the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Dec 9, 2013
Federal bankruptcy judge Steven Rhodes hadn’t even finished uttering his ruling in Detroit’s bankruptcy case, when politicians across the country started cheering. Judge Rhodes ruled on December 5 that Detroit’s city worker pensions were fair game in its bankruptcy, and all these politicians are jumping to get their hands on workers’ retirement money.
The state of Illinois, on the very same day as the Detroit ruling, made significant cuts to its state worker pensions, citing its debt as the reason for the cuts. On that same day, the press speculated that city bankruptcies already underway in California would be opened up to pension cuts.
Cities like Detroit and states like Illinois may be under water. But it certainly is not due to pension debt. What they’re saying about pension debt is a lie repeated by the media.
The attack on pensions is part of the continuing attack on the working class and its standard of living. It is another way that the capitalist class is seeking to have us pay for the crisis they created.
The pattern has been repeated across the country: cities and states have funneled billions to corporations through tax breaks and other “incentives.” To keep paying out those tax breaks, they have systematically underfunded their employee pension funds.
While giving away tax money, city officials floated crazy financial deals to cover operating expenses. These Wall Street deals culminated in huge balloon payments, just like the sub-prime mortgages that left so many homes under water. This doubled, quadrupled the debt.
And now that the pension funds have been underfunded, the politicians’ response is not to stop the tax breaks that caused it–but to take from the workers.
But these pensions are not gifts given to the worker by the employer–they are part of the workers’ pay. They are deferred payment–less money now, in return for guaranteed payment after retirement.
And if these pensions are cut, EVERY worker has taken a pay cut, young or old. After all, officials are not proposing to return pensions dollars to our wages! Officials are flat out saying they’d rather leave workers destitute in their retirement than stop handing billions to the corporations.
The attack on pensions has been building for years, moving from private employers to public, and back again. Every attack in one sector is picked up by employers in other sectors. So you can be sure that this latest attack won’t stop here. Every pension, every retirement fund is in danger. Notice has been served.
But we don’t have to accept it.
If they want to tear up our contracts–we have a few demands of our own. EVERY worker needs and deserves a guaranteed retirement income that they can live well on.
One study concludes that public pensions are underfunded by 46 billion dollars annually–while tax breaks to corporations amount to 80 billion dollars annually. If these tax breaks were just cut in half, it would wipe out the pension shortfalls.
Sound like a pipe dream? Why? They have the money–they’ve just been choosing to use it to shore up the profits of corporations and Wall Street.
But workers have a lot of power we haven’t yet used. Workers make the cities run–every city in the country. We can use that power to protect current pensions and to ensure a decent life for the generations behind us.
Dec 9, 2013
Congress wrote the Affordable Care Act in a way that required elected representatives and senators to buy their health insurance coverage from health care exchanges.
But their health care exchange system is not what the rest of us have to put up with.
They have given themselves “in-person support sessions” at their place of work, the Capitol. They have their own toll-free number called the “dedicated Congressional health insurance plan assistance line.” So anyone in Congress, including their staffs, who has a healthcare question can call their own personal rep to explain the exchange system.
Not only do they give themselves more help, they give themselves more choices–not only so-called “gold plans,” but 112 choices of plans–unlike the rest of us.
In addition, Congress members make $174,000 per year–that is, more than three times the median salary for families in the U.S., which is $52,100 per year. So what does the cost of health care mean to them?
For Congress? If someone feels sick, our tax dollars pay for a physician to be present at the Capitol. Unlike our children, who no longer have nurses in their schools.
For the rest of us? A messed up web site, and lousy health coverage.
For the health care industry? Guaranteed profits.
Dec 9, 2013
On November 12, two major health organizations issued new cholesterol guidelines that essentially declared that 30 to 40 million healthy people should immediately start taking statins. Stains are pills that reduce cholesterol levels by blocking cholesterol production in the liver.
Under the old guidelines, patients diagnosed to have more than a 20 percent risk of heart attack are instructed to take cholesterol-lowering drugs. There are currently 36 million people in the U.S. who have such risk. Under their new guidelines, the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association lower the threshold for risk. So almost twice as many people are considered at risk and in need of these drugs.
However, for many scientists and medical doctors, taking statins under these new guidelines provides dubious health benefits. For example, research from Harvard University scientists showed that “Statins are effective for people with known heart disease. But for people who have less than a 20 percent risk of getting heart disease in the next 10 years, statins not only fail to reduce the risk of death, but also fail even to reduce the risk of serious illness.” This research also suggested that there are side effects to healthy people taking statins, “including muscle pain or weakness, decreased cognitive function, increased risk of diabetes (especially for women), cataracts or sexual dysfunction.”.
According to the World Health Organization, 80 percent of heart disease is caused by smoking, lack of exercise, an unhealthy diet and other lifestyle factors. Thus, for example, walking an extra 10 minutes a day and having a healthy diet can also reduce cholesterol levels.
But drug companies cannot make money from people walking or eating healthier foods. In 2010 patients spent more than 21 billion dollars on cholesterol-lowering medications. The more people are shoveled into the use of these drugs, the happier these companies are. Indeed, after the guidelines were announced, AstraZeneca, which manufactures a statin called Crestor, said they were “pleased” with the new recommendations.
So, taking statins may provide dubious health benefits to healthy people. But these drugs assuredly supply healthy profits to the pharmaceutical industry!
Dec 9, 2013
On November 4, the U.S. attorney general announced a two billion dollar fine for Johnson and Johnson to settle a decades-old legal battle over the use of its drug Risperdol.
The attorney general said the company showed “reckless indifference” to people’s health by pushing the use of this anti-psychotic drug, especially for the elderly. The drug was used to quiet symptoms of schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder, but it also sometimes caused deadly strokes.
These cases were not just corporate “indifference,” they were potentially cases of murder. And two billion dollars? That’s what Johnson and Johnson made in sales of Risperdol in a single year!
Nor is Johnson and Johnson alone in pushing the use of drugs in ways that may possibly cause as much harm as good. Last year, GlaxoSmithKline paid a three billion dollar fine for problems with three of its drugs. Four years ago Pfizer paid a two billion dollar fine for the way it promoted one of its drugs.
In other words, the industry makes billions off human illnesses and then staves off lawsuits by settling for fines paid to the federal government.
Billions may sound like a lot of money, but pharmaceuticals is one of the largest and most profitable industries in this society. The U.S. government funds most research on drugs today, while the pharmaceutical companies benefit from taxpayer-funded research to make their billions.
Johnson and Johnson’s “fine” just covers for a very cozy arrangement with the government!
Dec 9, 2013
When you walk into the Detroit Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History galleries to view the Con Vida “Bandits & Heroes, Poets & Saints” exhibit, you walk into a world of color, music and diversity; a great place to be on a cold winter day!
Green, blue, pink, yellow; the brightly colored houses of villages and cities greet you from paintings on the wall. Dancing and singing in the streets and the faces of a diverse population greet you from a video; descendants of Africans, indigenous peoples, Europeans....
The exhibit explains that “popular art” in the exhibit is the art of ordinary people from the working class neighborhoods of northeast Brazil.
Whether you can spend a half hour or two hours, the exhibit has something to offer every viewer. It is well organized in one large room with multimedia presentations. There are slide shows, posters and explanations in bold color and print that divide the exhibit into bite-sized chunks easily digested.
The exhibit is rich in acrylic paintings, woodblock prints, wooden sculpture, papier mache puppetry and more, broken up into sections that highlight areas of northeast Brazil and subjects like Religion or Movements for Justice, Heroes, Bandits, and the Plantations.
There is a large section on art depicting the period of slavery in Brazil. The exhibit points out that five million Africans were enslaved in Brazil between 1500 and 1850 and shows through colorful art the history of resistance to slavery, oppression and poverty in general by the Brazilian population.
Bandits, Heroes, Poets, and Saints are all mixed up and portrayed through the eyes of artists reflecting perspectives of the popular masses, where a bandit may be a hero or a saint may be a bandit.
Oh, and leave enough time at the end of the exhibit to see the video of the artists themselves. So nice to see such a brilliant reflection of life from “ordinary” people like us!
Dec 9, 2013
The judge in the case of Detroit’s bankruptcy said that an art museum was “not an essential service.” He was speaking of changes and sales and fees and cuts that might happen in Detroit as a result of the bankruptcy ruling.
What’s true about art or music or culture is that the rulers of the country, and their families, have all the access they want. If they desire art or music or culture in any form, they have the money to go around the world, to see the finest monuments or paintings, to look at lost wonders, to hear any artist sing or play in any style at any time.
So public museums and art may not be essential for them, but it is part of what makes us human beings. It is essential that those living in this society learn from what was best in other societies and times. That’s what art or culture in the widest sense does.
That makes it essential for us–something worth fighting to keep.
Dec 9, 2013
Nelson Mandela has died. Tributes to him come in from the entire world, from the powerful, from black people and white. But not everyone agrees on what he represents.
In Mandela, black people of South Africa and the oppressed of the entire world want to salute the fight of a people against racial segregation and for freedom and equality.
The imperialist leaders, on the other hand, salute the policy of Mandela which consisted in limiting this fight. They see in Mandela the man of “reconciliation” and of “peace.” But it was a question of the social peace of the bourgeoisie and imperialism, which made it possible for those at the top of society to continue to enrich themselves, while those down below got poorer and poorer!
The fight against apartheid was the fight of an entire people, rising against a disgusting regime that used the club, torture and prison as methods of government. This struggle meant as much suffering and heartbreak as courage and pride.
So through Mandela the oppressed of the entire world are rendering homage to the people of South Africa, the oppressed who rebelled, the people in Sharpeville and Soweto, the miners and massacred workers.
But the battle against apartheid is unfinished, precisely because of the policy of Mandela and his party, the African National Congress (ANC). At the end of the 1980s, the white leaders at the head of the South African regime, confronted with revolts and ceaseless strikes, were pushed to end the system of racial oppression. They chose to ally with Mandela and the ANC, who had credit among the black masses, to negotiate a smooth end to apartheid.
It was a question of ending the laws sanctioning racial oppression, without affecting the hold of the white owners over the economy, without questioning the profit of the multinational companies, without questioning the interests of the imperialists, in particular in the mines.
Mandela was the man for the job. His long imprisonment by the apartheid regime made him the symbol of the fight against racial oppression. But he wasn’t at all against private property in land and mines, against exploitation, against capitalism, against the existence of an elite. He was for them, on the condition that some black people could find a place among them.
The workers and the poor, who expected that the end of apartheid would lead to a redistribution of land and access to jobs, decent housing, health care, running water and quality schools, were asked to wait, in the name of “national reconciliation.”
But the end of apartheid didn’t change the lives of the poor masses. The black ghettos didn’t disappear. Life for the great mass of black people remains miserable; and they suffer from disgraceful working, living and housing conditions.
Inequalities and exploitation are as ferocious as they were under apartheid, as the miners’ strike of Marikana showed in 2012. And today poor black workers are clubbed, imprisoned and assassinated by black police!
The homage that black South Africans render Mandela attests to their thirst for freedom and their hope for a better life. But that will only be accomplished–there as here–by a fight against the capitalist social order, so that there are no more privileges and privileged, either black or white.
Dec 9, 2013
More than 10,000 people demonstrated in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, on November 18, to protest poverty and to demand the resignation of President Michel Martelly. Martelly protects his own personal interests, those of the wealthy, and has shown himself just as corrupt as his predecessors.
The past several weeks has seen a wave of protests both in the capital and in other cities, where thousands of people from the poorest neighborhoods have taken to the streets. They also confront police repression, as noted in the journal of comrades in the French West Indies, from which the following is translated:
Throughout the month of October, there were a number of demonstrations against the government of President Martelly. On October 23, the young people of the neighborhoods and some students took to the streets of Port-au-Prince. They were responding to the call for protests of the lawyer André Michel, who has launched a legal complaint against the Martelly family for corruption. When the demonstrators reached the National Palace, they demanded the resignation of the government. They were dispersed by the police using tear gas. Some students responded to the teargas by throwing a hail of rocks.
In another protest, on Oct. 8, hundreds of residents of Fort-Liberté, a city in the north, took to the streets to demand that the mayor keep his promise to build a bridge. The police responded with tear gas and bullets, killing one man. Angry demonstrators set fire to a nearby police station.
A number of demonstrations have demanded the government take action to improve the living conditions of the population. [Haiti is one of the poorest countries on earth.]
Politicians opposed to Martelly have participated in these protests in hopes of pleasing voters for their political parties. So the Famni Lavalas called for the Oct. 17 demonstration in Port-au-Prince. Thousands of demonstrators protested the high price of school tuition, the rising cost of living, the need for new housing, as well as demanding the resignation of President Martelly. Opposition politicians marched at the head of the demonstration, some holding signs with the portrait of former President Aristide. These politicians conveniently forget that Aristide, before he was ousted, also served the “big eaters” (the rich), just like Martelly does.
For the moment, the discontent of the population is most often expressed in demonstrations orchestrated by politicians. Not only do these opponents of Martelly not defend the interests of the workers and the poor, but also they plan how to use the population for their own political purposes.
These demonstrations, these mobilizations in the streets, are the voice of the future for the workers and the poor of Haiti. They show an example of combativity to the workers and poor of the West Indies and of the United States. As always, the exploited can count only on themselves, and not on the politicians who serve the rich.
Dec 9, 2013
This article is from the November 22nd, 2013 edition of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
The police and the Saudi authorities have carried out a huge repressive manhunt aimed at immigrant workers within its borders. In Saudi Arabia, immigrants number more than eight million people, of whom two million are considered “illegal.”
These workers, who are mostly Africans from Ethiopia, Mali, Guinea, and Eritrea—even just counting those whose papers are in order—make up a considerable part of the working class in Saudi Arabia, a country of 27 million inhabitants. While the exploitation of immigrants benefits the Saudi ruling class, these workers are stripped of all rights.
The journal Le Pouvoir aux Travailleurs (Power to the Workers), edited by comrades of l’Union Africaine des Travailleurs Communistes Internationalistes (The African Union of Internationalist Communist Workers), describes their situation:
Certain kafeels (contractors) are businessmen bringing in foreign workers to sell their labor to small businessmen. They have been able to amass fortunes on the backs of these immigrants. When their clients are small merchants, these contractors take a certain percent out of their revenue. If their clients are workers, this contracting system almost resembles slavery. The workers have no rights and are at the mercy of the kafeel. The immigrants can be exploited by the kafeel directly or given to other exploiters, but in either case, the workers pay the kafeel a fee for smuggling them into the country.
Apparently the Saudi rulers propose to end the right of kafeels to rent out their workforce to a third party. And yet, for the moment, the kafeels are not the ones getting arrested. The workers were threatened with two years in prison and fines up to $27,000, if they didn’t follow a royal order “to leave the territory by Nov. 3rd at the latest.”
Starting the next day, the police began to hunt the immigrants who stayed. On November 9th, they locked down the poor neighborhood of Manfouha, in the capital Riyadh, where many immigrant workers live with their families. Hundreds of policemen and members of special security forces came to arrest people. Riots broke out. Government sources say three people died, dozens were wounded, and 561 people called “troublemakers” were arrested.
After this police violence, many illegal immigrants have stopped trying to hide and have been forced to turn themselves over to the authorities. Abandoning most of their possessions, they board motorbuses by the thousands and are driven to deportation centers. The journal Jeune Afrique (Young Africa) wrote that Saudi police have arrested 33,000 immigrants since November 12, of whom 17,000 await expulsion in these centers.
The major powers like the U.S. and the European countries remain completely silent about these acts, in order not to offend the sensibilities of the feudal rulers of Saudi Arabia. To show their confidence in the Saudis, the U.N. General Assembly elected Saudi Arabia a member of their Human Rights Council on November 12.
What a sinister farce!
Dec 9, 2013
T.J. Jemison, one of the leaders of the 1953 bus boycott in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has died at the age of 95.
The Baton Rouge bus boycott is not as well-known as the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, but it played a pivotal role.
As in other cities in the South, buses were segregated in Baton Rouge in 1953. Black passengers were not allowed to sit in the white front section, even though 80 percent of the bus riders were black. Jemison, a Baptist minister, said that he would watch women who had cooked and cleaned in houses of white folks all day having to stand up in the back on the long bus ride home, while half the seats were empty.
When attempts to change city segregation laws were ruled unconstitutional by the State of Louisiana, that very day, Jemison and Raymond Scott, a black tailor, announced on the radio that a boycott of the bus system would begin the next morning.
By the end of the following day, no black passengers were riding the buses. Some walked to work and others used free rides organized by the United Defense League (UDL), the organization that led the boycott.
Faced with the open threat of violence from the police and the Ku Klux Klan, the protesters organized armed guards. The whole black community stood behind the boycott. Thousands of people attended nightly meetings called by the UDL, where money was collected to pay for the gas for the carpool system. The crowds grew so large that, on the third day of the boycott, the meeting was held at the Memorial Stadium.
After eight days, the city establishment offered a “compromise”: only the first two seats on a bus would still be reserved for white people, although black passengers would still not be allowed to sit in front of a white passenger. Insisting that segregation be done away with altogether, many protesters continued the boycott, even though the UDL decided to accept the offer and called the boycott off.
The Baton Rouge bus boycott officially lasted only eight days, and did not end bus segregation. But the fact that black residents of Baton Rouge were able to stand together against Klan terror helped to open the door to what became a massive resistance movement against legal segregation in the 1950s and ’60s.
Dec 9, 2013
Eighty young people in foster care were bused recently from Baltimore to Philadelphia by the Department of Social Services. They took tests at the “Crooked Places Made Straight” Academy and were then given high school “diplomas.” For these fake diplomas, “Crooked Places” charged the department $500 apiece.
These young people had already been cheated long before they went to Philadelphia. They had lost their families before being sent to foster care, and then didn’t get the help they needed to graduate from public schools.
The public schools in Baltimore have special programs for students who drop out before finishing high school. In addition, the State of Maryland runs programs for young people who leave high school without graduating. These programs allow students to get a legitimate high school diploma, which doesn’t cost anywhere near $500, even with preparation classes thrown in.
The deal that the privately owned religious academy “Crooked Places” gave the young people is certainly crooked. Still, they get to keep the $40,000, even though such diplomas would be thrown out as worthless pieces of paper at any legitimate college.
Those who pretend that education, social services and health care need to be run on “business models” simply take public funds to give to private businesses.
That makes this society as “crooked” as that diploma mill in Philadelphia.
Dec 9, 2013
Unionized state employees in Michigan have mobilized to express outrage at the governor’s plans to decimate health insurance. The state’s proposed new plan for ALL employees would “offer” worse health insurance coverage than “new hires” have right now under Two Tier.
Unionized state employees in Michigan have no legal right to strike. Under arcane rules, when unions and management can’t agree about the contract, workers get no vote. A body called the Civil Service Commission—appointed 100 percent by management—will dictate the final union contract.
To have an impact, workers must “vote with their feet” and take action.
The following are reprinted from The Spark newsletter at State of Michigan:
Three State of Michigan pension fund administrators just got 88% raises! Are they serious? Everyone who works for the State is now doing the job of 2 or 3 people and working harder than ever. All deserve an 88% raise!
A spokesman for the State of Michigan said on the radio that the state is offering union workers a “generous” pay increase. By generous, do they mean the 88% raise top Treasury officials just received?!
No, they mean a 2% raise one year and a 1% raise the next. What a joke! This does NOT keep up with inflation, does NOT offset the years with no raises, and does NOT offset thousands of dollars in new healthcare costs.
The protest in Lansing on November 13 was fun. State workers and retirees enjoyed the chance to speak out. The fight is not over. The governor’s proposed cuts are still on the table. The Civil Service Commission meets again on December 18 to vote on cuts to state workers.
The Michigan Coalition of State Employee Unions has planned the next protest for Detroit on Monday, December 16 from noon to 1 p.m. Location: 3044 W. Grand Blvd., Detroit—the Cadillac Place State Office Building. Invite worker friends, city workers, retirees—everyone who is under attack by Governor Snyder can come and speak out.
Dec 9, 2013
The City of Chicago decided to buy the former site of the Michael Reese hospital in 2009 from the Mills family, ostensibly to use for the 2016 Olympics. But the city didn’t get the Olympics. Now, Chicago owes the super-rich Mills family more than 111 million dollars for the closed hospital–which the Mills family got for only 19 million dollars!
The Millses are pitching in a few million to help pay for demolishing the hospital. But this family, who “happen to be” closely tied to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, are walking away with a whopping 584% profit at Chicagoans expense.
Dec 9, 2013
When an electrical fire broke out at the Cadillac Place State Office Building in Detroit on November 23, who was there to benefit from the amazing capabilities of City of Detroit firefighters? Why Governor Snyder himself! He was stranded in his 14th floor Detroit office when the fire broke out.
Even though the Governor is spearheading the attack on firefighters’ pensions and benefits, the firefighters were very professional in escorting the governor and all evacuees down the stairs.
If the governor keeps up his attacks, maybe the firefighters will help him from his office in a way that isn’t so polite.
Dec 9, 2013
In mid-November, Boeing made an offer to its workforce in Seattle that it said “the workers could not refuse.” In return for a company promise to keep production of its latest airplane, the stretch version of the 777, called the 777X, in Seattle, Boeing demanded a horrible concession contract lasting eight years. These concessions included an end to the pension program, a virtual pay freeze, a permanent two tier wage system and much more expensive health benefits.
The workers, who belong to Lodge 751 of the Machinist union (IAM), rejected the contract by a two-to-one margin. So, Boeing threatened to move the 777X production to South Carolina, California, Texas, Alabama, Utah, or Kansas, engaging them in a bidding war to extract the most concessions from the workforce, as well as from state and local taxpayers. In fact, Washington State opened this bidding war by offering close to nine billion dollars in tax breaks and subsidies–a record amount from a state government.
Whenever Boeing management has tried to move airplane production out of the Seattle area, it has lost a huge amount of money.
But that hasn’t stopped Boeing from continuing to try to move airplane production out of Seattle. A secret company study that was leaked to the press explained why: Boeing is seeking to gain greater “leverage” over what it calls “an unbalanced and uncompetitive labor relationship.” In other words, Boeing is trying to outflank and smash its unionized workforce.
Certainly, Boeing has the money to carry out this expensive attack, given its global monopoly over commercial aircraft production. Last year, Boeing’s after-tax profits hit four billion dollars, and this year it is expected to be even more. And with 95 billion dollars in advance orders of its new 777X airliner, Boeing’s stock price has doubled in the last year.
Just as concessions imposed on auto workers by GM, Chrysler and Ford set the stage for Boeing’s attacks, these deep concession demands by Boeing may set off a new round of worse attacks nationwide.
Long gone are the days when workers at highly profitable companies could defend their wages and benefits alone. Today, the worsening crisis and high unemployment has sharpened the class struggle so that even the most skilled, best paid workers can only defend their interests as part of a much wider working class fight.
Dec 9, 2013
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes decided Detroit is eligible for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. With the stroke of a pen, he dismissed pension protections in the Michigan state constitution, saying such protections are “contracts” that can be thrown out in a federal bankruptcy court.
He accepted as true that Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr failed to properly negotiate with the unions, as is supposedly required under bankruptcy law, but he ruled it didn’t matter because good faith negotiations would have been “impracticable.”
In his ruling, the judge repeated all the conventional lies about city worker pensions and retiree health care causing a huge debt load.
Retiree pensions and medical coverage are long-term debts. They are not due today but rather are owed more than 30 years or more. The big figures adding up to 18 billion dollars were misrepresentations, meant to throw dust in everyone’s eyes.
In fact, Detroit is in bankruptcy only because it ran out of short-term revenue to pay its bills. The hidden truth is that the city has a cash flow shortfall of no more than 198 million dollars a year, according to Wallace Turbeville, a former investment banker from Goldman Sachs, who has meticulously researched the city’s finances.
And that shortfall could easily be covered. The list is long of how politicians slashed the income needed by the city. Detroit loses 20 million dollars a year because of all the tax abatements given to big companies like GM and Compuware and wealthy “developers” like Dan Gilbert, Mike Ilitch and Bill Ford, Jr.
Whatever tax money these companies do pay doesn’t go to the city, it goes to the Downtown Development Authority, which then hands it back to business!
Detroit was denied almost 43 million dollars every year due to cutbacks in state revenue sharing, a conscious decision made by the Republican-controlled state legislature and governor.
Detroit was denied about 80 million dollars a year from cutbacks in federal revenue sharing, a conscious decision made by the Democratic Obama administration.
Detroit lost untold millions in tax revenue from the sub-prime mortgage real estate scam run by some of the biggest banks in the country. As a result, many Detroiters lost their homes and whole neighborhoods were decimated.
Detroit had to pay almost a billion dollars in fees and penalties on its debt as a result of a financial scam run by some of the biggest schemers on Wall Street.
The so-called leaders of the city and the governor now demand that city workers lose their pensions and their medical coverage to make up for shortages in funding and accumulated debt their policies caused. And they are proposing to spin off revenue-producing departments like the Department of Water and Sewage and the Public Lighting Department.
The corporations caused the budget shortfall, and now they are using it to attack Detroiters even more. End all the handouts to corporations. Make them pay!
Dec 9, 2013
The Democratic-controlled Illinois state legislature and the Democratic governor just passed a law slashing pensions for Illinois public workers, in spite of the fact that the state constitution says that public pension benefits “may not be diminished or impaired.” This law cuts cost of living increases enormously, so that pensions won’t keep up with inflation. Teachers, nurses, caseworkers, and others who work 30 years and live 20 years after retirement will lose more than $250,000 each. It also makes workers younger than 46 wait up to five more years before retirement. And it sets up the threat of ditching the pensions for a 401(k) style plan, along with who knows what additional hidden cuts.
This attack was carried out, and will be imitated at the local level, by the Democratic Party–a party that has proven once again that it is an enemy of the working class.
The average worker affected by this bill today retires with a pension of $32,000 a year, and many make much less. Most of these retirees do not get Social Security. In addition most state workers pay between 8 and 9% of their wages into the pension fund throughout their working lives. With the inflation that’s sure to come in the years ahead, this bill will destroy the standard of living of current and future retirees.
Big business organizations like the Civic Federation pushed these cuts. The main Chicago newspapers went along with the drama, writing article after article about the “pension crisis.” Democrats sometimes shed crocodile tears for the benefit of the workers who supported them, but did the dirty work of big business by cutting the pensions nonetheless.
We can’t trust the numbers given about how underfunded the pension funds are to justify cutting them, but the funds undoubtedly are short. That’s because for decades, the state used the pension funds like a giant credit card, skipping payments so they could hand over tax breaks to huge corporations like Caterpillar, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Boeing, Miller-Coors, United Airlines, and Sears, to the tune of 1.5 billion dollars a year. About two-thirds of all companies in Illinois pay no state income taxes at all. And of course, these businesses and their politician cronies never cried about the state missing its pension payments all the years they were stealing the money.
The pension funds need to be filled back up by taking the money stolen out of them back from the big corporations. Obviously the Democrats will never do this. It’s long past time for workers to count on our own forces, build our own party, and stop supporting our enemies!