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
Mar 31, 2014
Corporate profits continued their record-breaking streak. Stupendously high, profits now account for twice as much of the U.S. economy as they did in the 1990s–when profits were already very high. The Wall Street Journal calls it the long-running “profit-margin miracle.”
A “miracle”? Not at all! The capitalists just grabbed more for themselves. They increased the exploitation of the working class. They boosted worker productivity, driving fewer workers to produce more. They extended the time workers spend on the job, being forced to work overtime or second and third jobs. They cut wages and eliminated benefits. Meanwhile, tens of millions of unemployed and underemployed people scrape by on practically nothing.
Corporations gorged themselves on public spending. Government officials handed over vast amounts of money from the public treasury through subsidies, privatization and other giveaways. They cut corporate taxes, reducing the tax rate that corporations pay by 25% over just the last five years.
To pay for all these gifts to capital, government officials slashed programs and services that the working population depends on, including education and health care, as well as safety net programs like unemployment insurance and food stamps. And they hiked the taxes and fees that workers pay.
This is what produced such a flood of profits. The big corporations boosted CEO pay to the sky, enriched their biggest stockholders with higher dividends and stock buy-backs, and blew hundreds of billions of dollars buying and selling each other’s companies. And they were still left with a cash hoard of eight trillion dollars! Eight TRILLION–that’s equal to half the entire U.S. economy. Put another way, eight trillion dollars is equal to all the money the federal government spent in 2013, 2012 and three months of 2011, said tax expert David Cay Johnston.
This is what capitalist class policy boils down to: a never-ending drive to extort more sacrifices from the working population in order to increase profit.
The working class needs its own policy to defend its own interests.
The wealth these companies have accumulated should be used to assure that everyone’s needs are met, out of simple human decency.
If that money were used for the benefit of the population, millions of unemployed workers would be set to building and repairing what has been left by the capitalists and their political henchmen to rot and decay, such as the crumbling infrastructure and the stock of affordable housing. Millions more would be employed in public services, starting with decent education and healthcare for everyone.
But more than that is needed. No company making a profit would be allowed to add to the horrendous level of unemployment by laying off more workers. Bring back all the jobs those companies eliminated in their speed-up drive. The tens of millions that companies locked out of the workforce would be put to work.
Work would be divided up among everyone who wants to work–with no loss of weekly pay. If that means we all work only 25 or 30 hours, fine–but for a decent wage. No one should have to kill themselves trying to keep up either with inhuman speed-up, or inhumanly long hours.
No one is going to give us any of this: no politicians, judges or Labor Boards. And the capitalists certainly won’t willingly give it up. But we can fight for it. And given our vast numbers and the central role workers play in economic life, we can determine what happens.
The working class can determine the future. But the working class needs its own policy, a fighting policy.
Mar 31, 2014
The California State University system was supposed to have no tuition increases for four years–at least that’s what both state politicians and university officials promised last year.
It didn’t take them long to break their promise. Cal State tuition is going up again; except that now it’s called “student success fee”–in other words, they are imposing another hike, but saying that the quicker you get out, the cheaper it will be. So isn’t that really a hike? What nonsense!
Eleven of the system’s twenty-three campuses have already announced a “success fee,” and more campuses are jumping on the bandwagon practically every day. The amount of the increase varies–so far, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Cal State San Jose have the highest with $630 per year, for an 11.5% tuition increase. On the “low” end, there is Cal State Fullerton with $60–but that’s only in the beginning; the tuition increase at Fullerton will reach $181 per year by the fall of 2016.
Cal State tuition was outrageously high already. Between 2001-02 to 2011-12, Cal State officials increased the tuition from $1,428 to $5,472 per year, for a 383 per cent increase over ten years.
These increases are occurring in a situation where state officials are admitting that school funding is not the problem. Gov. Jerry Brown just announced a 4.2-billion-dollar surplus in this year’s state budget. Brown himself pushed for, and got, a sales tax increase from voters in November 2012, with the promise that he would put more money into education.
These fees will weigh more heavily on so-called “unsuccessful” students who take longer to graduate–that is, on working class students, who are more likely to take longer to graduate due to inadequate preparation before college and who must work while going to school.
Once again, these regressive rates disadvantage working class families from attaining higher education in this blatantly unfair society.
Mar 31, 2014
To catch three bank robbers, police shut down a major artery in and out of Washington, D.C. and detained hundreds of commuters. During rush hour. Going car to car, they pointed shotguns and semi-automatic rifles at people, and searched their vehicles without a warrant.
And why were they terrorizing the population? They were looking for three men who had robbed a bank. Terrorizing an entire population just to catch three criminals.
Did the police learn these tactics from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?
Mar 31, 2014
The average bonus for Wall Street traders this year was $164,000. It’s the third highest on record.
And it’s 2007 all over again. That’s the year when Wall Street traders–better known as speculators–made big bucks for themselves and their banks, tying their financial system up in knots, setting in motion the collapse of 2008.
Well, they’re back at it again!
Mar 31, 2014
Gilead Sciences Inc. is betting that some people will pay $1,000 a pill for its new medication against hepatitis C–$14,000 for a two-week course of the medication.
That’s the price the company has put on Sovaldi, a new drug that supposedly is better than current drugs in treating hepatitis.
Hepatitis C progressively destroys your liver, leading to your death if the disease continues. Sovaldi supposedly checks the disease in between 80 and 90 per cent of patients.
Money hungry vultures? You bet!
And one more proof that in capitalist society the health care you get depends on how much money you have!
Mar 31, 2014
Both houses of the Maryland legislature recently approved an administration plan to reduce state contributions for state workers’ and teachers’ pensions by 500 million dollars over the next five years. They also approved a cut in inheritance taxes for millionaires in Maryland that will allow these rich folks to avoid paying 431 million dollars in state taxes over the next five years.
Looks like they’re taking the workers’ pension money and giving it to the millionaires, doesn’t it?
Mar 31, 2014
At 2:50 A.M. on March 24, a Blue Line train crashed through the barrier at the O’Hare airport station, jumped the tracks, and landed on top of an escalator. Thirty-two people were hurt, and no one was killed or more seriously injured only because, in the middle of the night, no one was in the path of the train.
It appears that the train driver fell asleep as the train entered the tunnel leading to the airport. But the train was not speeding–it was going the approved speed of 25 miles an hour. The emergency brakes did engage before the crash. There was a metal shock absorber at the end of the tracks. But these did not stop the train as they were supposed to do.
The Chicago Transit Authority and the media blame the train operator, pointing out that she fell asleep once before. They blame the union, saying it should be easier to fire drivers who make mistakes. What hypocrisy!
This driver was working crazy, inconsistent shifts. She worked as a fill-in for more senior workers, so sometimes she’d work during the morning, sometimes the afternoon, and sometimes overnight. Like so many workers, she was picking up all the shifts she could to try to make ends meet. No wonder she was exhausted and dozed off. When the Chicago Transit Authority sets up train and bus drivers to have these kinds of schedules, it is setting up a system that puts us all at risk.
How many other workers on the roads today are exhausted from the pressures of work and family? How many truck and bus drivers, or others with dangerous jobs are pushed beyond the limits of safety, because society is organized for the convenience of the bosses, not for the health and safety of the workers? Luckily, this time, no one was killed. But this system is a killer.
Mar 31, 2014
Jerome Murdough, a 56-year-old homeless man, was found dead in a Rikers Island jail cell. A New York city official said, “He basically baked to death.” The temperature in his cell was 100 degrees when guards found him, and may have been higher in the four hours since the time he was locked in his cell. Officials attributed the 100-degree temperature in his cell in the middle of March to malfunctioning equipment.
Murdough was a mentally ill ex-Marine. The medications he was taking may have made him more susceptible to the heat. Since he was being held in Rikers’ mental-observation unit, he was on suicide watch. Guards were supposed to check on Murdough every 15 minutes, yet no one did for four hours during which he died from the heat.
The reason Murdough was jailed in the first place was for “trespassing” in a housing project. His past criminal record consisted of 11 trespassing convictions, drinking in public, and minor drug offenses–in other words, for being homeless and mentally ill. Despite his poverty, his bail was set at $2500–not a high amount for many people, but obviously too much for a person in Murdough’s circumstance.
Murdough was able to make it through the Marines. He was able to survive homelessness. And he was able to live with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
What he couldn’t survive was the American prison system. Prison budgets have been cut, which means infrastructure like ventilation systems are not maintained and staff reductions prevent prisoners like Murdough from receiving attention in a timely fashion.
People like Murdough are victims of a society that treats homeless people, the mentally-ill and prisoners as throwaways. The attitude of those in power is to just let them all die. As Dostoevsky said, “The degree of civilization of a society can be judged by entering its prisons,” and the conditions of U.S. prisons demonstrate its barbarism.
Mar 31, 2014
Eight people were killed in a huge explosion in East Harlem on March 12. The blast also injured more than 60 people, at least two of them critically. Two apartment buildings were leveled, leaving at least 100 people homeless.
The disaster was totally avoidable. Residents had been smelling gas for weeks, and reporting it to the landlords and authorities. And sure enough, AFTER the explosion, the National Transportation Safety Board found that the ground under the buildings was saturated with natural gas, due to a leak in the 126-year-old cast-iron gas main.
Officials of the utility company serving the area, Consolidated Edison, said they responded to the complaints, but found no leaks when they “cruised the block” on February 28.
As outrageous as the company’s attitude toward safety sounds, it is confirmed by the words of Bob Ackley, a former gas company worker who was featured in the online magazine Matter. Ackley said that gas companies are quick to fix leaks that they consider “most dangerous,” but they would do nothing about most leaks that are reported.
And it’s not just in New York. Tens of thousands of leaks are reported across the U.S. every year, and explosions killing dozens of people have happened every year. Not surprisingly, because under U.S. cities there are thousands of miles of cast-iron pipes, decades old and corroded.
The money companies don’t spend on necessary repairs ends up in the pockets of shareholders as more profit. The capitalist system has turned our cities into powder kegs under our feet.
Mar 31, 2014
This article is from the March 28th issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
During the current standoff between Russia and the West over Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, one expression in particular cropped up again and again in the declarations of Western European and U.S. politicians and media: the “respect for international law.”
Representing the most powerful government in the world, Obama started the ball rolling by proclaiming that: “The proposed referendum on Crimea [on its reattachment to Russia] … would violate international law.” On behalf of second-rate powers like France, Germany, and Great Britain, heads of state Hollande, Merkel, and Cameron called it an “illegal and illegitimate referendum.” Then, after the final tally revealed that the large majority of the Crimean population found it in fact perfectly legitimate to rejoin Russia, they changed their refrain to: “The absorption into the Russian Federation is, in our firm opinion, … against international law,” to cite one speech by the German Chancellor Merkel.
She and her colleagues want above all to persuade their respective countries that the imperialist powers are in the right when they base what is legal and legitimate on what accords with their own interests.
In fact, “international law” is just that: their own law. This law is nothing but the codification of the law of “might makes right” by the United Nations and other organizations in which the big powers dominate. In the case of an unresolved rivalry between the bandits who govern the world, they are forced to make a compromise that becomes this “law.”
In all of this, none of the big powers take account of the right of populations to govern themselves.
Accordingly, the secession of Crimea, even when sanctioned by 97% of all voters, counts for nothing in the field of international law because Ukraine (with which Crimea is financially linked) is governed by supporters of the European Union and the United States. On the contrary, the Western powers considered the secession of the former Serbian province of Kosovo in 2008 perfectly legitimate in terms of international law, since they supported Kosovo against the Serbian government in Belgrade, against which they had fought after the breakup of Yugoslavia.
It is also worth remembering the 19th and 20th centuries, when France and England forcibly carved immense empires from the flesh of the entire populations of Africa, Asia, and other regions. They aimed to establish an internationally recognized system of pillage by which each colonial power had exclusive rights over its colonies and the hundreds of millions of people living in them.
However, even after decolonization, international law served to cover over the worst crimes against populations. From the Korean War waged by the United States and its allies in the 1950s to the recent French interventions in Mali and the Central African Republic, it is difficult to even count the military operations of the imperialist powers which their international laws have justified under the command of the UN, this modern “league of brigands,” as Lenin described the UN’s predecessor, the League of Nations.
Even in rare cases like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which hundreds of U.N. resolutions have affirmed and reaffirmed Palestinians’ right to an independent state and even condemned Israel’s military occupation of Palestine for more than half a century, what has “international law” changed? The United States financially and militarily supports Israel, making it the enforcer of imperialist order in the region. This allows Israel to essentially ignore the rights of Palestinians and even the UN resolutions full of phrases about “international law.” These resolutions are empty precisely because this law is that of the big powers, and they interpret it according only to their own interests.
Mar 31, 2014
This article is from the March 28th issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
During his European tour at the end of March, President Obama attempted to flex his muscles before his allies in the Old World, as well as Putin. He took advantage of a meeting attended by about 50 heads of state on the fringe of the G7 Summit—when the seven most powerful countries in the world meet. He was making the point that NATO (the military coalition organized by the United States to fight the Soviet Union after World War II) remains an alliance, “the strongest the world has ever known.”
Although the USSR, which had served as the pretext for this military bloc, has been gone for a quarter century, NATO is still a threatening presence. Precisely.
Obama has put his finger on what is at the heart of “international law,” which is the military force that imposes it.
Mar 31, 2014
This article is from the March 21st issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
On March 17th, the government decided to put in place a system of restrictions on driving in Paris and 22 of its suburbs. In order to reduce pollution, it was declared illegal for vehicles with even-numbered license plates to drive on certain days, while vehicles with odd-numbered license plates were forbidden from driving on the other days.
The government decided to apply this measure, not used since 1997, after several days of intense pollution in different regions. It certainly felt the need to give the impression of doing something, what with the municipal elections only one week away. Although automobile use is only responsible for 20% of the overall level of pollution, this measure only hurts drivers and not the big polluters like industry and commercial agriculture. But above all, it makes no attack whatsoever on the main causes of pollution, even that which is produced by cars.
These causes are profoundly linked to the way this capitalist society functions. In this society, the question of where workers live and where they work, like everything else, is left up to the blind laws of the market. This has always been a nearly unsolvable problem for workers, since cities from the start of the capitalist era had only slums to offer them, before real-estate speculation drove up the cost of city land and finally drove them into the more distant suburbs.
This phenomenon has taken on yet another form within the last forty years or so. The government, which had built thousands of public housing projects after the terrible postwar housing crisis, dramatically reduced their construction at the end of the 1970’s. At the same time that the economic crisis struck, real estate prices skyrocketed in and around the big cities, all due to speculation. Workers were forced to search for housing farther and farther away, which was a financial blessing for suburban real estate developers. At the same time, companies decided where to locate using a logic similarly linked to the laws of the market and determined by speculation.
In the Paris region, for example, the decisions to construct a business center at La Défense, or to close factories like that of Citroën Javel or Renault Billancourt in order to resell the land and shift production to the larger suburbs, take no account of the problem of the great distance between where workers live and where they work. Recently, this distance has grown even greater. This is one of the main reasons for the increase in the use of cars, since public transportation has obviously not been expanded to keep up with these changes.
Confronted with such a situation, the public authorities offer no real solutions. Since they hold the laws of the market and speculation sacred, there is no way within the framework of this system to plan the urbanization process, to control how cities expand, to make them more livable for their inhabitants, and to coordinate the location of workplaces with housing and public transportation. When capitalism imposes its anarchy and its law of the jungle, it asphyxiates this society, both literally and figuratively.
Mar 31, 2014
This article is from the March 28th issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
Hundreds of thousands of people from all regions in Spain participated in this demonstration that took place in Madrid on Saturday, March 22. Some had come on foot from far away places, walking from town to town over several weeks. Others had travelled by bus or train. There were rows upon rows of demonstrators, many groups led by colorful banners, organized by their work. In the health and education sectors, important struggles have taken place over the last months challenging the authorities, forcing them to back off on some of their attacks. The fire-fighters of Madrid and other regions, identified by their uniforms, served as marshals for the demonstration, to show their support.
The demonstrators gathered initially around the two main railroad stations in Madrid, and then converged on the vast Colon Square, in the center of the capital. Representatives of organizations and groups from all over Spain addressed the crowd. They explained that this “march for dignity” was a step toward the larger struggle of imposing their demands to allow the working classes to live with “dignity”—for all workers to have a job, a roof over their heads, social benefits, which have been put in jeopardy over the last several years of continuing budget cuts.
Those who spoke—coming from different unions, associations or political groups—passionately expressed the anger of the laboring classes. They emphasized their pride in being workers, their pride in their labor; the necessity of the various struggles joining and fighting together. There were some very emotional moments—as in listening to the words of an unemployed worker from Murcia.
Diego Cañamero, leader of the Andalusian Workers Union that initiated this mobilization, ended his speech by calling for the development of struggles, and launched the idea of a general strike across the country, with the hope that workers organized in the majority unions would take advantage of this call to go into action. The key remains the mobilization of the workers in the large private and public companies, where the majority unions are implanted. For years, these unions have entered into negotiations with the government rather than seeking to organize workers’ struggles to push back the bosses who continue to lay off, to cut wages and to attack workers in various ways. What is decisive is the capacity of this section of the working class to use its strength.
This movement follows on the Occupy 15M movement, born on May 15, 2011. But it is different in that it focuses on the interests of workers. Unlike 15M, it does not oppose the expression of political ideas, or the appearance as such of political parties or organizations. The objectives remain vague, however, focusing mostly on the call for the government to resign, or for the refusal to pay the debt and the rejection of the Troika, that is, the EU, the IMF and the European Central Bank. But this successful mobilization has the merit of opening new prospects for social protest.
Mar 31, 2014
The mudslide disaster in Washington state is heart-wrenching. As we go to press, there are 25 confirmed dead and at least 90 people still missing, making it almost certain that over half the population of the little town of Oso has been wiped out.
Oso is in an area prone to landslides and mud slides because of its rivers and steep hills. It is also just 55 miles northeast of Seattle and only 20 miles from Everett, where Boeing Aircraft Company builds many of the most technologically advanced airliners in the world. So you might think the residents of the town would have received some warning before the disaster struck. But they had no warning at all before the hillside above the town gave way unleashing a wall of mud, rocks and water.
In recent years, town residents were involved in efforts to stop flooding along the Stillaguamish River near town. And they knew there had been a mudslide near the town in 2006. But residents of Oso say they were not aware of the possibility that a mud slide could hit their town. Town officials claim they knew nothing of studies and reports in 1999, 2000 and 2006 warning of the danger the town faced.
But the straw that may have broken the camel’s back is the clear-cut timber cutting that results in elimination of tree roots that hold the soil and assure water absorption. Resulting landslides have occurred in the area for many decades. In the 1950s, slides occurred in nearby areas clear-cut in the 1940s. Slides in the 1960s, 1991, 2006 and 2014 happened in other nearby clear-cut areas. And nine years ago, it now appears that a logging company cut 350 feet past a boundary line that the state set to prevent the risk of a landslide uphill from Oso.
Oso is in an area fraught with danger. But in their drive for profit it now appears that logging companies may have been the ones that turned that danger into a complete disaster.
Mar 31, 2014
The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) announced it was ramping up an “aggressive” campaign to shut off water service to 1,500 to 3,000 households with delinquent water bills weekly. More than fifteen hundred families a week shut off–what an attack!
There are more than 150,000 delinquent household accounts out of around 300,000–more than half. Similarly, almost half of the commercial accounts in the city are delinquent.
The DWSD and the media portray this as a problem of people trying to get out of paying their bills. A specialist for the department stated cynically, “We’re trying to shift the behavioral payment patterns of our customer base ....”
What’s wrong is the behavior of the city. Residents’ water meters often don’t work. When the DWSD installs a new meter, people wind up receiving a huge bill they cannot afford to pay. Or the bills are simply wrong and the department ignores the protest.
If there are this many unpaid bills, it’s due to a combination of poverty and problems the water department itself created. So fine, if they don’t want delinquent bills, make sure all the meters are working. Start everybody over at a zero balance.
But that is not what they’re doing. Not only that–some of the biggest outstanding bills are from a few big companies, and their bills would undoubtedly total up to as much as most of the residential and smaller commercial accounts. But rather than go after the big-time delinquents, the Water Department plans to go after anyone more than two months behind in their bills or owing just $150, about two times the average monthly bill. Many of these are poor people for whom $150 is hard to pay. They also plan to restrict the ability of people to pay back what they owe in installments.
The aim behind this “aggressive campaign”: it is one more way to take land the developers want by driving people who cannot afford to pay out of the city.
Access to water should be a right, not a privilege. Stop the water shut-offs to poor people! Stop the land grab!
Mar 31, 2014
In March, two Los Angeles politicians proposed to raise sales taxes to 9.5% for the next 15 years to generate $4.5 billion. The current sales tax of 9.0% is already one of the highest sales taxes in the U.S. And in addition, authorities want another increase for the Metro and more construction projects.
These tax increases are regressive. Everybody, working poor and idle rich, pays the same sales taxes, but these taxes hit working people the hardest, taking a big chunk from their limited budget.
Meanwhile, the mayor wants more tax breaks for the corporations, including a proposal to completely eliminate the city’s business taxes that amount to $400 million per year, or 10% of the city’s budget. The Mayor’s plan predicts that this tax revenue loss will be offset by gains in sales tax and other revenue streams. Simply put, workers will foot the bill.
It’s past time to stop these gifts to the rich at the expense of workers. If they want more money, let them take it from the wealthy by stopping the handouts.
Mar 31, 2014
During the recent winter storms in Washington, most federal government office workers had the day off with pay. Many thousands of them had signed “telecommute agreements” to work from home. Having agreed to telecommute for a part of their work week, they were then required to work at home when it became convenient for the government to demand it.
Telecommuting used to be exclusively a management perk. But as spying and “networking” software gets better and better, bosses have all the more reason to encourage more ordinary office workers to telecommute.
On a worldwide level, ten percent of call center workers work at home every day. They are given no workplace to go to. Completely cut off from their co-workers, their homes turned into prisons, all they can do is slave away.
Remember how we lost our pensions? Bosses introduced 401k plans “for management only.” Then they started allowing workers in on it. For years, we had our pensions side by side with 401k plans. Then they started taking the pensions away, until all that was left was the 401k. It took a couple decades, but it happened. They’re doing exactly the same thing now, slowly, with these telecommute arrangements, trying to dismantle our possibility to act together.
Mar 31, 2014
For the truth, read a 2013 Michigan Senate Fiscal Agency (SFA) report: “Does a Lower Unemployment Rate Mean the Economy is Improving?” It says–NO!
The report says that from the year 2000 until 2012, Michigan lost 487,500 people from the labor force. That is almost half a million people no longer in the labor force!
To quote the SFA report: “If the 487,500 individuals who exited the labor force between 2000 and 2012 had remained in the labor force, the unemployment rate in 2012 would have been 25.5%–not the official rate of 9.1%”
Officially, Michigan “created” 64,000 new jobs in 2013. Only 422,500 more jobs to go before 2014 Michigan catches up with 1990 Michigan!
Mar 31, 2014
Commissioners in Carroll County, Maryland, insist on opening every meeting with a prayer that invokes Jesus Christ. Offended citizens sued to stop this, and a judge ruled the commissioners can pray, but can’t mention any specific faith. But one commissioner refused to stop. Commissioner Robin Frazier defended the Christian prayers, saying “Our Founding Fathers... upheld the idea that we are a nation based on biblical principles.”
Like the usual bigot, she is trying to impose religion on everyone else, but she also doesn’t know history. The founding fathers she invokes believed strongly that there should be no influence of religion over government, and they spelled that out.
They were part of an intellectual movement now referred to as the Enlightenment, which contributed to the growth of science, to religious toleration, to the idea that people have rights the government cannot contravene, that kings are not here by divine right, and that human beings have the right to throw aside a government that does not serve them.
Frederick Engels explained that the thinkers of this movement “recognized no external authority of any kind whatever. Religion, natural science, society, political institutions–everything was subjected to the most unsparing criticism: everything must justify its existence before the judgment seat of reason or give up existence.” These ideas led the so-called “Founding Fathers” to conclude that they had the right to make a revolution in 1775 and that the new government they created must not impose religion on its citizens.
Thomas Jefferson believed that the attempt to impose religious uniformity on society was a disaster: “Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned: yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.”
James Madison insisted that religion be kept out of the Constitution and wrote that “An alliance or coalition between government and religion cannot be too carefully guarded against.” To make this point perfectly obvious, in its 1796 treaty with the Muslim country of Tripoli, the United States signed an agreement stating that the country was “not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”
Today, the myth that the founders were Christian is used to justify the most backward ideas in society. To combat this, we need to recapture their conviction that people have the right and responsibility to revolt against rulers who would impose their interests on everyone else.
Mar 31, 2014
Michigan’s governor and attorney general are playing fast and loose with the state’s constitution, using it as a plaything to suit their own political purposes.
First, after a federal district judge overturned Michigan’s ban on gay marriage on Friday, March 21, state Attorney General Bill Schuette rushed to get an emergency stay on the ruling from an appeals court within 24 hours. The stay was extended indefinitely by Tuesday, pending Schuette’s appeal of the ruling.
Court clerks in several counties had opened their offices Saturday, granting 321 marriage licenses to gay couples before the stay was handed down that day.
Then, Governor Rick Snyder announced that, even though these marriages were legal, the state would not recognize them.
Since the ruling overturned a 2004 voter referendum passing a constitutional amendment against gay marriage, both Schuette and Snyder invoke the constitution and the will of the people in trying to stop it.
REALLY? After the people voted in November 2008 to get rid of his Emergency Manager law, Snyder and the legislature pushed through ANOTHER emergency manager law–two months later. So much for the will of the people.
Schuette and Snyder defend the constitution? When Snyder’s appointed Emergency Manager in Detroit, Kevyn Orr, proposed to cut city retiree pensions in his bankruptcy plan, Snyder had no problem with that–even though the state constitution specifically prohibits such cuts.
Schuette paid lip service to that constitutional protection, but in contrast to his quick reaction on the gay marriage ruling, he has done NOTHING for months to try to get a stay on THAT action.
Clearly, these two are not really interested in protecting the constitution. No, to them the constitution is just a tool, a toy–they use it like a club sometimes, and shred it like paper at others. Whatever suits their interests at the moment.
Mar 31, 2014
Every year, the U.S. Supreme Court hears one case out of a hundred brought before it. So it is outrageous that the Court even agreed to hear arguments in the Hobby Lobby case, which justifies bosses imposing reactionary views on their employees.
In this case, the family owning the Hobby Lobby retail store says employers should have the “religious freedom” to impose their own personal religious “morals” on their employees. Since the Hobby Lobby owners’ religion says two forms of contraception are “abortion”–the IUD and the morning after pill–they seek to deny these healthcare choices to employees.
If the religious views of bosses can be forced on workers, the door is open for “religious liberty” arguments to excuse all sorts of discrimination and to take additional healthcare choices away from employees.
For example, some religions object to blood transfusions, stem cell therapy and mental health treatment. How long before an owner’s “right to religious freedom” blocks employees from these healthcare choices?
Court cases have already been filed by businesses claiming “religious liberty” allows them to discriminate against gay customers. Next, will women be banned from leadership positions if a boss’s religion demands female submissiveness?
No matter what the Supreme Court rules in this case, it is already outrageous to legitimize discrimination with a court hearing!