The Supreme Court Gives Trump The Green Light. Are You Really Surprised?

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

HEO/GED 

"If you're going to strive to motivate workers through autonomy and empowerment, it's important to remember that the primary burden is to make sure employees believe what you say.  Don't tell them you want them to be empowered to increase the company's profits.  Tell them you want them to be empowered because it's the best way to remain competitive and guarantee everyone their jobs."  Carl Robinson, Vice President, Organizational Psychologists

 

I was in my Supervisors office one day discussing an issue a co-worker had. He left for a few minutes and I noticed a book he was reading so I took the opportunity to glance at it. It was a book about managing workers and developing strong managerial leadership. The name of the book escapes me but I took the above quote from it and the author was Carl Robinson, President, Organizational Psychologists.

 

This particular Supervisor had his weaknesses but he was not a nasty, aggressive guy. He was once called into an arbitration the union had filed on my behalf. Management disciplined me for creating a “hostile work environment” by distributing a flier attacking another worker’s pro-management actions that undermined our unity. His testimony actually supported me and the union position prevailed. I don’t know how he kept his job after that. I am sure had he been in the private sector he wouldn’t have.

 

In my union activity, including writing for the local newsletter and eventually editing a national opposition newsletter in AFSCME called the AFSCME Activist, I always made it clear that it was a disaster for working people to buy in to the Team Concept philosophy being pushed by the trade union hierarchy, neither in the workplace, through joint labor management committees, or in the political arena through support for the Democratic Party. We can only rely on our own strength, working class unity, and our collective ability to prevent the economy from functioning. 

While we can use the courts up to a point, we cannot rely on the justice system of the ruling class, of capitalism, to defend our rights or our material well-being. Unions and any gains we made over the years were won through mass action and mass violation of anti-worker laws. History is clear evidence of this. The social legislation that came out of the 1930’s New Deal was the employers and their state codifying what had already been won in the streets, factories, and workplaces of the United States. The same applies to the legislation that was brought about by the Black Revolt and Civil Rights movement that followed.

 

U.S. President Trump wants the government to be more efficient and intends to cut millions of jobs and eliminate vital departments (not the offense budget) to accomplish that. But Trump’s efficiency means the elimination of millions of federal jobs and agencies, cuts so severe, they will even have a disastrous effect on business, especially small businesses as well. But efficiency, no matter which party raises it, always means helping the private sector bosses and their rapacious quest for profits, not the worker and our social and economic needs. 

 

In the mid 1990’s, when Clinton kicked women off welfare during his efficiency program called “welfare to work”, and AFSCME officials in New York City’s DC37 were caught stuffing ballot boxes to ensure Rudolph Giuliani’s cost cutting contract was passed over the objection of the membership, Al Gore spoke to Business Week. Here’s an interesting answer to a question about making government more efficient:

 

BW: Republicans want to kill five Cabinet agencies. You still seem to be

tinkering at the edges. Can't you find one department to eliminate?

 

AG: Cabinet departments don't get created by accident. Below that level,

there are many agencies that we have eliminated. In one year, we downsized

by 100,000 employees. We have locked in place plans to eliminate another

200,000 workers. That's a bold start. (My added emphasis.)

 

BW: What's next for the REGO drive?

 

AG: Round Two is going to focus on whether certain government activities are

necessary at all. Each agency and department is being confronted with a

basic challenge: reinvention or elimination.

 

Getting Smaller With Al. Business Week, 01-23-1995.

 

With friends like this who needs enemies.

 

The Supreme Court

 

There are some very important lessons being learned thanks to the Trump Administration. Many workers have drawn them partially as they have abandoned the electoral process and the two parties of capital in their millions. But Trump and his menagerie of sycophants, religious lunatics, crooks, and billionaires have completely pulled the mask off the pretense.

 

The U.S. Supreme Court, has been presented as this almost divine body that Americans must look to as the highest and most honorable power in the land. A politburo of the capitalist class is what it really is; a panel of old lawyers, defenders of the free market, and the laws and edicts that govern it. Each national election is a contest between the two parties of capital for which section of the ruling class will govern U.S. society for four years. Each one will try to get one of its supporters on to the bench and on the benches of the lower courts as well. The entire judicial system, despite differences in its ranks, represents not the seller of labor power, the workers, but the buyers of it, the capitalists. We can’t rely on either in a pinch and that has been made abundantly clear with Trump.

 

In response, after unions and other groups filed a lawsuit claiming the Trump Administration needs the approval of the U.S. Congress to make such changes, a district judge in California ruled in favor of the unions. Subsequently, an appeals court allowed that ruling to remain in place. 

 

Trump responded by issuing an executive order, continuing with the call for mass layoffs, and appealing the California Court’s decision. The Supreme Court majority responded with a stay on the original injunction. There was only one dissenting voice, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson who accused the court of circumventing Congress and that the Trump Administrations actions will lead to:

"…..mass employee terminations, widespread cancellation of federal programs and services, and the dismantling of much of the federal government as Congress has created it," adding, "While the president no doubt has the authority to manage the executive branch, our system does not allow the president to rewrite laws on his own under the guise of that authority." 

 

In response to the Supreme Court becoming an agent of the Executive Branch of the U.S. government (hint: it always has been) Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif. throws down the gauntlet, "Oversight Democrats will not sit back as Trump turns the Court into a political weapon. We will keep fighting to protect the American people and prevent the destruction of our federal agencies.”

 

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said the fight would continue,  "In Congress, in the courts, and in our communities." 

 

The days when comments like that would have meant something to the American workers are long gone.

 

Some of my liberal middle class friends whose faith in the Supreme Court is quite extraordinary, have admonished me in the past for being too negative with regards to the Court’s power or interests when it comes to a real assault on workers’ rights, whether in the economic or social field. While millions of Americans have drawn the same conclusion through experience; they might not see the way forward at this point but they certainly have determined that the Democratic Party is not it. This absence of leadership has led to a growth of right-wing ideas and organizations in the US and throughout the world. 

 

As Marx once pointed out, “The emancipation of the working class is an act of the working class itself.”  Putting it another way, the liberation of the working class from Capital can only be achieved through our own collective action and struggle, not through the actions of another class or external forces. 

 

The New York City Democratic Primaries

 

Zohran Mamdani’s success in the NYC primaries is extremely important as it reflects the mood for change that exists in US society. He was able to build an army of 50,000 volunteers during the campaign around a fairly modest program of reform This is not a minor detail. But Sanders also had an opportunity to build a genuine political opposition to the status quo as far back as 2016, and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and the so-called “Squad” have had the same opportunity. All have been co-opted by the Democratic Party machine and AOC appears to be a rising start in the Party and a potential candidate for President in 2028. Sanders just keeps ranting about billionaires and how the two parties are controlled by them then urges his supporters to vote for one of them. I’m tired of him.

 

Mamdani will suffer the same fate as a candidate of the Democratic Party.  I commented on his campaign victory here.  Mamdani’s economic platform is not radical by any means, yet it has brought the wrath of the US ruling class down on him along with accusations of antisemitism and support for Islamic fundamentalist views. Trump has called him a “communist lunatic” despite having no idea what communism is. All of this is nonsense. 

But this is the standard response when any politician raises policies that are seen as an alternative to the free market. Musk has earned billions from public ventures, as have those investors in defense industry, But, hypocritically, they want no discussion about regulation that protects the consumer or any curbs on the private sector.

Already, the New York real estate moguls, (land pimps I call them) the enemies of all working people, and the reason housing and rent costs are so high, are offering to spend millions of dollars to defeat Mamdani in November as he has a real chance of becoming New York City’s next mayor.

 

If Mamdani does win in November he will face an even more powerful combination of the employers, their mass media, the courts, and all the institutions of capital, not to mention the Democratic Party machine. 

 

His only defense in the face of this class offensive is to appeal to and root his campaign in the working class, our organizations, and our communities. This would mean exiting the Democratic Party at some point.

 

But more importantly, he needs to make an appeal to the rank and file of organized labor in NYC. If he hasn’t already, he should set up a labor section of the campaign to draw in more workers, both inside and outside organized labor. Mamdani could encourage rank and file union members to take his campaign into their locals and fight for their locals to endorse it, other members to join it and to help finance it. The first Amazon workers' union was won at a plant in Staten Island if my memory serves me right. 

 

New York City is a strong union town. Mamdani should offer his support if he becomes mayor in helping existing unions to begin strong union drives to organize the unorganized and bring them in to the organized working class. A break from the black hole that the Democratic Party is for reform movements, and a victory for this campaign, will have a huge positive influence on the working class as a whole.

It will take a mass movement based on direct action and violating anti-worker laws that will drive back this offensive of capital. It's how unions were built and how workers and all oppressed people made progress. 

Who Sits On the US Supreme Court Matters Little To Workers

Workers Owe Nothing to These People

 

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

GED/HEO

 

"Brethren we conjure you...not to believe a word of what is being said about your interests and those of your employers being the same. Your interests and theirs are in a nature of things, hostile and irreconcilable.  Then do not look to them for relief...Our salvation must, through the blessing of God, come from ourselves.  It is useless to expect it from those whom our labors enrich." (1)

 

There is a bit of a panic brewing in the Democratic Party over the coming mid-terms that could lose this other Wall Street party the razor thin majority in the Senate and its influence in Congress in general. Biden is very unpopular. Democrats rely to a great degree on the Black vote, something many black voters are aware of and the party has at times been condemned for it, a form of abuse for black working-class Americans taking them for granted.  As the Black Agenda Report has pointed out many times, where can they go when it comes to electoral politics? The only alternative is the “white man’s party that has shifted so far to the right of late that supporting it is abhorrent to so many workers and black workers in particular.

 

So, the announcement by “worker Joe” Biden that he will appoint a black woman to the Supreme Court is an attempt to strengthen the party at the polls by appealing to the black voter for help, but importantly to the black middle classes, the professional politicians, businesses and other sections of the black petit-bourgeois that’s concerned with advancing its class interests in the capitalist pecking order.

 

“What about whether she’s qualified or not.” I overheard one white person say the other day. Well, this is true in general (and she will be------more on that in a minute) but you won’t get very far with that argument. I remember a rather conservative white guy on one of our crews saying that with regard to affirmative action, that qualifications alone should matter not race (color). A Latino co-worker who rarely expressed political views snapped right back with “You’ve had 200 years of affirmative action.”. While many of the minorities I worked with saw huge failures in Affirmative Action they vehemently defended it and rightly so. It has failed that’s for sure but we must defend it against attacks from the right and racists.

 

Whomever Biden picks to replace yet another aged lawyer that made the top spot for lawyers in US society and has decided to retire, she will be qualified. But qualified in what?  She will pledge to defend the so-called free market and the capitalist system as she has done so far, this is the primary qualification. She will uphold the laws of the land as written by billionaires or their political front men and women that uphold the rights of the owners of capital and the legitimacy of their rule. She will legitimize US foreign policy that has resulted in the deaths of millions of people throughout the world since the decline of the European colonial powers. These victims are overwhelmingly workers of color.

 

Present US Vice President, Kamala Harris put a lot of young working-class black men in jail to protect the system from these predators; it got her where she is today. Democrats Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden have apologized for supporting the 1994 crime bill that resulted in the massive increase in the prison population, disproportionally African Americans.

 

No matter who is on the US Supreme Court, it matters little to any worker. In a civilized society, a social system devoid of class exploitation, people in official positions would naturally reflect the make-up of the general population; but we are where we are. I would be foolish to not recognize that to have individuals in powerful positions in society who, because of their race or color, were excluded for centuries will be welcomed as progress and in a sense it is as it reflects a concession to the social power of the workers in that marginalized community.

 

But we must not see things backwards. The increase in black politicians, businesses, and growth of the black middle class is a product of the heroic struggle of the black workers and youth over a long period that periodically erupt in to the streets. The Civil Rights movement forced changes from above and, unbeknownst to many workers in the US and participants in that movement, it had a huge effect throughout the world as victims of colonialism from Kenya to Northern Ireland were influenced by it. It forced the white racist ruling class to remove some obstacles that would increase the black middle class that could act as a break on the revolutionary potential of the black workers, proof that the system works so work within it; don’t challenge its legitimacy.

 

Unions weren’t a product of the US Supreme Court either. They were also built through mass actions and violating the laws that the US Supreme Court upholds. Workers were shot and/or deported for even discussing them. Social legislation of the 1930’s and the social legislation of the 1960s were a result of what was already taken in the streets, politicians simply codified it, took it in to the courts where they have more control. That, in my view, was the purpose of Affirmative Action as far as I can gather. These are my personal opinions but I do have my GED and HEO certificate though I don’t like to boast.

 

The arrest and conviction of state security forces for killing unarmed blacks in particular (US cops kill a lot of people but as with most statistics, for people of color it’s the percentage or rate) would not have occurred but for the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. It was almost unheard of for a cop to be arrested never mind convicted of murder. For George Floyd to die under the knee of some jackbooted right-wing thug in uniform is disgusting, I don’t care how many cigarettes he sold whether he was a felon or not; you can be made a felon by the stroke of a cop’s pen, I know, it happened to me on a picket line. If white workers want to strengthen our own material position in society we can begin by openly condemning this and standing with our brothers and sisters of color, united we have a lot more power than relying on a bunch of old lawyers for our livelihoods. To support the racist court system or the police or defend the idea there is such a thing as a “White Race” and to identify with it is class collaboration with the enemy.

 

We must unconditionally condemn the likes of Rittenhouse and other right wing neo-fascist types, or misguided workers that identify the response to the cop murders as rioting. While the damage was mostly to corporate property (no individuals homes are were set alight to my knowledge) that was a small percentage of the activity of the BLM movement, (some of it the activity agent provocateurs). In the absence of a social movement to which workers of all backgrounds can turn, when boiling point is reached, when workers can take no more, the movement erupts out of pure anger and takes on many characteristics and many alien class forces jump to its head.  

No movement comes ready-made. If you want to get a glimpse of how the movements in early colonial America occurred and what methods they used, read The Urban Crucible by Gary Nash. I read that quite a while ago and you’ll see that workers’ history in this country and gains we made came about through mass action and taking to the streets. Some of the early battles were always described as riots, or mob action, many of them far more violent than the Black Lives Matter protests were which were overwhelmingly peaceful protests.

 

Arguing over Biden’s announcing a choice for the US Supreme Court a sort of Politburo for the US capitalist class, is pointless. So he’s limiting the choice to a woman and only a black woman. The US ruling class will get their person in. It's their court.

 

The US Supreme Court was instituted by George Washington in 1789. He was of course a slaveowner and also from a wealthy English landowning merchant family. His ancestors were those that drove the British peasants off the land denying them a livelihood and means of subsistence then imprisoning them or for repeated offenses, hanging them for vagrancy or poaching.

 

We owe nothing to the US Supreme Court. It’s not ours.

 

(1) 1840's appeal from New England laborers to their fellows to abandon the idea that the employers/capitalists would solve working people's problems.  Philip Foner History of the Labor Movement Vol. 1 p192

Amy Coney Barrett's Originalism is a Fraud.

Screenshot source.

By Carl Nyborg

Constitutional "originalism" is one of those con games that's so absurd, it's offensive to have to explain why it's stupid.

Let me get this idea straight, when the Supreme Court is going to decide how the law is going to work going forward, they are going to disregard developments in academia, ethics, philosophy made between 1789 to present (231+ years, years where some kinda big stuff has happened) and Right Wing kooks are going to rule bases on what they believe a small group of 18th Century slaveowners would have wanted?

Kenneth's grandmother is a reasonably high level intellectual property lawyer with a name law firm. She notes that federal courts have not been clear on intellectual property law.

So, the Supreme Court, facing a complex intellectual property law case, is the judge going to say, "Don't bring me anything written in the last thirty years! I'm re-reading the Federalist Papers and having a seance with Thomas Jefferson!"

"Originalism" is a scam to invalidate court rulings the Right doesn't like.

This is what "Conservatism" is about: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."--Frank Wilhoit

The law works as a somewhat reasonable system of consistency b/c of stare decisis. That is, stuff that's been ruled upon is a done deal. We're not constantly relitigating it.

"Originalism" is a BS ideology that exists to relitigate *selectively*.

Every treaty the United States entered with Native Americans was violated by the US Gov't. Does "originalism" open the door for Native plaintiffs to say that originally those treaties were meant to be honored?

Of course it won't.

Because "originalism" is a lie. It's a power grab.

"Originalism" is a roundabout way to relitigate the U.S. Civil War.

"Originalism" is motivated by a mindset that significantly overlaps with Pol Pot's desire to reset Cambodia to "Year Zero".

What the Brett Kavanaugh hearings showed is the the GOP nominee can a) lie, b) demonstrate injudicial temperament, and c) have shady personal finances... and the Republicans are going to vote to confirm.

The Democrats are playing the Washington Generals, putting up half-hearted opposition that's good enough for affluent Baby Boomers.

Amy Coney Barrett is a corrupt twit who shouldn't be on the Supreme Court. And yet, she'll probably be confirmed b/c the GOP needs racist judges to go along with their schemes to remove people from the voting process.

Kavanaugh, Supreme Court and US Capitalism's Growing Crisis.

They forced Flake to do what he did.

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

Myself and other supporters of this blog have argued that the unprecedented political developments in the United States over the past few years reflect a crisis of historical proportions. We are witnessing a period that is the beggining of the end of the two capitalist party domination of US political life. This has been taking place over time as millions of American citizens have refused to participate in the electoral process, correctly recognizing that their material well being, their standard of living, continue to decline. But we are in a new phase here.

I have written many times that one of the major factors in the rise of Trump is the cowardly role of the labor hierarchy, the heads of the AFL-CIO and the 14 million members so I will not repeat that in detail here.

Each week, or every day, there are more revelations about the corrupt, deviant and crude individual that occupies the US White House. The present occupant, a serial sexual abuser, is so odious and reviled by any decent human being that politicians that were once favorite topics for scorn and ridicule are being held up as positive figures. The imbecile George W Bush comes to mind as does the war criminal and Goldman Sachs candidate, Hillary Clinton. Obama accelerated the drone assassinations and became known as the Deporter in Chief, but he sounds so nice, so cultured. So are the English bourgeois when they need be.

The gathering at John McCain’s funeral of many of the more recent Wall Street politicians, some efficient killers themselves and Trump’s absence from it, reflect the deep divisions opening up within sections of the US ruling class. There is such desperation among ordinary folk that institutions like the FBI and the murderous CIA whose role in history has been to spy, punish, torture, and generally ensure the US working class and other oppressed sections of society know their station in life are seen a saviors from the Predator in Chief and his cronies. Who would have thought people would turn to these anti-union, anti-worker agencies as the only hope to save democracy.

As we always say on this forum, Trump and the more overconfident and less strategic sectors of the bourgeois have intensified the capitalist offensive against the US working class. Trump is laying the “Whip of the Counterrevolution” on the backs of the working class. He is driving back all the protections, the gains, the advances workers and specially oppressed sections of the working class have made over the last 100 years. Coupled with this, and perhaps the most important aspect of Trump’s rule, is that his actions are severely weakening the institutions of capitalism, the courts, the police, the judiciary and so on.

His misogyny, racism, xenophobia and crude behavior, even his idiocy, is acceptable. But by weakening the institutions of capitalism that are supposed to offer some redress from its excesses he is forcing the movement against the capitalist offensive in to the streets. The more strategic sectors of the US bourgeois are aware of this and concerned by it. Trump is going too far too fast. It is for this reason they were aghast when he said in the debates that he may not abide by the election results if he were to loose. Sacrilege! If he can violate the sanctity of bourgeois elections so can we.

The latest theater around one of the predator’s co-thinkers and his nominee for the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanagh, is threatening the highest legislative body in the nation. The Supreme Court has an almost divine mythology around it much like the old Divine Right of Kings in Feudal times or the gods that watched Jason and the Argonauts from the heavens in the epic film of the same name.  “We can’t have a liar on the Supreme Court” some said of Kavanaugh.  What! Being willing to lie is a pre-condition for getting on to the Supreme Court. It’s a Supreme capitalist court. Its job is to defend the system from the working class, to throw legal obstacles up to prevent the working class from imposing its will on society. Just think of the bias in society. I had to send some information to a government office once, it might have been a passport. I had to have it signed by a respected member of the community. The examples were doctor, lawyer, judge, managerial civil servant etc. No truck drivers, welders, cashiers of admin clerks. Workers are only respected when they need cannot fodder to defend their profits.

Those politicians who are now offering themselves as the anti-Trump represent the more strategic sectors of the US capitalist class. Trump is feeding the already existing anger in society while shutting down any acceptable outlet. The more serious of them watch that video of the two women that confronted kavanaugh at the elevator and recognize that if this continues there will be millions more doing this, they know working class history. And most of all they cannot stop the incredible rise of woman in opposition to patriarchy, inequality, lack of opportunity, physical violence/sexual violence of the Weinstein/Trump/Kavanaugh nature.

According to a USAToday survey 94% of women who work in Hollywood have experienced, “Unwanted sexual comments and groping. Propositioning women. Exposing themselves. Coercing women into having sex or doing something sexual. And, especially pertinent to showbiz, forcing women to disrobe and appear naked at an audition without prior warning.” Along with the changed situation with regards to women, we have another institution of capitalism, the Catholic Church also in a dire crisis related to sexual crimes and worse, covering them up.

Crispin Sartwell, a philosophy professor at Carlisle College Pa. Points out in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that, “The basic problem isn’t that people don’t trust institutions, but that the institutions aren’t trustworthy.” The professor is correct but does not see the dangers in the same way the more strategic thinking bourgeois do as it is not likely he sees the working class as a force for change at all. He adds, “The situation is more dire than most believe. The decline in trust suggests a widespread moral decline among the leadership class. It’s getting to the point that all powerful people are suspect.”

We must not underestimate the crisis level that exists among the ruling class in the US. Capitalism needs these institutions to give the illusion of control----election for the people by the people---and all that and if you are wronged there is an outlet. But Trump and the right wing overconfident bourgeois that support him are closing all the official means through which victims of capitalism’s wrongs can find redress forcing people to seek results by other means. It was Martin Luther King who pointed out to Mike Wallace that, “…..we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard.”

The women’s movement will not be shuttered or silenced. Do not underestimate the fear that those two women confronting Kavanaugh in the elevator drove in to the heart of the ruling class in this country. Do not give Kavanaugh credit; the credit is not his to have. As the movement is forced in to the streets, it will not be Madonna, Oprah or Scarlett Johansson, millionaires and celebrities that will be leading that movement but working class women. It will be women like those that played leading roles in the recent teachers struggles. This movement, striking in states where strikes are illegal, has also put the fear of god in the minds of the ruling class as well as the hierarchy atop organized labor.

I wrote after the so- called Supreme Court gave Janus a victory over Afscme, Don't Panic Over Janus. The Supreme Court is Not Ours The fight over Kavanaugh, no matter who wins it, is a plus for us. If he gets on it, the sanctity of this gang of capitalist judges is undermined and it is undermined if he doesn’t

Those that follow our blog, Facts For Working People, may have read this but this article below (link), with a short introduction by myself, will give the reader a glimpse of how more serious strategists of capital see the present situation, of how deeply disturbed they are by it. The author spent time in a Stalinist labor camp so has some experience other than a CEO which he is now. His experience under a Stalinist regime taught him some things and he is worried that US capitalism is heading down a road that can only lead to ruin.  He is warning them of the consequences if they do not share the wealth.  He doesn’t see that inequality in and of itself is not the problem, that poverty, war, hunger, environmental catastrophe are endemic to capitalism and that only its overthrow and the building of a democratic socialist economy, a world, federation of democratic socialist states can avert disaster. Serious Strategists of Capitalism are Beginning to Panic

Supreme Court. Unelected bourgeois agents. US undemocratic system.

The US capitalists have this great trick of trying to con us into believing we live in a democracy. And not only that a finely tuned one. It is full of all the checks and balances you see.

At present the so called supreme court is deciding whether or not to throw out the health care law. Not one of these stooges have been elected. They have all been appointed by the president of the day. The president of the day has not been elected by the population but by the electoral college which gives much more weight to the votes of rural areas than to urban (working class) areas. The president has to get bills through the Senate and house of representatives. The Senate has the same number of senators, 2, for the 30 million people who live in California as the less than one million who live in some of the smaller states. There is no one person one vote in the US. Elections are staggered. There is no one time when all the congress and the president are elected together. This means that a big mood for change cannot be reflected in the same election. This is a deliberate stalling measure. Then on top of this undemocratic stinking pile we are back to the supreme court. If laws are passed that the big capitalists do not like they can get them struck down.

This does not mean that no progressive laws can be passed. The 1930's the 1960's saw progressive laws being passed. But this was in spite of the system of so called checks and balances. This was because working class people occupied the plants, fought on the streets, in the 1960's took to the streets in the civil rights movement and women's movement. The big capitalists got frightened and made concessions. What we are living through now is these big capitalists through their rigged political system and their lying censored mass media trying to take back all they were forced to conceded to these mass militant movements. The war against women is part of this.

But they are going too far. They are arousing women and workers with their attacks. A new progressive movement is being prepared. This will rock their old so called checks and balance system and open up a new period of struggle. We are already seeing this in the response to the war against women and the response to the killing of Trayvon Martin. The near future will see the rise of a new working class movement. in this will be challenged the rigged system bought and paid for by the extreme right capitalists, Wall Street, the Koch Brothers, the military industrial complex, and so on. And of course the supreme leaders n the supreme court will be shaken up too. They recently ruled to allow big money unrestricted ability to buy the US elections. Iran has its supreme leaders. The US has the supreme court. Neither are elected. They all must be turfed out. The checks and balances that are here in the US to keep the working class down must be overthrown. A genuinely democratic society is one in which the majority, that is the working class own and control democratically the economy and society.

Sean

Supreme Court.

Left: A recent photo of the US Supreme Court.

Why do people in positions such as judges, priests, bishops, so often wear robes, weird hats and other strange garb? The reason is such clothing is meant to separate these people from the rest of us and so intimidate us. We have no robe, we have no fancy degree from some fancy law college, so just sit down and shut up.

Another right wing pro capitalist has been put on the US supreme court. Elena Kagan throughout all her career has supported capitalism. She will continue to do this on the Supreme Court. Obama continues to support and strengthen the capitalist institutions.

The capitalists and their propagandists like to talk about the wonderful democratic American system of checks and balances. This is a fraud and a lie. There is no system of checks and balances. The Senate is rigged. There are two Senators elected for every state no matter how big or small the population of the state. So tiny Iowa has as many Senators as mighty California.

Only one third of the senate is elected every two years along with the House of Representatives. This means that it is impossible at any one election for the American people to elect a majority of the House of Representatives and Senate. This blocks mass movements being reflected electorally in one election and allows for manipulation and stalling by capitalism of any mass movement for change.

Then there is the President. The president is not elected by the American people on the basis of one person one vote. The president is elected by the so called electoral college which is not democratic. It too, like the Senate, does not reflect the population as a whole but gives extra weight to different states in order to weaken the power of the working class in the major urban areas.

All these machinations have one purpose. That is to keep as much power as possible out of the hands of the urban working class. American capitalism murdered African American people and kept them as slaves for centuries and kept them from exercising their democratic rights. Then after slavery was ended they used their racist state and KKK to keep them away from the polls. And through all this period and continuing today they have maintained the undemocratic system which they claim is the system of checks and balances but which in reality is to keep the working class as a whole from dominating the electoral system.

Back to Kagan and the Supreme Court. If the measures above fail US capitalism still has the Supreme Court. This is an unelected body. That is it is totally undemocratic. These bunch of elitists sit on the Supreme court and can strike down any law that is passed anywhere in the land. This is one more way that capitalism has to block a radical socialist or workers movement.

Behind all these forces US capitalism have the armed state apparatus, the cops, the CIA, the FBI, the military, all of which its uses to enforce its rule. This includes assassination where it warrants this is necessary. Think Martin Luther king, Malcolm X, the Black Panther leaders and many many workers organizers. These cop and military forces are the armed fist of capitalism to be used against its own working class and its rivals abroad. But back to the Supreme Court.

In the first two hundred years of the Supreme Court, that is up to 1999, just over 200 people sat on this court. All but two were men. All but two were white. All but seven were Christian. Not much chance of a non white, woman, non christian getting a trial of their peers there. That is the Supreme Court is undemocratic and has a tradition of being racist, sexist and confined to one religious viewpoint.

The unelected Supreme Court, this entirely undemocratic body, can strike down any law and over turn any decision of the still limited but much more democratic decisions of the population reflected in the elections to Congress and the senate and the state and local bodies and decided upon by votes in ballots. The organizers of this blog believe that the Supreme court should be either abolished or democratized, that is its members elected.

PS One other factor which I do not have time to develop. When talking about democracy and checks and balances we must take into account the domination of the mass media by the corporations and the rich and their parties. Equal time for different ideas and alternatives has to be a fundamental principle of any system. Not like the US system where how much coverage you get for your views is determined by how much money you have, that is by how successful you were in exploiting the working class or conning their organizations' leaders.

US, the Californian students are fighting, they are an inspiration.

Most of the contributors to this blog have been, and are, very involved in the fight back on education in California. This has meant it has been hard to keep so much material up these past few days. The student/worker struggle in California is going very good. The movement to have a student/worker day to prepare the way for a strike and day of action on March 4th is going very good developing and gaining strength. The state's governor and ruling elite are calling on the Federal government to give them more funds. this is a direct result of the student movement and the fear that it has created in these elements. March 4th Committees are springing up throughout the state. The struggle is to affiliate the students, the colleges, the universities, the high schools and the union locals and workplaces to these March 4th committees. On this basis these March 4th committees can provide the foundation for the March 4th strike and day of action and if all goes well can provide the basis afterwards for a structure which can fight and defend all the rights and conditions of students and workers. Crucial to the building of the March 4th committees is the linking of the students with the workers. This is being done through the passing of resolutions at union locals supporting March 4th and affiliating to the March 4th committees. But the majority of workers in California are not in unions. How does the March 4th committee get to these? The high schools and the high school students are the key. Take the information to the high school students and ask them to take this to their parents and ask their parents to form student/parent committees in their neighborhoods and affiliate these to the March 4th committees and through these integrate the struggle further.

All out on march 4th for a strike and day or action.

No increases in education fees. Fully federally funded expanded education system for all with increased resources and more jobs.

Preserve and increase all social services.

Education not incarceration. Education for all whether documented or undocumented.

Pay for increased education and social services through increased taxation on the rich and the corporations.

End the wars and occupations abroad and use the wealth saved to fund education.

On another topic. We have argued on this blog that the US political system is corrupt. Well it just got more corrupt. The Supreme Court, that unelected bunch of elitist capitalist representatives just made a decision to remove the limit that corporations could spend to bribe the politicians. The dissenters on the court who opposed this ruling said that: "allowing corporate money to flood the political market place would corrupt democracy." It is already corrupted, this will only make it worse.

The timing of this decision is not accidental. Capitalism hit a wall in the last two years and it almost brought down the entire world economic system. The only reason it did not was because it was bailed out by tax payers dollars. A $14.00 trillion bail out according to one estimate. The financial system has been desperately trying to ward off regulation since. It has been stepping up its lobbying, that is bribing, efforts to prevent increased regulation. So now here we go and the Supreme Court, these unelected swine, hand them an even more powerful weapon to stop this regulation. Now they can bribe the politicians without any limits. They can give them as much as they want. Bribery unlimited, Corruption unlimited. Huge dump trucks will soon be seen in Washington delivering the loot.

This lifting of the limits on bribery will further undermine the political system in the US in another way. With unlimited cash, the corporations will utilize the communications systems that have developed in the past couple of decades. The US population will be bombarded with corporate propaganda as never before. Unlimited cash to bribe the politicians, unlimited cash to fill the TV screens, the mass media in general, the country's blogs and websites. Their intention is to step up their efforts to be able to find an alternative view of the world to that of capitalism.

Unfortunately, tragically, they will be helped in this because of the role of the labor leaders. The labor leaders have bought into this lobbying system also, this bribing of politicians. They will respond to the new laws by increasing the amount of union members money they pay to the capitalist politicians. They will try to outspend the corporations' contributions to the capitalist parties. Of course even if they could outspend them this would not work because the Democratic and Republican parties are capitalist parties, are bosses parties and no matter how much they are bribed by the unions they will remain so.

By continuing to try and bribe the capitalist parties the unions get dirtied by this process. They are seen as just as bad as the corporations. They too are trying to bribe the politicians. How can they criticize what they are doing themselves?

The unions have something the corporations do not have. They have millions of members. They can mobilize these in great campaigns and struggles, they can organize them in the workplaces and neighborhoods. They do not need to bribe the politicians. They should condemn this bribing process, refuse to participate in it and emerge with clean hands, as the democratic force in US society. The way they do it now they get the worst of all possible worlds. They bribe the politicians but they cannot outspend the corporations in this bribery, they cannot change the policies of the politicians because the politicians are corporate politicians, and at the same time they get the bad reputation of being just as bad, just as corrupt, as the corporations.

The unions give hundreds of millions every election to the Democrats. This should immediately stop. They might as well throw this money down the drain. Instead they should launch a campaign around a few clear issues which are directly related to working peoples lives.

#A 15.00 minimum wage or a $5.00 an hour wage increase for all whichever is greater.

#Free heath care and free education for all.

#Affordable decent housing for all as a right.

#An end to all wars and occupations abroad and the transfer of resources now used on these and on the military to solve the problems we face in society both here and abroad.

#Education not incarceration.

#An end to the corporate destruction of the environment through capitalism's mad addiction to profits.

#An end to the dictatorship of capitalism and for a Democratic Socialist Society.

#Build a Working Peoples Party to organize and fight for this program.

If the labor leaders gave a lead on this program, if they condemned the corporations and the lobbying/bribing system of US politics, they would open up the basis of a new movement which could begin to transform society to one where peoples interests and humanity's interests came first and which was genuinely democratic.

Sean.