the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Apr 14, 2014
In a recent speech at the University of Michigan, President Obama promoted a bill that would raise the minimum wage nationally to $10.10. He said it would “lift millions of people out of poverty right away” and added that he is calling upon business leaders across the nation to “give them (their employees) a fair wage.”
You don’t have to be working at minimum wage to know that Obama is stretching the truth past the breaking point.
It’s true that the minimum wage today means living in poverty. The federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour equates to $15,080 a year, which is below the federal poverty limit of $15,730 for a family of two.
A recent report of the National Low Income Housing Coalition showed that there isn’t one state in the U.S. where you can work 40 hours per week at minimum wage and afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment at what is called Fair Market Rent. In many states, you would have to work two or three full time jobs at minimum wage to earn enough.
But even if the minimum wage is raised to $10.10 per hour, it still is obviously not enough to live on–only $21,008 a year. That might be just enough to push a family of three over the official poverty line. But $21,000 a year puts a family of four below it.
If the minimum wage had only just kept up with inflation since the 1960s, it would be pegged at $10.52 per hour. And when you look at the bigger picture, the truth that jumps out at you is staggering.
Workers’ productivity has risen so high that the minimum wage would be $21.72 if the real value of the workers’ labor were calculated. The government knows this: the information was released in a study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. So why are Obama and some in Congress proposing to raise the minimum to less than half of that?
Why, because it is what the corporations and the bankers want. The same bosses that Obama wants to ask for cooperation have been making a killing off of us, off the gains of productivity they stole from us. Hourly wages grew by just 2% in 2013, while corporate earnings grew by as much as eleven percent per share of stock. The top one percent possess wealth equal to 90 percent of all U.S. families. The wealth streaming to the top has been ripped off the labor of most of the rest of the population.
We are being robbed of our productivity, our resulting wages, our homes and health and the welfare of our families and communities.
Obama said that “nobody who works full time should be raising a family in poverty.” Absolutely right! But when you combine the figures for the unemployed and the underemployed with the figures for those whose full time wage keeps them living in poverty, you see that well over half of the U.S. working class is barely surviving.
Sure, Obama talks about raising the minimum wage. Even some corporations do. But it should be, at the very least, a living wage that reflects the work and value of what every worker does.
No boss, no politician, is going to give us that.
We will have to fight for it. And it takes just as much effort, it’s just as hard to fight for $10.10 an hour, as it is to fight for double that.
Fight now, or fight later, as the saying goes. But later will be only that much harder.
Apr 14, 2014
The Democratic Party-controlled Illinois State legislature just passed a plan worked out by Democratic Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. It makes workers and retirees pay for the city’s under-funded pensions. City workers will pay more and get less, all so the Democrats can continue to hand out billions to big business.
The Mayor says the municipal employee and laborers’ pension funds are severely underfunded, which is true. But this is because the city refused to make its required payments to the funds year after year, even though city workers had contributions taken from their checks.
While this was going on, every year since 2007, more taxpayers’ money was given in subsidies to businesses than was put in pension funds. Since 1986, 5.5 billion dollars of property tax money has been siphoned out of Chicago’s general fund into TIFs (Tax Increment Financing). This money is used for business subsidies at the Mayor’s sole discretion. Subsidies included 40 million dollars to S&C Electric Company, 27 million dollars to Bank of America and 24 million dollars to United Airlines, and many more millions to many others.
To keep this cash flowing to business, Emanuel wants 34,000 school lunch workers, janitors, laborers, and clerical workers to pay 11 percent of their wages into the pension fund, instead of the current 8.5 percent. In five years, this will cost the average worker an additional $1,500 a year. On top of that, he wants the 23,000 retirees, who are not covered by Social Security, to have reduced cost of living adjustments. This means their pensions will buy less and less in the remaining years of their lives.
This is part of the general attack on public worker pensions throughout the country. Don’t think it’s just Republicans. In Illinois, it’s Democrats carrying out the attacks. In other places, it’s Republicans. But the politicians are all trying to do the same thing: steal workers’ hard-earned retirement money in order to give ever-larger subsidies to the corporations.
Apr 14, 2014
The “Grand Bargain” by the politicians and the bankruptcy courts to cut Detroit City retirees’ pensions and hand over hundreds of millions of dollars to big banks and bond insurers is nearly complete.
Detroit Emergency Financial Dictator Kevyn Orr announced his agreement with certain big bond insurers for them to accept a “reduced” repayment of 288 million out of 388 million dollars from the city. Then bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes approved a deal Orr made to repay 85 million dollars to the big banks holding “interest rate swaps” the city purchased in 2005 and 2006.
The decisions mean insurers backing the bonds held by the biggest bondholders will get back 74 percent of what they will pay out to the bondholders. That’s on top of the money the insurers already made on the insurance they sold to cover the debt.
The big bondholders will get 100 percent of what is owed them, because they generally insure the bonds they purchase against losses due to debtors’ bankruptcies. Many of these same bondholders have already been paid over and over and over again for money they previously loaned to the city.
Detroit city pensioners, on the other hand, would receive only 26 percent of what is owed to them. Also, the money to pay the 74 percent to the bondholders will come from a lien on state aid payments to Detroit, meaning much less money to spend on services to city residents!
The latest decisions likely pave the way for the city to go ahead with what is appropriately called a “cram down” settlement agreed upon by Orr and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and then forced on the pensioners. Rhodes has made it clear he is willing to accept such a deal.
These decisions mean a life of living in poverty, or near poverty, for many city retirees who gave decades of their lives to working for the city, all so the big banks and insurers can get their hundreds of millions. Unless city workers and others who support them stand up and say “No!” to these attacks.
Apr 14, 2014
Last week, the Senate Finance Committee passed a bill to extend more than 50 tax breaks for two more years, through Dec. 31, 2015. These tax breaks help huge corporations like General Electric and Caterpillar to defer their global income. In plain words, these corporations will continue to evade paying any taxes for overseas operations if this bill is approved. Taxes on commercial buildings would also be reduced. These tax breaks amounted to 86 billion dollars a year in the past.
That’s why government employees have been continuously laid off and services to the public have been drastically cut. The federal government and Congress have made it their task to hand over tax money to the rich–making workers foot the bill.
Apr 14, 2014
Detroit mayor Mike Duggan’s newly-formed Land Bank has just started moving to seize abandoned houses in the city. The Land Bank placed notices on 76 houses in the Marygrove neighborhood announcing that owners had three days to contact the city–or it would start legal action to seize the houses and either tear them down or sell them. More than 80,000 city houses might eventually be seized in this way.
That might seem fine–many of these empty houses were abandoned by slumlords long ago. Many were bought up by speculators–like Matty Moroun, who bought huge tracts of houses around Detroit City Airport and left them vacant and rotting, driving even MORE people away.
But many of these homes were only recently abandoned, as their owners found themselves underwater in the last mortgage crisis, owing much more than the homes were now worth. These homeowners walked away or were evicted by banks that then sat on the properties and did nothing with them.
Those homeowners lost their homes because the banks were playing financial games. They did not want to leave.
Duggan wants to get people into those houses? How about seizing them from the banks and giving them BACK to the residents who didn’t want to leave them in the first place!
But that’s not what’s happening. This just frees up even more land for speculators.
Apr 14, 2014
This article is from the April 11th, 2014 edition of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
According to a report by Amnesty International, the level of violence against the Roma people has significantly increased in Europe. In countries like Greece or the Czech Republic, far-right groups are the ones carrying out the attacks, backed by the complicity of the police. The report also singles out France and the police harassment organized by its government.
Like the Jewish population was during the economic crisis of the 1930s, the Roma today are the visible targets of the far-right groups that have grown, mainly in the European countries most affected by the economic crisis.
In Greece, a party called Golden Dawn has spewed forth hatred and violence against immigrant workers in general and against the Roma in particular. The Amnesty International report comments that the police, when they do intervene, more often arrest the victims than they do the attackers. It also states, “the fact that racist attitudes remain entrenched in many police forces is more often denied than addressed.”
In the Czech Republic, the report notes that, “throughout the summer and autumn of 2013, Czech far-right groups staged a series of anti-Roma protests in dozens of towns and cities across the country,” with a “systematic harassment of Romani communities.”
Finally, Amnesty International denounces the attitude of the French police. According to the organization, the majority of the 20,000 Romani living in France constantly face threats of deportation and police harassment. It also rightly cites the odious declarations about the Roma made by the Minister of the Interior at the time, Manuel Valls, in September 2013. In these declarations, he stated, “these populations have extremely different lifestyles from our own,” and are, “destined to return to Romania or Bulgaria.”
In France, the crisis has not yet taken on the severity that it has in Greece and other countries. But if it worsens and if there is not a conscious response on the part of the working class, it is possible that far-right groups will become bolder, starting by testing their strength against the poorest and most vulnerable parts of the population like the Roma. They will do this all the more forcefully to the extent that they can count on the leniency or even the complicity of the police, as they do in Greece and the Czech Republic. These far-right gangs will also turn their violence against workers’ organizations or against workers on strike when the bourgeoisie needs it.
The current propaganda against the Roma is disgusting, whether it is spewed by the well-heeled and well-dressed politicians of the traditional Right or by supposedly left-wing politicians like Manuel Valls. These political leaders, wanting to flatter the most reactionary prejudices, are preparing people’s minds to accept racist violence and paving the way for the Far Right.
Apr 14, 2014
This article is from the April 4th, 2014 edition of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
In the civil war in Syria, it seems as if the dictator Bashar al-Assad is gaining the upper hand against the numerous rival military groups rebelling against him. The major Western powers had temporarily supported these rebel groups in an effort to get rid of a regime not docile enough for their tastes. Now, however, they have finally allowed Assad’s army to come out on top.
During the height of the movements against the dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt, and other Arab countries in spring 2011, popular demonstrations against Bashar al-Assad’s regime broke out in several of Syria’s major cities, and in the capital, Damascus. However, due to the ferocity of the government’s repression and to the absence of clear perspectives among the movement, this popular uprising was suffocated. It transformed into a civil war in which armed gangs made up of ex-soldiers of the Syrian Army and of fundamentalist militias carried out a war to overthrow the regime in power.
Each clan has its supporters. The militias, both secular and fundamentalist, have received aid from Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. For his part, Bashar al-Assad has been able to count on Russia, Iran, and the Lebanese-based Hezbollah. The big powers have played opposing hands, supporting the Syrian opposition without ever really tipping the balance of force completely in its favor.
That Assad’s regime has emerged with a military advantage suits the leaders of the United States quite well in the end. They would not have been happy to see a new fundamentalist regime established in a region that they have already had trouble controlling.
Assad’s regime is therefore in the process of retaking lost territory. This is a slow and bloody reconquest. The regime uses a scorched earth policy—bombing, assassinating, and raping. Even if this war ends quickly, its effects will be devastating. Humanitarian organizations estimate that there have been at least 140,000 deaths since the start of the conflict. Today, 2.5 million Syrians, or more than 10% of the population, have fled the country.
Even if the direct clashes come to an end, these fundamentalist militias will not disappear, even if they are defeated. If they are forced to flee from Syria, they will channel their forces into other conflicts where they can find backers. They are a product of this war and of the maneuvers of the imperialist countries to intervene in it. The regime itself feels strengthened enough for Assad to prepare for his reelection this coming June.
The millions of Syrians who had seen a hope for change in the initial demonstrations of the population against the dictatorship suffer today from the barbarity of the armed gangs of both camps.
Apr 14, 2014
Almost seven million people have registered, or had tried to register, on the health insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act. The threat was that those not yet enrolled in a health insurance plan by March 31 would face penalties. It might cost $95 in penalties next year. But depending on a family’s income, the penalty might reach $500.
The fact is that only a small percentage of the uninsured in the U.S. have enrolled. Perhaps seven million have finally gotten insurance, which isn’t clear because registering is not the same as receiving an insurance card. The Obama administration crows about that seven million. But 30 million more remain uninsured. The media attribute the small numbers to the mess of the roll-out of the Affordable Care Act. And it’s true it has been a mess.
But the real problem is that the U.S. health care system is all about profit. Right now, health insurers make profit, hospitals make profit, drug manufacturers make profit, medical partnerships make profit, medical equipment manufacturers make profit, etc. And each component adds to the cost—even if the CEOs of these companies didn’t reward themselves with million-dollar salaries.
The Affordable Care Act is in no way a challenge to the for-profit system. It will actually add to the profits of the health insurers. That’s no surprise, because the health insurance industry wrote the Act. The Act was passed by Congress to allow the industry to get more profit from signing up more customers. The 13,000 different health insurance companies in the U.S. get to have a piece of the pie.
But when it turned out that people weren’t rushing to sign up for this so-called improvement, Congress showed what the whole act was about. It slipped in a little 16 billion-dollar gift from the taxpayers to the health insurance companies. They get a payment if they don’t get as many customers as the Affordable Care Act was promising them.
In addition, the Affordable Care Act allows companies to take at least 10% for so-called administrative expenses. Yet there are systems both in the U.S. and in other countries that have far lower administrative expenses. Medicare is estimated to pay less than 2%. So where does this difference end up? In the pockets of the owners or investors of health care companies.
Insurance companies are not the only ones feeding off the Affordable Care Act. The Act also grants profit to the hundreds of contractors and sub-contractors that have put together the federal and state systems of web sites—even when they don’t work.
In Maryland, for example, the health care web-site was shut down with thousands still trying to get insurance. But the contractors still got paid a large part of the 125 million dollars spent so far.
The health care system in the U.S. is so complex that it is hard to know what the costs are. Each drug company and each hospital and each doctor’s office charges different amounts for exactly the same drug or operation or procedure. And the amounts they charge can change according to which health insurance company is covering the health care given. That is an open door to the vultures looking for profit in this system.
But nothing in the Affordable Care Act challenges these costly complications.
The U.S. spends more than $8,000 per person on health care, compared to an average of $3,000 per person in the other rich countries. Yet for all the money spent, the measurement of the health of the population shows the U.S. lags behind those other countries. A report last year by the National Academy of Sciences showed that the U.S. infant mortality rate is higher than in 16 other rich countries. The U.S. has a growing mortality gap for everyone up to age 75. On average, people in the U.S. have much higher rates of obesity and related diseases—which comes from poor nutrition.
Poor outcomes. But high costs leading to big profits!
Some medical professionals have long pointed to problems of the U.S. health care system. Few seem to think the solution is the Affordable Care Act, suggesting the need instead for some kind of system, like Medicare, but extended to the entire population. Or they say we need a system like those in Canada or most European countries that socializes medical care. In other words, a centralized system of medical care, which has been called “single payer.”
Medicare does not solve all the problems of this system by any means. There is still a profit component in the U.S. and in the health care systems of other countries, although they give health coverage to their entire population.
Even with Medicare covering a large part of the population, costs are still high for those with limited incomes. Sometimes thousands of dollars must still be paid toward health procedures or toward drugs. Poorer people must choose what to pay for, often going without needed health care.
But Medicare still has lower costs than other parts of the U.S. health care system because it is centralized, with one place handling all paper work and setting all prices. Despite all its problems, Medicare delivers better health outcomes overall than the rest of the health care system does.
Given the knowledge and technology available, society has the ability to offer decent medical care to everyone. Yet in this country, instead of good health care being the right of everyone, it remains a privilege for those who can afford it.
Apr 14, 2014
Some 62 million people are now enrolled in Medicaid in the U.S. Medicaid is meant for those with low incomes–individuals with incomes to about $16,000 a year and families of four with incomes to about $33,000 a year.
That means one out of every five people is considered “low income,” without enough earnings to pay for health care on their own.
Yet the budget cutters in Congress have Medicaid in their sights for more cuts. Even worse, they are giving Medicaid funds to for-profit companies to run.
Congress, with excellent health benefits of its own, lets companies enrich themselves at the expense of the poorer parts of the population.
Apr 14, 2014
The two millionth person is about to be deported under President Obama. This number far exceeds the number deported under President George W. Bush. Obama makes a pretext of being on the immigrants’ side, but his actions speak louder than his words.
Obama has repeatedly justified all the deportations as part of a drive to make the border secure. Yet almost half the deportations are far away from the border, often in northern states like Illinois. Unlike Obama’s claim that they are dangerous criminals, two thirds have committed only minor offenses, including traffic violations, and many have committed no crime except being undocumented.
Everyone in this country needs full legal rights. It’s right and necessary for the immigrants, most of whom are fleeing poverty created by U.S. corporations. And it’s necessary to prevent the bosses from using immigration to attack workers already here. But that’s not Obama’s goal. Whatever he says, he is on the bosses’ side. And his actions as “deporter in chief” prove that once again.
Apr 14, 2014
UPS is holding fast to its firing of 250 drivers in Queens, New York after they walked off the job in defense of a long-time worker who was fired. Teamster activists are leading a campaign around the country to support the New York workers. The union was built through actions like this, and it will be rebuilt this way.
Apr 14, 2014
The movie Cesar Chavez, starring Michael Peña, gives a sense of the determined fight carried out by the farm workers in California, but it praises aspects of Chavez’s leadership that were actually problems for the workers.
Chavez was the best-known Mexican-American leader, for whom numerous schools and parks are named. Unusually for such a hero in this country, he was a leader of workers.
The movie is a drama showing Chavez’s life and leadership of the farm workers in California up through the victory in the grape strike of 1970. It is worth seeing because it gives a picture of the farm workers’ lives and of their determined struggle. In a time like this when worker struggles are rare, this movie shows one important moment when some of the most oppressed workers in the country organized and fought back to improve their lives.
However, the way Chavez led these fights caused problems. The movie vividly shows Chavez’s 25-day fast for non-violence. But it does not clearly explain that this fast was directed against members of the union who wanted to use force against strike breakers and thugs. Any democratic debate and control of their struggle by the workers was impossible with Chavez as the suffering holy man.
The movie also shows the large numbers of outside supporters who came to Delano to help with the strike. But Chavez’s reliance on these volunteers after the victory of the grape strike, as the union tried to spread the movement to other crops, ultimately caused problems for the workers because they kept the movement from being controlled by the workers themselves.
Despite the problems of Chavez’s leadership, this movie is definitely worth seeing for the picture it gives of this important struggle in the fields, which greatly inspired millions of Mexican-Americans and other workers.
Apr 14, 2014
A year after Chicago Public Schools closed 50 elementary schools, the attack on public education in Chicago continues.
The school board wants to take the new building parents won for Ames Middle School when they protested overcrowding at Ames Elementary, and turn it into a military high school. The parents got a referendum to defend the school on this spring’s primary ballot and 68.6% voted for Ames. But the school board has so far ignored the vote.
The school board also wants to “Turn Around” three elementary schools–that is, fire all the teachers, administrators, janitors and lunchroom workers, and replace them with a completely new staff. Management of these schools will be turned over to the Academy of Urban School Leadership, a private entity with ties to the president of the school board, and the schools’ chief administrative officer.
As with Ames, the communities at these schools are not taking the attacks lying down. At one of them, Dvorak, the Local School Council organized the school community to join hands around the building. At a community hearing later in the evening, parents and community members denounced the school board’s turnaround plan as a “land grab” aimed to push working class residents out of the area, which is close to downtown.
At another of these “turnaround” schools, Gresham Elementary, the principal pointed out that the school board’s claims about “a failing school culture” were lies. Gresham’s test scores are low, but they have improved in the past few years. Like almost every other Chicago public school, Gresham is under-funded. The residents called for the extra turnaround money to go to the school and its current staff, to continue the improvement.
These parents have pushed back in a small way, which the mayor and school board have ignored so far. To defend our schools, workers will have to take up the fight much more broadly.
Apr 14, 2014
A black 16-year-old Detroiter was the fifth person so far charged in the beating of a white suburban man, Steven Utash. Detroit police say the 16-year-old threw the first punch of what became a mob assault, after Utash’s truck hit a 10-year-old child who had dashed into the street in front of Utash. Utash stopped after hitting the child, whose leg was broken.
The 16-year-old Detroiter was charged with assault and ethnic intimidation, a so-called “hate crime.”
Was it hateful what happened to Utash? Without a doubt. No one deserves to be beaten down to the ground by 10 or so men, then kicked repeatedly in the head. Utash remains in the hospital, seriously injured, not at all out of danger, with doctors unable to say what the long-term consequences of the beating will be. By all accounts, it was a savage beating.
But calling it a “hate-crime” blurs the issue. And so does all the talk in the media about “good Detroiters,” and “bad ones”–which sounds eerily reminiscent of the phrases used not so long ago by racists referring to so-called “good niggers” and “bad ones.”
If it were only a simple question of a few “bad men,” there would be few problems.
The fact is, Detroit is a pressure cooker, and it should come as no surprise that sometimes the lid blows off. It’s no surprise that there are explosions. And people would be foolish to believe that it’s only the “bad ones” who explode.
Detroit is plagued with unemployment–it has long provided the big companies with casual labor when they needed more workers, and suffered the greatest unemployment when the companies cut back.
It is a city that was raped by some of the biggest companies in the world, which made off with enormous amounts of Detroiters’ tax money. It is a city today being taken over by “developers” who want more of that tax money and by well-off suburban “pioneers” who want to re-colonize the city–or parts of the city.
For the Detroiters who have always been here, there is no money for streetlights, no money to prevent sinkholes in the streets, no money for its schools, no money for its parks.
This Detroit is a city where young 16-year-olds already can see their whole future laid out in front of them–no decent schools, no jobs, no prospects.
To believe because whites and blacks mingled in a black church in the middle of Detroit in a vigil for Steven Utash and his family that the “hate” will go away is the most asinine form of ignorance.
The hate will go away when people have prospects. And in this day and age, the only thing that will give prospects back to all the people deprived of them will be a struggle to take back the wealth from those who have drained it out of Detroit and places like Detroit.
It’s obvious that Steven Utash is not the problem–at most, he was a symbol for the gang that beat him. It’s equally obvious that the men who made up that temporary gang did not alleviate the problems they face.
The anger dumped on Utash in a flashpoint has to be channeled and aimed at those who have turned Detroit into this pressure cooker. And not just Detroit. By all accounts, Steven Utash, and how many more white workers like him who live in the near suburbs, also have lives that are a daily grind, giving up their labor for a pittance.
No one should have to live this way! But if we want another way, we, all of us, workers, black and white, will have to create it. We will have to drive out the ones who steal our lives, the capitalists, take back the wealth our labor created and use it for ourselves.
Apr 14, 2014
On April 2nd, a soldier at Fort Hood in Texas committed suicide after killing three sergeants and wounding 16 others on the base. He had served in Iraq in 2011 and was being treated for depression.
Every day an average of 22 former soldiers kill themselves in the U.S., often shortly after their return to civilian life. This information came from the army journal Stars and Stripes.
Psychological traumas play the principal role in the deaths of veterans, but also for those on active service–like the soldier at Fort Hood.
The U.S. army congratulates itself for providing the necessary psychological services to deal with the problems of soldiers returning from war zones. It says it has reduced the number of suicides.
“Reduced”? Maybe so. But it remains true that more U.S. soldiers die by taking their own lives than died in combat during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The U.S. army has very sophisticated weaponry to reduce as much as possible the numbers of its soldiers killed in battle. But war kills not only the people who are victimized by imperialist aggression; it also kills U.S. soldiers, and not just on the battlefield.
Apr 14, 2014
Congress gave the green light to the IRS to collect debts from people by taking their tax refunds.
But not just any debts–these are debts more than 10 years old and do not necessarily belong to the people being forced to pay them! The Treasury has already collected 424 million dollars, and expects to grab another 714 million dollars on old debts. That’s more than a billion dollars.
One woman’s supposed debt was from her late father, from 40 years ago; another person supposedly owed $189 for a debt from his mother who died 33 years ago. And these outrages are imposed even though Social Security officials cannot provide any documentation on these debts.
Is this the Treasury Department of a poor third world country holding up its citizens? No, it’s the Treasury Department of a very rich country holding up its poorer citizens.
Why? So it can turn over more money to corporate America. For example, a deal is being finalized between Graham Holdings (formerly The Washington Post Company) and Berkshire Hathaway (owned mainly by Warren Buffett) to exchange assets worth more than a billion dollars each. For this big deal, neither company will pay any of the normal federal and state taxes–about 675 million dollars for Graham and Berkshire Hathaway together.
A fine tax holiday for the biggest of the big, paid for by taxpayers whose income is low enough that they qualify for tax refunds!