People Before Profit blog

Immigration reform returns to Congress

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 08:18:00 +0000

NewsAnalysis

As Congress returns to the subject of immigration, the Bush administration has stepped up arrests and deportations of immigrants. Meanwhile, in his State of the Union message, Bush once again stressed the creation of a new guest worker program. Both have to be countered by the immigrant rights movement.

Bush’s motives for ratcheting up repression are not hard to guess. His administration has been extremely consistent in emphasizing a greatly expanded guest worker program as the “solution.” He also talks vaguely about legalization, but it is the guest worker part that really interests his corporate supporters.

And combining his talk about guest workers and reform with vicious raids makes sense tactically, for it tends to push both employers and immigrants into accepting a guest worker program in order to get out from under the pressure.

Service Employees Union President Andy Stern, in an open letter to Sen. Edward Kennedy last month, listed the following things as essential for any guest worker program to be acceptable to his union:

• Portability of visas (guest workers should be allowed to switch jobs in mid-stint),

• Right of guest workers to join unions and exercise all other labor rights,

• Right of guest workers to bring their families with them,

• Ability of guest workers to petition for permanent resident status without permission from the employer,

• Enforcement mechanisms to protect the interests of both the guest workers and other workers, and

• No requirement to return home after a limited stint working in the U.S.

This would be, on paper, a considerable improvement over what was in the bill the Senate passed last year, or even the McCain-Kennedy Bill that SEIU and others supported. But what Stern describes is not the kind of guest worker program that employers want or that Bush would accept.

Bush made clear that he wants a guest worker program in which workers would be forced to go back to their countries of origin after their stint. He promotes a guest worker program in order to please major sectors of big business that want the cheap labor “legally,” but also pitches to anti-immigrant forces with a promise that the workers brought here to be exploited will also not have either labor rights or social services. This is incompatible with Stern’s stipulations.

The AFL-CIO has taken a position in opposition to any guest worker program as “harmful to all workers.” Existing guest worker programs are prone to grotesque abuses. For example, last week Mexican guest workers in Louisiana protested against a contractor for holding onto their passports so that the workers could not escape his clutches, and would be forced to keep working despite the fact that the employer had reneged on promised conditions of work.

Supporters of guest worker programs say that even if all 12 million undocumented immigrants were legalized, huge numbers would still cross the border to find work, because the home country pressures that cause immigration would not have changed. It is better that such people be enabled to come legally. But it does not follow that a new guest worker program is the best or only way to do this. The U.S. government has been issuing only 5,000 work-related permanent resident visas per year to people in the main job categories in which most undocumented workers are employed. It would be far better to adjust this figure radically upward than to bring in guest workers, because permanent residents have more enforceable rights.

Right now, the immediate fight is to stop the current spate of raids and other repressive actions.

An important national initiative has begun. Under the leadership of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, the American Friends Service Committee, the League of United Latin American Citizens and hundreds of other local and national organizations, there is a push for a moratorium on all raids and deportations until Congress can craft an acceptable comprehensive immigration reform program.

EDITORIAL: Mortgaging our future

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:53:00 +0000

It’s an oft-repeated truism: our children are our future. By that measure, however, our country could be heading for a pretty dismal time, according to a UNICEF report released earlier this month.

Called “Report Card 7: Child Poverty in Perspective,” the study by UNICEF’s Italy-based Innocenti Research Center ranked the United States and Britain at the bottom among 21 developed countries in the well-being of their children.

The study examined material conditions, health and safety, education, peer and family relationships, behaviors and risks, and young people’s own sense of their well-being.

The U.S. ranked last in health and safety, largely because of high child mortality and accidental deaths. It was next to last in family and peer relations and risk-taking behavior.

Interestingly, while scoring near the top for children having at least one employed parent, the U.S. again scored worst for “relative income poverty.”

One of the study’s researchers blamed economic inequality and poor public support for families for the abysmal rating of the world’s richest country. Jonathan Bradshaw, a professor of social policy at Britain’s York University, cited the scarcity of day care services in both Britain and the U.S., and poorer health coverage and preventive care for U.S. children.

We would add that U.S. military expenditures amount to nearly half the world’s total, and the cost of this country’s nearly four years of war in Iraq has already soared over $365 billion.

A radical reorganization of priorities is essential if our country is to build a solid future for all its people. This must start with concerted action to overcome the inequalities inflicted by racism, so glaringly illustrated a year and a half ago by Katrina. Second, a sound social support system for children and families. And finally, an end to the policy of endless war, and a massive shift of resources to human needs.

EDITORIAL: History matters

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:50:00 +0000

For casting a vote in the 1872 presidential election, women’s rights pioneer Susan B. Anthony was arrested, tried, convicted and fined $100 (which she never paid). In a famous 1873 speech to the court titled “On Women’s Right to Vote,” Anthony drew a profound connection between the struggles for African American rights and for women’s rights.

“It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people — women as well as men.”

This week, as February, African American History Month, segues into March, Women’s History Month, it is fitting and essential to remind ourselves that these two struggles to expand and strengthen democracy are intertwined in our country’s history, and continue to be intertwined today.

The fight for the abolition of slavery and for the rights of the former slaves produced some of the greatest women our country has known, Black and white — such as the Grimke sisters, Lucretia Mott, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell. This “second American revolution” was the fertile soil in which the movement for women’s rights blossomed.

Frederick Douglass, the former slave who became one of this nation’s foremost abolitionists and moral compasses, was a leading advocate of women’s rights. Despite differences over tactics among abolitionists and women’s rights leaders after the Civil War, Douglass was later hailed by Anthony as a women’s rights pioneer, and upon his death in 1895, she delivered his eulogy.

We do well to remember this history as we contemplate the big struggles we face today to decisively defeat the far-right and to advance peace, democracy and social justice.

Commenting on the 2008 presidential race in a recent New York Times op-ed, Gloria Steinem, a prominent figure in the modern women’s movement, said progressives should refuse to be drawn into an “irrelevant” and “destructive” debate pitting Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama against each other — “forcing a choice between race and sex.”

Steinem said, “We can accomplish much more if we act as a coalition.”

That’s a good history lesson to keep in mind.

States mull privatizing lotteries

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:09:00 +0000

NewsAnalysis

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has raised the public’s eyebrows once again. Perry’s staffers have been cooking up a scheme for six months with former Sen. Phil Gramm to sell the state’s lottery. The Austin American Statesman and Houston Chronicle have detailed the intricate web woven in this proposal.

Gramm is now an investment banker and is vice chairman of UBS, which is one of the corporations along with Morgan Stanley that would benefit from the sale of the lottery. Former Perry staffers who are now lobbyists also stand to score big. Plus, UBS recently hired the governor’s son, Griffin Perry.

UBS and Morgan Stanley have made presentations to Phil Wilson, Perry’s deputy chief of staff and a former Gramm employee, which conclude that selling the lottery over the next 40 years would be worth at least $14 billion and possibly more. The lottery currently puts $1 billion into the state tresury every year.

Gramm, a Republican, was infamous for being the darling of bankers, real estate tycoons and energy moguls when he was a senator. He was tied to the notorious savings and loan scandal, which cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars. Glaxo, a mega-drug company, made a corporate jet available to him for the cost of a round-trip ticket on any domestic flight during his campaign for president. His wife, Wendy, sat on the Enron corporate board. Enron was one of Gramm’s major campaign contributors.

Texas’ efforts can be seen as part of a larger effort to privatize public assets. Recently, the Chicago Skyway and Indiana Toll Road were leased to private interests. Illinois, Indiana and New Jersey are exploring the possibility of selling their lotteries.

In Illinois, public workers union AFSCME Council 31 blasted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s plan to sell the state lottery as “anything but responsible.”

“It is never prudent to sell a public asset for a one-time lump of cash that is spent on operating costs,” the union said. “Wisconsin and Michigan in recent years both rejected lottery privatization plans as poor fiscal policy.”

Many are noting that this trend of leasing or selling off public assets is not only scandalous, but also a response to the financial crises that many states are facing. Privatization would only increase the intensity of the exploitation of working people and expand the profits of the wealthy.

Blagojevich, a Democrat, proposed the idea of privatizing the state lottery about six months ago, around the same time Perry started incubating the idea for Texas.

Accountability of a private lottery would be difficult. Rick Casey of the Houston Chronicle said lotteries prey on poor people who “see the lottery as their only way out of poverty.”

phill2 @ houston.rr.com

Spitzer administration presents new challenges

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:03:00 +0000

NewsAnalysis

New York’s new Democratic governor Eliot Spitzer has pledged to reform state government, and that’s widely welcomed. There are lots of reasons why people support cleaning up politics, the biggest one being that too few regular folks represent the rest of us, and a vast amount of corporate money is behind those who run the state.

But Spitzer has already shown himself to be a very mixed bag — no surprise, given his background and his relationships with some Democratic Party centrists and in the corporate world. Still, he’s an improvement over Pataki and can be pushed to take pro-people positions. He has put forth positive proposals, the brightest spot so far being on education. His budget begins to settle the school funding lawsuit that the Pataki administration fought for more than 10 years, and will include more than $3 billion for New York City’s schools, to which the city is supposed to add another $2 billion. These desperately needed — and court ordered — funds will make a huge difference for millions of kids, not just in New York City, since other school districts will benefit from the changes in the funding formula.

But that same budget contains big cuts in health care, which, when added to those called for by President Bush’s latest “guns over butter” budget, will be a disaster. Several million New Yorkers have no health insurance, asthma and diabetes are reaching epidemic levels and people in rural areas are already underserved. Why should reform start with cutting services, and not with cutting the profits of insurance companies? Why not look for ways to cut drug costs, as other states have, such as buying them from Canada? And why accept the federal government’s current level of Medicare reimbursement — there’s a new Congress and the electorate placed health care high on its priorities. Why not put the power of the state government behind a call for a national solution to the health care crisis?

The fundamental problem is how to pay for the state’s obligations to its residents. Spitzer has promised to lower property taxes, as well he should — such relief for working families is long overdue. But this should not be confused with the issue of what to do about taxes on big business and the wealthy.

Over the Pataki years there was a sharp shift away from such taxes, and as a result, a decline in revenue. The web site “New York Loves Business” cheers that in the last five years, “the cost of doing business in New York dropped by 33 percent ... workers’ compensation costs [are] down more than one-third … New York has eliminated or streamlined 1,300 regulations.”

Although Spitzer had pledged absolutely no tax increases, he seems to have moderated that stance, and is considering closing some tax loopholes. But it will take a struggle to move his administration to undo the damage done by Pataki’s version of Bush’s tax breaks for the “haves and have mores.”

The question of good government boils down to this: Who will the changes and reforms benefit? Will they benefit the majority, the working people, the children, the poor, the racially and nationally oppressed, and immigrants? Will they benefit the many communities that have the economic wolf at the door, from rural areas and small towns to bigger cities, in every part of the state?

New York’s Democratic state government should add its collective voice to the growing call for a speedy withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. The $2 billion a week that is being spent there on death and destruction would make so many things possible in terms of state programs that benefit working people.

The November elections produced a more favorable balance of power in New York state, creating the possibility of winning some victories on basic issues like affordable housing and health care, reform of the Taylor law, women’s reproductive rights, repealing the Rockefeller drug laws, and immigrant rights, among others. But it will require new and higher levels of unity of the labor and people’s movements, a broader view of what is in working people’s interests, and energetic mobilization of the people — the majority — who voted for a change in our country’s direction.

Elena Mora (emora @ cpusa.org) is chair of the New York State Communist Party.

Cheney leaves country in midst of Libby trial

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 10:33:00 +0000

Commentary

In his Washington Post column, Eugene Robinson writes, “If you’ve been following the … Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby perjury trial, I can understand how you might confuse Dick Cheney with Tony Soprano. Cheney’s office is beginning to sound a lot like the Bada Bing, minus the dancers.”

Libby was Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff during and after the build up to the Iraq war. Most of us believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the Bush administration knowingly used lies and distortions to fabricate rationales for this immoral war and went after anyone who contradicted them with a vengeance. The complexity sewn into this crazy quilt of deception is formidable.

The organized crime analogy to Cheney, though, brings visions of Al Capone to my head. After all, Capone was brought down on tax evasion, not murder charges. Perhaps G-man Patrick Fitzgerald could start a similar chain of events with a successful prosecution of Libby for perjury.

In a nutshell, Libby is being tried for perjury and obstruction of justice in the investigation of a leak that exposed a war critic’s wife as a CIA agent. Valerie Plame Wilson was an undercover CIA operative working on the prevention of the spread of WMDs. In 2002, her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, had been dispatched to Africa by the CIA to check out intelligence that Iraq had an agreement to acquire uranium “yellowcake” from Niger. Wilson had concluded that there was no such arrangement. Wilson wrote of his findings in a New York Times opinion piece titled “What I didn’t find in Africa” on July 6, 2003.

According to prosecutor Fitzgerald, there was “concerted action” by “multiple people in the White House” to use classified information to “discredit, punish or seek revenge against” a critic of President Bush’s war in Iraq. This included illegally “outing” an undercover CIA agent.

Libby is not on trial for exposing Plame. He is on trial for lying to the grand jury during the Plame-leak investigation.

For me, this trial has legs beyond Libby. With the political changes in Washington and the inquiries and hearings on Iraq — from pre-war intelligence to contractors’ corruption — this trial could be the undoing of Cheney.

Libby’s defense went after FBI agent Deborah Bond, who testified that during her investigation Libby said he may have talked with Cheney about going after Plame. Introduced into evidence were Cheney’s handwritten notes that implicate the president in the outing and smear campaign, something Bush has vehemently denied.

NBC news analyst Craig Crawford said the trial “seems destined to serve as an unofficial impeachment of Cheney’s integrity.” And while last November Democrats made an election promise not to impeach the president, “they did not close that door for the vice president,” he speculated.

When Libby was indicted last year, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) said it “represents the beginning but not the end of the process of holding the Bush administration accountable for its conduct in foisting a pre-emptive war on this country.” Conyers now chairs the House Judiciary Committee, whose oversight plan includes investigating abuses of executive power.

Libby’s defense attorney announced Feb. 13 that neither Libby nor Cheney would take the stand. The announcement about Cheney may be due to his being out of the country. Apparently the president asked Cheney to go to Japan and Australia next week for 10 days “to thank these two allies for their efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.” As Saturday Night Live’s Church Lady always said, “How convenient.”

Teresa Albano (talbano @ pww.org) is editor of the People’s Weekly World.

The Struggle for African American Freedom Continues

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 09:29:00 +0000

The following is the text of a speech Jarvis Tyner, executive vice-chair of the Communist Party USA, delivered to the Trade Union Council as part of his tour of the United Kingdom in October 2006. Originally published in Political Affairs magazine: .

It is an honor for me to participate in your Black History Month celebrations [October is Black History month in Britain - ed.] and I want to thank the Trade Union Council for inviting me to the UK.

The fight against racism is even more urgent today. There is nothing more important on the agenda of the progressive forces worldwide than the fight to end the scourge of racism from our planet. By racism I’m not just talking about a set of bad ideas and beliefs. I’m talking about a system of oppression; ideas that when put into practice lead to terrible suffering, inequalities, violence, war and genocide.

Now George W. Bush doesn’t want to talk about this issue. Interestingly his so-called “War on Terror” does not include ending racism, which has been a source of enormous terror throughout history. Today a growing number of people in the US believe his war on terror is really a war on the people.

Throughout history, racism has always been a weapon of mass destruction. In my country it justified genocide against the Native American Indians and the kidnapping and enslavement of Africans. W. E. B. Du Bois pointed out that 13 million Africans died in the capture, kidnap and transport to slavery in the new world. After slavery and the overthrow of Reconstruction, the south was ruled by KKK terror and thousands were lynched and murdered. From 1887 to 1927 about 3,500 Black people were lynched 95 percent in the South.

Racism and War

Racism has always been used to justify imperialist aggression and the most horrible acts of violence and genocide in history. And believe me it is being used thoroughly used by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Rove to promote the war in Iraq.

Anti-Arab, anti-Muslim bigotry, is basic to their ability to carry out the war. They are doing great damage to the democratic spirit of many good people who are being fed this racist confusion to win their support. Racism has always been a weapon of mass destruction.

We have to understand that the struggle against racism must be a basic part of the anti-war movement. The same goes for basic class issues. This war is draining the US of billions of dollars that should be used for education, health care and job creating people-serving government programs.

The African American people are paying a special price for this war. It is our schools that are in the worst condition. It is our communities that have the worse housing crisis. It is our people that have the highest unemployment rate.

Official figures put Black unemployment at 9.2%, Hispanic 5.3% and white at 4.1%. But a correct count which would include those who are jobless but want to work, plus who are working part-time but want full-time work) will bring the over all figure up to 8.3% and up to 16% for Black workers.

If you break those figures down more the situation is Depression like. For Black teens the rate is in excess of 50%. Even official rates of unemployment for Black male teens is 32% and for Black males ages 18-29 its 18%.

The slogan “Money for jobs not for War” really resonates in the Black community. That slogan has become accepted in most working-class communities especially after Katrina but it has a special impact among Black folks.

Speaking of the impact of racism, when Bush launched his shock-and-awe invasion of Iraq the US was still in a state of hysteria about the 9/11 terrorist attack and Bush had majority support. But even during those rather trying times the same polls showed that African Americans rejected his war by almost 70%.

In 2004 89% of Black voters who came to the polls voted against Bush. Even thought they had deep concerns about terrorism they rejected Bush’s phony war.

Knowing that he had very little support among Black voters, the Republicans launched a well financed national effort to suppress the Black vote.

If it had not been for this, Bush would have lost in 2000 for sure and when you look at what the Bush people did in Ohio in 2004 to stop Blacks from registering and voting he would have lost then as well.

Now, that says a lot. Think about it; if Bush would have lost in 2000 or 2004 going by what Gore and Kerry are now saying against the war, we would likely not be in Iraq quagmire today. This is the price we are all paying because of racism.

Katrina

The way the Bush administration handled the Hurricane Katrina tragedy should put to rest any doubts about how deeply racist they are.

Kanye West the hip hop star went on national live TV and was supposed to ask for relief for the people in New Orleans instead he told the story of the media reportage which everyone knew about. When they showed a white couple wading through the water with food the media said they were a family that found food but when they showed a Black couple wading through waist high waters with food they called them “looters.” West went on to say that “George Bush doesn’t like Black people.”

This caused a tremendous up roar. The media, no doubt administration inspired, dragged out every Black person they could to say, “No, The president is not a racist.” This did not work however.

What is reality?

The Bush administration knew that the levees could not hold back more than a category 3 storm and they didn’t fix the levees. In fact the Bush administration cut the money for strengthening the levees.

They also knew that a storm of that intensity would eventually come and it would completely flood the predominantly Black and poor areas of the city. And still they did not fix the levees.

In fact the state, local and federal governments were all grossly negligent but the federal government has the resources enough to save the thousands of lives that were lost. But they failed to act and thousands of people died as a result. Kanye West was right!

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) put the people in the Super Dome football stadium and the convention center and didn’t give them food and water and more people died.

In the middle of this debacle, Bush came into the area and congratulates the head of FEMA Michael Brown on national television. The infamous statement he made in his Texas twang was, “Your doin’ a heck- of- a job Brownie”

After thousands had to be evacuated and some were packed into the Houston Astro Dome (another football stadium) Bush’s mother (Barbara Bush) came to visit the place and standing before thousands people made homeless by her son’s neglect, sleeping on cots on a football field makes the statement that, “these people are happy to be here because its better then where they lived before.”

Does Marie Antoinette come to mind?

Like the slave masters who didn’t understand why the slaves suffered so when their children were taken away, Barbara Bush doesn’t understand that when these Black working-class families lost their homes, their jobs, their communities their lives were literally in ruins.

But Mrs. Bush, the woman who was the wife of one president and raised another, looks at the world through the racist lens of the white ruling class. That’s George W’s mother! His grandfather, Prescott Bush was a friend of Hitler and was prosecuted for trading with the Nazis.

Katrina was a turning point for a lot of Americans. When they saw the TV pictures of all those Black folks screaming for someone to help them; when they saw the people trapped on their roof tops, the bodies lying in the streets and floating in the water and the children who couldn’t stop crying, who may be traumatized for life; when they saw the elderly with no life support who were literally taken their last breaths – they saw the reality of structural racism in America. Many understood for the first time that something was drastically wrong in America and this administration was moving things in the wrong direction. Many asked, “How could they spend so much money in Iraq and fail to provide for the thousands of flood victims?

It was at this point that the polls started to show a sharp decline in support for the president and the war. Katrina shook the conscience of the nation. It was a wake up call for a lot of people. It illustrated the centrality of the fight against racism in the overall fight for democracy, peace and economic justice.

African Genocide and Racism

And speaking of role of racism, there is no question in my mind, if what is happening in Darfur was happening to white people the world’s capitalist powers would not tolerate it. But the lack of decisive action to end this problem and similar problems on the African continent suggest that there is a lot of racist indifference. Or what if the AIDS crisis in Europe was on the level of Africa? Or if 55,000 US kids were dying very day from preventable diseases?

When the New York cops shot Amadu Diallo, the African immigrant, 41 times, they said they thought he had a gun. It was his wallet. In my opinion they saw Diallo’s race and that’s why they thought a wallet was a gun.

Racial profiling must be stopped. The signal for that kind of police behavior comes from the top. Rudolph Giuliani was mayor then and his policies encouraged police brutality. Some cops where reportedly said that they could get away with this because it was “Giuliani time.” This racist thinking afflicts too many of the authorities in the private and public sectors and causes high unemployment and the loss of many innocent lives.

Coming Election

The coming elections could mean a big change. US voters have an opportunity in the coming elections to reverse the extreme policies of the Bush administration. The midterm election for Congress will on November 7th, which is only about 3 weeks away. The entire House and a third of the US Senate are up and almost all predictions are that Bush, the Republican Party and the ultra right in general will suffer a big defeat.

The outcome of this election will hopefully reflect the widespread discontent among the US people. The accumulated effects of the war, their attempt to eliminate Social Security, Katrina and the environment is weighing heavy on the minds of the voters. After, all the lies and deceptions – all the hypocrisy and demagogy and all of the corruption scandals and now the Congressional sex scandal the people are poised to vote them out. New splits are developing on the right.

The Republicans and their cronies have been bankrupting the federal treasury on behalf of their wealthy friends. They are probably the biggest influence peddlers in government since the days of Boss Tweed. There is a growing gap between the economic and social conservatives in the Bush electoral coalition. Paul Krugman of the NY Times says Bush’s coalition is falling apart. Rightwing evangelicals are abandoning the Bush coalition because of the congressional sex scandal and the fact that he did not fulfill promises he made to them. Bush is so unpopular now that Republican candidates don’t want his public support.

What will it mean? If the Democrats win (let’s be optimistic, the majority in both houses – 6 in the Senate and 24 or 25 in the House) they will be in a position to change the political agenda of the Congress and the nation. For example, there are a number of resolutions that call for the withdrawal from Iraq that could pass.

It is time to end this war. The truth is that the US lost the war the day we entered Iraq. Bush’s demagogic cut-and-run charge against the majority who want to leave, means stay and continue the carnage. The consequences of staying are far worse than the consequences of leaving. Even their people are saying they need 4 more years. The truth is, US troops could be there for decades.

They have a strategy in Iraq. They want to establish a US military presents in the region. They want to keep control of Iraqi oil and to do that US and other occupation forces will be there for years. The British chief of command was right; the presence of the occupying forces is making things worse. A number of US generals are openly critical of the policy as well. After the elections the American people will have openly spoken and the mandate predictably will be “start the process of withdrawal now”!

Rep. John Conyers, Black congressman from Michigan, will become chair of Judiciary Committee and the word is, he has articles of impeachment (of Bush) in his back pocket. There will also be a number of investigations into the reasons for going to war and the conduct of the war. Vice President Cheney’s energy scandal that nearly wrecked the economy of California during their first term will be investigated. The outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame because her husband disagreed with the administrations reasons for going to war will be looked at again and so will the price gouging of the oil companies. They will be able to investigate all the administration’s (conscious) incompetence around the Katrina disaster.

With their closeness to, Halliburton and Bechtel, there is a whole lot of dirt under the Bush rug. Rumsfeld, who is a weak link, will likely be forced out. Besides, the military and a lot of Republicans don’t like him. A lot of groups are already putting on pressure for serious action to help meet the many crises in Africa.

Keep in mind however, that Bush will still be president for 2 more years and will likely use his veto. But if the Republicans lose in 2006 the stage will be set for a bigger defeat for them in the 2008 presidential election.

What will it mean for the struggle against racism?

It will be enormous. The civil right s movement can go on the offensive. For example, all of the ultra right racists that Bush appointed to the Civil Rights commission will be under sharp attack. And all the efforts of the anti-labor rightists on the National Labor Relations Board could be stalled and even overruled. They could possible win some big concessions for the victims of Katrina; to help them get back their homes and be properly compensated.

All the major and minor civil rights organizations are fully involved in voter registration and education. The Coalition of Black Trade Unionists always plays a big role in getting out the crucial Black vote. The Congressional Black Caucus is calling for an all out effort to defeat the GOP. The Black churches are mobilizing. NAACP is education and registering voters. They are working with the AFL-CIO and many of the Change to Win Unions to rally Black, Latino and labor households. Immigrant movements are in motion to bring out the maximum vote because the Republican majority in congress with some Democrats help passed a bill to build an 800-mile fence along the Mexican border. That measure is based on anti immigrant, especially Latino immigrant racism. It must be repealed.

As indicated above the Republicans have a strategic approach to suppressing the Black vote. In one election after another, they have been working to split and weaken the Black vote and keep it from getter to the polls.

People are going to court to stop the use of the Diebold voting machines (which can be rigged) and are in use in mainly Republican controlled states. There will be an efforts to buy off some Black ministers to not support the Democrats. But after two major election-year experiences people are much more vigilant. Preventing vote theft by the Republicans will be a major struggle. If Harold Ford wins in Tennessee he will be the first black to be elected to the US Senate from the South since Reconstruction. If Bernie Saunders wins in Vermont (and he is expected to win) he will be the first openly socialist member of the US Senate. This could all happen.

Structural Racism or institutional racism

An all-round attack on structural racism is needed if the damaging effects of the Bush policies are to be reversed. Earlier I mentioned the unemployment figures but now I want to briefly mention some of the other forms of structural racism. The criminal justice system is completely stacked against African American males especially. In the US today there are regularly about 2 million people in prison, which is the highest incarceration rate in the world. While Blacks, age 16 and over, are about 3% of that age group (27 million total) at any given time they are about 800,000 of the 2 million prison population. Black men are the largest group of prison inmates in the US. If they were counted as part of the unemployed then only 53% of Black males 18 and over would have jobs.

In 2003, the official jobless rate for black men in New York City actually reached 50%. This is economic racism.

The situation became serious when Reagan came into office (1980). That marked the beginning of a new corporate, racist offensive. That’s also when the crack cocaine epidemic started. When Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush (former head of the CIA) was put in charge of the so-called war on drugs, cocaine use reached epidemic proportions. And that was the basis for what became a 3-fold increase in the prison population.

They created special penalties for possession of crack and located the marketplace for it in black communities. Crack started out as a black drug but spread to Latinos and whites and every other racial group. But because the market place was in the Black community that’s who suffered from the violence and that’s who ended up going to jail. Sixty percent of street crime is drug related.

For first offense crack users, they made jail time mandatory. But if an upper class powder cocaine user first offenses meant probation. This is how they were able to criminalize almost a whole generation of Black youth.

This is structural racism. There are more examples in the school system, the foster care system, in housing, in health care and in social benefits in general. Black people are discriminated against in the prices they pay and the quality of the goods and services especially when they shop in their communities. There is what is called environmental racism where most of the hazardous waste dumps in the country are located in or near poor Black communities. This is structural racism and the labor and peoples movements must force all levels of government to eliminate it.

The question has to be posed? Why is the Black movement in the US not as dynamic and visually dramatic as before? I think it has to do with the ebb and flow that all movements go through. I think the murder of principled leaders like Dr. King, and Malcolm X and the buying off of others are also factors.

I think it’s the impact of the ultra right corporate, racist offensive. This meant that there would be even more stubborn resistance of the ruling class to the righteous demands of the people. The right wing has had the ideological offensive for two decades or more. It has had an impact. Basically the civil rights movement has been on the defensive ideologically. They’re out to remove the fight against racism from the moral agenda of the nation.

I believe it’s related to the shock of the structural crisis and the great loss of jobs due to globalization. This has disrupted and broken up traditionally areas of Black political power. New Orleans has to be added to that list.

Some important things have been won but in the high councils of governments and business racism is “in your face” as Bill Lucy, the head of the Coalition of Black Trade Union described it. Basically, “we get no respect” because they know that with Bush in the White House and the Republicans dominating Congress; they can get away with it.

Typical arguments by the neo cons are:

1. You’ve already won legal equality why are you demanding more? Since we are for a color blind society affirmative action is not fair to whites. If black and other minorities demand more you are asking for special treatment i.e. “reverse discrimination.” (Based on that deception, the victims of racism become the racists.)

2. Besides, they argue, more demands for civil rights means tax increases and that would damage the economy resulting in more Black joblessness as well.

3. Neo cons argue Black people and poor people need to become entrepreneurs, invest their money and get rich and that’s how they will get out of poverty and overcome discrimination.

4. They say that there is a moral crisis in the Black community and its damaging the whole country. “Fathers need to take care of their babies,” “Black youth need to stop all that gangbanging and sexual promiscuity and calling women b’s and w’s.” “They need to just say no to drugs and sex” and stay in school and behave themselves. Bill Cosby has become one of the main proponents of this view, although he has shifted away.

On the surface most decent people would not disagree with some of the things they raise. Many of our greatest civil rights leaders have and continue to raise similar criticism but within the context of a struggle to end racism.

However, as an ideological package what the right are really saying is, “the greatest enemy of Black people is Black people”.

There are whole numbers of right-wing books on race. John McWhorter a Black writer comes to mind. His book; “Losing the Race” says it all. And Abigail Thorenson, who was appointed to the Federal Civil Rights Commission by Bush is a proponent of the view that Black people have become sociologically inferior.

In essence what they are saying is not fundamentally new: it is old racism in a new package. They are the grand apologists for capitalism and racism.

Their slanders must be rejected. African Americans are not a culturally bankrupt people. We love our children and respect the institution of marriage, and have always had to fight to preserve our families. In fact during slavery we saw our children sold down the river and we fought, in vain to keep them. We are not opposed to women’s equality. Going back to Fredrick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, our movement has consistently been aligned with the women’s movement.

During slavery, when it was illegal to marry, we married secretly and fought to hold that family together. It was illegal for us to learn to read and write so we risked our lives to become literate. There is a long history of struggle for the right to a quality non-segregated education. It was during the Reconstruction governments after the Civil War that the first public schools where established in the US. People gave their lives fighting for this.

Today they push our young people out of school. They criminalize them with drugs. Then they put them in prison and ruin their lives. If our kids make it though the under funded, under staffed ill-equipped and still largely segregated public schools, the cost of college tuition is beyond most of our means. Globalization has taken away the jobs we had; jobs we had to fight to get in the first place because of discrimination. We joined and supported unions. We made gains, but they exported those union jobs to low-wage non-union areas and workers on both sides suffered. Whole communities, whole towns have been wiped out because of globalization.

You cannot raise a family on US minimum wage of $6.50 an hour. All of this is a crushing blow to family stability and the healthy rearing of children. The people who approve of, and pay to make most off the rap/hip hop videos (especially the most misogynist, violent and racist ones) are usually white male capitalists representing big corporations.

It is not Black culture they are pushing but capitalist culture wrapped in a Black façade. All they want to talk about is how great the economy is and how many jobs they’ve created with their conservative economic policies.

On the real state of the economy, we say, yes some jobs have been created but poverty has been steadily growing through the last two decades and real wages have consistently fallen. Underemployment is not the answer. We had full employment under slavery. How about some good paying, steady jobs so we can raise our families? When it comes to the fight against racism we can say with great confidence we know the enemy and it is not us. There is a lot of talk of the need to get back into the streets. Rev. Jesse Jackson is always pushing: “We need more street heat.” And when we get more political breathing room by defeating the Republicans this November I am confident we will.

A lot of you here know the problem. I am standing before an audience of organized worker. You know the problem. Would you elected your boss as your shop steward? Would you vote for your landlord to be on the rent board? If the answer to those questions is “no” then you know the problem!

The United States is a capitalist country. Its wealth and power depends on exploitation of the working class and institutional racism at home and imperialist penetration abroad. This is why there are still 4 million Americans who are homeless, 47 million with no health care, 37 million living in poverty. This is why we have hunger in a land of plenty.

Black people in the US are over 90% working class and have the highest percentage of trade union organization than any other racial or ethnic group: 20%. We have historically brought more militancy to the working class and trade union movement. We have brought power and resources of the trade unions into the civil rights struggle. It was Martin L. King who brought the largest number of labor unions into the fight against the Vietnam War.

We will be free!

We are dealing with a crisis of capitalism not a crisis of Black people. Bush struts around the world like he is king. But he is basically a wealthy spoiled brat. He never had to work for anything; it was given to him. As Ann Richards put it, like his father “he was born with a silver foot in his mouth”.

He is a former cocaine user and alcoholic, which makes him a good liar.

We the African American people made it through the middle passage and survived 300 years of slavery and 80 years of Jim Crow terror. Believe me no blue blood pip-squeak with a fake Texas twang is going to stop us from reaching our historic destiny. As the popular rhythm and blues song goes “Ain’t no stopping us now”! We are on the move and we know how to fight and we know who to fight. And that is why we will be free.

Jarvis Tyner is executive vice-chair of the Communist Party USA and can be reached at jtyner @ cpusa.org.

Yugoslavia: a historic view

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 08:09:00 +0000

When the term “balkanization” is used, it has long meant to break a territory or a region up into hostile, unmanageable parts. The Balkans has long been portrayed by imperialist ideology as a region filled with colorful, violent, backward people — the “hillbillies” of Europe.

I teach a course on the history of imperialism and try to give students a framework for understanding that different kinds of empires have existed throughout history.

Birth of imperialism

What we called imperialism in the 20th century or “globalization” in the 21st is a new system, not simply a continuation of old empires.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many figures, most importantly, Vladimir Lenin, called this new world system imperialism. Lenin saw this development as representing the rise of state monopoly capitalism and leading inevitably to great wars. Today this system is usually referred to euphemistically as “globalization.”

Lenin argued that as industrial capital developed productive capacities — limited only by the earth’s resources and labor pools — industrial powers established rival empires who fought each other to turn into colonies areas of the world that had escaped earlier colonization (Africa, China and other regions), and to take colonies and spheres of influence away from “less advanced” empires like those of Spain, Portugal and Ottoman Turkey. These rising empires used various nationalist movements as pawns in their manipulations.

The Muslim Ottoman Turkish Empire and the Roman Catholic Austrian Empire had divided the Balkans between them. For centuries, they fought wars with each other over the region and instilled hatreds among its subject peoples.

Who are the peoples of the Balkans?

The desires of the peoples of the Balkans had nothing to do with the manipulations of the various empires.

Serbians and Croatians constituted nearly 75 percent of the total Yugoslav population, with Serbians being a 2 to 1 majority. Other significant nationality groups were Slovenes, Albanians, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Roma (gypsy). There was also a Yugoslav ethnic designation for the people who wanted to identify with the entire country. Many who were born to parents in interethnic marriages called themselves Yugoslav. Christians, Jews and Muslims were all part of the region’s religious makeup.

Many who call themselves Bosnians have emigrated to the U.S. Even though there was no distinct Bosnian nationality in Yugoslavia, Bosnia today is a separate state as a consequence of the civil war and the U.S.-NATO bloc’s intervention.

Rival empires

By the mid-19th century, the powerful British and French empires sought to prop up the Ottomans, whom they referred to derisively as “the sick man of Europe,” against the czarist Russian Empire. They feared czarist Russia might develop into a major capitalist rival if it gained access to ports and trade routes under Ottoman control.

The rise of an industrial capitalist German Empire in the last decades of the 19th century challenged the hegemony of the British, threatened the French and Russians, and created over time European-based alliances that fought each other for imperialist domination over the whole world.

Systemic tendency towards war

These empires feared a “big war” in Europe (as opposed to the “little wars” they were fighting against the peoples of Africa and Asia) would threaten the whole system of imperialism. But the violent, unstable nature of imperialism, and its competition for markets and investments, dashed these aspirations. A relatively unimportant incident in the Balkans — the assassination of the Austrian Archduke by a young Serbian — led the imperialist powers into the greatest war in human history up to that time.

When World War I began, Lenin understood it was an imperialist war for spheres of influence, but in the long run could produce revolutions in industrial Europe and anti-imperialist uprisings in the colonial regions.

Although Serbian casualties in World War I were enormous, Yugoslavia was established with the French-British-U.S. victory. The new state was a liberal constitutional monarchy under the former King of Serbia. Yugoslavia had a strong labor movement and left on the political scene. The Yugoslav Communist Party became a significant force by the 1930s.

The victorious allied powers supported Yugoslavia, largely to prevent a revival of German imperialist power in the region.

The rise of fascism

Even with the growth of the left and labor, at the same time Croatian rightists, funded first by fascist Italy, which had its own designs on the region, used terrorist violence in a campaign to create an independent Croatia. The terror campaign included an armed uprising in 1932 and the murder of the Yugoslav king, Alexander, in 1935.

In the 1930s a new, more powerful European fascist state, Nazi Germany, embarked upon a policy of military annexations to regain all of Germany’s lost territories from the previous war. This meant annexing Austria and Czechoslovakia, aiding Croatian chauvinists, and annexing Polish territory, along with using reactionary and fascist groups in Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, and the Baltic States to transform those regions into “satellites” of a German-dominated axis.

In 1941, after the Nazi conquest of Western Europe and before Hitler’s invasion of the USSR, Yugoslavia was invaded and dismembered. Hitler and Italy’s fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, created a Croatian fascist puppet-state. Ustasha, the Croatian fascist movement, led the “Independent State of Croatia” with control over Bosnia. Unlike the secular German and Italian fascists who had long backed them, the Ustasha was deeply connected with the Roman Catholic Church and representatives of “clerical” or religious-based fascism.

Serbia became a German-occupied province. With Hitler’s approval, the fascist dictator, Ante Pavelic, turned the Serbian minorities in Ustasha-controlled Croatia and Bosnia into targets of genocidal and racist persecution. In Croatia, the Jasenovac death camp was established. The fascists there carried out genocide against hundreds of thousands of Serbian people, and tens of thousands of Jewish and Roma people. Jasenovac, where an estimated 700,000 perished, became the third largest death camp in Europe, surpassed only by Auschwitz and Treblinka.

Cold War politics emerge

The Yugoslav partisan movement, led by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY), fought the Nazis, the Ustasha and their fascist allies. At the end of the war, these movements established a socialist Yugoslavia. Although U.S. and British imperialists were very hostile to Yugoslavia at first, the development of the Cold War changed that.

The Yugoslav leadership broke with the Soviets by 1948 and took a nonaligned position in the Cold War and world affairs. Because of its conflict with the Soviets and their allies, Yugoslavia became in the 1950s and 1960s the only country in the world led by Communists with whom the U.S. had fairly amicable relations.

Socialist Yugoslavia was the most advanced state that had ever existed in the region in regard to its people’s quality of life. However, Yugoslavia, like the Soviet Union, made serious errors in dealing with questions connected to the traumas of the Second World War, errors that ultimately strengthened its internal and external enemies.

The Soviets defined WWII as a struggle between fascists and anti-fascists only, and, for example, refused to address the specific genocide directed against Jewish people.

The Yugoslavs also defined the conflict as one between fascists and anti-fascists and failed to deal with the decimation of Serbian people and the genocide carried out by the Croatian fascist Ustasha.

Broader ideals of internationalism and friendship of peoples were asserted rather than effectively implemented. However, these errors should not be exaggerated. As many Yugoslavs contend, intermarriage between people of Muslim and Christian backgrounds in Bosnia, and of course, between Serbians and Croatians, along with friendly relations between the various peoples of Yugoslavia, did exist at a much higher level than in the prewar era or at any time in the history of the region.

The former socialist Yugoslavia was made up of six republics and two autonomous provinces. The republics were Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia and Serbia, of which the two autonomous provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina, were a part.

In less than 50 years, under Communist leadership, the peoples of Yugoslavia made substantial progress in living, working and advancing together after six centuries of political, religious and ethno-cultural division and separation at the hands of empires seeking to dominate and exploit them.

New conditions, problems

Meanwhile, the global inflation of the 1970s and 1980s negatively affected both capitalist and socialist countries, especially Yugoslavia. Capital-poor socialist countries had no captive markets and cheap labor “enterprise zones” abroad, and were much less likely to receive investment from the capitalist International Monetary Fund/World Bank system because of their restrictions on capital.

Yugoslavia also continued to face attacks by influential émigré Croatian rightists, including Ustasha elements, centered in West Germany, Canada and the U.S. This network funded anti-Yugoslav elements in the country and used terrorist assassinations, bombings and plane hijackings against Yugoslav officials and resources.

In the Serbian province of Kosovo, whose population is majority Albanian, Albanian nationalists in the 1980s attacked the Serbian minority and demanded autonomy. In Croatia, rightists supported by both nationalist émigré groups and the Vatican grew more brazen with attacks on Serbians and advocacy of an “independent” Croatia.

The Vatican, which has never acknowledged either its support for the wartime Ustasha regime or its well documented assistance to various fascist war criminals to escape capture after WWII, played a major role in providing assistance to anti-socialist elements in the region.

Socialism destroyed

Following the destruction of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia was dismembered.

Like in the Soviet Union, former communists had a hand in the destruction. Franjo Tudgman, a former member of the League of Yugoslav Communists (the successor to the CPY), formed a nationalist “democratic movement” that defeated Communists in elections in Croatia in 1990 and then embarked upon a separatist path. He openly identified with right-wing Croatian nationalists of the past and eventually embarrassed his NATO-bloc supporters by denying the scope of the WWII Holocaust.

Together, people of Serbian and Croatian background constituted the overwhelming majority of Yugoslavians. Without Croatia, Yugoslavia could not exist. A bloody and complicated civil war then developed, with Croatians leaving the Yugoslav army to join the Croatian separatist army. The Serbian Milosevic-led government fought to sustain Yugoslavia. The Tudgman-led Croatian government fought for a separatist state. Anti-communist forces in Bosnia appealed to the Muslim-majority population and launched their own separatist war. The Serbians then moved to form their own state in Bosnia as ethnic massacres and atrocities escalated on all sides in the region.

Major capitalist states established economic sanctions and intervened militarily against Yugoslavia, which at that point consisted of Serbia and Montenegro. The U.S. and NATO conducted military campaigns, including a 78-day bombardment of Serbia in 1999. Depleted uranium, land mines and other remnants of that war remain a long-term problem for the region.

These states supported the dismemberment as both a victory against any state identified with socialism, and a regional re-division that would permit them more access to exploit its resources and labor force.

Re-Balkanization

As the 21st century began, the imperialist states had once more “balkanized” the Balkans and agreed among themselves to keep it weak, divided and dependent. In Bosnia, for example, the Christian Science Monitor reported an unemployment rate of 49 percent in 2003. In Croatia, youth unemployment today is 34 percent, according to the United Nations Development Program. Travelers mention huge increases in unemployment and neglect of basic infrastructure, along with the failure to repair the devastation of the civil war.

All of this has produced great cynicism along with deepening ethno-cultural hostilities. Yugoslavia, led by the League of Communists, stressed fraternal relations and mutual respect among the constituent republics, including the minority nationalities within the republics. The “post-Communist” states of Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, etc., define themselves on nationalist grounds and in effect make sections of the populations “foreigners” on land where their families have lived for centuries.

The struggle continues

For the peoples of dismembered Yugoslavia, it will be a long and difficult road back from the disaster that has befallen them. Yet, forms of economic and social cooperation and reconstruction on the basis of self-determination and equality are in the self-interest of the peoples of the Balkans, as they are in the interests of the people of the U.S.

We both have been victimized, although in different ways, by the advance of reactionary imperialist forces over the last generation. We both, along with the working people, labor and left forces throughout the world, have a common interest in fighting imperialism in favor of the positive policies of social reconstruction, internationalism and peace that appeared to be on the horizon at the end of WWII.

Mexicos tortilla crisis: harvest of NAFTA

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 07:35:00 +0000

NewsAnalysis

More than 120,000 people protested in Mexico City, Jan. 31, against massive hikes in the price of white maize (called “corn” in the U.S.) and other basic foodstuffs — up nearly 100 percent since Christmas on top of a 700 percent increase since 1994.

Marchers, organized by major labor, farmer and political organizations, chanted “Queremos tortillas, no queremos PAN” (“We want tortillas, we don’t want bread/PAN.”) The right-wing ruling party of President Felipe Calderon is the PAN (National Action Party), and “pan” in Spanish also means bread.

In Mexico, white maize tortillas are traditionally the food of the laboring millions, some of whom can afford little else, as opposed to the white bread of the elite. The protesters were demanding renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, restoration of grain self-sufficiency, and wage increases.

Calderon announced the duty-free import of 650,000 metric tons of white maize from the United States, plus a “gentlemen’s agreement” with some tortilla distributors to cap prices at 76 cents (U.S.) a kilogram.

The plan to import maize enraged Mexico’s farmers. Since the inception of NAFTA in 1994, they have felt their government has allowed cheap U.S. grain imports, heavily subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, and the elimination of government price supports to destroy their livelihoods, driving millions of them off the land.

Some distributors announced they would refuse to honor the price caps. But Wal-Mart, by far the largest retailer in Mexico, began selling tortillas at three-fourths to one-half the price of others, sparking fears that its actions will wipe out even more small distributors than it already has.

Environmental groups pointed out the danger of genetically modified imported grain.

From the early 1980s, the Mexican government of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) turned sharply away from long-standing policies of protectionism toward neoliberalism — free trade, privatization and public austerity. Such policies were followed by PRI presidents until 2000, and intensified by PANista Presidents Fox (2000-2006) and Calderon.

Under NAFTA, the Mexican government hoped to attract foreign industrial investment and to expand its exports of fruits and vegetables to the U.S. and Canada, while moving farmers away from grain farming, which, in line with the classical economic theories of David Ricardo, Mexico “should not” be doing because the geography and climate of the U.S. and south-central Canada are better suited to this than Mexico’s.

This all went awry the first day that NAFTA came into force: Jan. 1, 1994, when Native American peasants in Chiapas rose in armed rebellion, claiming that NAFTA would destroy their communities. The PRI’s presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, was assassinated in February (an event unconnected with the Chiapas rebellion). This set off a chain of events involving devaluation, disinvestment and capital flight, which nearly collapsed the Mexican fiscal house of cards.

To rescue U.S. investors, the Clinton administration organized a $50 billion loan with conditions that led then-President Zedillo to greatly speed up the pace of implementing neoliberal policies.

The results have been devastating. The government agency that used to buy 20 percent of the Mexican maize crop at a subsidized price to sell cheaply to the poor was dismantled. Neither the export-oriented crop farming nor foreign-owned factories were able to absorb the displaced grain farmers. Mexican real wages dropped drastically to less than half their 1994 value, and many businesses went broke.

As a result, economically displaced Mexicans have poured into the “informal” economy and over the border to the U.S.

Free-trade ideologues blame the rise in maize prices on the diversion of large amounts of the U.S. harvest into ethanol. But the left, unions and farmers claim that there is also massive hoarding and speculation by big Mexican and international monopolies such as Cargill and the giant Mexican conglomerate Gruma, which is 27 percent owned by Archer-Daniels-Midland. In 2006, Cargill bought 600,000 metric tons of white maize at 1,650 pesos per metric ton at midyear and sold it in the Mexico City area for 3,500 pesos per metric ton at the end of the year.

This situation has fueled hikes in other food prices, too. And in 2008, all protective tariffs on maize and other foods, such as chickens, are supposed to disappear. Protests will only grow if massive inflation of food prices is going to make the poor majority in Mexico even poorer.

Mexico’s farmers and working-class consumers have often been played off against each other in the past, but the common enemy of U.S.-inspired neoliberalism is now bringing them together.

House moving to restore workers rights

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 07:24:00 +0000

News Analysis

The AFL-CIO and the Change to Win unions have launched a full-court press to restore workers’ rights to join a union and bargain a contract.

Step No. 1 was introduction of the Employee Free Choice Act (HR 800) into the House, Feb. 5. The bill brought with it a hefty 230 co-sponsors, over half the 435 members — 228 Democrats and two Republicans. Rolling up its sleeves, the AFL-CIO issued a battle cry to pass what’s considered the most important labor reform bill in nearly 50 years.

House members will likely pass the measure. Then it heads to the Senate, then Bush’s desk.

The bill brings “fresh hope” to millions of America’s workers who want and need to join a union to improve their families’ lives, said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

A December 2006 poll by Hart Research reported that given a fair chance, 60 million workers in the U.S. would form or join a union.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that workers who are union members earn 30 percent more than workers who do not have a union. Union workers are more likely to have health insurance and pension plans and work in safer environments.

Last year, according to the National Labor Relations Board, 70,000 workers tried to form unions and failed.

It is not news to working families, but every economic study concludes that wages are stagnant, 47 million have no health insurance and those who have health coverage are paying increased co-pays. This at a time when corporate profits are in outer space, CEO pay averages $13.5 million per year and the Bush administration is cutting taxes on corporations and the rich.

A report by two University of Chicago professors, “Undermining the Right to Organize,” found that 30 percent of companies fire pro-union workers; 49 percent threaten to close (only 2 percent actually do); 51 percent coerce workers into opposing union drives through bribery or favoritism; 82 percent hire professional union-busting law outfits; and 91 percent force workers to attend intimidating one-on-one meetings with their supervisor.

The report concludes, “Union membership in the United States is not declining because workers no longer want, need or attempt to form unions. Instead, the falling membership rate is related to employers’ systematic use of legal and illegal tactics to stymie union organizing.”

Under the Employee Free Choice Act, if 50-percent-plus-one people in a workplace sign a union card, the employer would be required to recognize and bargain with the union.

Currently, workers do not have “free choice” when going through the NLRB petition and election process, Sweeney said. Instead, he said, the petition “triggers a bitter, divisive and often lengthy anti-union campaign designed to chill or destroy union support.”

He continued, “The NLRB process may be called an ‘election,’ but it is nothing like any democratic election held in any other part of our society.”

But if the new labor law is passed, card-check would be guaranteed as another way to gain union recognition. Sweeney cited the positive example of Cingular Wireless, where the company recognized the union after a majority of workers signed union cards.

EFCA addresses the long-standing frustration when workers manage to withstand the NLRB election process, only to be denied a first contract. In such situations, Unite Here President Bruce Raynor asked, “What did they win?”

EFCA provides mediation and arbitration to resolve first contract disputes and increases fines for violations of workers’ rights.

dwinebr696 @ aol.com

Lebanon crisis a mix of complex issues

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 08:19:00 +0000

Protests and a Jan. 23 one-day general strike have rocked Lebanon. Some violent incidents resulted in three deaths and 100 injuries. The violence is one factor triggering Lebanese fears of a new civil war, but there are deeper issues involved.

Today’s crisis revolves around the government headed by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and the opposition to it. Mostly peaceful protests demanding the government step down have been going on since Dec. 1. Both sides charge each other with violating the constitution, coup plotting, not representing the people and being puppets of foreign influence.

Lebanese political representation is based on religious affiliation, with rules specifying that the prime minister, president and Parliament speaker be Muslim Sunni, Maronite Christian and Muslim Shiite, respectively. This “confessional” system has been a source of conflict for decades.

Siniora’s government is made up of mainly Sunni Muslims, Christians and Druze, which together are about 60 percent of the population. It is accused of being too pro-Western, a puppet of the U.S., Europe and to a lesser extent Saudi Arabia. The Sunni-dominated Saudi kingdom is reportedly concerned about the growing influence of Shiites and in particular Iran in the region.

The Siniora government once included Hezbollah. The government was formed after the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and the “Cedar Revolution,” which forced Syrian troops — there since the end of the civil war — out of Lebanon. Six ministers from Hezbollah and other parties resigned in November 2006, precipitating the current crisis.

Hezbollah leads the opposition, which includes the Free Patriotic Movement, a Christian group, as well as other Shiite parties and some nonsectarian groups. The opposition is accused of being too pro-Syrian and pawns of Iran. Shiites and the Christians aligned with the opposition represent about 40 percent of Lebanon’s population.

The Bush administration’s policies of militarism instead of diplomacy aggravate this complex situation.

During his recent State of the Union speech, Bush charged that the U.S. faces “an escalating danger from Shia extremists” controlled by Iran, whose “client” Hezbollah is “second only to al Qaeda in the American lives it has taken.”

University of Michigan Middle East expert Juan Cole said Bush’s speech showed ignorance of Shiite politics in the region. In his Informed Consent blog, Cole said Hezbollah was focused on “getting the Israelis back out of their country,” not on targeting the U.S.

“In fact,” he said, “it isn’t clear that the Lebanese Hezbollah has done anything to the U.S. for 20 years.”

Noting that Hezbollah was part of the Cedar Revolution’s government, Cole commented, “What destabilized that government was the brutal Israeli war on Lebanon of last summer. Bush collaborated in that war and even worked against the early cease-fire called for by the Siniora government.”

Cole said putting all the blame for Lebanon’s instability on Syria, as Bush has done, is “implausible.”

Meanwhile, a Jan. 25 Paris conference of more than 40 countries, global financial institutions and corporations raised $7.6 billion in loans, grants and direct support to bolster the embattled Siniora government. The biggest donors were the World Bank, European Investment Bank and Saudi Arabia. Lebanon’s national debt is $41 billion.

In return, Siniora’s government proposed a package of economic “reforms” that would hit poor and working people hard. It would end government subsidies on fuel and other necessities, resulting in skyrocketing prices. Mobile phone and electricity industries would be privatized. Consumer taxes would increase from 10 to 12 percent.

Lebanon’s 200,000-member General Confederation of Labor and Trade Unions is protesting this plan, and joined in the opposition-led general strike.

Noting that the Lebanese people have already “paid the price of privatizations,” federation President Ghassan Ghosn said labor “rejects the World Bank demands for more. We reject selling the properties of the people and the government.”

The Lebanese Communist Party called for the government to step down. The party joined with the Free Patriotic Movement to demand formation of a “temporary government with wider representation and extra legislative powers to approve a modern electoral law based on proportional representation.”

A fundamental solution, the LCP and FPM said, requires “forming of a secular democratic state, unifying the Lebanese on the bases of equal citizenship,” not on religious belief. They said eliminating corruption and resolving problems with Syria, were critical to a solution. Hezbollah has not endorsed abolishing the confessional system.

talbano @ pww.org

No Child Left Behind up for review

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 07:56:00 +0000

News Analysis

The day after President Bush’s State of the Union address, the secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, presented a proposal to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the administration’s troubled education law.

Speaking at a charter school, Spellings said she is pleased but not yet satisfied with the NCLB’s accomplishments. She then laid out the changes the administration would like to see in a reauthorized version of the law, including allowing school districts to ignore state-imposed caps on the number of charter schools and allowing districts to transfer, hire and fire teachers without regard to their contracts.

Another change would enact a voucher plan involving federal grants of up to $4,000 per student to help students shift from “failing” schools to private schools. The school district would also have to pass along its financial allotment for that student to the private school.

These proposals have been criticized by teachers unions, members of Congress, state legislators, school officials and the National Council of Churches.

Edward J. McElroy, president of the American Federation of Teachers, called the proposals “silly,” adding, “I have a feeling they’re setting up a straw man just to knock it down.”

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Education Committee, said he was “disappointed that the administration has proposed circumventing state law and siphoning crucial resources from our public schools for private schools.”

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education Committee, called the proposal “a way to gut collective bargaining agreements.” He added, “Private school vouchers have been rejected in the past and are still a bad idea.”

Both lawmakers called for a substantial increase in funding for NCLB, often referred to as an unfunded mandate.

The National Education Association supports the stated goals of the No Child Left Behind Act — to improve student achievement and to close the achievement and skills gap that exists in this country between students of different races, incomes and language abilities. But the NEA has challenged the flaws in NCLB since its inception five years ago.

In July 2006 the NEA presented its “Positive Agenda” for the reauthorization of NCLB. It calls on Congress to shift its focus from labeling and punishing schools with a flawed one-size-fits-all accountability system to fully funding NCLB, using common-sense flexibility and supporting programs that will really improve student learning.

The Committee on Public Education and Literacy of the National Council of Churches USA is calling for major changes and full funding of NCLB. In a letter to Kennedy and Miller, the committee expressed its concern that the law, with its overemphasis on testing and scores, has undermined education in urban schools serving children living in concentrated areas of poverty.

The committee believes that the pressures of NCLB have resulted in the high dropout rates of high school students in these areas. It is also concerned about teacher burnout and the alarming rate of excellent teachers leaving urban districts and the profession.

The committee reflects a diverse membership from 10 of 35 denominations, including historic African American congregations. The National Council of Churches has a combined membership of 45 million worshippers in 100,000 congregations.

The 110th Congress is being asked to reauthorize NCLB, but serious changes are needed before such a move takes place, these groups say.

phillyrose623 @ verizon.net