People Before Profit blog

How the Iraq war will end

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 12:32:00 +0000

“I have come to speak to you about how the war in Iraq will end,” President Obama told Marines gathered at Fort Lejeune, N.C., on Friday.

Obama told the military audience and the nation he will pull out all U.S. combat troops over the next 18 months: “Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.”

This means the bulk of the 142,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq — administration officials put the number to be pulled out at roughly 92,000 to 107,000 — will be home by the end of next August.

Obama said “a transitional force” of 35,000 to 50,000 U.S. troops would remain after that to carry out training, equipping, and advising Iraqi security forces; counter-terrorism missions; and protecting U.S. civilian and military personnel.

But he flatly declared his intention to comply with the full withdrawal specified in the U.S.-Iraq status of forces agreement. “I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011,” he said.

This is a huge victory for all those in our country who have marched, lobbied, written letters, made phone calls and turned out the vote — to end the Iraq war, bring the troops home and turn our country’s foreign policy towards peace and international cooperation. Of course, we will have to continue to make our voices heard, to ensure that these intentions are carried out.

Obama spoke of “a critical recognition that the long-term solution in Iraq must be political — not military,” and that “the most important decisions that have to be made about Iraq's future must now be made by Iraqis.”

He said the U.S. would turn from military combat to two other strategies. One is “sustained diplomacy on behalf of a more peaceful and prosperous Iraq.” This, he said, will include working with the United Nations to support Iraqi self-governance, and providing assistance to help the millions of Iraqis displaced by the war.

The second strategy the president outlined is “comprehensive American engagement across the region,” including Iran, Syria and the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.

This is an approach that the overwhelming majority of Americans and the people of the world have been yearning for.

It will require rethinking the role of the United States in the world.

Our government will have to break with the disastrous Cold War policies of the past. This means no longer propping up dictatorships and sprinkling military bases and nuclear weaponry around the globe. It means ending the dominance of reactionary oil interests, here and abroad, in our foreign policy, by redirecting our economy toward alternative energy sources.

It means adopting political, economic and social foreign policies that promote de-nuclearization and demilitarization, labor rights, grassroots economic and social development and culture, and real democracy — not the phony kind trumpeted by previous administrations.

Nationalize that! Why should Alice and Mike give a damn about failing banks?

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 11:53:00 +0000

UPDATED ARTICLE

Alice is 31 years old. Her husband Mike was just laid off and she is worried about losing hers given the economic decline. They would like to buy a house but that’s out of the question now, and they want to start a family but worry about how they’ll manage. Why should Alice, Mike and the rest of us give a damn about failing banks? Does it really affect ordinary working families?

To try to make sense of all the talk about bank bailouts, nationalization and socialism, we put a few questions to our People Before Profits columnists John Case and Art Perlo.

1. What is the appropriate and necessary role of banks?

Case: Banking serves two important roles: a) to make loans sustained by collateral — loans of all types are a key mechanism of broad commercial activity, and of economic growth; and b) to serve as brokers for investment. These two services are in some conflict with each other, and should, like accounting and investment, be separated.

Banks play an important role as secure repositories of wealth (your savings) as low-risk, federally insured, institutions. Investment banking firms, conversely, attract the interest of high-risk, high-return, activity. They are major funding sources for investment in innovation. Of course federal grants and many tax-protected foundations have significant impact on such investment as well.

The weakness of regulation of banking has been amply demonstrated in the current crisis. However the weakness of a fully nationalized bank system would likely be insensitivity or inflexibility with regard to investments that promote local and regional economic diversity. In addition, how to both encourage and test innovation —without bringing society to its knees — is a profound question to which there may be no easy answer.

Perlo: Even progressive economists often concentrate too much on getting the financial system working, whatever that means, instead of asking what parts of the financial system are necessary to get the economy working for working people.

Ordinary people and businesses use the financial system for legitimate purposes — to store money and hopefully maintain a small financial cushion, to build savings, and to have access to the funds through checking accounts and debit cards (ATMs). These functions are in no immediate danger. If a bank fails, these accounts are insured, the FDIC takes over and runs the bank until it can be sold to another bank, and customers don't see any interruption in service. In some countries, the post office provides some basic retail banking services.

The financial sector provides credit. To ordinary people for home mortgages, car loans and credit cards. To business for startup and expansion and as a bridge over slow periods. While these are necessary functions, they have been expanded beyond all reason. A record level of consumer income is now going to pay interest on these debts. Of the value created by workers, a larger share is appropriated not by their direct employers, but by the financial industry. The situation for business is similar, with massive indebtedness.

The problem right now is not primarily that banks are not making loans. It is that in previous years, they made too many loans, beyond the ability of consumers or businesses to repay.

Someone paying 60 percent of their paycheck in mortgage, car and credit card payments doesn't need more credit — they need more income and less debt. A business (whether General Motors or the car wash down the street) is in trouble because there are too many cars and too many car washes for any reasonable economic scenario, much less the diminished demand of today’s economic crisis. Many businesses cannot and should not be saved. Huge businesses like GM need to be restructured to produce stuff that is useful. Business needs customers. The best thing for that is more and more fiscal stimulus, spent on useful and necessary goods and services. This results in direct purchases from many businesses, and by boosting employment and wages enables workers to patronize business. Many businesses would benefit from higher general wage levels, although some would not. Access to credit is necessary for business, but is not the main problem.

2. What is the difference between nationalization and socialism?

Case: Nationalization is a public takeover solution to the collapse of a private, capitalist enterprise considered too big or systemic to fail. Socialism, historically, is a social system in which public interests and institutions override private ones in the 'commanding heights' of the economy. Socialism is based on a working class ideology, in the main, and thus advances the broadest-based democratic principles and institutions that define and govern the public interest.

Thus nationalization is a step toward socialism to the extent that democracy, and working class empowerment, is expanding. However in the absence of expanding democracy — that is, in the hands of corrupt, compromised and unaccountable forces — nationalization can mean a harmful centralization of power.

The true socialist path is through successive waves of major social and industrial revolutions and reforms, expansion of democratic rights, and successful adaptation to technological changes that further empower communication and mobility and cooperation across the world.

The nationalization challenge before the United States now cannot succeed without greater democratic guidance.

Major banks and investment firms are outright insolvent, yet by virtue of their immense size and diversity of interests, their collapse would paralyze many large national and international markets. Attention is currently focused on the finance and banking industry, and auto. It is up to working people to make their mark upon this period. If we can insure that health care, retirement and education rights for all are measurably advanced, are made more secure, which can only happen through a real increase in the truly socialized portion of our mixed economy, then we shall have succeeded. If all unemployed are offered an opportunity to serve in building the new infrastructures and services that must sustain a recovered economy, we shall have succeeded — the nationalizations of 2009 will be true steps toward socialism.

Perlo: Socialism is working class power — working class control of the political and economic direction of the country. That includes various forms of public ownership (local, regional, national) of key economic resources, along with public regulation of important private-sector companies.

Socialism would eliminate the speculation from the financial industry, and would use finance to direct the country's resources toward investment in infrastructure, industry and services that advance the public good.

Nationalization can be part of, or move in the direction of, socialism. But what has been happening in this crisis could best be regarded as 'lemon nationalization' and has nothing to do with socialism. The U.S. government steps in, cleans up the mess made by private banks, pays premium prices for worthless stock and pays salaries and bonuses to executives instead of throwing them in jail. If the government does take formal ownership, the plan is to clean them up financially, but not interfere in the way they are run, and turn them back to private investors (probably at a bargain price) as fast as possible.

We should fight not only to improve the financial terms of nationalization, but to dismantle the parasitic functions of nationalized banks and focus on providing economically useful services.

3. In the past, some developing countries, such as Nasser’s Egypt, nationalized various industries but the people remained in poverty, social problems persisted, democracy was not implemented, etc. Some call that 'state capitalism.' Is that pertinent to what is being discussed now?

Case: Yes, the failure of large scale nationalization — socialization — can have more than one cause. Socialization works better for large-scale production than small. And the ideals of socialism and communism can only arise out of a well-rounded development of an economy, reforms in services, taxation, law and regulation, expansion of democracy and, above all, a dramatic rise in the level of culture, education and skills of the working class.

Witness the tragic circumstances of many resource-rich nations where those with the most guns seize the national wealth for themselves, but are in turn corrupted by it, typically selling themselves to foreign oil and mining interests, on whom they become dependent. These circumstances often do not promote real economic growth, but instead a very distorted, cancerous growth in inequality or militarism, or both. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, the Horn of Africa, Nigeria, Malaysia and many other countries bear the scars of the 'resource rich curse.' This form of phony nationalizations, or degraded socialisms — it's possible one could put much of the post-90s Russian recovery under Putin in this category — is not the path to real socialism.

Perlo: Nationalization was often necessary for any progress in sectors where national or international capital would not invest. National steel, energy and other industries laid the basis for a better economy, less completely dependent on foreign capital. But benefits were unevenly distributed, and there was a tendency (as with the energy companies PEMEX in Mexico, PDVSA in Venezuela) for massive corruption and a self-perpetuating bureaucracy to develop. Thus, in Venezuela, it took a massive struggle including resisting a coup attempt and overcoming a bosses' strike for the popular government to actually gain control of the state-owned oil company.

In any capitalist society, it is an ongoing struggle to have popular control over government-owned or government-regulated companies and industries. But at least if it is government-owned, there is the possibility that we can exercise some level of control through the democratic process, however flawed.

4. What is 'partial nationalization' as is currently being discussed?

Case: Partial nationalization means the government takes partial ownership of a corporation. The sharp struggle in Congress on what constitutes control in the public interest is reflected in the confusion of interpretations that now surround the term 'nationalization.'

The first version (Bush Treasury Secretary Paulson): the government takes preferred shares in exchange for its capital infusion. Preferred shares a) get bigger dividends than common shares; and b) in a bankruptcy, are paid off before common shares. But (c) they have no vote in electing the board of directors, or choosing management.

The second version (Obama Treasury Secretary Geithner): a) the government has the option to trade preferred for common (voting) shares; and b) the government will 'stress test' the banks to determine their actual value. This sets the stage for seizing control to protect the public interest in exchange for absorbing all bad assets of insolvent institutions — effectively the same as nationalization.

Perlo: The government pays the freight, but existing stockholders and management keep control.

The bank bailouts have transferred massive wealth from the people to the finance capitalists. It's not only executive pay and bonuses — every dollar of dividends paid out is theft from the people.

Economist Dean Baker explains how this works with Citigroup:

'The government originally lent $25 billion to Citigroup at below-market interest rates in the first wave of TARP lending. In December, it lent another $20 billion and guaranteed $300 billion in bad assets. (The guarantee was almost certainly worth more than $30 billion annually, given the quality of the assets.) On that day, $20 billion would have been sufficient to buy Citi in its entirety on the stock market. So the question is, how can the taxpayers own anything less than 100 percent of Citi, if its preferred shares (the form of the loans) are converted to common shares? Why is this anything other than a huge gift to Citi's shareholders and top executives?'

5. Is the government in the current circumstances actually able to 'run' banks and companies such as auto better than the private sector?

Case: The government can run basic commercial and personal loan operations, even the mortgage business, for awhile. The question is: what are the tasks that only government can perform? The whole groundwork of the recent government bailout and takeover activities was to restart lending. But it turned out that restarting lending can't be turned on by hooking up a cheap money spigot to pump cash in an insolvent structure. Substantial restructuring of finance capital must take place. But finance capital is incapable, it appears, of performing its own correction without bringing society to a standstill, or worse, instability.

Similarly in auto manufacturing, the restructuring necessary to engineer and produce the new 'American green transportation system' must involve massive publicly coordinated management in order to succeed.

So, government must manage the restructurings, including evaluating the parts that should remain public indefinitely.

Perlo: Most of the necessary functions can be run perfectly well by civil servants. It is not rocket science to look at mortgage applications and apply well-known formulas to them. Lower-level and middle-level managers and professionals, as well as all the unemployed graduates of college business courses, would probably jump at a chance of a government job with steady pay and benefits, performing a real public service. The more exotic functions, like bundling mortgages, slicing them and selling them to investors, are largely parasitic, and should be eliminated. It is hard to imagine government technocrats doing a worse job than the management of the U.S. auto and financial industries.

6. What kind of nationalization or other measures should and realistically can be pursued by the Obama administration, given the current balance of forces, to further the answer to #4 and 5? Short and long term?

Case: Finance is the immediate target. For many reasons both national and international in scope, stability and consumer confidence in the commercial banking sector must be restored. Auto is not far behind, and a long train of hurting industrial manufacturing operations, on the border of bankruptcy or below, will also be seeking help on this. The key for us is: let’s not do 'bailout', but takeover, where restructuring is what is required. Restructuring will mandate high-tech do-overs of as much manufacturing as possible. If so, the new jobs created will not be the old jobs. After restructuring is completed is the time to determine what must remain nationalized, and what parts can perform their function better in a competitive market environment.

The long term is determined by the technologies we deploy today, and the new ones we imagine and bring to life to relieve and enhance human labor tomorrow.

Perlo: Build up a public sector banking industry that does the most necessary banking functions for people and business. This is a formidable task, but should be doable. Don't even try to fix the whole banking system as it exists.

suewebb @ pww.org

UPDATED: March 2, 2009, with Art Perlo interview

A woman loved by millions: Rosa Luxemburg

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 09:28:00 +0000

The remains of the small middle-aged woman were found in June; her brutalized body had been dumped into the Berlin canal in January. That was in 1919. Ninety years later many Germans and people on every continent still speak her name — Rosa Luxemburg — with real affection.

Born in 1871 into a well-to-do Jewish family in a part of Poland ruled by czarist Russia, she began her fight for oppressed working people while still in high school. Threatened with arrest a few years later, she fled to Switzerland, where she obtained a doctor’s degree and, at 26, was already a leading theoretician on political and economic issues. Although in exile, she helped found a new, revolutionary party in Poland.

After marrying a German citizen and moving to Berlin she was soon prominent in the Social Democratic Party there, then the largest in the world. Despite her small stature and slightly handicapped by a limp, left by a childhood illness, “Red Rosa” as she was often called, defied male domination to become one of the most popular left-wing speakers in the country, while her newspaper articles were as fiery and eloquent as her speeches.

She soon ran into difficulty with both. Many leaders, holding seats in parliament or the large party apparatus, were losing enthusiasm for passionate speeches and daring programs. They tended to roll their eyes when people like Luxemburg spoke of revolution; they preferred reforms in the “free enterprise” system which maybe some day might lead to some kind of socialism. General strikes alarmed them and, as WWI approached, they began downplaying ideas of cross-border solidarity to prevent working class people from shooting at each other.

True enough, when the murderous war began in 1914, social democratic parties in Germany, France and elsewhere forgot their anti-war pledges, jumped on “patriotic” bandwagons and supported the war of the corporations and the generals.

Only one deputy in the German Reichstag, Karl Liebknecht, a friend and collaborator of Luxemburg’s, had the guts to vote against money for the war. Rosa, Karl and like-minded comrades immediately began organizing to end the war, maintaining contact with anti-war socialists from France and other “enemies” through neutral Switzerland. They named their group Spartakus Bund, after a slave rebellion leader in ancient Rome.

But in 1915 Luxemburg was arrested, jailed, briefly freed and in 1916 locked up again until war’s end.

Luxemburg was soon smuggling texts for anti-war leaflets out of the prison. She wrote diary entries and many letters, not only on political questions but on literature, history, and even delightful descriptions of songbirds and even beetles observed from her window.

Many letters included personal matters, often to the wife of Karl Liebknecht, who was also arrested in 1916, and to a son of the great German feminist and socialist Clara Zetkin, Maxim, one of Luxemburg’s great loves, all of which ended — for her — tragically.

The anti-war movement mushroomed. In November 1918 the revolt of naval units in Kiel kicked off a revolution which forced the German Kaiser to abdicate, ended the war, and nearly created the socialist republic which Karl Liebknecht, like Luxemburg just out of prison, proclaimed from a balcony of the ex-Kaiser’s palace.

But within hours Friedrich Ebert, the Social Democratic leader, who supported the war until the very end, seized leadership in Germany and joined with reactionary army generals to prevent any socialist solution to the chaos which followed the lost war.

On New Year’s weekend 1918-1919 the Spartakus leaders founded a new Communist Party. But the last ditch revolt a week later in Berlin’s newspaper district, fought with bales of newsprint as barricades, was quickly defeated; hundreds were massacred and the revolution was ended.

With the press openly demanding their murder Liebknecht and Luxemburg went into hiding. They were soon betrayed; rightwing military men bludgeoned and shot them. Later confessions showed that the governing Social Democrats had OK’d the lynching. The government which resulted, known as the Weimar Republic, was discarded 14 years later when the Nazis embarked on their path of murder and mass annihilation.

Countless German workers mourned the death of Luxemburg and Liebknecht.

After WWII the East German Democratic Republic revived the pre-Hitler tradition of marching in mid-January to the site of their graves; a new monument replaced the one destroyed by the Nazis.

Even after the Wall went down, and with it the GDR, every year tens of thousands, young and old, still place red carnations around the big stone and plaques of other German socialists and communists, as leftists from all Germany and other countries demonstrate their determination to keep fighting for a better world.

Some people still try to depict Luxemburg as an anti-communist, quoting her words: “Freedom is always freedom for those who think differently.” But although she differed with Lenin on several issues, she steadfastly supported the October Revolution in Russia and never recanted her belief: “The overthrow of the rule of capital, the establishment of a socialist social system — this and no less than this is the historic theme of the present revolution.”

Letters to the Editor

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:59:00 +0000

Lessons from Massachusetts

Flávio Casoy’s recent article on differences within the health care reform movement and within labor misconstrues the facts. There is strong and growing support within labor, and among the people in general, for single-payer health care reform as reflected in HR 676, Medicare for All. There are operatives of both the national AFL-CIO and national Change to Win, especially from SEIU, who have been working hard to marginalize those who have been struggling for health care justice. We in Massachusetts know quite well we cannot afford to sustain the presence of the commercial health insurance industry and other corporate profiteers. We nurses have launched a movement to unite 150,000 of our numbers initially, with the creation of health care justice as a founding principle, and by that we explicitly mean Medicare for All.

I trust the PWW will give full coverage to the hearing on “National Lessons from State Health Reform: The Massachusetts Case Study.”

Sandy Eaton

Via e-mail

Flávio Casoy responds: Mr. Eaton’s comments emphasize the important work that many people in the labor movement are doing to promote real health care reform. This work is to be celebrated. As I mentioned in my opinion piece, the labor movement is split on this issue because many people are afraid to lose the health care they have now. This fear can only be solved by continuous engagement and mobilization by progressives in and out of the labor movement. This is why progressives must work with the labor movement, even when individual unions take stances that are not in line with single payer. For this reason, I think that it is important for progressives to work with HCAN and bring a strong single-payer voice to the table.

Poverty and the media

The reason the plight of the poor, along with solutions, is not covered in the media is advertisers do not pay attention to employers paying less then the amount needed for their workers to pay their bills. Poverty isn’t just not having enough to eat, it is having to decide what bills are paid this month. It is not having a bank account, or recreation. Destitution is feeling less than human.

Life feels like being in a constant hurricane. Lost is a way of life. Poverty is an equal opportunity unnatural disaster. One created by people.

Those making less than $70,000 a year are not the middle class, they are our society’s pawns. If you are not dirt poor, you think of yourself as middle class. In fact, society works because around 70 percent of people of all incomes think of themselves as the working middle class.

Anyone visiting from an enlightened culture would wonder why employers are not ashamed of paying less then it costs to live. It costs a burger flipper or store clerk as much for rent and utilities as it does anyone else. Advertisers do not realize that they would be getting a better return when companies pay their workers a decent wage.

A Maine law firm released a Social Security newsletter that documents the flaw in SSI: “In our area, about 63 percent of initial applications are denied. Yet, two-thirds of those who appeal their denials eventually win their cases.”

From a social perspective you might ask, “How do the disabled stay alive until they win?” Ingenuity and kindness is the answer. Some do not stay alive, or win.

But the question I want you to ask is, “Why doesn’t the American broadcast and print media tell the general public about this unthinkable, inhumane system existing?”

Please write your local and national newspapers and TV stations saying, “I want the untold stories.”

Jan LightfootLane

Fairfield ME

Cuba’s 50th

Having recently recovered from an illness, I now greet Cuba with congratulations on her 50th anniversary of the victory of socialism.

As visitors to Cuba in April 1959, my wife Helen and I were guests of Capt. Jorge Alvarez, who fought alongside Commandante Fidel Castro. We represented the Wisconsin Committee for Peace and Justice. Since we were the only peace representatives to visit Cuba at the time, Alvarez was anxious to hear our opinion of the Cuban revolution. We surprised him because we said we thought this revolution was different from any other revolution. He differed with us but invited us back to Cuba as his personal guests the following year.

The following year in December, the Wisconsin Committee for Peace and Justice had gotten together with the Chicago Peace Council and the Detroit Peace Coalition and formed the Midwest Fair Play For Cuba Committee. We chartered a plane from Midway Airport which took 175 passengers (my two little girls of 10 and 11 years of age were there) and we landed in Havana for a stay of two weeks.

We contacted the captain soon after arriving in Havana and spent time with him in Mayeri, the birthplace of Fidel Castro.

We also met Rosita Antich Coro, who was dean of the English department of Havana University, who volunteered as our interpreter. She was a key person who assisted in contacting many officials in Cuba who worked with our committee in bringing over many Americans and tons of medical supplies.

After that, it was impossible to travel to Cuba until 1978 when Jimmy Carter allowed travel. From 1978 until today, our committee brought to Cuba thousands of dollars of medical supplies donated by doctors in Milwaukee, and hundreds of visitors, including a dozen state legislators, the president of the state Senate, several members of the clergy, and 22 high school students and 22 teachers.

Our organization donated four school buses, a 10-ton truck loaded with 1,000 reams of paper, a commercial printing machine, 30,000 pounds of powdered milk (with the help of Pastors for Peace), 200 pounds of agricultural seeds and a medical machine donated by the Central United Methodist Church which assisted in preventing blindness with Vitamin B, at a time when Vitamin B was very scarce.

The Wisconsin committee donated $57,000 in cash which assisted in building a soy bean milk factory, contributed to the founding of Jose Marti School and other schools and assisted in the printing of the history of the Cuban labor movement.

John Gilman

Milwaukee WI

Recommended: ‘Waltz with Bashir’

I always read your movie recommendations. I hope that you will tell your readers about a marvelous movie, “Waltz with Bashir.” The animated film deals with the horrendous 1982 massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps where Palestinians, old men, women and children, were massacred by Lebanese Phalangists with the help of the Israeli army. It illustrates to perfection that war is hell.

Elaine Flannigan Turk

Portland OR

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Afghanistan: war is not the answer

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:54:00 +0000

The good news: President Obama believes military action alone won’t bring peace to Afghanistan. “We’re going to have to use diplomacy; we’re going to have to use development,” he said in a recent television interview. He added that his administration is undertaking a comprehensive review of U.S. policy there.

The bad news: The president plans to send 17,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan, bringing the total to 55,000, along with 32,000 NATO troops.

But sending more U.S. troops is like pouring gasoline on a raging fire. Three decades ago Washington laid the foundations of Al Qaeda and the Taliban when it built up Afghanistan’s most backward, violent elements, destroying a progressive government in its rush to counter Soviet influence in this strategic region. The civil war that followed pitted extremist against extremist and turned to ashes the faint green shoots of democracy, women’s rights, and economic and social development.

NATO countries are increasingly recognizing that war is not the answer to helping the Afghan people solve their complex problems. These countries are resisting U.S. requests to increase their deployments.

The death toll is escalating among both U.S. troops and Afghan civilians. The cost to U.S. taxpayers is sure to soar past the current $100 million a day.

The Afghan people’s rejection of foreign troops as a means to heal their country’s deep wounds is illustrated in recent polls that show 90 percent oppose the Taliban but less than half see the U.S. in a positive light.

“Bringing in another foreign army is not going to help,” Ibrahim Khan, a 40-year-old truck driver from eastern Afghanistan, told the Washington Post. “They always come here for their own interests and they always lose. Better to let everyone sit down with the elders and find a way to peace.”

So what is the path to peace?

Prompt withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces, and ending air strikes on Afghan and Pakistani targets, would be a good start. The UN could help with temporary security if needed.

The diplomatic and development strands of the administration’s approach offer many positive possibilities, including fostering talks among all forces in the conflict, and developing aid projects like sustainable agriculture to help Afghans at the grass roots.

State of the union

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:52:00 +0000

President Barack Obama’s address to Congress, Feb. 24, was both sober and inspiring.

He spelled out the deep economic crisis we are in and blamed decades of trickle-down economics, loss of jobs, bank deregulation, unpayable debt and a culture of “short-term gain over long-term prosperity” in which surpluses “became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy.”

He acknowledged the popular outrage when a $770 billion taxpayer bailout of the banks last fall was used to purchase corporate jets. The people were “infuriated” and “so was I,” he said. “I promise you, I get it.”

“Though we are living through difficult and uncertain times,” the president said, “tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild. We will recover and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”

For the millions of unemployed and people losing their homes, Obama’s message brought not only hope but a reminder that concrete action has already been taken, namely the $787 billion economic recovery package pushed through Congress and his $275 billion package to help people stop the foreclosure hemorrhage.

Yet Obama made clear these are only a down payment on an even more ambitious effort to create good, green jobs and shift the nation to renewable energy sources, reform our health care system and improve our public schools.

Republicans in the chamber, almost all of whom voted against Obama’s recovery package, sat grimly silent as Obama spoke. Democrats gave Obama a standing ovation when he mentioned that SCHIP health care benefits have been extended to 13 million uninsured children. But only a handful of Republicans joined in the applause.

It is a reminder that the Republican right is determined to obstruct efforts to rebuild the economy and achieve desperately needed reforms. Obama himself recognized this reality when he flew to economically stricken Elkhart, Ind., and Fort Myers, Fla., to spur public support for his recovery package. Our task is to build an even mightier grassroots coalition to win the next urgently needed measures, including the Employee Free Choice Act, over the opposition of the corporate ultra-right.

Animal magnetism

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 08:05:00 +0000

(Xinhua/Agencies) With a view to prevent crocodiles from returning to residential neighborhoods, Florida wildlife managers have temporarily affixed magnets to the reptiles' heads in order to disrupt their homing ability.

Lindsey Hord, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's crocodile response coordinator, said Tuesday, 'We said, 'Hey, we might as well give this a try,'

Crocodiles are notoriously territorial and when biologists move them from urban areas to new homes in the wild, they often go right back to the place where they were captured, traveling up to 10 miles a week to get there.

Scientists believe they rely in part on the Earth's magnetic fields to navigate, and that taping magnets to both sides of their heads disorients them.

'They're just taped on temporarily,' Hord said. 'We just put the magnets on when they're captured and since they don't know where we take them, they're lost. The hope would be that they stay where we take them to.'

Hord and his co-workers have tried it on two crocodiles since launching the experiment in January, affixing 'a common old laboratory magnet' to both sides of the animals' heads. One got run over by a car and died, but the other has yet to return, Hord said.

Once an endangered species, American crocodiles' numbers have rebounded to nearly 2,000 in coastal south Florida, their only habitat in the continental United States. That puts them in increasing contact with humans, especially in areas where backyards border on canals around Miami and the Florida Keys.

Crocodiles are still classified as a threatened species, so game managers are reluctant to move them to new areas where they might be killed battling other resident crocodiles for turf rights, Hord said. Unlike alligators, which are far more numerous, each crocodile is considered important to preserving the species, he said.

'These crocodiles are unique and valuable creatures and we feel like we have a responsibility to live with these animals as much as we can,' he said.

The progressive approach to fiscal responsibility

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 07:03:00 +0000

Fiscal responsibility, the code word for balancing the budget, is on everyone's lips in Washington these days. With a federal budget deficit close to $2 trillion inherited from the Bush administration, the Obama White House is eager to build a consensus in Congress for reducing the deficit, shifting budget priorities and reforming the process of federal government appropriations.

This push for 'fiscal responsibility' has progressive activists both concerned and primed for an opportunity to bring far-reaching reforms in health care and other fiscal matters.

Concerns

When the White House announced its intention to hold a 'fiscal responsibility summit' this month that included a wide range of political leaders, think tanks and activists, progressives grew concerned.

Among the invitees, for example, were representatives of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a $1 billion endowed group that pushes for Social Security privatization and gutting Medicare. As expected, groups like the Peterson Foundation and the conservative Heritage Foundation along with Republican politicians at the summit called for raising the retirement age for and the privatization of Social Security, eliminating Medicaid, keeping the Bush tax cuts for the richest Americans, slashing the budget for Medicare and so on.

While people on the right saw the summit as an opportunity to lash out at the social safety net, progressives raised different questions.

In the lead-up to the summit last week, economist James K. Galbraith questioned the necessity for a 'fiscal responsibility summit' in the first place. The economic and financial crises need to be the 'paramount public policy concerns. We're not returning to the normal world any time soon,' he told reporters. Talk of balancing the budget sends an inaccurate signal that the economic and financial crises have been addressed, Galbraith suggested.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich agreed with this point of view in a recent blog post. Large amounts of government spending is needed to create the demand in the economy in order to turn it back towards growth. The push for a balanced budget 'doesn't make much economic sense,' he wrote, citing the effort in 1937 by President Roosevelt to balance the budget that created a mini-recession within the Great Depression.

In today's recession, which appears to be worsening, '[t]he biggest challenge is to ramp up aggregate demand,' Reich wrote. That requires heavy borrowing and government spending; it may even require a second stimulus package down the road, he declared. Balancing the budget should be the last thing on anyone's mind at the moment.

Roger Hickey, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, which was also represented at the summit, stated that long-term fiscal balance is a laudable goal. He added, however, that in its 'effort to get bipartisan consensus [on budget issues] the White House could get locked into a path of austerity as the way to achieve long-term budget balance.'

Hickey offered an alternative 'progressive path to long-term fiscal responsibility.' For this, he suggested a strong Social Security system combined with universal health care reform that controls costs, high levels of public investment to promote continued economic growth, and a plan to match federal spending with 'a responsible level of progressive taxation.'

Are entitlement programs even the real problem?

Right-wing advocates of 'fiscal responsibility' typically target 'entitlement programs' like Social Security and Medicare as the main cause of the country's financial problems. They prefer 'market solutions' to questions of retirement security and health care coverage. To accomplish this privatization agenda, they promote the mistaken notion that both Social Security and Medicare are in crisis and are unsustainable.

In doing so, however, they ignore or distort some basic facts, progressive economists say. Advocacy groups and think tanks like the Campaign for America's Future, the Economic Policy Institute, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, the Center for Economic Policy Research and the Center for American Progress tend to agree that Social Security is not in any imminent financial danger and that Medicare's problems are not inherent but are related directly to the general crisis of health care in the country.

Take Social Security, for example. Social Security will have a $5.5 trillion surplus by 2027 and will be able to pay all benefits promised under current law, through 2041. In addition, Congressional Budget Office estimates show that if no changes are ever made to the Social Security program, in 75 years, the program will be able to afford to pay retirees better benefits than they receive now.

By comparison, if no changes are ever made to the health care system, in 75 years the cost to the country will equal about 99 percent of current Gross Domestic Product.

Nancy Altman, an economist and former advisor to Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, concurred. Of all federal programs, Social Security is the most 'fiscally sound,' she noted. If predictions are correct and the program does experience budget shortfalls in 75 years, they will be 'manageable.' By comparison, she noted, predicted deficits in the program 75 years from now will be less than the cost of the Bush tax cuts for the richest one percent of Americans.

Altman added that according to federal law, saving money in the Social Security program does not automatically translate into savings in the federal budget or in anyway help balance the budget.

At a time when Americans have lost $2 trillion in housing value and $6 trillion in retirement savings as a result of the market crashes, this is no time to privatize or gut the social safety, these progressives argued.

'We don't have an entitlements crisis,' economist Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic Policy Research, added, 'we have a health care crisis.' The word 'crisis' should not be used to described Social Security's financial situation either. Social Security is not 'in anything that any reasonable person can call crisis.'

Medicare's long-term sustainability is tied directly to the need for reforms in the health care system as a whole. 'The root of the deficit problem is health care costs. Our leaders must get serious about improving our health care system. A concentrated effort by policy makers to control health care expenditures will help American business compete internationally and free resources for other pressing needs,' read a joint statement this week by Hickey, Baker and Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute.

Where are Obama and the Democrats?

While it tried to provide a space at this fiscal summit in which differences could be aired, civility promoted and bipartisan approaches presented, the Obama administration appears to be pressing a 'fiscal responsibility' agenda the promotes cutting back on Iraq war costs, eliminating the Bush tax cuts for the richest Americans and ending wasteful spending.

At the fiscal reform summit, Obama told the gathering that his administration will emphasize the importance of health care reform. 'Over the longer run, putting America on a sustainable fiscal course will require addressing healthcare,' he said.

Other members of the administration spoke directly to the general concern for entitlement programs. Lawrence Summers, director of the White House Economic Council, told his break-out group that in light of 'the events in the market the last couple years, the sense of the need for government to take a core public responsibility for Social Security ... has been strengthened.'

White House Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag added that the sustainability of programs like Medicare and Medicaid are tied to the general sustainability of the entire health care system. 'To my fellow budget hawks in this room and in the rest of the country,' he noted at the summit, 'let me be very clear: healthcare reform is entitlement reform. The path of fiscal responsibility must run directly through healthcare. We also must recognize that reforms to Medicare and Medicaid will only succeed in the context of slowing the spiraling growth of overall healthcare costs.'

Other administration officials expressed support for strengthening Social Security's financial situation by raising the income cap on payroll deductions. Economist Nancy Altman estimated that 94 percent of working families would see no additional payroll deductions as a result of this type of change. And higher income earners would see additional Social Security deductions from their paychecks amounting to only about one week per year.

The White House Web site further expresses 'strong' opposition to privatization, raising the retirement age or cutting benefits for the program's beneficiaries.

Opponents of Social Security and Medicare have also called for a special 'entitlements commission' to push privatization schemes through Congress and avoid the traditional legislative process.

As she left the fiscal summit, Nancy Pelosi rejected the idea. 'We believe that elected officials of the land, the Congress of the United States, should review this in a bipartisan way in our committees,' she said. 'If people want commissions they can have commissions, but that doesn't mean we're abdicating our responsibility to keep Social Security solvent, and we are committed to doing that.''

Fiscal responsibility

In his speech to a joint session of Congress, Tuesday, Feb. 24, President Obama offered some additional assurances that his approach to budget policy will focus on saving taxpayer dollars without undermining the social safety net and harming working families.

Obama targeted health care reform. '[T]he cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough. So let there be no doubt: health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait and it will not wait another year,' he told Congress.

Obama's agenda for fiscal responsibility looks to other places for savings. He said, 'In this budget, we will end education programs that don’t work and end direct payments to large agribusinesses that don’t need them. We’ll eliminate the no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq, and reform our defense budget so that we’re not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don’t use. We will root out the waste, fraud and abuse in our Medicare program that doesn’t make our seniors any healthier, and we will restore a sense of fairness and balance to our tax code by finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas.'

In a statement following the speech, Barbara Kennelly, director of the national Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said, 'The President is right, comprehensive healthcare reform is the best way to strengthen Medicare for the future and that healthcare reform should come sooner rather than later.'

Comprehensive health care reform that controls costs, provides universal access and offers public options in addition to private options to consumers will reduce overall costs of health care and ease the burden on taxpayers over the long haul.

Experts in the health care field believe that Obama's reference to waste in Medicare targets the issue of overpayments to insurance carriers implemented under the Bush Medicare privatization law in 2005. They suggest that a reform in this area alone could save billions annually. The White House Web site specifically calls for 'eliminating subsidies to the private insurance Medicare Advantage program,' which could produce a savings of about $15 billion.

Joel Wendland is editor of .

Seeking Earth-like planets with alien life in galaxy

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 06:31:00 +0000

(Xinhua) NASA's Kepler spacecraft is ready to be moved to the launch pad and will soon begin a journey to search for worlds that could potentially host life, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said in a statement.

Kepler is scheduled to blast into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, aboard a Delta II rocket on March 5 at 10:48 p.m. EST (0348 GMT). It is the first mission with the ability to find planets like Earth -- rocky planets that orbit sun-like stars in a warm zone where liquid water could be maintained on the surface. Liquid water is believed to be essential for the formation of life.

'Kepler is a critical component in NASA's broader efforts to ultimately find and study planets where Earth-like conditions may be present,' said Jon Morse, the Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

'The planetary census Kepler takes will be very important for understanding the frequency of Earth-size planets in our galaxy and planning future missions that directly detect and characterize such worlds around nearby stars,' Morse added.

The Kepler spacecraft will watch a patch of space for 3.5 years or more for signs of Earth-sized planets moving around stars similar to the Sun. The patch that Kepler will watch contains about 100,000 stars like the Sun.

Using special detectors similar to those used in digital cameras, Kepler will look for slight dimming in the stars as planets pass between the star and Kepler. The Kepler's place in space will allow it to watch the same stars constantly throughout its mission, something observatories like Hubble Space Telescope cannot do. 　

Xinhua

Nuclear wake-up call

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 10:21:00 +0000

Kate Hudson, chair of the London-based Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, issued a grave warning after the collision of a British and a French nuclear-armed submarine patrolling the mid-Atlantic a couple of weeks ago.

“This is a nuclear nightmare of the highest order,” she said. “The dents on the British sub show the boats were no more than a couple of seconds away from a total catastrophe.”

The collision, Hudson added, “could have released vast amounts of radiation and scattered scores of nuclear warheads across the seabed.”

She called on British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to “end continuous patrols, building on Barack Obama’s recent move to downgrade the alert status of U.S. nukes.”

The U.S. deploys 14 nuclear subs, each with scores of nuclear warheads, on constant patrol around the world. Russia has a similar number and is said to be developing more. (Russia’s nuclear-armed Kursk submarine sank in 2000, killing all sailors aboard.) Britain and France each have four nuclear-armed subs, each capable of carrying up to 16 missiles.

These submarines are relics of the Cold War that supposedly ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Eighteen years later, why do we still have these enormous arsenals of weapons of mass destruction, some on hair-trigger alert? What justification is there for the U.S. Senate to refuse to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty? Why does the U.S. deploy 5,535 nuclear warheads on intercontinental missiles, nuclear-armed aircraft and 14 submarines? Why is Defense Secretary Robert Gates advocating development and deployment of a new generation of nuclear warheads? And why is the Pentagon still hell-bent on a futile project of developing a missile capable of shooting down ballistic missiles? Why do they push forward with a crazed scheme of deploying anti-missile “shields” in the Czech Republic and Poland? What war are they preparing to fight?

Nuclear weaponry promoters are still alive and well in Washington and in military corporate suites, dreaming of hefty profits and U.S. global domination based on nuclear terror. Kate Hudson is right that the collision of those two nuclear subs is a wake-up call. It is time to build on President Obama’s initiative to move toward international agreements that ultimately abolish all nuclear weapons.

Newsweeks socialism

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 10:13:00 +0000

Newsweek’s Feb. 16 issue features the provocative cover story, “We are all socialists now.” What a change. After almost two decades of being told, “We are all capitalists,” people who are losing their jobs, their homes and their health care won’t buy it any more.

The authors have their own definition of socialism: government “headed in a more European direction” — some government regulation and oversight, some social welfare spending, some public ownership and public investment for the common good. Of course, note that European workers are free to form unions without corporate interference, and Europe’s governments have to make concessions to the “organized rabble.” And Europe treats comprehensive health care as a right. Oh my! That’s what the Newsweek authors call “big government.”

They reject “big government,” but they fail to mention the anti-big-government crowd’s love of wasteful military spending, huge subsidies for corporations and laws that create huge deficits by letting corporations and the rich avoid any kind of fair taxation. They never mention public controls on profiteering and profits.

For them socialism means “redistributing” wealth down. Funny they don’t talk about who actually does the work of creating that wealth and how it mostly gets redistributed up to a tiny super-wealthy elite.

Well, we thank Newsweek for starting a discussion on socialism. The current failures of the capitalist “free market” system set the stage for new thinking on socialism — what it is and what it isn’t. Most of the things that Newsweek characterizes as socialism are good progressive reforms, things this newspaper not only supports but fights for.

But socialism is so much more.

Karl Marx defined socialism as “winning the battle for democracy.” Workers, working families, farmers, small-business people are the overwhelming majority in any society. Socialism means they, the true majority, are in power — not corporations, not the super-rich who can afford “the best governments that money can buy.”

Socialism is a big topic. But suffice it to say, a country with the productive capacity of ours should be able to provide full employment featuring green jobs, comprehensive health care, free education from pre-school through advanced university degrees, an end to all discrimination, decent and adequate housing for all — for starters. Let’s continue this discussion.

Black-and-white TV

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 10:04:00 +0000

Forty-five short years ago

I sat at my TV

And in that grainy image,

I witnessed tyranny.

I saw the dogs and hoses

And the men at either end.

I was ashamed at what I witnessed

It seemed so un-American.

I thought about the patriots

who died for liberty

And those who’d given up

their lives to end their slavery.

After all that had been sacrificed,

was this how it would end?

That’s when I knew injustice,

when I was only 10.

Sunday morning children,

in their finest Sunday dress

Came to the very threshold,

of those who had oppressed.

They faced the dogs and hoses

on that bright and fateful day

Made themselves a sacrifice,

atonement they would pay.

I thought about the sailors

who died on board the Maine

And I thought about the doughboys

on the fields of France were slain.

After all that had been sacrificed,

was this how it would end?

That’s when I learned what courage was, when I was only 10.

Today our world trembles

from the burden of its hate

Would those who’d sacrificed

their lives and spirits vindicate.

Everywhere are people crying,

“Someone set us free”

So we can reap the promises

of life and liberty.

I thought about our fathers,

who vanquished Nazi hoards

I thought about our mothers

who were left to man the homes.

And I think about my brothers,

who died in Vietnam

And I think about those

children, as sacrificial lambs.

Forty-five short years ago I

would have never believed

A black man could be president

and lead us to be free.

From war and hate and prejudice,

from tyranny and greed

As those Sunday morning children did

… on the black-and- white TV.

Workers Words column

from Jan.-Feb. 2009 Solidarity,

the magazine for UAW members

and families.

By John Delcamp, UAW Local 735, Ypsilanti, Mich.

Che reminds us why we fight

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 10:01:00 +0000

For months I couldn’t wait to finally see Steven Soderbergh’s four-hour, two-part epic “Che” about the heroic victories and military defeats of revolutionary guerilla fighter Ernesto Guevara.

As a youth the iconic image of Che was all too common in my household. But it wasn’t until college that I really learned about his life and writings when I checked out a thick book at my campus library. I remember being blown away by this book about a man who had so much audacity, passion, courage and intelligence to speak out against injustice and especially against what I later understood as U.S. imperialism. Che’s writings and speeches were one of my first literary lessons in understanding Marxism and the Cuban revolution. I immediately felt the urge to join the fight for social justice, equality, humanity and bold radical change.

Reading about the history of the Cuban revolution and the life of Che had a real impact in my life and culminated in my first trip to Cuba in 1997, which further radicalized my belief in social justice. I remember coming back to the U.S. fired up and inspired like never before and eager to play a part in helping to change the world into a better place for all.

The film stars Benicio Del Toro as Che and is entirely in Spanish. The first part details Che’s life as a medical doctor in Cuba who then becomes a military commander under Fidel Castro during the Cuban revolution. The movie outlines Che’s military battles and ends triumphantly. The second part begins with Che as a Cuban statesman addressing the United Nations. Later, viewers get a first hand account of Che’s failed attempt to spark an armed uprising in Bolivia. Both films capture Che as a guerilla leader in battle, in victory, then in defeat. More importantly, each scene personifies the humanity in Che and his undying principles as a leader toward his comrades in arms.

For me, the film portrays how people, even during times of war and distress, should act toward one another as brothers and sisters when struggling to build a new man and a new society. For many the life of Che reminds us why we fight for change today. Our commitment for peace and justice binds us together and we know that our passion as freedom fighters is guided by true feelings of love.

The films are not action packed and can be slow at times. But I found the quiet and still moments throughout the films as well as the relationships Che builds with his troops to be the most fascinating. Del Toro illustrates a deeper emotion of Che and tells a story of a man committed to higher moral standards and an understanding of what men and women should strive for when fighting for socialist values. And although there are many opinions about Che’s tactical, strategic and theoretical approach to fighting for change, Soderbergh attempts to show the human connection Che had with those closest to him at the time.

In a recent interview published on huffingtonpost.com Del Toro said, “Some people say we just glorified him and made him into a super hero. But I think we just made him human.” Del Toro added, “To play Che you just have to understand what he stood for.”

Looking at Cuba-U.S. relations today Del Toro noted, “The embargo doesn’t make any sense. But it is real. It is something Cubans have to deal with everyday. The embargo creates an atmosphere of still being at war, from the Cuban point of view. I feel for the Cuban people. It is amazing how Cuba has been able to stick it out.”

Hopefully the film will bring current issues afloat said Del Toro especially relations between Cuba and the U.S. and between the U.S. and Latin America.

“Issues such as poverty, lack of a middle class, lack of education, lack of medicines and food,” he said.

Del Toro won the prestigious Goya award for “best actor” in Spain and won an award in the same category at the Cannes Film Festival last May.

plozano@pww.org

Single-payer and the battle for health care

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 08:54:00 +0000

As the curtains close on an era of reactionary rule by the most right-wing elements of the capitalist ruling class, we progressives must assess what must be done in order to promote an agenda friendly to working people in this country. A chief and undisputable crisis facing everyone is the crumbling health care system.

Every day, Americans increasingly understand the failure of our employer-based private health insurance model. As the economy continues to reel from Wall Street plundering, rising unemployment means more and more people lose their health insurance, sacrifice their homes and retirements in order to pay for mounting medical bills, and forego essential care because of high costs. Every day, shrinking city, county and state budgets result in cutbacks in essential programs, closing of critical safety-net hospitals, and reduction of staff and services in surviving hospitals — all in a context of nurse and doctor shortages; mounting racial, gender and class health disparities; and a woefully under-resourced public health infrastructure. A solution to many of these problems is a single, guaranteed, national public health insurance program that covers everyone in our nation from birth to death for all necessary services.

This system is also known as a “single-payer system” because it would be paid for exclusively through our government instead of millions of employer and employee premiums or premiums for individually purchased insurance. It would ensure that no one goes bankrupt because of medical bills, make sure that all providers get paid for services, save the country billions of dollars, and solve many of the access problems faced by the millions of uninsured and underinsured Americans. Proponents have fought for single-payer mostly under the banner of HR 676, “The United States National Health Care Act,” an excellent bill that clearly articulates a progressive vision for reform. Single-payer is the best, most evidence-based and most rational health care reform strategy we can adopt as a country.

So why don’t we? The main reason it is so difficult to win this needed reform is the political power of the insurance industry and other entities that benefit from the current system. To date, progressive health care reform movements have not been able to generate sufficient power to overcome the enormous control these industries have over our government. Reform that leads to a single-payer system would require the elimination of these companies, and we can be certain that they will fight tooth and nail to survive . What we need is broad unity among progressive health care (and other) organizations. Unfortunately, some single-payer organizations today (but not all) take a narrow approach, refusing to collaborate with any organization that does not agree exactly with HR 676. This results in the alienation of single-payer advocates from the broader health care reform movement and our inability to generate the pressure needed to win real health care reform.

As we move into the post-Bush era, new times call for new tactics. We achieved the defeat of the far right and the election of President Obama because of broad unity amongst all sorts of different groups, and a main engine behind this victory was the labor movement. Labor is unquestionably the most important driver of a working people’s agenda, and in order for real health care reform to be achieved, labor must be behind it. Therefore, the role of progressive health care activists today is not to insist that HR 676 is the only solution, but to engage widely with labor and a variety of progressive organizations in order to build broad unity and support for real health care reform, even if it looks slightly different than HR 676.

Some sectarian single-payer advocates have taken great pains to attack “incrementalist” health care reform as insufficient and fundamentally different from “real” (single-payer) reform. It is time to move beyond this approach. Political power and popular support is built through ongoing struggle and by achieving victories. In order to build the power we need to pass and implement a single-payer system, we have to win many prior victories. The question we are fighting today is not immediate versus gradual reform, but whether reform will happen at all. The answer by single-payer and non-single-payer progressive activists alike must be an emphatic and resounding YES. There are many struggles ahead that progressive health care activists of multiple hues can wage together. It is defeatist not to win together today because of disagreements we may have tomorrow.

A clear example of a divisive approach by some HR 676 advocates is their attacks against the labor-backed Health Care for America Now campaign (HCAN, healthcareforamericanow.org). HCAN is a coalition of hundreds of progressive national and state organizations, including the AFL-CIO, SEIU, Jobs with Justice, Human Rights Campaign, National Council of La Raza, Congressional Black Caucus Health Brain Trust, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and many others, that have come together to take on the power of the for-profit companies in health care and fight together for a better system. Narrow-thinking single-payer groups reject HCAN because it is not a purely pro-single-payer coalition. One of the goals listed on HCAN’s web site is that American should have “a choice of a private insurance plan, including keeping the insurance you have if you like it, or a public insurance plan without a private insurer middleman that guarantees affordable coverage.” This inclusion of private insurance plans as part of a mix has infuriated some single-payer activists; one web site charges that HCAN “has surrendered in advance.”

Of course, in many respects, these activists are right: as in the case of housing, education and criminal justice, there ought to be no role for profit-driven companies in health care. The way insurance companies maximize their profits is to charge the most expensive premiums possible and to deny as much care as possible.

However, I think it is important to look more closely at the dynamics of HCAN’s constituent organizations. For all the reasons I mentioned above, we feel incredibly insecure about being able to afford and receive health care when we get sick (and we all will get sick at some point), especially now in this recession. The more insecure they become, the more many people want to hold onto what they have now, even if subpar and irrational. HCAN member organizations represent millions of working-class Americans, with diverse circumstances and outlooks — some ready to demand fundamental health care reform and get rid of the corporate role, some fearful of the uncertainties of change and worried about the role of government, and most feeling varying combinations of these emotions. HCAN’s stance is not a surrender, but reflects the very real confusion and anxiety around health care reform among working people in the United States. The task for progressives is to meet people where they are and bring them along.

The HCAN organizations each have slightly different end goals, but for now, everyone has a common struggle. It is essential that single-payer advocates have a seat at this table and that we constructively bring our unique perspective to this dialogue to help build our progressive majority. Sitting on the outside will only make it more difficult to win a health care system that makes America proud.

Flávio Casoy is a fourth-year medical student at Brown University in Providence, R.I.

Letters: Deliver mail, not fighter jets and more

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 08:22:00 +0000

Deliver mail, not fighter jets

It’s a shameful indictment of our national priorities that the postmaster general has to squirm before Congress to report that the Post Office is still losing money and may have to cut mail delivery to five days a week. Years ago, the feds partially privatized our constitutionally mandated national postal service, which has been struggling ever since to fulfill its charter of universal service.

This freshly elected Demo-cratic-Party-run Congress could easily cut a couple billion bucks from the bloated Pentagon war budget and give it instead to the U.S. Postal Service, where it would do the people more good.

The armed forces already have an excess of expensive Lockheed fighter jets, enough, for instance, to unload plenty of them on Pakistan and other U.S. client states. If the Senate Armed Services Committee, which now includes my state’s Mark Udall, were to procure four or five fewer of them, nobody except Lockheed’s executives would even notice. The resultant savings could then simply be directed towards the still vital services of the Post Office and the many decent-paying jobs it provides.

Cord MacGuire

Boulder CO

William Pomeroy

Thank you so much for Tim Wheeler’s heartfelt and inspiring article, “Remembering William Pomeroy” (PWW 2/14-20). I always looked forward to reading anything Pomeroy wrote: his stories were always human, enlightening, and at times riveting. If there is such a thing as a “classic Communist life” Wheeler gave us the picture of one in his excellent article. I shall miss Mr. Pomeroy so, so much.

I urge everyone who hasn’t read it to please do and please: let us all give more contributions to the PWW so we can continue to read more wonderful stories like this one.

Jackie Lavalle

Via e-mail

On diplomacy

“Give diplomacy a chance in Afghanistan,” by Marilyn Bechtel (PWW 2/7-13) implies that President Obama will emphasize diplomatic, political and economic tools rather than “military actions.” Specifically it cites the appointment of Richard Holbrooke as special envoy as pointing to a diplomacy shift.

However, this is consistent with a modern, full-spectrum counterinsurgency approach in which diplomacy is embedded within the overall politico-military strategy. This strategy includes diplomatic, political, economic and military components supplementing each other in an integrated and coordinated way. It does not indicate a diplomacy vs. military shift.

The real alternative, as stated in the article, is “troop withdrawal, a broad regional diplomatic approach and civilian economic and humanitarian aid.” Anything less will demonstrate that President Obama is adhering to a counterinsurgency strategy.

Al Sargis

Via e-mail

‘Cadillac Records’ review

I’m glad that the review of “Cadillac Records” (PWW 1/31-2/6) addressed the issue of theft of African American blues musicians’ songs by Anglo musicians. That was an injurious practice to the individual songwriter and to Black people, because it revealed the disregard the thieves had for both.

When people play and gradually modify traditional folk music as it’s passed around their region or ethnic group that is a normal evolution of music. However, for an outsider to take without even asking and change it radically is disrespectful. What makes it particularly insulting is the fact that the thefts were being carried out against an oppressed group.

Roberto Botello

Via e-mail

Fair treatment on immigration

This letter was printed in the Star Beacon, a local newspaper in Ashtabula County, Ohio, in response to a recent story.

Are immigrants treated unfairly? By asking this question over a front page headline picturing people of Puerto Rican descent caught in an illegal drug raid, the Star Beacon seems to be asking whether or not Hispanic members of our community are being unfairly treated.

Immigrants and immigration are words being carelessly thrown around by some very irresponsible people, not for the purpose of explaining problems and seeking harmonious and peaceful relations in our neighborhoods, but rather for the purpose of spreading falsehoods and creating fear and division among our neighbors.

Why is this being done? Who gains by it?

First, let’s realize that by “immigrant,” they are referring to our 20 million working people of Hispanic descent, workers who are sustaining such sectors of our economy as service, retail, health care and agriculture.

Of this 20 million, 7 to 8 million are “undocumented,” with large numbers coming into the U.S. labor force over the last decade.

How did this come about? Remember President Bush and other national leaders saying we need to expand the “guest worker” programs? For most of the years over the last half century, 600,000 immigrants per year have been brought into the country under “guest worker” programs.

Employers have turned tens of thousands of good paying jobs for U.S. workers into temporary jobs through these “guest worker” programs. These jobs are staffed by temporary agencies, the foreign workers having no control over conditions of their employment.

Also companies have been given a free hand to send their own recruiters south of the border, bringing back truckloads of impoverished workers seeking a means to work and support their families.

These millions of workers are denied elementary human rights, often live under threats by their employers that they face deportation unless they work in the conditions imposed upon them. Sometimes groups have been deported without being paid to instill fear into the rest.

There have been instances where immigrant workers in the meat processing industries have banded together, formed unions, and tried through negotiations to improve their wages and working conditions, wherein employers have called in the federal immigration authorities, resulting in raids, arrests and deportations.

The broken immigration system has allowed employers to create an underclass of workers with no rights, completely controlled by the corporations they work for, a system which is destroying wages, safety and working conditions for all workers. For example, the poultry industry, which employs a large number of immigrant workers, was found to be 100 percent out of compliance with wage and hour laws.

Is it not obvious who gains by making one section of our working population a scapegoat to be blamed for all the ills which have beset our society? Who desperately wants to divert our attention away from the corrupt, criminal activities of the Wall Street, finance and corporate buccaneers?

Let’s get real! Working folks need to join together and bring about the changes that will benefit all our people.

F. Wallace Kaufman

Geneva OH

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Peanut butter crisis

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 08:08:00 +0000

Once again the Bush-stacked and -stymied Food and Drug Administration is asleep on the job in its duty to protect the people from poisoned foods and drugs. Salmonella-tainted peanut butter produced by Georgia-based Peanut Corporation of America has killed eight people and sickened 19,000, a majority of them children, in 43 states.

It has forced one of the most sweeping recalls of tainted food in recent history. The peanut butter was distributed in jars, in crackers, snack bars labeled “organic” and in ready-made meals and TV dinners. FEMA is in the midst of recalling millions of emergency food rations containing the toxic peanut butter.

In case anyone thinks this is an isolated incident, The New York Times obtained documents proving that a peanut-processing plant owned by ConAgra that was only 70 miles from the PCA plant also produced and distributed salmonella-tainted peanut butter. It caused a similar nationwide outbreak of salmonella poisoning in 2007. The Times reports that in 2004, lab tests at the ConAgra facility came up positive for salmonella. ConAgra refused to release the lab results until the FDA agreed not to make the data public, claiming the information was “proprietary.”

Three years later, the 2007 salmonella outbreak forced the FDA to finally end the coverup and release the data.

Peanut Corp. of America, ConAgra and Bush administration officials should be charged with manslaughter and reckless indifference to human safety and health.

This situation calls for quick action by the Obama administration to strengthen oversight and inspection of the nation’s food supply. Congress should quickly create a new federal agency with the single mission of insuring safe foods, with far more inspectors and the power to shut down unsafe food operations.

Obama should also pursue a farm and food policy that helps break the stranglehold of ConAgra, Monsanto, Cargill, ADM and other agribusiness giants.

Obama is right to push for 21st century sustainable energy, public education and health care. We also need a 21st century system of sustainable agriculture that produces safe, fresh, nutritious food. That means encouraging production of food on independent and family farms, locally grown, and with a minimum of factory processing.

Safe and healthy food is a national security issue, which shouldn’t be left to the capitalist imperative to maximize profits over people’s health.

Stiglitz: Nationalized banks are only answer

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 07:53:00 +0000

Reposted from Deutsche Welle

Nationalized banks are the 'only answer,' economist Stiglitz says. In an interview with Deutsche Welle, Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz talks about nationalizing banks, the outlook for developing countries, and the need for an international financial regulator.

DW-WORLD: Many experts fear that while things are bad now, we haven't seen the worst of the crisis yet. Do you share the belief that we are facing a long decline that could rival the Great Depression?

Joseph Stiglitz: We live in a very different world than during the Great Depression. Then, we had a manufacturing economy. Now we have a service-sector economy. Many people in the in the United States are already working part time because they can't get full-time jobs. People are talking more about the 'comprehensive' measures of unemployment, and these show unemployment at very high levels, around 15 percent. So it clearly is a serious downturn.

Another big difference between now and the Great Depression is then we didn't have a safety net. Now we have unemployment insurance.

Economists Nouriel Roubini and Nassim Taleb, who predicted the global economic downturn, have called for a nationalization of banks in order to stop the financial meltdown. Do you agree?

The fact of the matter is, the banks are in very bad shape. The U.S. government has poured in hundreds of billions of dollars to very little effect. It is very clear that the banks have failed. American citizens have become majority owners in a very large number of the major banks. But they have no control. Any system where there is a separation of ownership and control is a recipe for disaster.

Nationalization is the only answer. These banks are effectively bankrupt.

The Institute of International Finance estimates that the private flow of capital to developing countries will shrink by about two-thirds. Are we facing a situation where we could see a total collapse of many developing countries?

I think many governments of emerging nations actually have a much better central banking system than the United States. They realized the risks of excessive leverage, excessive dependance on real estate lending and so they took much more prudent actions. Many developing countries also built up large reserves and are in a better position to meet this crisis than they were a decade ago.

But some will face very difficult times, potentially defaults. Some of these countries are suffering from having paid too much attention to what has gone on in the United States.

Should steps be taken to help these developing countries?

Very definitely. I think it is absolutely imperative not just for the interest of these countries, not just from a humanitarian perspective, but from the perspective of global stability. It is not possible to have a strong global economy when there are large pockets of economic turmoil.

The World Bank has called for advanced industrial countries as they are bailing out their own industries and provide subsidies, to set aside some amounts for the developing countries, who can't compete on this uneven playing field.

U.S. President Obama blasted banks for paying out billions in bonuses to executives while still on brink of collapse. Do you agree with him that their behavior is 'shameful' and 'irresponsible'?

Yes, it is shameful and irresponsible. But it is not a surprise ... for years the executives of American firms have defended their outrageous compensation, saying it's important as an incentive scheme. How in the world can you give bonuses of billions of dollars when your firm has had record losses of billions of dollars? Unless you're rewarding people for failure you shouldn't be getting bonuses, you should be getting penalties.

In her speech at the World Economic Forum, German Chancellor Merkel warned the U.S. of protectionism and criticized subsidies for American auto companies. Is she correct? Do you see a danger that the U.S. will resort to protectionist measures?

Yes, very clearly. We have always been aware that protectionism takes two forms: Tariffs and subsidies. Subsidies distort the playing field just like tariffs do. Subsidies are even more unfair and even more distorting, because while developed countries can give subsidies, poor countries can't afford to do so. Rich countries are distorting the level playing field by giving huge subsidies, not necessarily in the intention of protection, but with the consequence of protection.

Merkel recently called for an international financial oversight body, and consensus on the issue is growing. How realistic do you think it is that governments and companies would give up sovereignty to an international entity?

Merkel's idea is a very important one, which I have long supported. You need to have coordination of global economic policy that goes beyond the IMF, which has failed, and the World Bank. You cannot say that we have open borders without global regulation. It is inconceiveable as we go forward that we would allow financial products that are risky, manufactured in countries with inadequate regulation, to come without regulation into the United States and vice versa. International companies that are committed to globalization should be at the forefront of calling for international regulation. --------- Joseph Stiglitz was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001. Under US President Bill Clinton he served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1995- 1997. He was chief economist of the World Bank from 1997-2000 and was a lead author of the 1995 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He is currently a professor at Columbia University in New York.

People before Profits: Peasants, rural workers wait in the wings

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 10:53:00 +0000

Discontent of the rural poor in the global south and the hunger of almost a billion humans fill the tinder box of revolution. Great corporations control both land and agricultural production. Dispossession and desperation follow; so do profits.

With their concentrated power over land and agricultural production, great corporations are at war with the dispossessed and desperate.

A UN-convened “High Level Meeting on Food Security for All” in Madrid Jan. 26-27 solved few problems. On hand, according to Inter Press Service, were representatives of 100 countries, plus donor agencies, civil society and “private groups.” Spain’s prime minister and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon gave closing speeches.

Private and public donations to aid agencies were high on the agenda. Progress was reviewed since a similar meeting last year in Rome. For the sake of “fair” agricultural trade, delegates called for the elimination of subsidies.

Doctors without Borders protested the role of corporations in fighting hunger. Via Campesina’s representative pointed out that their aim is to sell seeds, fertilizers and farm machinery. A weak proposal emerged for a corporation “code of conduct.”

On foodsovereignty.org, activists protested their relegation to the sidelines in Madrid, and blindness there to “structural causes.” They diagnosed the G8 scheme of “an ethereal Global Partnership for Agricultural and Food Security” as a “move to give big corporations and their foundations a formal place at the table.” Calls to make land accessible for local producers went unheard.

Corporate dominance was evident elsewhere. The Feb. 7 East African Business Week reports “the 600-mile [Tanzanian] coastline … has been taken either directly by foreign companies or by local well-to-do Tanzanians” acting as agents. Earlier in the week Saudi Arabia informed President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo that a high-level Saudi mission would be in the Philippines in April, scouting out “investment opportunities in the Philippine agriculture sector.”

Analyst Ignacio Ramonet, writing for rebelion.org, reports that oil and cash rich nations, often land and water poor, send out buyers. For speculators, food is a future “black gold.” They project a doubling of food production by 2050. Land hoarding is sweeping the world, mostly in poor countries.

South Korea (leading the pack), China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Japan have recently swallowed up 20 million acres. China, burdened by urbanization, desertification and infertile land, has holdings in Australia, Kazakhstan, Laos, Mexico, Brazil, Surinam and above all, in Africa.

Foreign investors own 10 percent of Argentina’s land, notably the U.S. mogul Douglas Tomkins, who owns half a million acres, and financier George Soros. Morgan Stanley bank and the British corporation Landkom, with 250,000 acres, are ensconced in the Ukraine.

In “The New Geopolitics of Hunger,” published late last year, Joao Pedro Stedile provides crucial background (ipsnews.net). Co-founder of the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil, where 10 percent of landowners hold 85 percent of the land, Stedile is a leader of Via Campesina, an umbrella organization of small farmers worldwide.

As transnational corporations extended throughout the world from the 1960s on, agriculture adopted “the intensive use of industrial inputs” to build monoculture empires growing soy, wheat, palm oil, sugar cane, corn and cotton. According to Stedile, hungry people grew from 80 million in 1960 to 800 million and then “in the last two years, from 800 to 925 million.” He castigates the manufacture of bio-fuels.

Agricultural prices are now tied to speculation and control of world food markets. “Humanity is at the mercy of a handful of transnationals and giant speculators,” he asserts. Meanwhile, millions of small farmers are losing land and emigrating or moving to the barren outskirts of cities.

Via Campesina “proposes a radical transformation in the production and trade of foodstuffs. We defend the principle of food sovereignty.” For Stedile, that means nations guaranteeing access to food and production sufficient for people’s needs. Small farmers are crucial to this project.

Food, Stedile says, is “a natural right of all human beings.” Laying down the gauntlet, he warns that unless governments “make radical changes, social problems and contradictions will intensify and, sooner or later, they will explode.”

Ramonet similarly charges that foreign landowners, having expropriated small producers, signify a “return to odious colonial practices and serve as a time bomb.” He adds that 'agrarian neocolonialism” promises increasing poverty, rising social tensions and violence. “Land involves people's identity. [It] has always provoked passions.”

News Analysis: U.S. financial stability plan fails to thaw market

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:28:00 +0000

U.S. President Barack Obama's administration on Tuesday unveiled its long-expected reshaped financial rescue plan.

But the plan has so far failed to shore up investors' confidence as it did not offer enough details on key questions like how toxic assets will be priced and how to get banks to start lending.

NEW RESCUE PLAN

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner introduced the Financial Stability Plan in Washington on Tuesday morning. Different from providing capital to financial institutions in the first half of the Trouble Assets Relief Program (TARP), the new plan includes measures to 'help restart the flow of credit, clean up and strengthen banks, and provide critical aid for homeowners and for small businesses.'

The government 'will impose new, higher standards for transparency and accountability,' Geithner said.

'The force of government support was not comprehensive or quick enough to withstand the deepening pressure brought on by the weakening economy,' Geithner said in his speech, referring to why the Obama administration is fundamentally reshaping the program to repair the financial system.

Under the new rescue plan, a Public-Private Investment Fund will be created to provide government capital and financing to leverage private capital to buy up the 'toxic assets.' Banks who fail the comprehensive 'stress tests' will receive more capital injections from the government.

The 'stress tests' will be jointly designed by the Treasury, the Federal Reserve (Fed), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and federal bank regulators to ensure the nation's largest banks can withstand a worsening economy.

In addition, up to 1 trillion U.S. dollars will be leveraged to kick-start the secondary lending markets.

'From a macroeconomic standpoint, the key point is that the banks will be healthier tomorrow than they are today as a result of these proposals,' Ian Shepherdson, U.S. chief economist of High Frequency Economics, wrote in a note to clients.

MARKET RESPONSE

Despite the introduction of the new package, U.S. stocks plunged afterwards. The Dow Jones index dove nearly 382 points, or4.62 percent, to 7,888.88, the biggest decline since Dec. 1.

Broader stock indicators also tumbled. The Standard & Poor's 500 Stock index dropped 4.91 percent to 827.17, the biggest drop since Obama took office on Jan. 20. The Nasdaq composite index also fell 4.20 percent to 1,524.73.

Meanwhile, light sweet crude for March delivery slid by 2.01 dollars to 37.55 dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The dollar strengthened against other major currencies, and gold prices also rose.

Financial shares lost ground, as Bank of America Corp. tumbled 19.3 percent to 5.56 dollars a share, Wells Fargo & Co. shares fell 14 percent to 16.35 dollars, and Citigroup plunged 15.19 percent to 3.35 dollars.

A survey by CNBC of more than 32,000 investors showed that 67 percent of them believed that the new proposal would not solve the current financial crisis. 　

MISSING DETAILS

Many believe that the new package is not specific enough to deliver a boost to investors' confidence.

The most important part of the plan is the Public-Private Investment Fund, which will provide government funding to private sectors to purchase bad assets.

However, Geithner gave no details on the structures of the initiative or how the private investors would price the toxic assets.

Many analysts were disappointed to find that the much discussed relaxation of mark-to-market accounting rules was missing in the new proposals.

The idea of 'stress test' for banks also raised questions. It is not sure how the assessment will be conducted. And the proposal did not specify on how it would help the housing market.

'Indeed, we remain firmly of the view that further substantial support will be required as the extended recession drives up losses on assets which have, thus far, performed reasonably well,' Shepherdson said.

Paul Krugman, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Economics, said the plan is not clear. 'What is the plan? I really don't know,' he wrote in a New York Times column. 'But maybe it's a Trojan horse that smuggles the right policy into place.'

LENDING RELUCTANCE

Investors and economists are skeptical how the new proposals will get banks to start lending.

According to the plan, a consumer or business lending facility will be created to leverage up to 1 trillion dollars to jump start the secondary lending markets, a move that aims to get banks to both lend and bring down borrowing costs.

The facility will be conducted through the Fed's earlier Term Asset-Backed Lending Facility (TALF). The difference lies in that the size is much bigger than the initial 200 billion U.S. dollars.

But it comes face to face with the reality that consumer and business loan demand is collapsing while banks remained reluctant to increase lending.

A conversation between Oppenheimer & Co. banking analyst Meredith Whitney and JP Morgan Chase's Chief Financial Officer Michael Cavanaugh, revealed last week, proved the concern.

Cavanaugh said that no amount of capital infusions from the government will get JP Morgan to lend more and the bank simply has no appetite for risk in a recession. So it is quite clear that even if JP Morgan accepts more government funds, it's not going to lend it out soon.

'Even a healthy bank would be much more cautious in this environment, and it is unrealistic to expect battered, rescued institutions to behave very differently,' Shepherdson said.

Source:Xinhua

People Before Profits: Falling off a cliff

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:24:00 +0000

Last September, employment in the United States fell off a cliff. It is still falling.

The economy had been losing jobs since the beginning of 2008, and the pace has been accelerating since the summer. Over the last three months, 1.8 million jobs were lost. That's an annual rate of 5 percent, the worst since 1975. Just under 3 million jobs were lost in all of 2008, but we are on track to beat that before June of this year.

There are no credible signs that this will get better soon:

State and local government employment is usually a stabilizing factor, and over the past year government jobs have increased slightly while 3.6 million private sector jobs were lost. But emergency sessions in state capitols and city and town halls throughout the country, are meeting budget crises with hiring freezes and layoffs, which will take effect in the months to come.

Even if jobs in residential construction hit bottom (a big if), workers at big commercial construction projects will be laid off as jobs are finished, because new projects have been canceled or postponed.

Manufacturing employment will stay in free fall, reflecting the New York times headline “Factory Orders Fall Again With No Clear End in Sight.” The lost jobs, especially in auto, have been particularly important to African Americans, whose official unemployment rate has reached 12.6 percent, with a more realistic estimate above 20 percent.

Continued crisis in the financial industry means more closings and mergers, and consequent job loss, in banking, insurance and real estate. Unfortunately, along with the overpaid executives and traders, hundreds of thousands of secretaries, technicians and custodians are losing their jobs.

Working families smothered by debt and facing job loss are cutting spending to bare necessities. Service industries, from shopping malls to franchise restaurants to entertainment to nail salons to car washes, all of which expanded beyond any real need, have only begun to feel the effects. There will be a wave of closings and consolidations, with consequent job losses.

Finally, this is probably the first time since 1929 that an economic crisis has been so completely global in scope.

In the face of this, the arguments against the Economic Recovery Act have an Alice in Wonderland quality. As I write this, a bipartisan group of Senators is working on a cutting the plan in order to “focus it on spending that truly helps the economy,” according to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). One of the cuts will strip $40 billion in aid to states from the Bill. What planet do these people live on?

In Collins' state of Maine, the governor has just presented a budget that cuts spending by 13 percent, cuts hundreds of jobs and trims higher education. What Maine needs to “truly help the economy,” is for Congress to pass the Recovery Act without cuts, put the check in the mail, and then get to work on another round. The same goes for the state of Connecticut, facing massive cuts, whose senator, Joseph Lieberman (formerly a Democrat, now Independent), is part of the Collins gang. And the same goes for nearly every state in the country.

Even with the Recovery Act, unemployment will pass 9 percent -- 14 million people -- this year. The Act will not be perfect – it includes some spending on unnecessary tax cuts for business, and falls short on spending for areas like rail and mass transit. The main problem with the Recovery Act, according to economists like Nobel Prize winners Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, is that it is not big enough. But it will save or create a lot of jobs doing useful, productive work, and it will provide real help to many working class families.

The Recovery Act is like a temporary dike, thrown together in the path of a flood. It will not be enough, and the rising tide of unemployment and economic distress can sweep it away – unless it is reinforced. The recovery Act must be passed now, and followed up with other major efforts like universal health care, the Employee Free Choice Act, and additional investment in mass transit, education and other vital needs.