ debt pyramid collapsed. The entire economy is still stuck in the ruins.
If JPMC wants to pay more than ten billion dollars up front, it must see that amount as a very good deal. That could only mean that the actual size of its frauds, and the extent of its crimes, are beyond imagination. And it’s not at all the only bank involved!
Sep 30, 2013
In California, an hourly wage of $26 is needed to rent a two-bedroom apartment, without spending more than a third of one’s income on rent–according to a study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
So what are California’s politicians doing about that? They’re raising the minimum wage from $8 to $10 an hour–gradually, and NOT UNTIL January 2016.
Democratic politicians, who control the state legislature and governor’s office in California, pretend they are doing a favor to workers. But $10 an hour is obviously not enough to live on. In fact, it’s an insult.
Sep 30, 2013
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced he would put 17 million dollars into a new annex for Walter Payton High School. Payton is a selective enrollment school–that is, students must take a test to get in. According to people who rate high schools, Payton is one of the best high schools in Illinois, one of the best in the whole country. A few token working class students go there, but most Payton students are those already wealthy and privileged enough to get a better primary school education.
Too bad the other schools don’t get the same resources. In fact, Emanuel’s school board just cut the budgets of hundreds of neighborhood schools by between 10 and 20%, leading to thousands of teacher and staff layoffs and higher class sizes. This came on top of closing 50 neighborhood elementary schools.
It’s no accident Payton gets money while other schools get cut. Payton is located a few blocks from Chicago’s downtown–making it the school of choice of many of the city’s political and business elite.
Emanuel’s contempt for the working class could not be more clear. Schools for the wealthy get millions, while schools in workers’ neighborhoods starve.
Sep 30, 2013
Ever wonder why it seems like the two parties favor the rich? A glance at the Pritzkers shows why. They are the richest family in Chicago, with about 20 billion dollars and six members in the Forbes’ top 400. One of them, J.B., ran Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2008. Another, Penny, was the chief fundraiser for Obama! After being on the Chicago School Board, Penny Pritzker is now Secretary of Commerce for Obama. Meanwhile Jennifer Pritzker has given millions to Republicans.
They aren’t the only super-rich family favoring both parties. No wonder the parties serve the rich–they’re run by the rich!
Sep 30, 2013
Sheep and goats to mow Detroit instead of lawnmowers? One councilman with nothing better to do wants to replace city mowing crews with munching herds.
One of his consultants said, “They’ve been very good employees. They don’t talk back.”
There might be one use for this hare-brained idea. A lot of people are homeless and hungry in Detroit. Sheep and goat taste good if you cook them right.
Which is more than you can say about councilmen!
Sep 30, 2013
San Jose officials want to cut the city workers’ pensions and healthcare.
Last year, the city passed a referendum to make current workers pay more toward their pensions or accept much lower pensions. The city would also introduce a second tier for new city workers involving much lower pension and health benefits. These are in fact pay cuts for the city workers.
San Jose is the third largest city in California and so-called “Capital of Silicon Valley” that claims to lead the world in “High-Tech” companies. All “rich and famous” companies that invade our daily lives–Apple, Facebook, Intel, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard–you name it, they are located in Silicon Valley. Yet the City of San Jose claims that they don’t have enough money for the pensions and healthcare. What a crock!
If there is a budget problem, these incredibly successful companies are the culprits, because these cheap-skates pay little or no taxes. The 47 largest tech companies avoided paying any taxes on much of their earnings simply by claiming that these earnings are kept outside the U.S. To avoid taxes, Apple went so far as registering itself as an Irish company!
If such tax avoidance schemes are not enough, the City of San Jose provides “Financial/Tax Incentives,” according to the city’s website. These “Tax Incentive” schemes include the “Business Cooperation Program,” which provides businesses a rebate of up to 30 per cent on the local portion of the state collected use tax; the “Enterprise Zone,” which provides a variety of state income tax credits to support the continued growth of a business, including handing over $37,000 to the business for each new hire over a five-year period; and the “Foreign Trade Zone,” which allows a business to delay, reduce or eliminate customs duties on imported goods.
To provide these enormous gifts to business, the city cut services, closed libraries and community centers, laid off workers, reduced their salaries by 10 per cent a few years ago, left new facilities unused due to lack of staff, and did not repair potholes on the streets.
But San Jose politicians try to blame workers’ pensions and healthcare for causing these cuts!
How dare they!
Sep 30, 2013
Dr. Shiping Bao, the medical examiner in the Trayvon Martin murder case, accuses prosecutors and investigators of throwing the case.
Bao says he was prepared to offer evidence showing Martin could not have been on top of George Zimmerman when Zimmerman shot and killed him. But prosecutors never asked the questions in court that would have allowed him to present the information that would have refuted Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense. When he tried to press the prosecutors on the matter, his lawyer Willie Gary said, “He was in essence told to zip his lips. ‘Shut up. Don’t say those things.’” He was eventually fired.
In addition, Bao says that investigators mishandled the murder scene. They did not bag Martin’s hands to preserve any evidence under his fingernails, and they did not take pictures of Martin’s body or of Zimmerman at the scene. Bao says all offices involved in the case clearly sent the message that they were not interested in prosecuting Zimmerman. Gary said, “He says their general attitude was that [Martin] got what he deserved.”
Anyone following the case with open eyes will not be surprised at all. It was obvious that the prosecution was more than happy to let Martin’s murderer walk free. But now someone close to the case has confirmed it. It’s one more signal that the trial was a travesty.
It’s too bad he waited until after the verdict to find his voice. Just like the jurors, he allowed himself to be used by the racists to justify Martin’s murder. As Bao himself said of the officials, “They don’t care. They don’t think it’s worthy of trial. This case is over. The black kid is on the ground, it’s over.”
Sep 30, 2013
After a gunman shot and wounded 13 people with an AK-47 in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood, Mayor Emanuel and Police Superintendent McCarthy feigned outrage. Emanuel said, “For a city to have a sense of civility, a sense of community, it must live by a moral code.” Emanuel then had the nerve to invoke the children who are often victims of gun violence in Chicago.
How dare he! This is the same mayor who has gutted schools for working class children, destroying their futures, destroying their hope, and laying the foundation for more violence. He is the one without a moral code or sense of community!
Police Superintendent McCarthy called the reaction to the shooting “hysteria.” McCarthy bragged, “We’ve got the lowest murder rate in the city since 1965.” That may be true–but McCarthy is using that statistic to lie. Murders are down overall, because they’re down in the mostly North Side neighborhoods that have been taken over by mostly white, middle class and wealthy people. Violence is concentrated in the poor neighborhoods, the black and Latino neighborhoods on the South and West Sides of this extremely segregated city. But McCarthy and Emanuel don’t care at all about that!
Emanuel and McCarthy are no better than the old segregationists of the Jim Crow South. Don’t be “hysterical.” As long as you’re rich and white, and stay in your middle class, North Side neighborhood, you’re safe!