The news is biased. That's not so hard to believe is it?

Well I've been watching my local news and I'm 20 minutes in to it and still nothing about Honduras (this is a country a couple borders away where a revolution is taking place). Nothing yet about the potential for a strike of the public transit workers. There's been robberies, marijuana growing in private homes and people robbing them; other robberies and murders and even a old howitzer shell found on a street I once lived on.

Now there is a segment on celebrities and about how they are always in the news. What is it about us that we want to read about them all the time, that we want to talk about them and are interested in their pathetic lives?

I don't deny that Michael Jackson's death doesn't have some interest to me, mostly I feel sorry for his tragic life and how capitalism turns everything in to a commodity, sex, love, art. The intention here is to create the view that what is in the media is what people want, what they are interested in and demand. It is to obscure reality, that the news, the media has an agenda, it has a class base, the content of the media is the reverse of what they say it is; they have to convince us this crap is important and they spend a lot of money and resources doing this.

Who decides what is news and how much time is spent on this or that issue? Do the owners of the corporations who are interrupting it every 10 minutes to sell me things have any influence in what counts as news? People are interested in all sorts of things, or can be. Human's are naturally curious. The goal of the the capitalist class that actually controls the media and decides what is news and what isn't is to ensure that curiosity and interest in the world around us doesn't develop in to anything that might lead to changing it; that our class consciousness is supressed.

The power of those that own the media is very extensive here in the US. The movies that Hollywood turns out are always, when they're not the car crash blowing up and raping kind, about beautiful people with lots of money. The movies are much less likely to be about ordinary working people as they often are in other countries; after all, workers are stupid and live very boring lives just drinking and wondering what Paris Hilton is doing.

In the last analysis, ideas have a material base. Someone living in misery cannot be convinced by the TV that they are well off, but they can be influenced enough to believe, certainly temporarily, that their situation is their own fault. Those that own the means of producing the goods we use every day in society also control the manufacture of ideas; the dominant ideas of society are the ideas of the ruling class.

A friend once pointed out that there was a poll some years ago. Women were asked what most they wanted in a sexual partner. The overwhelming number of respondents said kindness was what they wanted in a partner There are thousands of magazines that encourage us to wear certain clothes or drive certain cars as this will bring us happiness and good sex. Yet there are not magazines about kindness. This is because kindness, solidarity, unity, these things are not good for capitalism, in fact they are hostile to it, threaten its existence---so kindness is out.

Instead, capitalism rewards selfishness, greed and individualism. It rewards those who advance themselves at the expense of others. It encourages anti-human behavior.

But as the poll results showed, despite all this, kindness, solidarity and compassion are very powerful human urges. These human characteristics that have been developed over thousands of years of human evolution are what will help us end capitalism and build a society that nurtures our collective spirit and allows us to develop our full potential as human beings. The proof that this side of human nature is very powerful is shown by the amount of money and time convincing us wer'e all selfish greedy bastards them. Aren't we born sinners?

Bailouts Pressure Workers

Recently at a non-union Fruit warehouse the boss has tighten up the safety procedures at their job site. As oppose to 10 months ago, when the country had not undergone an economic meltdown. It makes sense that jobs should have safety procedures such as wearing hair nets, waistbands to lift boxes and proper uniforms to work in. It is good for the worker to have some kind of safety code to better their work conditions. However, now that the codes are implemented, workers must make sure they don't forget any of these items, including their ID badge, because they will be penalized.

Lourdes, a worker at the warehouse, says that when workers go in, the supervisors check the workers to make sure they have their necessary gear to work in. Every time that a worker does not bring a piece of equipment they are issued a warning and told to go back home and pick it up. The most warnings that a worker can get is 5. Each warning entails something different. from written warning to being suspended and potentailly being fired.

This places more pressure on workers. The fact of the matter is, if workers don't bring in their gear, they get closer to being fired. This is an excuse that the bosses have come up with. It says that workers are to be blamed if they are fired. This is an insult to workers because the bosses exploit that issue to their advantage in an economic downturn. And of course, when workers are under more pressure to perform they tend to forget things because they are worried for their jobs. When someone is fired they are being pointed at. The truth is that the bosses should be blamed for, for implementing such harsh consequences for not following safety codes and for undermining workers ability to work. Safety codes are placed at workplaces to secure the safety of workers, not threaten their employment.

Workers must unite to fight for a Union at their job site in order to combate this kind of harrassment.

Mortgage Ripoffs and the Panthers

Dropping off my 5-year old at summer camp this morning I was chatting with another parent. She was a bit peeved that her company sent her a text message marked “Urgent.” Relieved, she mentioned it was about canceling a meeting. For a moment she thought she was being called in to be laid-off. I don’t know what’s worse being unemployed or waiting for the cut to come. Well, I do know what’s worse.
She told me that her main concern, as it is for many of us, is her mortgage. “After we got the loan and were paying, they told us they’d made a mistake and they had to raise our payment. If it was $50 or a $100, Okay. But we ended up paying $1,000-a-month more!” They tried several lawyers, but are stuck with this massively higher mortgage payment. So many ripped off by so few. Capitalism.
Later this morning we made a Campaign for Renters Rights house call. A couple of us stopped by a high-fenced, corner-lot garage, piled up with old cars. Ronnell came out to meet us and we made our way between the disabled vehicles up on ramps to his office. Ronnell told us he became a mechanic, “’cause that’s all they’d let me do.” He contacted the Campaign For Renters Rights through a carpenter friend who’d found our number in the Local union’s newspaper. He’s lived in his house for 15 years and refinanced in 2004. Recently his original monthly payment bounced up from $938 to close to $1600. With the economy down, there’s no way he could make the new fat payment. He called us to let us know he was 90-days behind on his payments and that Wachovia was messing around with him as he tried to get his mortgage modified.
We flicked through the phone book, found a couple of local Wachovia banks and made a date for a lively picket line. We’ll bring a few people and we asked Ronnell to bring people. He mentioned he has a friend who takes pictures. Great! He used to be involved in civil rights stuff. Great!
As our meet drew to close, Ronnell pointed across the road at a small run-down apartment building with a store-front below it. “That’s where the Black Panthers had their Office, right there!” Wow. There’s some real history. But the building had no sign on the wall, no nothing to commemorate this historical site.
In the subsequent thirty years the Panthers came and went. People’s rights have improved a little, while poverty is probably worse. We now have a black President, but life on the street doesn’t change. As we told Ronnell, billion-dollar banks like Wachovia are getting cash hand-over-fist from the Federal Government, but they don’t want to let it go in loan modifications for the average person that got screwed by Big Finance and their agents.
Anything we gain, we gain by action. We’ll let you know how the Wachovia action goes!

Jena 6 are FREE!

This is a form letter forwarded from one of our comrades. The Jena 6 were six young black high schoolers who were accused of beating up a white kid from the same school. The problem started when some Black kids from Jena High school decided to sit around a tree designated as the "white tree" the next day there were nooses put on the tree. No students were suffered repercussions becuase of the tree but when there was a fight at a party only the Black students were arrested. The state at first tried to try them as adults but later rescinded that.


Yesterday, nearly two years after more than 320,000 of you stood up to protect them from Jim Crow justice, the Jena 6--Jesse Ray Beard, Carwin Jones, Robert Bailey, Theo Shaw, Bryant Purvis and Mychal Bell--are all now free to move ahead with their lives. We should all be proud.
The five remaining Jena 6 cases were brought to conclusion on Friday1 when Jesse Ray, Carwin, Robert, Theo, and Bryant pleaded "no contest" to misdemeanor simple battery charges.2 They will spend no time in jail, serve seven days of probation, and pay relatively minor fines and court fees.
It's an incredible outcome given that the young men were originally charged with attempted murder in small-town Louisiana and had neither the funds nor the connections to get high-quality representation or attention for their cases.
Luckily for the Jena 6, hundreds of thousands of you got involved, and the power of your participation changed the game. An amazing team of lawyers worked tirelessly to achieve Friday's outcome. Our staff helped recruit them, and your financial contributions--over $275,000--provided the bulk of the funds for their work. Jim Boren, the coordinating attorney, said this about ColorOfChange members' contribution: "None of this would have happened without you."
But it wasn't just lawyers and money. Over 300,000 of you wrote to Governor Blanco and District Attorney Reed Walters. On September 20th, 2007, more than 10,000 of you went to Jena. Members who couldn't make it to Jena held more than 150 rallies and vigils across the country, and made more than 6,000 phone calls to elected officials in Louisiana. And a few weeks later, ColorOfChange members sent almost 4,000 complaints demanding an inquiry into the DA's actions.
Your actions offline and online helped put Jena on the map and resulted in critical coverage in every mainstream news outlet. You started a movement that made it impossible for Louisiana officials to support the status quo.
Today we offer congratulations to these young men and their families, and we say thank you to the entire ColorOfChange.org community. We're also so thankful to the attorneys who took these cases but chose to stay out of the limelight. They and several others3 are the unsung heroes of this story.
As the young men of the Jena 6 close this chapter of their lives, we wanted to give you an opportunity to wish them well. Click the link below to leave a personal statement for the young men of the Jena 6, or to listen to the voicemail from Jim Boren thanking the ColorOfChange community for our work:
http://www.colorofchange.org/jenaresolution/?id=2029-631676
While this is a great moment, it's important to remember that if it were not for the extreme nature of this case, most of us wouldn't have known about it or gotten involved. The reality is that there are countless Jena 6's: young people--often Black and male--who are overcharged or unduly criminalized, and whose plight is unknown to most of the outside world.
It's the reason our work cannot just be about identifying and fighting for individuals railroaded by the system, but about creating systemic change in criminal justice in America. We are truly grateful to have the chance to do this work with you, and we're hoping for your continued engagement and support.
Thanks and Peace,
-- James, Gabriel, William, Dani and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team June 27, 2009
Help support our work. ColorOfChange.org is powered by YOU -- your energy and dollars. We take no money from lobbyists or large corporations that don't share our values, and our tiny staff ensures your contributions go a long way. You can contribute here:
https://secure.colorofchange.org/contribute/?id=2029-631676
References:
1. "Plea Bargain Wraps Up 'Jena 6' Case," 9-26-09 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/26/national/main5116800.shtml
2. The sixth teenager charged, Mychal Bell, pleaded guilty to battery in juvenile court on December 3rd, 2007.
3. Thanks are due to Alan Bean, Tory Pegram, and King Downing, who dedicated months to working with the families and getting the story out, and to our friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center who played a central role in putting together and supporting the legal teams. Without any one of them, our work would have been hampered, or in some cases not possible at all.

US wipes out another 60 people at a funeral.

Left: after a visit by a US Drone.

A "Drone" is a pilotless US plane that is being used to fire missiles at communities without risking US lives. This is very important to the US orchestrators of these interventions around the world as too many US deaths would not be tolerated for long. People don't like their kids dying when the threat isn't real imminent and public support, or at least acquiescence would diminish rapidly.

Today, the papers report a Drone killed sixty people at a funeral; a week or so ago a US missile missed its intended target and killed 22 others. They were all "militants" we are told. Militants is a word they frequently use for anyone who opposes being invaded. It is beginning to replace terrorist. This has been going on a while and is one of the reasons the Taliban are gaining in popularity and is also destabilizing Pakistan. It's hard to hit the nail on the head when you're guiding the aircraft from some center in Iowa perhaps. The other thing is that workers around the world see it as evidence of great cowardice and disrespect for human life.

This policy of pilotless carnage, started by Bush, has been intensified by Obama. Let's step in to the minds of workers in the former colonial world, or just plain people from other countries in general. The US cries such indignation at the horror of losing 3000 people in the 911 attacks. This is tragic of course, but the loss of life around the world, much of it completely innocent life, through the actions of US imperialism is massive and is the single most contributing factor to the rise of terrorist groups. How else, some might ask, do you fight back against and enemy that drops bombs on you from thousands of miles away? How would you react if your entire family was wiped out "by accident", and the perpetrator gave you a hundred dollars and sent you on your way.

I think you'd have some hatred for these people and everything they stand for.

Some light reading

Multi-tasking? Bankers and Generals. What a combination.

I see that two more of Bank of America’s board of directors are directors no more. They are both retired military big wigs, General Tommy Franks and the lesser known Admiral Joseph Prueher. Bank of America received $45 billion from the US taxpayer.

It shows how interconnected finance capital and the war machine is. The military is not to keep us free. It won’t be sent to the picket lines to help strikers keep scabs out. History is not full of examples of the troops being sent to protect workers from company thugs or to ensure that workers’ rights aren’t trampled on. They aren’t sent in to the urban slums to root out the slumlords and ensure tenants have a decent, roach free environment.

And they certainly aren’t sent abroad to defend the rights of US workers. They are sent to expand upon and defend the rights of US capitalists. Roosevelt, the Darling of the liberals, used troops against domestic workers more than any president before him according to some sources.

Rural struggle
Ranchers in Colorado are waging a battle against the US Army that wants to grab more land just north of the New Mexico border. With all this spreading of freedom around the world and those pesky foreign workers who prefer being unfree, the military needs more training ground at home for war practice. The economic downturn ion the US will no doubt be a boon for the military as more working class youth will need a steady income.

The present training ground in Colorado covers about 370 square miles but the Army wants to triple that to over 1000. The Army is trying to buy out the locals but they are resisting and may have to resort to taking it through eminent domain.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the area is a historic treasure trove containing dinosaur tracks, ancient writings carved in to cliffs and other national treasures. Some 17,000 locals are fiercely resisting the Army’s attempts to throw them from the land they have lived on for five generations.

So US capitalism’s predatory wars are demanding more at home, not just in the form of higher taxes, diversion of funds from sorely needed social services to the war machine, but driving people from their communities as well. This is not new as the original inhabitants were driven from the land also but probably comes as a bit of a surprise to the more recent residents---the market doesn’t discriminate.

At some point the failed courtroom strategies will be abandoned and the old traditions of struggle, the direct action battles of the past, will once again emerge as workers find our feet, whether it been in the factories and hog farms of the south or among the small ranchers in Colorado.
Note: I have not researched the Colorado issue to any extent and assume that the ranchers involved are not huge agribusinesses

Insurances companies policies murder people

This would come as no surprise to the millions without decent health care in this country, but it is always important when the media is forced to reveal to any extent the swindling and corrupt nature of the US health industry, big Pharma, the private hospitals and of course, the insurance companies.

Wendell Potter, a former chief executive for the insurance group Cigna corp reveals today that the insurance companies "Confuse their customers and dump the sick, all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors." Potter says that insurance companies often drop seriously ill policyholders so they can meet, "Wall Street's relentless profit expectations."

"They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment,"

"All it takes is one illness or accident among employees at a small business to prompt an insurance company to hike the next year's premiums so high that the employer has to cut benefits, shop for another carrier, or stop offering coverage altogether," he said. "Dumping a small number of enrollees can have a big effect on the bottom line."

The US health care system is the worst in the industrialized world, a for profit driven, inadequate health care system. Health care should not be a business. The US taxpayer spends more and gets less for health care than their workers in other industrial countries.

Read more on Potter here: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Health/story?id=7911195&page=1

cop thug gets off

Some months ago an off duty cop went into a bar here in Chicago and demanded a drink. It was past closing time. The young woman bartender told him this. He then proceeded to beat her up with his fists and feet. This was caught on video and seen world wide. The judge, if you can call this degenerate a judge recently ruled on this ex-cops case. He let him off with two years probation. If this had been a young black man, if it had been a young working class white man from a poor background he would be sitting in jail today. This pathetic so-called sentence was announced this morning in the Chicago Tribune. Within a couple of hours there were over 600 emails calling for the judge to be removed from the bench. This shows the righteous anger that exists amongst working people. 

Cops, ex-cops, judges, they are in the main a bunch of crooks and swindlers. Contributions to the election of judges should all be banned. These financial contributions are just a way of bribing the judges for when they are needed in the future by the people who give them the money. As well as that the income of all judges should be the same as that of the average workers wage. And there should be no expenses. Let them get to work like the rest of us, by bus or train or in their own car. 

These people have to be put under the control of the working people. These upper and middle class swine will not run for election for judges if they have to live on the same wage as the average worker and live on the same living standard. 

And on this specific case let us have a picket on this judges court house every day until he reverses his judgement against this ex-cop thug. 

Sean. 

Attacks on the public sector will increase in the period ahead

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Chicago's Democratic Mayor is offering city worker's and residents quite a deal; layoffs or 16 days off without pay; they call them, "involuntary furloughs". Public services would be shut down on those days naturally. Michael Bloomberg, the multi-millionaire mayor of NYC is also laying off a couple thousand workers and reducing services. Around the country, the scenario is the same, Detroit, LA, Philadelphia, Baltimore and other major urban centers.

In Chicago, the Union leaders' answer has been to ask, politely of course, for a no layoff guarantee if worker's agree to the 16 days off without pay. How inspiring is that? How can you build a movement against the employer's offensive with this strategy? The answer is you can't.

City workers will most likely accept one of these two bad alternatives--we accept lots of things that are not in our interests when we see no other alternative; it's a coerced acceptance.

But we know there is plenty of money in society, we don't need to have PhD's in economics to see this. We've seen them dole out trillions of dollars to their friends. We've seen them with their snouts in the public trough for years. And, are the Union officials taking 16 days off without pay? I'll bet they would be a little less willing to offer such a position to their members were this so; they'd get a bit more aggressive if they were losing their living standards.

All Union officials should not receive compensation greater than the wages of the worker's they represent, and, if worker's take cuts, Union officials should take the same cuts.

Chicago has cut its workforce by 15% not including the anticipated 1500 new layoffs. Meanwhile, the city gave a 75 year year lease to a bunch of investors from Morgan Stanley, the moneylenders, group. The lease privatizes the city's 36,000 parking meters. What a crock. Worker's pay the fines due to a failed urban planning system based on market priorities (poor transit system) and the method of issuing these fines and collecting the cash is a healthy, for profit business. The sale raised $1.2 billion and the new private owners have already "quadrupled" rates in some areas and in others, numerous broken meters have been reported.

One woman who was forced to park at a broken meter ended up paying $300 after her car was towed. "It feels like your paying more and getting less" the woman tells the WSJ. She feels that way because her perception is real--she is paying more for less.

I have raised numerous times on this blog the absurd situation we are in. The politicians of big business who control and distribute the national wealth, hand over our money to moneylenders, speculators and other parasitical characters so they can either lend it back to us at a price so we can buy the commodities we produce and pay for the services we ourselves provide. In other instances they hand over our money so their friends can invest it in the marketplace; this is what happened with much of the TARP money.

Regardless of our so-called political affiliation, this is just an inefficient way to run society. Any worker can see that. Were workers in possession of, and had control over the allocation of the surplus we produce through our labor, we would undoubtedly do a better job of it.

What working class person would disagree with that? I'd be interested in hearing from them.

A little example of the dictatorship of capital over our lives

Please turn it down, whoever is doing this turn it down.

If I'm so free, so in control of my own destiny, how come every time the ads come on, about every five minutes it seems during this movie, the volume goes up? I never touched the knob, handled the remote or nothin'. Who made that decision?

Teachers should be defended as bosses attacks on them heat up.

Left: 400,000 teachers on strike in UK 2008

The employers and their media are continuing to launch a vicious assault on teachers. Teachers are not alone by any means but they are an important target as the main teachers Union, the NEA is the largest Union in the country and teachers, although underpaid and overworked like most workers, have some strong job protections. The employers want to do to the NEA what it has done to autoworkers and the UAW.

The media reveals today that disciplined teachers are “Paid to sit, do nothing.” These are teachers who are under investigation for one reason or another. They can spend this time “playing scrabble, surfing the Internet, or just staring at the wall.” I am getting angry just writing this. They can “practice, Yoga, work on their novels, paint portraits of their colleagues, pretty much anything but schoolwork.” The author adds.

The cost of paying these teachers while the investigations take place is some $65 million a year, the article points out. And the blame naturally is the Union, the fact that the teachers have organized to protect themselves from being treated like a shoe or car or any other commodity in the marketplace; they have dared to form combinations to protect their interests as workers. That includes the interests of the children of society.

Teachers are on the whole a most dedicated group of workers. They work long hours, much of them at home. They contribute a lot of their own money for the needs of our children as trillions are handed over to bankers, moneylenders and other leeches on society.

There are too many statistics showing where the wealth is in society for me to use more of them here but even if the cost is $65 million a year; this is nothing compared to what the private equity thieves took home, for really not working. In 2006 alone the top 25 of them earned $15 billion.

This assault on a Union, its members (they want to privatize education) and their limited security and power on the job should be met with fierce resistance. Unfortunately, the heads of the entire trade Union movement in the US accept that they have to collaborate with the employers and offer only more concessions. The employers do not fear them.

In the Bay Area, the Union leadership representing the subway workers (BART) is asking for a contract extension in the hopes the economy picks up in a year. This is their strategy for avoiding concessions. Of course, they’ll say that this is what the members want but will have put forward no alternative and how to win it.

But the bosses are relentless, they have learned through experience that the Union officials will not fight, will not mobilize the power of Labor and go on the offensive----the have only one tactic, retreat; they differ only on the pace of retreat. The transit workers have the power to shut down the entire Bay Area. With a strategy that demanded more jobs, a higher minimum wage, cheaper fares an end to concession, in other words, that was aimed at the working class as whole, the offensive of big business could be driven back and a movement started that would be an example for workers throughout the country. The Union leaders are afraid of this too.

This capitulation by the trade Union leadership in the face of a massive assault on worker’s rights and living standards is what is delaying the resistance movement.
But a leadership that seems entrenched in times of relative calm but has gone long passed its expiration date, will, like rotten fruit, fall to the ground at the slightest breeze.

It’s our job to provide a good gale and some new fruit.

Don't be fooled by the volunteer craze

The first story on the local news tonight is the conference in San Francisco called the conference of volunteers. Schwarzennegger is there as is Michelle Obama and 400 volunteers turned up. Nancy Pelosi, worth some $30 million is about to speak to the crowd about the need to donate your time to get the nation on track.

They interview a young guy who volunteers as a teacher's aide without pay during the day. I have a friend who is a teacher's aide and they are in a Union. They are understaffed and, as in education in general, more cuts are on the way. So multi-millionaire politicians hold conferences to recruit scabs, calling them volunteers as they cut back libraries, education, and, as is being reported on at the moment, fire stations.

The Obama administration is no different than the Bush one in the eagerness to cut services and replace paid jobs with scabs calling them volunteers. The whole thing is to make the public feel guilty about doing nothing to make society better.

People will have lots of time on their hands with unemployment at its highest since 1941.

We should see this for what it is, hypocrisy, a great con game. These politicians are responsible for the crisis and for the ongoing destruction of people's living standards. They use their power to savage public services and then ask the victims to work for nothing to replace some of them as if this can replace the state's role in this process.

health care

I see there is a poll in the New York Times today on health care. 72% favor the government offering everybody health care. 57% are willing to pay higher taxes for this. 50% think the government would do a better job providing health care than the private sector. Only 34% think the opposite. 59% think the government would do a better job holding down health costs than the private sector. 

These figures show that there is a powerful mood out there for public health care. In the meantime the Obama regime and the Democrats and Republicans are playing footsie with the profit addicted health care industry. It will take a mass radical movement to get a public universal health care industry in this country. This capitalist government and both capitalist parties will never do it. End the profit in the health care industry. For universal health care for all. 

Sean

Unemployed in Oakland, California - Week 21

The highest unemployment ever reached in this country, in total numbers, was 1933 when 12.8 million people were out of work during the Great Depression. The next time this was surpassed was this past April. It has kept rising and has now passed 14.5 million. While the labor force has expanded many times since 1933, the country has remained the same size. Yet the unemployed today are virtually invisible. I know of a couple of places in my neighborhood where people line-up for free food, but most people out of work seem invisible today.
I was laid-off in January. There were about 270 people on the out of work list in my Carpenters Local and I was at the back end of that number. Fathers' Day will mark my fifth month of unemployment, the list has grown closer to 400 workers and I have climbed to #151. My friend was #36 two weeks ago and is now #35.
My family's health insurance runs out soon and I have sent an application for COBRA. I'll be looking in the mail for that news.
The Green Shoots of the recovery are constant in the local newspapers. I don't see it. It's June for god's sake and we're supposed to see some uptick in construction. It's not happening. Obama's 600,000 jobs in 100 days? It's a good thing, I just don't see it either. If it does kick in, it may well end up being 600,000 state workers who don't get fired because of emergency Federal Funding. That'd be a good thing too, but its not job creation and 600,000 jobs is really nothing when unemployment is nearing 15 million. Six hundred thousand jobs is just a month's rise in unemployment in this country.
Perhaps our invisible army of 14.5 million is waiting, partly in shock, partly just waiting to see if things will quickly recover. And if they don't then it won't simply be the numbers of the 1930s that will be repeated today, but also the radicalism and militant organizing of that period that will be repeated.

Capitalism destroys from Detroit to Bombay

I see Detroit, a city of 900,000 does not have one major store. The retailers have abandoned it, says the news. Borders was founded 40 miles away and they don't have a store there either. Starbucks has four stores. The population where I am is about 70,000 and we have about 10 Starbucks.

Detroit has a 22.8% unemployment rate is among the highest in the U.S.; 30% of residents are on food stamps, and you know these figures are most likely conservative.

I was re-reading Marx' s writing on primitive accumulation and the expropriation of the peasantry. He explains how in a period of 21 years, three and a half million acres of land were stolen from those whose home it was. Then free enterprise ventured to Ireland and Africa, a continent as Marx said that it "turned in to a warren for the commercial hunting of black skins". "These idyllic proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation." he adds. In Asia, as we commented before on this blog, Capitalism left millions in misery and many dead in its wake. Banjuwangi, a Javanese province had 72,000 left people after 60 years of the precious market.

It is hard to write of history in more plainer terms than Marx. On Capitalism's emergence he write that "..the expropriation of the great mass of the people from the soil, from the means of subsistence, and from the means of labour...forms the prelude to the history of capital." "The expropriation of the immediate producers was accomplished with merciless vandalism..."

We are seeing this results of this "merciless vandalism" from Peru to Detroit, Riga to Johannesburg. Bombay, Calcutta are evidence of it. Marx's scientific analysis of society and world history is confirmed by events, by objective reality. Yet the so-called prophecies of Nostradamus are brought to our attention through the mass media, the TV, and film so much more than the concrete analysis and conclusions of Marx.

"The only of the so-called national wealth that actually enters in to the collective possessions of modern peoples is their national debt." he wrote over 100 years ago. Look at what is happening now. Workers have had our debt payments tripled over the last two years.

For Marx, capitalism was a historical step forward, as murderous as it is. For capitalism increases the "cooperative form of the labor process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labor only usable in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as the means of production of combined socialized labor, the entanglement of all people's in the net of the world market, and with this the international character of the capitalistic regime."

Entangled we are in the net of the world market.

Capitalism strengthens the working class and creates the condition for the elimination of capitalism and the collectivization of production ownership of the social prodcut. This would be a lot easier. After all, Capitalism came to being through "the expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers. " The historical task of the working class is "the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people."

Further reading on the subject of the birth of the capitalist mode of production can be found here: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch26.htm

Read through to chapter 28.

Now all of a sudden, a trillion dollars is a "staggering sum."

I just watched a few minutes of CBS' evening news. The piece I caught was about health care reform. This is all over the news right now it seems. The newscaster announces that it comes to light that there are ""staggering sums involved", and adds that it could be as high as $1 trillion over ten years (and still 36 million will be without insurance we are told). This is a "shocking wake up call" is the term he uses.

But this sum is not so staggering. One trillion dollars over ten years . The big business politicians have allocated $11 trillion of taxpayer's money to bail out the speculators, investors and other moneylenders that brought the system to a halt. The US spends three quarters of a trillion a year on the arms industry. Just today, the Wall Street Journal reports that a government audit finds that the state dept. overpaid Blackwater, the mercenary company in Iraq, some $55 million.

Then there is another $11 trillion that has reportedly been stashed away in off shore accounts in order to avoid taxes. This is money from private individuals, not corporations.

And the $11 trillion bailout money. What is some of it being used for? Much of this money, wealth that is or will be the creation of working people, their government is lending to speculators and other parasites so they can lend it to back to us so we can buy the cars and stuff we make because they don't pay us enough in wages to buy them without borrowing from them. How nice of them to do this on our behalf. But it seems a bit convoluted doesn't it?

Trillions of dollars of health care money ends up in the pockets of pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and the private hospital industry. Trillions of dollars has been pocketed by a few thousand individuals over the past years that came from people who paid made mortgage payments, no interest payments, credit card charges, car loans and other scams until they could pay no more. This is our wealth going in to the pockets of socially unproductive individuals and enterprises.

Health care would not be a business in a civilized society. In the US we have the worst health system in the industrialized world spending some twice the percentage of our GDP on it than France and getting less in return. As it is now, much of the expenditure and most of the cuts that Obama says he will make to curb waste, will come at the expense of those who actually use and need health care. A major waste is contributing to an insurance company. Why do we need an insurance company in order to get treated when we're sick? It's a complete waste of resources. But it's good business.

We are told that the public running of anything is inefficient and bad. But not bad enough for the capitalist class to resort to it to save them from ruin. As of April this year, the governments of the world (mostly the richer countries obviously) spent $8 trillion in public funds to pull their precious system back from the edge of the abyss.

The figures above are but a tiny tip of a huge iceberg. There is not just the outright theft, but the "legal" theft, profit. I remember during the French transit strikes of 1995-96 when an American journalist approached a striking worker and asked how he could justify a strike when the subways are not making any profit. Who cares was his answer, it's a public service. Profit is money a few get by exploiting the many; it's not something we should worry about as it's illegitimate income.

No, a trillion dollars over ten years is nothing by their standards. It is only something when it social spending.

Picking up the tab for the Bailout PARTY

"Dire economic circumstances have certainly justified some out-of-the-ordinary remedial actions by government, but enough is enough" declared Thomas J. Donohue, CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce. Donahue, who we could call the official spokesperson for the US Capitalist class, went on to complain about the "rapidly growing influence of government."
Mmmm. If its not crystal clear to most of us what he's saying here, its because his message is not aimed at us. His message is aimed at his government. Today, the bailout, is over. Capitalism's ailing corporations and big banks have been helped back on their feet. According to the IMF, the cost to the average US family of four of this bailout will be around $24,000 in taxation.
"Enough is Enough" is the message to Obama and Co., that there will be no more bailouts. Healthcare, in particular, should not be bailed out by the government, according to the top businessman. All other calls for bailouts: "where's my bailout?" "bailout my kid's school?" will fall on deaf ears. It's over. If you couldn't afford to wine and dine a Senate leader or big Congressmen or even the President, you are too late. The bailouts are over. Now the massive savaging of the public sector is necessary to pay the bill for another corporate party we weren't invited to. A bailout party on the scale of no other party in world history, perhaps as big a $8 trillion. Or $8 million, million dollars.
We waited the tables at this party, we prepared the food, but we are now to go hungry.
Rob, one of the 14-million Americans out of work and one-week shy of being unemployed 5 months.

Welfare is OK when it’s welfare for the capitalist class

Left: Figuring out how to help their banker friends

In its June 22nd edition, Business Week, a serious journal of capitalism, has an article about the banks. “A reality Check On the Banks” is the title of the article. As most of us that follow politics in any way at all are aware there is an ongoing war, a debate if you like, between sections of the capitalist class about how to move their system forward; about how to ensure the mistakes they made that almost brought the system down can be avoided in the future.

What they want to avoid is what happened last year in the early stages of the crisis when they “poured” private capital in to the banks, “figuring the worst was over” as BW puts it. Lehman failed and the banks had to eat in to their reserve funds to pay the piper. With the banks funds deleted, the taxpayer stepped in and bailed them out.

The US government has allotted some $11 trillion of taxpayer’s money to bail out capitalism. While they are telling us that things have improved, there are still trillions of dollars of bad loans on the books and capitalists will not invest as long as this situation exists. Banks still hold about $1 trillion in commercial real estate loans and, by many economists’ predictions, commercial real estate will be the next “subprime” crisis.

The article is very informative in this regard---telling us the truth about their system and the potential pitfalls. “Corporate loans, credit card debt, and construction loans also continue to sour in the face of the recession,” writes Business Week.

What is interesting about this particular article is their honesty. It is an honesty we don’t find in the mass consumption press, the very censored US media that they serve to the vast majority of us; they are speaking to each other in Business Week you see; they don’t have to lie.

“The government had to come to the rescue.” Says Marvin Miller about the bailout. Miller is a strategist of capital, a theoretician for them; someone who helps guide them through the ups and downs of their system. He doesn’t call them welfare queens and lazy bums for taking government money like he would a worker, a single mother or unemployed person.

Business Week is concerned about profits. They are built on a “rocky foundation” it says. They are worried about profits because they are up (yes they are up) but primarily because they used their control of political life and the government to change what they call, “accounting rules.” Do you remember Enron and the crisis with Anderson, the bookkeeping company? When they steal billions it is described as an“accounting error.” Go back and read the papers, you’ll see what I mean, same with MCI/WorldCom.

These accounting rule changes helped them pass the capital requirements the Obama administration forced on the banks due to pressure form a very angry public. Another aspect of these “accounting rule” changes allowed bankers to value the “toxic assets” (loans that can’t be repaid) they have on the books themselves as opposed to them being valued by market forces.

What this accomplished was quite amazing. It enabled the “big banks to engineer a boffo quarter” writes BW. I am not sure what “Boffo” means. But I can understand this: Bank of America made $4.2 billion in profits the first quarter of this year and Wells Fargo earned $3.05 billion.

But here’s what gets me. The government “came to the rescue” writes Business Week. But when the government “comes to the rescue” for workers, that’s “communism.”
People on welfare are savaged by the bankers and the strategists of capital for not going to work, for not “pulling themselves up by their bootstraps” as George Bush has done (snicker, snicker). Any state intervention that provides social services or aid to the poor; to youth the aged or the unemployed, this is failure. This is “big government” and it breeds dependency and laziness. Public expenditure for jobs or education or anything that benefits the working classes is savagely attacked using their control of the mass media.

The market is the answer to all things, they tell us during those times when they are making money. Health care” Let the market decide. Education? Privatize it. The postal service? Let the market deal with it and take it out of the hands of those lazy public sector workers.

But the capitalists actually ask for and get, government guarantees for their investments. In other words, they can invest in their precious marketplace and if they lose their money, the taxpayer will reimburse them. What a sweet deal.

Big government is only bad when it helps the working class. When it gives us housing or education or swimming pools in the community or help for the aged and disabled. When it helps them they love it.

And it mostly helps them.

The government is their government. This does not mean that we can’t win concessions from it; force them to spend more of the national pie on workers than capitalists. We won public education. We won sick leave and unemployment pay. But they are after destroying those gains. They were won in the past during periods of great social upheaval and class conflict.

If we want to keep them and, as we should, expand on them. We have to learn some lessons here. We have to reject the propaganda of their media. We have to reject their two political parties. We have to build an in dependent movement that challenges their rule and their ownership and control of society’s resources. What Business Week tells us is that everything they tell us is phony. They are the biggest welfare recipients, the biggest thieves, and the biggest liars.

Damn it! We have to change the whole shebang.

40 year anniversary of war on drugs.

It is forty years since Nixon launched his so called war on drugs. After the spending of more than $1 trillion drugs are more available and cheaper on uS streets than ever. Along with that the US regime imprisons its citizens at five times the average of the rest of the world. In 1980 there were 41,000 people in US jails for drugs. Today there are 500,000. Incredible. And when in prison only 14% get treatment. 

The war on drugs has nothing to do with drugs. US capitalism always has to have a war on something. It has to have this to divert the attention of its own working class from their own conditions and exploitation and to create an atmosphere of fear and willingness to accept increased repression. At present its the war on terror. 

As far as defeating drugs is concerned the war on drugs has been a complete failure. As far as controlling the mass of the population, making massive profits out of the prison industrial complex, and strengthening the state apparatus, it has been a success. 

Sean. 

Iran Elections, Freedom and Fairness

Watching footage of un-armed demonstrators going up against heavily-armed riot cops stirs up any working person. It especially stirs up those of us who’ve been in a similar situation here in the US. The sympathy of Vice President Biden for the demonstrators, on the radio this morning, didn’t carry much water for me.
It was heartening to see the working people of Tehran out on the streets taking on their authoritarian religious regime. It is 30 years since the Mullahs and their backwardness took the reigns in a revolution initially dominated by working people. In the subsequent decades lot of workers attempting to organize have subsequently been jailed, tortured or even killed. No different to the history of any single nation in this world.
But what inflamed me the most this morning was the indignation of the Bidens and Clintons at the Iranian Elections. That the elections were not free or fair.
In 1951 the Iranian people elected Mossadegh as Prime Minister. He took back Iran’s oil, by nationalizing the industry. Two years later British and US capitalism took back Iran’s democracy by organizing a coup against the elected government. In its place they made the Shah king once again. Eisenhower’s Operation Ajax is not even denied by the US establishment’s historians.
The Shah, the bloody dictator, that essentially brought us the current regime, was supported by the great US Democrats of the last century: John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, along with all the other US Presidents in-between.
I think the Iranian opposition’s claim that 10 million votes went missing is quite likely to be true. What is far, far less credibleis the tears for democracy cried by the tops of US capitalism. Every iota of democracy in this country came from below and is always claimed from above.

Solidarity from one union and socialist activist in the US to all those fighting for a better world on the streets of Tehran today.
Rob

The recession is not over and when it is the world will never be the same

A recent report announces that the default rate on commercial mortgages in the US was at a 15 year high for the first quarter of this year. Business Week reports that this may be the "Next Default Wave" something we have been warning readers about for some time; this crisis is far from over. "The shoe is about to drop with a thud" writes Business Week.

Another aspect of this as with much of the rest of the financial world is the derivatives market that is based on these loans. And the so called "Toxic Assets" that are still on the banks' books are still keeping capitalists wary of investing. They don't like to play when the risks reach a certain level. The treasury gave them a sweet deal in a public/private partnership aimed at getting rid of these assets but things are moving slowly.

The US government has set aside $11 trillion dollars over the last two years in order to save the system from collapse. This money will have to be paid for in the form of higher taxes and further cuts. Such huge injections of cash in to the economy is also a recipe for inflation which is increasing daily but likely to pose a real problem in the coming period. Commodity prices have risen steadily with Silver up 59% in the last six months, copper 90%, corn 45% and crude oil 115%. Gas prices have been rising daily here in California. And consumers are still saving in order to pay off debts, shocked as they have been by the severity of the system they thought had all the answers.

Roosevelt's new deal never saved capitalism, world war two did.

Obama's stimulus plan is paving the way for further crisis and increased social resistance to it. If you like what you read in Facts For Working People and this blog and you want to join us in fighting back, or help us in any way, contact us at: ffworkingpeople@gmail.com

If you can help us with a donation use the donation button on this site.

Obama"s chief economic adviser: "Obama is defender of free markets."

Summers, the chief economist of the Obama regime was extensively quoted in the Wall Street Journal today. His speech was made against the background of increasing attacks by groups such as the Chambers of Commerce against the Obama regime's talk of regulation and increased intervention in the economy. Summers said the Obama regimes bail outs, take overs, interventions were done out of "necessity not choice. And just as history has judged Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal as saving capitalism, not destroying it, Mr Obama's efforts eventually will be seen as pro-free market." There you have it. The Obama regime exists to save capitalism. This can be seen in its economic and other policies at home and in its invasions and occupations and wars abroad. Sean. 

Foreign Policy magazine leads with Marx on the front page.

The May/June edition of the US capitalist magazine Foreign Policy leads with Marx on the front page. It says: "Marx really. Why he matters now." It explains that worldwide sales of Marx's works have shot up. The magazine says Marx was "far ahead of his time" and he had "premonitions of AIG and Bear Stearns trembling a century and a half later." In relation to the present world crisis the article says, Marx would have said it represented "the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the netherworld whom he has called up by his spells." The article quotes Marx as saying that the "immediate aim was to organize the "proletarians into a class" whose first task "would be to win the battle for democracy." This is interesting when so many lefts have got so confused that they appear to be more against democracy than the right. Here in the US one of the demands I think the left should be raising is the banning of all lobbying at city, state and federal levels, the banning of all lobbying. This would increase real democracy. The article also speaks about the increased debate on nationalization of the banks.  And under a photo of a bust of Marx says: "From museum curiousity to man of the hour." When ideas correspond to reality then they cannot be supressed for ever. Reality will resurrect them again and again. After 48 years of right wing dictatorship in Portugal during which all Marx's works were banned when the regime was overthrown in 1974 Marx immediately became the best selling author. Marx and all socialist writers and workers are coming back on the agenda again. Socialists like ourselves must see that this demand is met.

Sean. 

With pro-market leaders, the road ahead will be difficult for working people.

It is the responsibility of all activists to learn from the past and help our movement change course.

Here in the US when they want to discredit their opponents in election campaigns, big business politicians accuse them of waging class warfare. This is a very serious accusation as we are one nation, under god. We are indivisible. So to accuse someone of class war is to accuse them of being unpatriotic and just plain un-American. It’s like violating the Divine Right of Kings.

The politicians wage class war all the time of course, and the present economic crisis has heightened class tensions as the capitalist class unloads a crisis of their system on to the backs of working people. In California it is being felt severely as millions lose their homes and jobs. California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger is threatening to layoff thousands of state workers and cities and counties are doing the same. Education, health care for the poor or disabled and other crucial services are threatened with the axe.

The global recession is forcing this upon us we are told; we have to tighten our belts. There is nothing we can do it seems. Democrat and Republican alike are united in their call for sacrifice. “California residents are going to feel a reduction in services---there’s just no way around that.” Says Noreen Evans, a Democratic state assembly member, budget chair and advocate for California’s wine industry Darrell Stenberg and Karen Bass, two prominent California Democrats “recognize that all of those programs are going to be cut.” “It’s a matter of degrees, ” says Stenberg adding, “I will not eliminate services for the most vulnerable Californians”. But he does admit that he is not “frivolous” or “irresponsible about what’s at stake here in California.” *

These two statements are for very different ears. What he is not “frivolous” about and what is at stake is an unfriendly business environment, a climate that is not favorable to profit making. As a representative of the capitalist class he is well aware that such unfavorable conditions could lead to an outward flow of capital as businesses move to friendlier climes. More importantly, the potential for social upheaval increases as they destroy the standard of living of workers and the middle class. To alleviate this threat the attacks must be tempered; “it’s a matter of degrees”. We must sacrifice now for a better future, to not do so invites catastrophe. The weakest among us will be hit hard; the very poor and the disabled---children and the sick as well a veterans and those who are least organized. Different sections of the working class will be set against each other as we all scramble to stay afloat in an overcrowded boat; this is the strategy that will best avert a united opposition to a generalized attack on us all.

This is the voice of the Democratic Party in California. This is the party of Obama, of Kennedy, Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. These are the so-called champions of the US working class, the defenders of working folk. Pelosi and her husband have had a hard time of it recently as no doubt all the millionaires in Congress have. Her and her husband Paul lost up to $ 1 million of their AIG investments. Paul is a real estate investor too and has lost money there so they say, up to another million. But they have the winery in Napa among their six properties and that is worth between $5 and $25 million. They made somewhere between $100,000 and $1,000,000 selling grapes last year apparently. What is never mentioned is the income they have earned from the tenants that paid the rent; this figure is buried somewhere in their net worth. The Pelosi’s have between $25.3 million and $109.4 million in assets according to a report filed last month.

There is no revolt within the Democratic Party at these attempts to force workers and the middle class to pay for the banker’s crisis. Obama has not condemned Schwarzenegger, like Bass and Steinberg he supports him.

The Democrats and Republicans have no fundamental differences on the important issue; that the working class will shoulder the costs of the crisis; will have to rescue them from their precious market.
It is simply a matter of degrees, they are bickering over how to make the working class pay, nothing else.

In this, they have the assistance of the heads of organized Labor who support their “matter of degree” strategy. This is the same strategy they apply in contract disputes when workers strike to defend what has been won over years of struggle.

“We want to make changes with a scalpel, not a chain saw.”

These precious words do not come from the lips of a more compassionate CEO, the head of Chrysler or Wal-Mart perhaps. UFCW official, Ron Lind, announced this to the world during the grocery strike here in California some years ago. As his members fought on picket lines for five months, lost their homes, abandoned their children’s college plans and, in some cases, committed suicide having lost all due to their heroic defense of their Union and their rights; Ron Lind was assuring the bosses through their media that cuts were acceptable, just not quite so severe. Just a few weeks ago, the heads of SEIU and the San Francisco Central Labor Council publicly accused their members of being “confused” when they voted against a contract that contained some $38 million in concessions.

We can see how linked the strategists of the Labor movement are to the Democratic Party; it is from this section of the capitalist class that they get their ideas.

There have been numerous rallies and demonstrations by teachers, nurses, and other public sector workers against the attacks on them and social services in general. The responses so far have been isolated from each other and lack any clear strategy for winning let alone a program of demands.

The top Union officialdom will not act without massive pressure from below. The employers will not act without it either. They are not afraid of rallies and protests where the main theme is to wear pink in order to show our anger at teachers being laid off.

All activists have to in one way or another fight against the concessionary stand of the Labor leadership and their allies in the Democratic Party. We must act and act in away that is different from what has been done for years with miserable results. The teacher’s Union alone has some 330,000 members in California; the California State Labor Federation has, in conjunction with the CTW coalition (Stern and Co) some 2 million workers affiliated to it. Organized and unorganized, we have the power.

Demanding what we need and not what the employers, the Democrats and Labor officials say is acceptable is where we must start. No concessions, more jobs at Union rates, a $15 minimum wage, shorter workweek etc. Housing, education, transportation, these issues belong to all of us.
Fighting for what we want and need and using direct action tactics to win it is what works. Stopping production, challenging their anti-Union anti-worker laws is what works and what got us this far in the first place.

It is not difficult to argue that there is plenty of money. The first half of the $750 billion in TARP money they approved, $350 billion, disappeared, but that didn’t stop them giving more of our tax money to these crooks. They say this crisis was mostly due to a “lack of oversight”. Not true. The finance sector spent billions of dollars bribing politicians (they call it lobbying) in their two political parties to ensure there was no interference in their economic activity. They spent $3.5 billion in the last decade lobbying in Washington and made $2.2 billion in campaign contributions.

Paul Craig Roberts writing in counterpunch comments that. “If the Pentagon is correct, then by next year the US government will have squandered $6 trillion dollars on two wars, the only purpose of which is to enrich the munitions manufacturers and the "security" bureaucracy.”

We don’t need to be voting for measures to decrease our disposable income in order to pay for their crisis.

Like the alcoholic that must overcome his denial and accept that his addiction exists if he wants to eliminate it, we must overcome the ideology of the capitalist class that claims the wealth does not exist in society to provide people with a decent and secure life. The money is there; the problem is that they have it; they have ownership and control its allocation.

Influential members of the Democratic Party themselves make it clear that we can only expect a slower death with them at the helm of our political lifeboat. The heads of organized Labor have poured billions of dollars of worker’s hard earned dues money in to that black hole we call the Democratic Party over the years, some $400 million in the last election cycle.

A movement built around a program that demands what we need, not what they say they can afford. A movement that rejects the absurd notion that workers and employers have the same interests (the Team Concept as applied by the Union leadership) and uses direct action tactics to enforce its will is what can transform the balance of forces and attract all sections of the working class to its banner.

Out of such a movement and in conjunction with the communities in which we live and work, independent candidates, can run for office and a mass worker’s party can be built that will offer a political alternative to the domination of political life by the two parties of capital.

A movement such as this will develop. Hatred of the big business politicians is rampant. California voters rejected all their measures in May aimed at making us pay more to fill the budget gap, but they voted yes ((by a huge 80%) on the one measure that denies politicians pay raises when budgets are not balanced.

This is significant but voting is not enough. It is the responsibility of all those within organized Labor and without to act; to abandon what has not worked and help spur the development of such a movement armed with what will.

*SF Chronicle, 6-12-09

Union Election & Washing the Bosses' Car

I recently got nominated to run for President of my local union and have been discussing a whole slew of issues with other carpenters. With around 20-25% of our Local out of work, the primary issue is jobs. But under capitalism there’s not much a small Local union can do to undermine the blow of 14.5 million workers unemployed. In our campaign we have raised the issue of shutting down non-union jobs with mass picketing and the need to challenge the existing labor laws which have contributed to the decline in union membership.
As unemployment rises, with it tensions among ourselves, as workers, have increased. We have attempted in our flyers to bridge the gap in particular between Latino and non-Latino workers. A lot of Latino workers aired their grievances with the union refusing to deal with them in Spanish. When our Wildcat Strike Caucus won the Executive Board elections back in 2000 we immediately instigated Simultaneous Spanish translations at our Union Meetings. On our flyer, we stand for the right of workers to deal with the union in their own primary language.
On a recent phone call discussion with a candidate for the Executive Board, another carpenter who is also out of work, this issue hit a nerve with the worker. “You know, English is supposed to be this country’s language. I’m fed up with carpenters who come out to the job who can’t speak it. You tell them to do something and they get it wrong ‘cause they can’t understand you.”
I paused. “Well, workers who can’t do the job get laid-off, why does it bother you?” Then he explained how he worked for a company where immigrant workers were allowed to make mistakes because they were working on the bosses’ house or getting paid less hours than they were working. “Well there’s two issues here, surely.” One is the language issue. The other is the contract. The boss, it seems, is exploiting the vulnerability of the worker that doesn’t speak English so as to undermine the contract. If a worker is violating the contract and can’t be talked out of it, then we should bring them up on charges. But, who’s to blame here? Surely not the immigrant worker who left their family to come to foreign country to put food on their table, but the boss who’s screwing everyone within hand’s reach.
So we can do one of two things: help our fellow worker be able to better communicate with his sisters and brothers or get rid of the boss. Short of a revolution, I suggested, getting rid of the boss would be difficult. Most everybody needs some English skills to survive in this country, but more importantly the worker needs to see the union as his/her defender or at least ally.
The union has the resources. We pay $1.25 an hour into our union as dues. Our union is sitting on a huge pile of cash. We need to use up some of our resources to strengthen the union: the union now prints most everything in English-Spanish (since the Wildcat strike), job dispatch needs to be done in the two languages too and there should be a professional translator at union meetings. Why? Because this severe recession has created a situation that bosses nationwide are seeking to exploit. People are hungry, people are worried-sick about keeping their jobs and the bosses are seeking to incrementally take back everything we’ve gained in the past. One route they will use is dividing us. Black against White. English-speaker against Spanish-speaker. If we play their game of fighting each-other instead of the boss, ultimately will be all end up washing the bosses’ car.

Don't let Madison Avenue choose Father's Day for you.

I ‘m so sick of hearing about father’s day on the radio all day long. Don’t get me wrong. I am a father, I had a father, and my son is a father. But I refuse to fall for this hypocritical media onslaught. The same people that are driving fathers from their employment; are driving them from their houses, and are destroying the system that can educate their children; these same people are bombarding us with ads about showing father we love him by buying something they’re selling on Father’s day.

I refuse to spend one minute considering such a thing. I refuse to spend one dime at their urging on Father’s day. My son was just here (they’ve cut his pay by 50%) and he doesn’t feel the need to wish me happy fathers day; I consider that a sort of freedom. How or when I show my love for my Father or for my Mother will not be determined by Warren Buffet’s holding company, The Wal-Mart family or Madison Avenue.

They are liars and hypocrites. Not long ago it was Mother’s day, before that, Valentines Day. Anyone can see that it is not love and solidarity, caring and thanks that they seek by bombarding us with guilt-ridden ads about Fathers Day. They want us to shop. Just like after 911; Bush told us to shop. Not ask why someone would do what they did. Not question our own government, but shop.

Why is this?

The commodities we will buy were made by human beings like ourselves. They are the products of Labor. They have Labor time contained within them. But there is a little gem, some of the Labor time contained within the commodities we buy has not been paid for; the capitalist got it for free. So when they sell these to us, they realize that value in the form of money, it is money paid for total Labor time, the paid (wages), and money for Labor power for which they paid nothing. The problem is that normal human beings don’t spend our every waking minute thinking about buying things. So they have to create that need, that desire so they can retrieve money for the unpaid part of the commodity—money for nothing as Dire Straits put it.. That’s what the entire system is built around.

We don’t have to be rocket scientists to figure out what a good deal that is for the capitalists and why they bombard us day in day out with ads telling us to buy things. We can also understand then why all the various holidays; Fathers Day, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day. They are all really, “spur demand” days.

Growing up in England I cannot recall all the marketing and hype around these days. The US capitalist class is the most powerful and here they have had a freer reign.

We don’t need Father’s Day and we don’t need to buy things to show our love and gratitude to our parents. Pretty soon there’ll be retired paraplegic uncle day or overweight cousin’s day.

As a gift to fathers and mothers throughout the US I call for a law banning all layoffs and all home evictions and foreclosures and that all able bodied workers be employed at a minimum of $15 an hour.

That would be a real good day for fathers, mothers and the entire family. It’s a true family value.

Joe Biden stands up for workers at great sacrifice to himself

I received this from the rom the AFL-CIO:
June 9, 2009

"Vice President Joe Biden says he and several high-level Obama
administration officials won't attend this weekend's U.S.
Conference of Mayors in Providence, R.I., because city Fire
Fighters will be picketing to protest Providence Mayor David
Cicilline's refusal to negotiate a fair contract. What a
difference an election makes...Dick Cheney probably would have
had his limo drive through the picket line."

Wow! What a fool I have been. I never voted for the Obama/Biden ticket. I had no idea they would sacrifice so much for working people. Why wasn't I aware of this?

This proves that the Democrats are clearly in the camp of working people. Doesn't it?

No. I'm just kidding. This publicity ploy is for the Labor leadership and the liberals that cling to their coattails. Workers see it for what it is. Anyway, the fair contract that will be negotiated is a contract "fair" to the bosses in a so-called bad economy. The Union leaders atop the AFL-CIO will ensure that the necessary concessions are made, as long as the firefighters don't do what the city workers here in San Francisco did---vote a concessionary deal down. The Union leaders corrected that though---took them another concessionary contract; the members were just "confused" announced the Labor heads.

At some point though my brothers and sisters, you've got to do more than just vote.

Who are these people?

There is an old movie with Paul Newman about a trial in a Boston court where doctors are being tried for their wrong procedures in surgery which killed a young woman.  To cover their tracks they drove a young woman out of her job in the hospital. In the course of the trial this young woman said: "Who were these men. I wanted to be a nurse." 

I was thinking of this line when I read the most recent figures on military spending. The US is the top spender on arms and military activity in the world. They increased this spending by 45% in the last ten years. Yes 45%. They did not increase health spending or spending on social services or spending on education by 45%. No they cut these. No US worker should allow themselves to be conned by the propaganda of the corporations and their mouthpieces and media that there is no money for human needs. This is a lie. They can increase the spending by 45% on those areas which kill people but on the areas which help people they cut them. The people who run the system are monsters. 

This huge military spending is because the US has bases in over 180 countries round the world. These are there, financed by the US tax payer to protect the property and power of the US corporations. A side affect is that they alienate the local populations and create a bigger base for fighters against the US. 

So to quote the nurse in the movie, who are these people who make the decisions to spend this money in this destructive murderous way, rather than spend this money on the US poor and the poor internationally. This would make for a much safer, much more secure world. These people are the leaders of the corporations who make the military hardware, the leaders of the oil companies and banks who need the US military to protect their property and power, the leaders of all the major US corporations and of course the US military brass and politicians who are bought and paid for by the US corporations. That is who these people are. That is who make these decisions. They are monsters. They must be stopped. 

On another subject. The holding of the two journalists in North Korea. You cannot turn on the TV without heart wrenching stories of their plight. I am not in favor of them being held. This is a stalinist regime. However the main thing that strikes me is not this. I looked up in the dictionary the word for hypocrisy. It says pretending to a belief that one does not hold. Interesting. The US government and mass media is pretending to a belief that these journalists should be freed and allowed go where they like. This is the same government and mass media that has supported the seizing of people from all over the world and held them and tortured them in a prison camp in Cuba without trial or access to a lawyer for almost a decade. Apparently the two journalists in North Korea are staying in a guest house and allowed to call and write their folks.  The prisoners in the US gulag in Cuba are not allowed to be free and go where they like and write and phone their folks. Incredible, the hypocrisy of the US bourgeois. 

Do not believe what you hear on the bosses media and from the bosses politicians. there is plenty of money and resources for human needs and the US government and ruling elite do not believe in freedom. Ask the tortured prisoners of the US gulag in Cuba. 

Sean 

Terrorism has its roots in US foreign policy

Left: Consequences of "accidental" bombing that occurs when bombing rules aren't followed.

The US government admits that its “bombing rules” weren’t followed when it accidentally killed 140 or so Afghan civilians last month. No matter, surely a $100 each to the families of the murdered will quiet them down. The US has been very generous when it bombs the wrong people.

These pesky wars are costing US taxpayers a pretty penny; you can’t expect to have decent health care, public transportation and education if you want to introduce freedom throughout the world-----freedom isn’t free someone said. Iraq and Afghanistan has cost taxpayers $1 trillion so far.

One small section of Americans are doing well from it though. Global military spending rose 4% in 2008 to a record $1,464bn - up 45% since 1999, setting a new record. European and US companies are the world’s dominant arms dealers having about 95% of the industry between them but the US is still the biggest manufacturer of weapons accounting for 58% of the total global spending increase during the past 10 years.

The US spends more on arms than the rest of the world combined. Below is the top 10 military spenders according to the report published by AP. It is interesting that Israel is not in that list. I am sure Israel’s military spending relative to its economy must be one of the world’s highest.

The top 10 military spenders

USA $607bn
China $84.9bn
France $65.74bn
UK $65.35bn
Russia $58.6bn
Germany $46.87bn
Japan $46.38bn
Italy $40.69bn
Saudi Arabia $38.2bn
India $30.0bn

Domestically, the US military is opening more military public schools as the government is savaging funding for the public school system. Congress passed a bill last year that will increase the military presence in the schools. De Kalb county which includes much of Atlanta, would receive some $2 million in total for its public military school. Chicago has six such schools.

One parent, a Vietnam veteran, is not pleased with having these schools going after children. Mike Hearington, a Vietnam War says the schools are breeding grounds for the military.

"To pursue children like they are is criminal in my mind," He says. *

*http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2009/06/04/military_backed_public_schools_on_the_rise_in_us/


And we’re supposed to be worried about Iran.

For many workers, fear of layoff is big motivator

I just read an article from the Associated Press. It can be read here:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/For-many-workers-fear-of-apf-15458805.html

Here is terrorism at work. The Union leaders are also responsible for this. I was talking to a guy in the building trades the other day. His hours have been cut in half but he has not been laid off. This is good as the Union hall is full of unemployed workers. Another friend told me some 500 of his 3000 members are unemployed.

Like the situation described in the article, this guy decided against a trip with his son's school as a chaperon and said that there is increased tension even between friends at work as everyone knows they could be without a job any moment. He may also lose his home. Public sector workers are also under attack but much more fortunate in that they cannot be laid off at will.

I retired from a public sector job and one thing that I found most irritating was some of the right wing workers who championed the merits of the free market while receiving European welfare state type wages, benefits and security; what hypocrites.

The security and benefits of the public sector is what the bosses want to eliminate and are using this crisis to step up that assault with the help of the Union officials. Anyone who accepts that we have to compete, in other words accepts the laws of the market rather than challenging them will suffer this fate.

In fact, those right wingers on the job who champion capitalism and all that, particular those in the public sector, should not complain about losing their benefits, this is capitalism at work----enjoy it.

A great tragedy is not just the Union leaders at the highest levels. There are the thousands of paid staffers that work for the Union apparatus or other lower level officials that have entered the Labor bureaucracy with the auspices of the hierarchy as opposed to on the shoulders of a movement from below or with having built a base first among the ranks around a fighting program and a strategy to win it.

In this area alone (The SF Bay Area) there must be thousands of them. Many of them are former or present socialists, Anarchists or other leftists of one sort or another. Yet, they march in lock step with the right wing bureaucracy that dominates the Labor movement; they are part of the Union machine because their actions protect the hierarchy's left flank. San Francisco city workers that voted against a concessionary contract a few weeks ago were "confused" according to Labor leaders, including the head of the supposedly progressive San Francisco Labor Council. Another concessionary contract was sent them and, having no alternative, they voted it up. There was no public outrage from any of the thousands of left or progressive officials, no contradicting this remark in the press, no calling of meetings to oppose this and challenge the establish leadership's collaborationist's policies.

SEIU alone provided hundreds of staffers at dues payers expense electing Obama and other Democrats in to office. Now Obama's spokesperson is telling them thanks but we all have to sacrifice. The violence, breakdown of solidarity and emotional distress that occurs due to this situation is primarily the responsibility of the bosses and their system, but the Labor leadership shares a huge part of the blame. In fact, those of us that claim to oppose the Labor leaderships policies but do nothing are also responsible if we do not act, and act differently than they have.

Victory over landlord empower's tenants. Worker's can make gains with the correct approach.

Labor's Militant Voice and supporters of Facts For Working People has been involved in a major struggle against a slumlord in Los Angeles. Our comrades down there along with the tenants used direct action tactics and forced this landlord to spend thousands of dollars in long overdue repairs. He had to install new plumbing and water heaters. He installed new counter tops and cabinets and fumigated (speedily) the complex as bedbugs were rampant. He had to paint the place. He was warned by a judge, not to harass the tenants and that he couldn't just turn up at people’s apartments any time of the day or night as he was fond of doing.

It was not always a smooth ride by any means. Like the employers, landlords like these take advantage of the vulnerable among us; single mothers or undocumented workers who could face deportation. He also had another business that the tenants picketed.

We had to first build trust with the tenants and ensure there was a core group that was willing to fight and lead the struggle as well. In these situations, it is imperative that we make it clear we do not fight for people but with them, that we have certain methods and a track record but they must be willing also; it is equally as important that they understand the risks involved as we don’t look to the courts or the liberal politicians to fight on our behalf, but self organization and direct action. We explain clearly what we mean by this.

The landlord fought back ferociously as they do, using intimidation, threats of violence and the courts. He tried to separate the tenants and pretended to be friends with some and not with others; the carrot and the stick and divide and rule, two standard weapons in the arsenal of those that oppress us.

The struggle, and the advances made had another valuable aspect to it. It empowered the tenants; they could see that they didn't have to be victims of history; they could make some themselves, and make some they did. With the correct method and tactics, victories can be had. But just like Union contracts where the boss violates them before the ink is dry; this particular landlord has only been slowed, has had his nose bloodied. Like any section of the capitalist class; they are driven by the laws of the system itself to wage war on workers in the workplace, the home and society in general. And like workers on the job, tenants must form permanent tenants rights organization armed with direct action tactics and a fight to win strategy that can defend their interests.

It was not easy at first given the power a landlord can have over tenants, after all they own the roof over your head. An LMV member lived in the apartments with his family and played a major role in the campaign; this caused some tension between him and his parents who, with some justification, were very concerned about the outcome. In the course of the campaign though, his mother, who was most concerned, became convinced that what they were doing was right, but it was a difficult journey. This woman, Inez, eventually joined LMV and is also helping tenants like herself in other buildings fight back against their landlords. She came to our conference, one of two national conferences that we have each year to discuss political and economic perspectives and to assess our work over the past six months and what we should expect in the period ahead.

She spoke through a translator at the conference, something that was not easy for her. But it was a very moving and powerful contribution. I wrote down some of it and will let her speak for herself:

"I am nervous and proud, proud of Julio's development. In the beginning I was against it (the campaign against the landlord) but my husband said that I should let him be, that he "will learn his lesson." The landlord was our friend I thought and I didn't want to offend him. (She starts to cry) We kicked my son out of the house and he slept in his car. I told him he can't come back. My husband said to let him get this out of his system. But the landlord showed up at our workplace and tried to get us fired but our boss supported us. The landlord showed up with the police to get tell Julio to back off.

I am proud of Julio because even when I would yell at him he would stay quiet and continue his activity. He insisted and we decided to become part of the campaign. I believe we will get somewhere with this someday. I used to be a Republican and now I am not. Whatever Julio wants we are with him."

Inez is an active member of LMV and has also become more interested in what we do, in politics, and the wider issues. She is discussing these issues with others and said that since this experience she "can't go back." At one point, the Landlord offered her and her husband $18,000 to leave----- a significant sum. But Inez would have none of it, she rejected it saying that it would be “abandoning our neighbors” and that we will “stay and fight with them.”

This is how we learn the great lessons. We learn through the struggle for reforms that something more has to be done. The whole experience shows how, when a leadership is present that has a method and strategy that works, workers will step forward as difficult as it may be. In the wider sphere of things, this struggle was a very small victory. But for those involved it was a huge one.

Inez's comments had half the room in tears. Not because we felt sorry for her, or Julio, but because she inspired us with her courage, not just to fight the landlord, but to share with us her fears and mistakes; this way we can all learn from them.

As Marx said 130 years ago, "Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programs."

More here: http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/2009/02/tenants-fight-back-against-slumlord-in.html

Teen suicides, the Holocaust, forgotten Palestinians and animal love. The US media at its best.

So CBS news tonight reports on the rising unemployment rate; it's now at 9.4%. The figure for teenagers is more than double that. In reality, these figures are both grossly under the actual figures.

Earlier, the local CBS news reported the increase in teen suicides. There have been numerous suicides with teenagers throwing themselves under trains here in the Bay Area. There will be all sorts of investigations as to why this is. Grief counselors are there for the rest of the youth and efforts will be made to discover what is causing this.

There is no linking of the two, the crisis of capitalism and the human crises like teen suicides. I wonder what it must be like to be a teenager in this world. What future is there? The politicians are rotten. Capitalism is destroying the environment and leaving them a cesspool to live in. They are bombarded with ads every minute of every day selling them everything from violent video games to magazines with mindless content about looks and sex. Their parents are out of work and about to lose their homes. Those that are not are working two jobs to stay in them. And another feature, coming after the ad here for erectile dysfunction, will cover the pain for children not being able to get enough to eat in this recession.

It is no wonder they are killing themselves. And what adds to this is the absence of a mass movement which gives youth, or their parents, a way out. This movement will develop and it will be the youth that will play a leading role in it as they have in all social movements. It is being delayed in part by the refusal of the Labor leaders to organize a fightback It was youth who shut down the WTO in Seattle lets not forget.

On another note I see Obama at Buchenwald with Elie Wiesel, the concentration camp survivor. Obama gives a fine speech and explains the need to keep these memorials to those that died there.

What was interesting was that while in Israel Palestine I don't think Obama went to Gaza. In fact he visited an Israeli village right outside Gaza where Hamas rockets had landed and basically gave support to the Zionist regime's massive slaughter in what is the largest concentration camp in the world.

Wiesel, talked of learning from history. Have we learned from the Holocaust? He mentioned Bosnia, Darfur, Cambodia and Rwanda but he too conveniently left out Gaza; as a supporter of the Zionist regime he is silent.

Obama talks of both sides in the Israel Palestinian issue making "tough choices". But both sides aren't equal. The Palestinian people are about to be handed another defeat from another US president.

Oh, here's the last story; an elephant and a dog that have become friends, Such tenderness, such trust" says the news reporter.

After setting us up to be depressed, disillusioned and helpless, they want to leave us in a good mood and with hope for the future. If a dog and an elephant can get along, why can't we?

Bosses blame workers for being under staffed

Today my co-worker jessica was in a tough situation. Jessica, as instructed, took her kindergarden class after recess, to drink water. It was the same route that she takes everday, but this was unlike any other day because one of her kids was playing in line and accidentatly hit his head on a set of stair case that split his head. Immediately she took the kid to the office so that he could be taken to a hospital. Her mind after that incident was lost in time, there was no way in bringing her down. Then the principle was checking all the T.A's on how we were keeping the kids under control.
The opportunity to talk with Jessica and our other co-worker about the incident was not until our lunch time. Jessica begins by blaming herself, feeling she needed to be more responsible for the kids. Our response to that claim was that she is not entirely at fault, we are under staffed, we cant see all the things the kids do. We shouldnt be taking the kids to drink water when clearly the kids should do it on their own. On top of that we are 3 T.A's to 14 teachers, let alone the 2 hours that we are assigned as yard supervisors. This conversation was significant, it gave her confidence that the T.A's weren't blaming her and the real blame comes from the principle in that she was not hiring more staff. Its a lie that there is a budget crisis when banks get multi-trillion dollar baillout and education gets the ax. We were all on the same page as to how the T.A's are under such pressure.
Jessica was to go and meet with the principle after our lunch, we tried offering her the assistance of the shop steward being present a the meeting, but she refused. During the meeting, the principle tried to make her feel as if it was all her fault and nothing more, but that didnt break her, she knew the other T.A's were backing her up. Jessica asked why there isnt a fountain closer to where the playground was, the principle's response was, its out of the question and we cannot do that. Yet there has been 2 teather ball courts installed as we as a funnel ball court. Plus, Jessica pushed the idea that we as T.A's should not take the kids to drink water, as was discussed prior to the meeting.
After their talk, the principle made an announcement over the P.A system and said that the kids have to take themselves to drink water and go to the bathroom because they need to take more responsibility on their own. This meant that the principle was not blaming the T.A's as much for the students not being careful, in a sense she was retreating her statement. The reason that this happened was becuase of under staffing. This was in our mind a concession to the workers.

Bribing and Obama and Reagan

Thanks Richard for your piece on the capitalists bribing Washington. You know the one about the devil goes to Washington and makes an offer to all the politicians. He says he will give them anything at all they want if they sell their soul to him. As one they ask. "What is the catch?" 

On a more serious note. I see that Obama is arming around that creature Reagan. And they say Michelle Obama is on the phone to her regularly to get her advice on how to be a first lady. It is nauseating. This is the person along with her husband Ronald Reagan who pushed the racist, sexist policies of the Republican party. He is at this a few months after bailing out the bankers, a few days after sitting down with the corrupt billionaire heads of the Arab states and the vicious racist leaders of Israel. Anybody who had any illusions that Obama was anything but a politician who carries out the policies of US Imperialism should have lost those by now. 

Sean. 

Medical Care in the US is the worst in the industrialized world

The Wall Street Journal reports today on a new study that finds 60% of personal bankruptcies are caused by medical bills. Over three quarters of people who filed bankruptcy, the study, claims, had health insurance at the beginning of their illnesses. High deductibles and prescription drug costs drove people over the abyss.

The present economic crisis has led to an increase in violent crimes, domestic abuse, even total family annihilations as people that thought they did everything right saw the world around them collapse. From 2001 to 19007, the study reports, bankruptcy filings rose by 49%.

This is a powerful condemnation of the market. The US is the richest country in the history of human civilization. It spends trillions on warfare, supplies most of the world’s arms and weapons of mass destruction, and has just handed over some $3 to $4 trillion to the bankers and other moneylenders who caused this mess. It has secret prisons all over the world and kidnaps individuals who disappear in to these tortuous hell-holes where they live for years without ever being charged with crimes—but if you get sick in the US and have no money, chance is you die. If you have money when you get sick, you won’t have it for very long.

The Journal had a somewhat different piece yesterday on the massive lobbying campaign financial institutions waged to get accounting rules changed that will allow them to value toxic assets more favorably than their precious market which has dealt them quite a blow.

These financial groups spent $27.6 million in the first quarter lobbying Washington about the rule and other issues, according to a Wall Street Journal. The Journal also reports that they made campaign contributions of $286,000 to legislators on one of the committees relevant to the issue.

Rep. Paul Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat who heads the House Financial Services subcommittee lobbied for the change. He received $18,500 from coalition members in the first quarter. Kanjorski received $704,000 in contributions from banking and insurance firms, the third-highest total among members of Congress public documents reveal. Naturally, none of these politicians were influenced by these bribes.

We should always use the term, bribes as opposed to lobbying. It is insulting to even use the term lobbying. This $27 million in bribes in the first quarter alone is the tip of the iceberg. The figures are staggering, the best democracy money can buy, as one author put it.

The system is rotten. The recipients of these bribes are rotten. Through their actions, they are responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. The annual cost for health coverage for a family of four in 2007 exceeded $15,000. In 2000 it was a little over $7,400. Millions die in the US each year for lack of medical care. Our health care costs more and provides less; it is the worst system in the industrialized world.

doctor murdered.

Dr. George Tiller, a doctor who has persisted in spite of other attempts on his life in helping women who wanted to have abortions have these abortions, has been murdered by a man who denies women the right to choose whether or not to have an abortion. The man who stands accused is Scott Roeder. This man is also a member of various right wing militia groups. But this is not the crime of one man. This is the crime of the entire anti abortion movement. Reagan and the Republicans got this movement off the ground in order to whip up the religious right behind their party. They are as responsible for the murder of Dr. Tiller as is Roeder. 

Women must have the unconditional right to choose what they do with their own body. If they want to have a child they must have the ability to do this, that is they must have access to a good wage, a good job, affordable housing, affordable and good childcare at home and at work and one year maternity leave with pay. This must be part of the struggle for women's rights. 

But at the same time women must have the unconditional right to have an abortion. And this must be their choice. They should have access to the fullest and best medical advice in making their choice but in the last analysis the choice must be theirs and theirs alone. 

The anti abortion movement seeks to deny women their rights. Whether they are killers such as Roeder or picketers outside clinics they have this in common. Dr. Tiller was very clear on this, he was risking his life to give women the right to choose and control over their own bodies. The anti abortion movement, whether it is the wing who believe in murdering doctors or the wing who wants to whip up this issue to get votes for the Republicans are guilty of the murder of Dr Tiller. They all have blood on their hands. They all have to be condemned. 

Sean. 

Nancy Reagan, preserving Rasputin's legacy

The Russian royal Family had Rasputin (left) --the Obamas have Nancy Reagan.

The US and pre-revolution Russian ruling classes have a lot more in common that they think. The Tzarina had Rasputin and Michelle Obama has Nancy Reagan. Michelle Obama has been calling Nancy Reagan for advice, according to Vanity Fair. Nancy Reagan still talks to Ronnie, a miracle since he's been dead a while. I wonder if he feels bad about what he did to the air traffic controllers, destroying their livelihoods and banning them for working in their profession for life.

Nancy, like Rasputin, liked to have a good time and trusted the stars a lot, stars like the ones that only come out at night, not the ones in hollywood but those in space. (Damn it's hard to describe these two types of stars as they both come out at night and are in space) Her advice to Ms Obama was to have more state dinners. The Bush's didn't have too many of them, especially after what Colbert did to George.

"Just have a good time and do a little business. And that is the way Washington works," she told Michelle. Nancy's carefree attitude amidst a world engulfed in hunger and mayhem, brought about by policies her husband implemented is quite something. It takes a real inner strength to chomp down on a chicken wing while listening to Lawrence Welk in times like that.

That shameful Barak Obama made some wisecrack about poor Nancy's astrological preferences but he apologized; Michelle is trying to correct that little mistake; what bootlickers they all are.

I wonder if Nancy passed on Ronnies advice about how to deal with workers who engage in job actions to protest the destruction of their living standards...."Fire the bastards."

Could you imagine Malcolm X, Big Bill Haywood or Mother Jones giving these people any credibility by kissing their asses like that?

GM attacks workers

The GM bankruptcy will mean 21,000 GM manufacturing jobs will be done away with. The closing of dealerships is estimated to do away with over 100,000 jobs. So over 120,000 jobs altogether and at the same time billions of taxpayers money is being handed over to the company. The Obama regime represents the capitalists just like the Bush regime before it. The workers are going to be made to pay. 

The United Auto Workers are going along with this. The leaders of this union refuse to use their power to force the nationalization of the company and all the auto industry under workers control and management with compensation only on the basis of proven need.  This lack of lead increases the feeling amongst workers that there is no alternative to bankruptcy. I heard a worker interviewed yesterday and he was saying how good GM had been to him. The steam was coming out of my head with anger. It was the workers struggles over the past decades that had forced GM to give decent benefits and wages for a while. It was not that GM had been good to workers. 

The way to deal with the crisis in auto is to build opposition in the UAW, to build fighting Hands of our Jobs, Wages and Benefits in the workplace, link these us nationally and internationally in a campaign of mass direct action, occupations, mass mobilizations, and force the nationalization of the entire auto and auto supply industry under workers control and management with compensation only on the basis of proven need. And proven need to be decided by democratically elected committees of rank and file workers.  Part of this program that would be fought for would also be a shorter work week, no lays, and the preservation of health care and pension plans. 

Sean

Landlords are greedy bastards

Campaign for Renters Rights has fought for tenants in Lockwood in winning a great amount of victories such as heaters, paint jobs, fumigations and dignity. Since then the landlords have cooled off from the tenants. Yet they are still pissed off because they spent more than 30,000 in repairs to 10 units and when they see the opportunity they will jump on any small matter. Most recently a tenant, whose name is Yajaira is moving from the apartments. She spoke to the landlords son, Gabriel, about moving within 3 days, he agreed without Junes rent . Rent is due today and the landlord, Alfredo, (Gabriels father) went to Yajaira's apartment asking for the rent, she told him that Gabriel and her talked about it, but Alfredo refused and asked for the rent. Alfredo said that there needs to be 30 days notice prior to moving, if Yajaira didnt pay the rent he would take her to court. Yajaira responded with "Go ahead, take me to court because that's all you know what to say!". The landlord looked at her for a second then walked away. What a victory! to be able to get your landlord out of your face by make them feel like the scum of the earth! Victory for tenants all over!

If the old refuse to die, let them work

Left: Labor power in use. What the boss calls a willing worker.

Never let an opportunity slip by. That's what capitalism is all about. Michael Skapinker coined the title of this blog in the Financial Times a year ago.* Aging is not a biological necessity, Skapinker points out and refers us to scientist's reports to back up his claims. Even better, the Sea Anemone is proof that mortality doesn't have to be a product of ageing. This opens up great opportunity for profit taking.

Skapinker points out that "Only 35% of those born in England and Wales in 1851 could expect to live until their mid 60s. Of those born in 1951, 80% are expected to make it." The profitability of pension funds and the cost of them are adversely affected by the increasing human lifespan and it is a bit of a problem. Life expectancies in the former colonial world, places like Rwanda and much of Africa, for example, that hover around 45 to 50 years for males don't count as pensions are not available in these places so the math doesn't matter. Where capitalism is incapable of providing food, water and shelter, it certainly doesn't need to provide a pension plan for old age; no one gets old and you have to have a job to retire from.

But in the industrial countries this extended lifespan means idle workers. Idle, like demand, work and other terms that mean different things to capitalists than they do to us, does not mean that retired people are doing nothing. They might be traveling, fishing, gardening, taking care of grandchildren. But the real danger is that they might be active politically in some way, like fighting to extend retirement rights to all workers; even worse, ridding us of the system itself and fighting for a democratic socialist society.

Idle to Skapinker as a theoretician of the capitalist class mean this living human being, this mental and physical power contained within the human body, is in the possession of the individual whose body it is and is being used by them. This Labor power, as Marx correctly called it, is not offered for sale in the marketplace for an owner of money, a capitalist, to buy, and like the owner of any commodity, use it to their benefit.

The productive process, in control of the capitalists that posses the means of production, is the process through which wealth is created. Labor power not in use is even more of a waste in their eyes than a factory not in use or a machine not in use as the use of a machine consumes value while the use of a human being during the process of production not only consumes value but adds it, creates it. Labor power in use is the source of profit.

The capitalist class never loses sight of this. Anyway, retired workers who have won through massive struggle, the right to retire and receive a pension means that they consume a portion of that reserve capital that has been accumulated by capitalists through the exploitation of past Labor power; it's a damn nuisance and just not right.

Social class also effects longevity, the Times states. In fact, blue collar workers, like myself, live shorter lives, and women tend to live longer than men.

How differently we see the world. I saw an old co-worker/friend who retired 20 years ago the other day and all of us who worked together are so happy he is enjoying his retirement and getting that check, including the government one as he is over 62. Normally, the insurance companies figure out pretty accurately how long we'll live ensuring that most of us die way before that, allowing them to keep the rest of what we could have had.

Living longer is "difficult to fund" writes Skapinker. And a waste of "willing workers" Willing has another meaning for them as well. A woman worker earning a couple bucks a day in Bangladesh is "more willing" than US workers, as are workers in factories under dictatorships.

We're as willing as pimps claim their victims are.

Ridding ourselves of the system we call capitalism, and those that rule it, will allow us to retire from collective Labor in our forties or earlier, freeing us to then participate in the collective running and administrating of all aspects of society ensuring that we all benefit from our collective wealth.

It will be the dawn of genuine freedom.

FT 6-17-08