People Before Profit blog

What is voter fraud?

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 10:19:00 +0000

During the last presidential debate, Republican nominee John McCain made the following remark: “ACORN is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.”

What is voter fraud? How is it different from registration fraud? And, most importantly, what is voter suppression?

Of the thousands of grassroots folks doing voter registration around the country, a very, very small percentage have been found to have faked information on registration application forms. But this does not mean that voter fraud has taken place. In order for actual vote fraud to happen, the fake application information would have to be approved by the Board of Election, with the individual verified as an actual person, and the board-approved applicant would have to show up on Election Day, prove his or her identity to local election judges and actually cast a vote.

There has never been a single reported instance in which fraudulently filled out registration application forms have led to improper voting. If a suspicious registration application form is turned in, the Board of Election tries to match the registration information with both the applicant’s driver’s license number and the last four digits of his/her Social Security number. If there is a mismatch, election officials attempt to contact the potential voter to verify his or her status. If status can not be verified, the application is rejected.

According to The New York Times, a five-year national crackdown on voter fraud by the Justice Department produced a total of 70 convictions at the federal level, including 40 campaign workers or government workers convicted of vote-buying, intimidation or ballot forgery and 23 cases of multiple voting or voting by ineligible voters.

There were 122 million votes cast during the 2004 presidential elections. And this year’s election turnout is expected to surpass all previous records. So do the math. Is John McCain really concerned about voter fraud? Or is he more concerned about a massive turnout of working class Americans, black, brown and white, young and old, voting overwhelmingly for Barack Obama?

ACORN, which hires people to do voter registration in largely low-income communities, employed over 13,000 people as voter registrars. In most cases where bad forms were turned in, the organization promptly fired the person responsible, andnotified the proper election authorities — as they are required to do by law. The group also separated and flagged suspicious applications to make the process easier for election officials.

In fact, ACORN has not been officially charged with any crime.

Now, what is voter suppression? Voter suppression is what McCain and the right-wing of the Republican Party are attempting to do right now. Voter suppression refers to the use of governmental power, political campaign strategies, media strategies and private resources in order to tamp down the total voter turnout, especially in areas seen as likely to vote heavily for one’s opponent. In effect, what we are seeing is an effort by McCain to delegitimize the voice of average Americans. He doesn’t want their voice to be heard. So he makes outlandish claims about so-called voter fraud even though the facts clearly state otherwise.

The Republican smokescreen is meant to accomplish three distinct goals: first, they want to distract voters from the real issues (the economy, jobs, health care, the war in Iraq, corporate greed and corruption in Washington); second, they want to keep newly registered voters, mostly African American, Latino and low-income, from actually going to the polls; third, they want to challenge the legitimacy of a process that encourages every citizen (no matter their class, color, age or beliefs) to participate in democracy. Contrary to John McCain’s rhetoric, the “fabric of democracy” is alive and well. Come Nov. 4, the people will have spoken. And change will come.

Tony Pecinovsky (tonypec @ cpusa.org) is district staff for the Missouri/Kansas Communist Party.

OPINION: A contradiction corporations on welfare complaining about socialism

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 10:12:00 +0000

John McCain has been describing Barack Obama as a “socialist” because the Illinois senator would impose higher taxes on the wealthy than on the working class and poor. McCain says this amounts to an “unacceptable” redistribution of wealth.

Let’s grant, for a moment, that the Obama plan really amounts to redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. Let’s grant, just for the moment, that this really can be defined as a form of “socialism.”

How then would we define the upward redistribution of wealth that Congress approved in the Wall Street bailout package? The deal takes tax money from folks who earn $40,000 annually and hands it to bankers who, at the low end of their scale, make $4,000,000 per year.

McCain says he wants everyone to have the chance to get rich. But doesn’t the massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich that Congress just approved make that even more impossible than it already is? I’m not an economist, by any means. It seems to me, however, that the bailout only worsens the enormous income inequality between workers and Wall Street execs. It seems to me this only puts further out of reach for more millions the age old American Dream of “moving on up.” It seems to me that Obama’s approach would put that dream a bit more in reach and allow more people to move up a bit. It seems to me that the Obama approach makes for at least a little more economic democracy.

So far, nothing has been done to help bail out Main Street and none of the $700 billion approved for Wall Street has yet been used to help anyone other than the Wall Street moneymakers themselves.

Thus far Wall Street bankers have used the handout that we pay for to buy up other companies. They have even used some of it to go on $500,000 all-expense-paid “retreats” to discuss their next moves. They decided, during one of these “retreats,” to use some of the bailout money to pay lobbyists who will — guess what — lobby for additional taxpayer handouts. There is also evidence that quite a bit of the bailout money they have already received is being hoarded.

Be all that as it may, one thing is clear. They are not using the money for what we were told they were going to use it: pumping it into the market so that credit would again be available not just to Wall Street but to Main Street.

The issue during this major crisis of American capitalism is not that Obama or anyone else is trying to slip “socialism” into the picture. The issue is, as the economist, Dean Baker put it recently:

“Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson mailed $150 billion in checks to the big banks. From that point forward, the CEOs and all other top executives of these banks are now our dependents. They are living off the tax dollars of schoolteachers in Iowa, truck drivers in Montana and even Joe the Plumber.”

jwojcik @ pww.org

Young workers do better with unions

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 10:09:00 +0000

For young workers who may not know what the advantages of being in a union are, the question “What’s a union gonna do for me?” was answered in a report released last week by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

The report detailed good news and bad news. The bad news is that workers aged 18-29 have the lowest unionization rates of any age group. They have been hit hardest by the stagnant wage growth over the last three decades. This is despite a substantial increase in the number of young workers with college degrees.

The good news is young workers who are in a union make an average of 12.4 percent, or about $1.75 an hour, more than non-union workers. They are also 17 percent more likely to have employer-provided health insurance and 24 percent more likely to have a pension plan.

According to American Rights at Work, the Employee Free Choice Act would give workers a fair and direct path to form unions through majority sign-up, help employees secure a contract with their employer in a reasonable period of time and toughen penalties against employers who violate their rights. Sen. Barack Obama not only supports the legislation, but is a co-sponsor. Sen. McCain opposes it completely.

For young workers in the lowest-wage occupations, the study shows the contrast between union and non-union is even starker. The median young worker in a unionized low-wage occupation earned $10.62, almost two dollars an hour more than the $8.74 the median non-union young worker earned. These benefits also carried over into their health care coverage, where 40 percent of union workers are covered vs. less than 20 percent of non-union workers, and 29 percent had a pension compared to only 11 percent of their non-union counterparts.

In these tough economic times, the union advantage is not only strong, but obvious and necessary. If young workers are to survive, thrive and build a solid future, we must make sure the Employee Free Choice Act is enacted.

Melissa O’Rourke (morourke@cpusa.org) is a young worker and member of the Communist Party’s labor commission.

Letters: Oct. 25, 2008

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 10:02:00 +0000

Open letter to McCain

As a proud citizen and believer in the American dream I can and do sympathize with Joe the plumber. However, we have yet to hear from you the words, “Joe the plumber still has his job, unlike so many of my friends who are now unemployed.”

I am on Social Security, living in New York City on $710 per month. While you use Joe in presenting your “remedy” to us the taxpayers and those who are out of work, what you fail to mention is that Joe would not get a tax cut under your McCain economics. If Obama becomes president he will.

Senator, when you say you cannot lower taxes for 95 percent of the people when 40 percent do not pay any taxes what you fail to mention is that 50 percent or more of those who pay no taxes are our children and retired seniors. Obama was obviously referring to the 95 percent of overburdened taxpayers, many of whom are supporting their little ones and also may be helping their parents.

Yes, Sen. McCain, the working class is familiar with trickle-down, and we reject it. It has already landed and it is crushing our economy.

Sincerely waiting for your reply,

Ken Besaw

Bronx NY

The times they are a-changin

While driving to work the other day I was listening to the Bill Press radio program and the topic was the recent steps taken by the government to partially nationalize some of the major banks on a temporary basis.

Before opening the phone lines, Mr. Press went on to explain that yes indeed we are now a socialist country and he never thought he would see the day that this would happen, and how he believes in capitalism and what about all the talk about Hugo Chavez, now we are no better than him. This stoking of the fire went on for quite some time and after the commercial break the calls started to flow.

Mr. Press did not receive the response he had hoped for, call after call supported the decision, in fact some callers felt it did not go far enough, one caller stated that it should have been done to the oil companies first. At one point Mr. Press stated that he was surprised at the reaction from his audience and then expanded on his stance, naturally he received a call from time to time that would go along with him but the majority of callers did not agree with him and stood firm.

Of course this knee jerk reaction to the government’s latest attempt at putting a band-aid on a crumbling system in no way signals a socialist USA, but it does give an indication that people are thinking outside the box and open to the idea of the present dominating the past.

Tom Fair

Cleveland OH

Cruel veto

I am hoping that the Peoples Weekly World will have an article about the cruel veto by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of SB 1322. If signed into law it would have repealed obsolete California laws that make it impossible for anyone who has been a member of the Communist Party within 5 years to be a public school teacher. The veto message was horrible. He said some people now living in California are refugees from Communism, and it would be cruel to them for him to sign this bill. I have covered the SB 1322 story at www.ballot-access.org. There is a search feature.

Richard Winger

San Francisco CA

New economic model

French president Nicolas Sarkozy was quoted in the Wall Street Journal (“The Confidence Game” by James Grant, October 18-19) paraphrasing a solution advocated for years by your paper’s “People Before Profits” column. Read on:

“...A new form of capitalism is needed, based on values which put finance at the service of business and citizens, not vice versa.”

Mr. Grant goes on to note that “...the sentiment is on the lips of heads of state the world over.”

Jackie Lavalle

New York NY

We want to hear from you!

By mail:

People’s Weekly World

3339 S. Halsted St.

Chicago IL 60608

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Letters should be limited to 200 words. We reserve the right to edit stories and letters. Only signed letters with the return address of the sender will be considered for publication, but the name of the sender will be withheld on request.

Not this time

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 09:59:00 +0000

In state after state the number of new voters has exploded like never before. A people united are rising up to sweep the extreme right out of the White House and the Congress.

The new voters are all colors and languages, younger and older, male and female, with all sorts of political views. They are trade unionists and students. Many were once disaffected. Many first-time voters found something to vote for in this election. Analysts say many are backing Barack Obama.

This should be celebrated. Bringing more people into the democratic process matches this country’s highest ideals and is part of its most historic struggles.

Even so, past turnout has been sickly. Since 1972 it has hovered around 50-55 percent during presidential elections and plunged to the high 30s in off-years. In 2006, a notable exception, 43 percent of the voting age population participated.

Yet, the ultra-right Republican stranglehold on politics, from Ronald Reagan to Newt Gingrich to George W. Bush, has brought a nonstop attempt to suppress the vote — to keep the numbers down especially of working-class people, youth and people of color.

This year, the McCain-Palin campaign is no exception. Their efforts include scratching voters who lost their homes to foreclosure, terroristic robo-calls to scare new voters into staying home, threatening students with loss of student loans, telling the poor they are vulnerable to bill collectors if they vote, threatening ex-prisoners they could be arrested at the polls and spreading leaflets with wrong information about where to vote.

Attacks on ACORN and new attempts to scrub the registration lists because a person’s registered name doesn’t exactly match a government database riddled with mistakes and typos are all part of the McCain campaign’s voter suppression strategy.

Although Republican voter suppression is nothing new — Florida vote theft in 2000, Ohio vote suppression in 2004 — an energized people determined to stop it this time is something new. Mass organizations, unions and community groups are fighting on all fronts, including the courts, to stop it.

The people are saying “Enough!” They are pushing for an all-out mobilization for a landslide victory which will help guarantee that voter suppression won’t work.

Not this time.

Plumbers vote their paycheck

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 09:56:00 +0000

“Joe the Plumber” has become a crutch John McCain and Sarah Palin are leaning on, heavily, to keep their limping campaign from keeling over. They quote him constantly as a sharp critic of Barack Obama’s plan to increase income taxes on those earning more than $250,000 per year while cutting them for those earning less.

The Republican twosome are using the plumber to give their campaign a phony aura of populism, as if they are defending the “Joe Sixpacks” of America against Obama’s “spread the wealth socialism.”

Joe the Plumber is Samuel Joe Wurzelbacher. He and Obama had a six-minute conversation. He is not licensed, which in the state of Ohio means you are not a plumber. He is one of two employees of Toledo-based Newell Plumbing and Heating, which had $100,000 in total revenues last year. Asked by a TV news interviewer if he makes more than $250,000, Wurzelbacher laughed. “No, not even close.”

Daniel Fleisher, a licensed journeyman plumber in Baltimore, wrote a letter to the Baltimore Sun Oct. 21 pointing out that Wurzelbacher disparaged Social Security as a “joke” and complained that he “hates” the federal withholding tax that finances the program.

“When Dan the plumber looks in the mirror, he sees Dan the plumber,” Fleisher wrote. “When Joe the plumber looks in the mirror, notwithstanding the lien on his house, he apparently sees some version of Warren E. Buffett.”

“Which of these two working-class guys is more likely to make political decisions that are in his own interest?” Fleisher asks.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman pointed out in a recent column that the average income of Ohio “plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters” is $47,930.

“So what does this say about the candidates? Who’s really standing up for Ohio’s plumbers?” Krugman asked.

Not everyone would be better off under Obama’s tax plan, Krugman continued. “The plumber would almost certainly be better off but Richie the hedge-fund manager would take a serious hit.”

In this election, voters at last have a chance to tear off the Republican rightwing blinders and vote their own interests rather than be hoodwinked into voting to further enrich the greedy.

Letters - October 18, 2008

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 06:21:00 +0000

Crash of 2008

The news has been comparing this economic crisis to the Great Depression of 1929.

Many neighbors and friends have been talking about the upcoming holidays and how we weren’t going to be able to give store-bought gifts this year. We agreed to have our traditional family dinner but we would exchange baked goods and things we canned recently. We’ve already canceled our family trip to Florida, citing the gas shortages in the very states that we’d be driving through. Plus, the cost of vehicle rental versus the car tune up, as well as the cost of the accommodations. In the end we decided to forgo the family holiday.

One friend was deeply concerned because his plant is scheduling a weeklong closing and then going down to a four-day work week. A local manufacturing plant closed for two weeks and later management announced that it was not going to reopen the plant. Already, we’ve lost our major hotel and conference center which closed in June. People here are wondering what will come next. More importantly what will happen to them and their loved ones. I had a sense that I was watching history unfold. Will this be later called the Great Depression of 2008?

Michael Adam Reale

Owensboro KY

When will we be leaving Iraq?

On Sept. 20 CNN aired an interesting panel consisting of Colin Powell, Madeline Albright and Henry Kissinger that was titled “A World of Challenges.” Covering many subjects, one issue was barely touched upon — their opinions on when we would leave Iraq. Passed over, perhaps for good reason, because none of them seemed to know, or wanted to tell.

For years now, we have learned that all the reasons given to justify invading that innocent country were based upon lies. So what are we doing there, having caused the killing of well over 1 million suffering Iraqis and over 4,000 of our own loved ones? We are building 14 large permanent (we call them enduring) military bases around the country. Is this preparing to leave, or to stay?

For decades, American and other First World oil companies have been conducting 30-or-more-year ( the average life of an oil field ) production sharing agreements (PSAs) in poor, oil-rich Third World countries where the companies totally control the oil production, though not the ownership of the oil. They locate, drill, pump and sell the oil and after recovering all of their expenses up to that point, they then share the profit with the country, usually 60 percent to the country, and 40 percent to the company.

Now, how much have you heard about the Iraq oil agreement? For years, we have quietly been trying to hammer out a typical U.S.-written PSA agreement. Unsuccessful so far. It is clear that as long as the Iraq government is still in control, they are not about to give up their massive dozens of known and undeveloped oil fields to the U.S., or any other greedy nation’s oil barons.

So, when will we be leaving Iraq?

Bud Deraps

St. Louis MO

Free speech and elections

We Americans are so quick to herald the free speech and free elections in our society as outstanding examples of the democratic way of life. And compared to many countries around the world, I guess so.

But compared to a higher standard of democracy we should be practicing, we should be ashamed.

Free speech and free elections go hand in hand. And it’s never more apparent than during the electoral period we are now going through. How free is our speech and how fair are our elections when minority, but responsible groups like Ralph Nader of the Independent Party and Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party are denied access to the “public” airwaves to present their platforms to the American people? Denied because they and others do not have access to the corporate dollars donated to their corporate representatives, the Democrats and Republicans.

So, ad nauseam, we hear their corporate-framed solutions to the multiplicity of social problems besetting our people, while other alternative outside the corporate-box- solutions, are kept from the airwaves.

Free speech, indeed, unless one picks up a minority party flier from a volunteer on a street corner. That’s where our free speech comes in.

Lawrence Geller

Via e-mail

Keeping hope alive

I cannot tell you how much we look forward to reading PWW/Nuestro Mundo each week. I am a community activist and organize around issues of concern to women and lesbians. My mailbox is flooded with reading material of a wide variety. I want you to know that the only thing my partner will read is PWW.

As an Appalachian woman, I have a rather unique perspective on the world. Sometimes I express my viewpoint in song, accompanied by my mountain dulcimer. Recently I wrote new lyrics to the anthem for the 1931 coal strike in Harlan County, Ky. — “Which Side Are You On?” Although I am a born and bred East Tennessean, my partner’s family hails from Knox County, Ky. Knox County shares a border with Harlan County. My now-deceased father-in-law equivalent, Albert Bennett, was active in the UMW local there. He mined for more than 40 years.

Which Side Are You On? — 2008

An Appalachian womon’s (sic) lament

The oil man’s in the White House;

Wall Street just bit the dust.

Foreclosure on your Mama’s house

Is anything but just

(CHORUS)

Which side are you on?

Which side are you on?

Workin’ folks are desperate

To set food on the table.

It takes three checks to pay the bills,

And we just lost our cable.

CHORUS

Wimmin folks a-strugglin’ to try

And do it all.

Knowin’ there just ain’t no way

They’ll ever break their fall.

CHORUS

Iraq War is draining

Our coffers and our souls.

Troops come home so damaged

They go right on the dole.

CHORUS

Public schools are goin’ down.

Children just can’t learn.

GOP’s almighty buck

Is harder now to earn.

CHORUS

Black bears are a-starvin’,

Get shot when they come down.

Tourists leave pollution

All over White Oak Town.

CHORUS

Queers ain’t seen as human,

Hispanics same as dogs.

All the while, the man reaps profits

Like a big ‘ol hog.

CHORUS

The winds of change are blowin’

All across this land.

The People reckon now’s the time

We’ve got to take a stand.

CHORUS

Thank you for helping us keep hope alive.

Beth Maples-Bays

Via e-mail

We want to hear from you!

By mail:

People’s Weekly World

3339 S. Halsted St.

Chicago IL 60608

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e-mail:

Letters should be limited to 200 words. We reserve the right to edit stories and letters. Only signed letters with the return address of the sender will be considered for publication, but the name of the sender will be withheld on request.

Landslide: necessary and possible

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 06:18:00 +0000

When tyrants tremble in their fear

And hear their death knell ringing

When friends rejoice both far and near

How can I keep from singing!

— from a Quaker hymn

Yes, the neoconservatives are reading the writing on the wall. Polls show voters nationally and in battleground states rejecting the policies of the Bush administration and congressional Republicans, and growing awareness that the McCain-Palin ticket is a continuation of the same.

Many believe there is cause for singing, not lullabies or songs of triumph, but songs of struggle, determination, and yes, unity and hope: We Shall Overcome, Solidarity Forever, De Colores. Because their victory is not won yet. Tyrants are escalating their hatemongering to create fear and division so they can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Nevertheless, tens of millions have become engaged in the politics of change and hope and tens of millions more can be reached by Nov. 4.

For a year this newspaper has called for building for a landslide because it is a necessary step to reverse the damage we have suffered from 30 years of far-right dominance.

A landslide in the Electoral College and the popular vote will establish a mandate and the political leverage to make real change. A 60-vote Senate Democratic majority could prevent obstruction by filibuster. And there are 11 key Senate races that could make such a majority.

The damage cannot be undone all at once. It will take a change of direction with tangible gains that build greater engagement and unity for deeper transformations. The extreme right-wing backlash being promoted by the McCain-Palin campaign will not stop even with defeat at the polls. If defeated, it will try to frustrate any real change in policy by obstructionism or in the courts.

This newspaper has often said, “Every vote counts” and “Vote as if your life depended on it — because it does.” And so it is for this election.

As a labor leader recently urged, “Volunteer to phone bank, canvass neighborhoods, pass out fliers and bend the ears of your family members, friends and co-workers.” It’s all about turnout, turnout, turnout.

With such unity and struggle, tyrants cannot stand.

EDITORIAL: Marx was right

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 06:13:00 +0000

It was only yesterday that “free market” ideologues were dancing on Karl Marx’s grave with scornful shouts that “greed is good” and “TINA” — “there is no alternative” to capitalism. These fat men guffawed contemptuously at Marx’s warning that capitalism is built on wage exploitation, that workers never earn enough to buy back what they produce, creating “overproduction” and periodic crises — some deep and long — that can only be solved by socialism.

These ideologues cling to delusions that capitalism is the “best of all possible worlds,” blindness expressed as recently as two weeks ago by John McCain when he asserted that the “fundamentals of the economy are strong.”

But just the other day, economist David Macke surveyed the financial collapse spreading like a thermonuclear chain reaction. Asked what was needed to stop the destruction he replied, “At the end of the day, if you socialize enough of the financial system, it has to work.” Suddenly “socialism” is needed to stave off catastrophe! And who is Macke? An economist for JPMorgan Chase, one of the world’s biggest transnational banks.

But Macke’s “socialism” bears no resemblance to Marx’s version, in which working people own the means of production, including banks, and operate them in working people’s interests. Macke would “socialize” bad debt, forcing working people to bear the burden of rescuing Wall Street. Profits would continue to flow into the coffers of the rich. Left behind would be millions who have lost their homes, their jobs and health care as well as their 401(k) retirement accounts.

We should demand that any bailout work for us.

A coalition led by leaders of major unions has laid out just that approach in “A Call for Common Sense.” Use the federal government’s bank equity, paid for with our tax dollars, to force Morgan Chase, CitiGroup, etc., to agree to a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. Require the banks to invest in a “green” jobs program to jumpstart the economy and retool our nation’s factories, farms and infrastructure to sharply reduce greenhouse gases. Make the banks invest in rebuilding the Gulf Coast, especially New Orleans. Such a program is not socialism, but it is a step toward socialism’s democratic principle, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his work.”

Nationalize banks, employ unemployed

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 09:19:00 +0000

Last week the major economies of the world, including the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, China, Russia and Brazil carried out an unprecedented and coordinated reduction of interest rates. The effort itself was not immediately successful.

How financial stabilization is carried out, and which costs and which benefits are directed toward working people or toward financial titans, will remain an area of fierce struggle, often hidden in arcane financial language, well into the next administration.

While many details remain to be seen, it appears that the UK’s decisive lead in moving to partial bank nationalization as the key step in stabilizing financial markets has won the day, both in the U.S., much of the EU and Russia. The U.S. announced $250 billion of the bailout would go to buy shares in nine banks: Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Bank of New York Mellon, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, State Street and Wells Fargo. The investment will be made in the form of preferred stock equal to between 1 percent and 3 percent of the bank’s assets, the Washington Post reported.

China, of course, does not need to take this step since most of its finance and banking industries are already nationalized.

Many reports suggest that the UK’s Gordon Brown and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke advocated this step from the beginning, but the “markets good, government bad” ideology of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (and President George Bush) wasted precious weeks and inflicted even more damage on the U.S. economy.

(As a side note, those feisty Europeans delivered a stinging rebuke to everything-Bush by awarding the Nobel Prize in economics to Paul Krugman — perhaps the most consistent and effective critic of Bush economic and political policies in the establishment press. In the early 2000s, he was receiving hundreds of death threats for challenging Bush’s veracity on a wide range of issues.)

Clearly, coordinated bank nationalization on an international scale is an immediate move to halt the collapse of world financial systems. The interconnectedness of world economies reduces the effectiveness of any single nation’s actions in the absence of coordination.

As many economists have said, it is a collapse of bank capital, not just liquidity, that is at the root of the problem. And it is clear that halting this collapse must take place before any other reforms, stimulus, etc., can have any effect.

Despite the disarray and fragmentation of world financial regulations and interests, and the absence of any central regulating effort or institutions, this partial bank “nationalization” seems to have been the right initial step. It must be followed, however, by additional measures.

For example, how much nationalization? How much public direction of bank, credit or investment policy? These will no doubt be subjects of hot and necessary debate.

The devil will be in the details.

The existing instruments of international coordination have serious defects. Neither the IMF nor the World Bank currently have the resources or influence, nor are they properly constituted with democratic representation, nor are their operations sufficiently transparent to inspire confidence. Russia, China, India, Brazil and South Africa — just to name a few of the vital economies — are not even represented. The G7 group of “leading” economies also excludes these wealth-producing countries.

The coming recession is likely to result in over 10 percent official unemployment, and likely 20 percent or more if you count discouraged workers. (Those figures reach 50 percent in some communities.) No one knows the true figure, but the damage to the “real” economy on Main Street, both nationally and globally — even if the financial collapse ends today — has already been severe. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s bank reforms halted the 1930 financial collapse by 1933, but it took a world war and public stimulus equal to over 100 percent of GNP to recover from the Depression.

An Obama victory assumes ever greater significance, as a broad-based, aggressive program of pro-worker, pro-people public interventions becomes each day a more urgent necessity. The crisis is quickly spreading to kitchen tables, with the prospect of heatless homes and jobless communities. Obama’s even temperament seems well-suited to the turbulent waters he will be called to navigate. Yet he will be challenged to be bolder, more prepared to make fundamental structural changes in the operation of the U.S. economy, than was Roosevelt. So he will need help. A filibuster-proof majority in both houses of Congress is now a necessity for sound, coordinated government action along with an energized and educated labor and people’s grassroots coalition to provide a mass political base for pro-people policies.

It’s time for the government to supplement its policy of unemployment benefits or welfare for economic victims, by becoming the employer of last resort. There are zillions of public infrastructure tasks desperately in need of workers, there are millions of youth desperately in need of jobs, and the crisis can best be addressed, with the least debt or inflation, by putting people directly to work producing real values.

There are other steps of course: health care, energy, environmental protection all demand our attention. A full, stable recovery cannot ignore any of them. But halting the panic, and keeping people from starving, comes first.

jcase@commonhumanity.info

Editorial: Talking about race

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 06:56:00 +0000

Two conversations about race are taking place in our country. One is reviving the ugly past. The other is looking to a brighter future.

Stirring a lynch-mob atmosphere reminiscent of the worst in our nation’s history, Sarah Palin is using barely concealed racism to whip up a jingoistic frenzy among the far-right’s shrinking base of supporters. At her rally in Clearwater, Fla., a participant must have thought he was back in Jim Crow times, yelling a racial obscenity at an African American TV sound man and telling him, “Sit down, boy!”

Meanwhile the McCain campaign is airing a leering ad suggesting that Barack Obama wants to teach sex to kindergartners, conjuring up the vicious racist images of Black men that shamed our nation with Scottsboro and “Strange Fruit” lynchings.

Appeals to racism by the far-right are not new in presidential campaigns. The “Willie Horton” ads used by Bush Sr. against Michael Dukakis in 1988 are one infamous example. But the McCain-Palin campaign is taking it to new depths as, like a trapped beast, the ultra-right lashes out, trying to hold onto power and stop the nation from electing its first African American president. It’s the stench of fascism.

But there is another much more important conversation about race going on in union halls, over dinner tables and on front porches across the country.

Last month, Ohio AFL-CIO President Joe Rugola called on Ohio trade unionists to confront racism and elect Obama.

“We cannot allow silence on this question to overtake us and prevent the election of Barack Obama,” Rugola said. He called it “a fight for the future existence of the labor movement, a fight to preserve 50 more years of democracy in America.”

Last weekend, Rugola kicked off a “Walk for Economic Recovery” across Ohio. At one of the first stops, in economically devastated Niles, Gov. Ted Strickland said, “If you’re going down the river without a life jacket and there’s a man standing on the bank, you don’t care if he’s black, white, purple or green. You only care if he’s got a strong arm to pull you out. Barack Obama has a strong arm, and he will pull us out of the mess the Republicans have created over the past eight years.”

In an unprecedented speech that is now racing around the country via YouTube, e-mails and web postings, national AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Rich Trumka electrified 3,000 Steelworker convention delegates in June when he declared: “There is no evil that has inflicted more pain and suffering than the evil of racism in our country.”

“We have a special responsibility to fight this evil,” the union leader said.

“There are a thousand good reasons to elect Barack Obama and only one really, really bad reason to vote against him and that is the color of his skin,” he said.

“We can’t let stupid bigoted wisecracks go unchallenged,” Trumka, a former mine worker leader from Pennsylvania, told the Ohio federation convention last month. “We can’t ignore the claim that the United States is not ready for a Black president. We need to make it personal. We need to confront every expression of bigotry and prejudice.”

And in Massachusetts, state AFL-CIO President Robert Haynes brought the audience to its feet at the Greater Boston Central Labor Council’s Labor Day breakfast, declaring, “Barack Obama’s skin color isn’t what matters in this election.” He continued, “I’ll be damned, and I know you’ll be damned, if I let racism … scare this country into voting for John McCain.”

Haynes said he wanted to give union members something to say in response to racism on the campaign trail, the Boston Globe reported. He told them they could emphasize the economy and workers’ rights. They could point out that Black union members have been voting for white Democrats for president all their lives.

When all else fails, Haynes said, “You’ve got to look them dead in the eye. Can you imagine telling your kid in this day and age that you’re not going to vote for someone because of the color of their skin?”

After his speech, union members, white and Black, approached Haynes to shake his hand, slap him on the shoulder, and thank him, the Globe reported.

This is a conversation about the future. It’s the conversation we need, about the change we need.

CORRECTION: In an earlier version the Walk for Economic Recovery was misnamed. We regret the error.

Letters: October 11

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 06:54:00 +0000

Taking issue

I am insulted by Bruce Bostick’s article “Unity — the only road to victory” (PWW 9/20-26). He insults third parties and their supporters as having “no understanding” of the corporate power around Bush/McCain and “no understanding” of strategic approaches toward winning “real change.”

Most progressive third parties understand too well the corporate power around Washington and see the political independence of the “huge people’s movement” as the only hope for real change.

Obama has received more donations than McCain from the following industries: commercial banks, health services and HMOs, hedge funds, securities and investment, and law firms.

The Democrats have continued to fund this completely imperialist, illegal and murderous war.

Will independent parties — including the Communist Party — take a leadership role as capitalism’s world financial system is crumbling, or will they stand behind the Democrats as they band together with their Republican colleagues to save state monopoly capitalism?

Konrad Cukla Brooklyn NY

Bruce Bostick replies: I welcome Brother Cukla’s comments. I am sorry that he feels “insulted” by my comments on the role of Nader/Greens in this election. That was never my intent (i.e. the title of my article; “Unity — the only road to victory”). However, I do strongly stand by the formulation that these parties are, objectively and regardless of their “left” verbiage, splitting the people’s forces at the time we most need unity.

Obama is the candidate of a wide multi-class democratic coalition that is fighting to replace the ultra-right forces that have been running our nation for the past decade. There are varied, contradictory forces in this wide coalition. They are united in some cases only in their common interest in defeating the ultra-right GOP forces now in power — the most extreme reactionary, racist, pro-war polluters and profiteers.

Brother Cukla says the Nader/Green folks “understand all too well the corporate power around Washington.” I believe that statement is true only in the abstract, divorced from the reality of people’s lives, since they have no real approach to actually winning the changes needed to relieve the suffering corporate forces have forced on our people.

Replacement of the ultra-right with a more progressive administration creates the conditions that make it possible for the people’s forces to be able to win national health care, an end to the wars, real progressive labor law reform, protection for workers’ hard-earned pensions, a new “green” jobs program and other reforms.

Bailout

Albano and Wojcik’s article (“To bail or not to bail?” PWW 10/4-10) should have been more unambiguously against the bailout. The PWW is supposed to take sides. From what I’ve read the progressive consensus is against the bailout. Progressives disagree with Obama and Biden on several issues such as Afghanistan so Obama’s support for the bailout isn’t relevant to whether or not to support it.

Sean Mulligan Alpharetta GA

Ever since Reagan, the policy of decreasing taxes on the wealthy, along with huge, increasing military expenditures, has threatened the social programs which originated in the New Deal. The costly and unjustified war in Iraq continues to accelerate the process. Recently, Bush vetoed a $7 billion children’s health care program because it was too expensive! The just completed passage of an outrageous bailout bill by a craven Congress is yet another nail in the coffin of the New Deal and subsequent legislation which protected the people and restrained capitalism’s most predatory tendencies.

Now, with the deadly intent of vampires, corrupt and criminal financial institutions are poised to suck in hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money. Congressional leaders, aghast at the unseemly behavior of the predators, promise a clampdown in the future.

It will soon be clear that the majority of the American people have very different ideas and a new New Deal might be just a first step.

John Mackoviak Tucson AZ

Racism

I’m an art student and I’m currently writing an essay on propaganda art. I want to make a point about how racism can develop subtly without people realizing that they have any prejudices at all, and I was wondering if you could give me any help with information or examples, any subtle ways in which prejudice builds in society. A short response would be a great help to me, thanks.

Stefan Scally Northern Ireland

Editor’s note: Sounds like an interesting project. Check out this week’s editorial.

Who’s in the Electoral College?

In less than a month many of us believe that we will be voting for president. What a lot of people don’t know, or have forgotten, is that the Electoral College actually chooses who the next president will be. As I understand it, when we vote for a presidential candidate, we are really voting for a slate of electors. The number of our electors is supposed to be equal to the number of our state’s representatives and senators in Congress. I am sure that you knew that. I would like to know the names of the electors, and I would also like to know why they aren’t listed on the ballot.

I hope that this paper will explain the Electoral College to the voters so that they will understand that we the people don’t actually get to decide who becomes president. A group of unknown individuals gets to choose who holds “the highest office in the land.” If they can’t decide then either the House of Representatives or the Supreme Court gets to choose who becomes president. I believe in popular sovereignty. The American people should be allowed to directly elect the next president.

Chuck Mann Greensboro NC

The Great Election Swindle

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 06:49:00 +0000

“The Great Rock and Roll Swindle,” a movie that is alleged to be the true story of the ’70s punk rock band the Sex Pistols, tells a tale of how Malcolm McLaren, the band’s founder and manager, controlled the rise and fall of this infamous band.

In the story, McLaren tells us how he handpicked four angry young men to form a band. This band had no talent, but a few songs that would work up England’s troubled youth into a frenzy. He limited the number of live shows the band played in order to keep the “swindle” alive. McLaren figured that if no one could actually see them play live, then they would never figure out that this group of drug abusers had no musical ability and record sales would continue to soar.

After [last] week’s debacle in which Sarah Palin’s handlers refused media access to a high-profile event, I have no choice but to feel this is a remake of the original “Swindle”: this time call it “The Great Election Swindle.” Not to be confused with Bush 43’s theft of the 2000 election. …

The McCain-Palin Campaign has a keep-Sarah-Palin-away-from-the-media-at-all-costs attitude and one must wonder why. If you have a candidate who looks great until she opens her mouth, it seems she hasn’t even purchased a ticket for the Straight Talk Express, let alone know where to board. It makes sense to keep her away from any real media scrutiny.

Palin is still telling people she sold a jet on eBay. Not true. Palin is still telling people she fired the chef. Not true. Palin is still telling people she killed the Bridge to Nowhere. Not true. Palin is telling people that she is against earmarks. Not true, especially considering she just asked for 31 earmarks totaling $197 million for the 2009 budget in Alaska. Palin is still telling people that McCain is not a Washington insider. Not true. John McCain has been in Washington for over 25 years. They are also telling people that they are mavericks which, of course, is not true unless you are thinking of his calling for the resignation of the chairman of the Federal Election Commission when you find out you can’t fire the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Because you can see Russia from some parts of Alaska, Palin thinks that she has foreign policy experience. This is clearly a stretch, but heck, McCain doesn’t even know that Spain is in Europe and not Latin America.

So now you understand why the media is not allowed to question her: the campaign needs to keep the swindle alive.

Ahhh, “The Great Election Swindle.” I only wish they had names like Johnny Rotten or Sid Vicious, but then maybe they do. Coming to a polling place near you. Opens November 4. Buy your tickets early.

— Daniel J. Mancuso is publisher of the Shelton-Mason County Journal in Shelton, Wash., where this article originally appeared.

OPINION: Voters beware there they go again!

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:45:00 +0000

The McCain-Palin campaign has reached rock bottom. A New York Times editorial Oct. 8 described the campaign as having “gone far beyond the usual fare of quotes taken out of context and distortions of an opponent’s record — into the dark territory of race-baiting and xenophobia.” The editorial goes on to refer to a Washington Post report that a man at a Palin rally in Florida yelled “kill him!” in response to Palin’s demagogic remarks against Obama. At that same rally, “others shouted epithets at an African American member of a TV crew.”

The country is facing its deepest financial crisis since the Depression of the 1930s. As the war in Iraq rages on, people are losing their homes in record numbers. Thousands of Hurricane Ike victims are still homeless or without power, water and other basics and have joined the thousands who lost everything after Katrina.

Wall Street gets bailed out while Main Street drowns in debt, foreclosures and unemployment.

Millions are joining the unemployment lines and have little means to pay their bills and feed their families. Not to mention things like sending their kids to college and paying for health emergencies. The oil giants, drunk with record profits, aren’t supplying enough gas to millions of motorists especially in the South, and there are millions more who are facing the horrible “choice” of putting food on the table or gassing up the car or heating their homes this winter. And the bloody, trillion-dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan go on.

Under this situation of multiple crises, it is the policies of Obama/Biden that are gaining more and more support while McCain/Palin are losing big ground. They are in a panic and think they can win by appealing to racism. They are playing a dangerous game, a game that proves that they really don’t put “country first.”

So bogus are their accusations against Obama that at Tuesday’s debate, with a huge TV audience, McCain didn’t even mention his slanders.

George W. Bush used “Swift boating,” Bush Senior used Willie Horton and Ronald Reagan used a fictitious Chicago “welfare queen” to rally white voters against their class interests. This is dangerous. If they win with racist appeals, they will rule with even worse racist policies.

Voters beware! There they go again!

However, this time there are many signs that the people are stronger and more united. Even the inadequate polls show that the race card is not as effective.

I think the country is fed up with the smear tactics and the vote stealing of the right. The stock market just dropped another 500 points. Trillions of dollars have been lost. Millions are losing their jobs because of Wall Street’s greed. This is a time for anti-racism, a time for unity of all working people.

History has shown that the only way to win is with unity.

But, this is no time to relax.

These last weeks should be marked by a new offensive against racism as part of the most massive ground effort to bring out the largest vote against the ultra-right in our history.

Jarvis Tyner (jtyner @ cpusa.org) is executive vice chair of the Communist Party USA.

The crisis of family debt

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:36:00 +0000

There is broad consensus among labor unions and progressive organizations, economists and politicians that we need a bottom-up solution to the economic crisis. That is, the priority should be fixing Main Street, not Wall Street. The main proposals include:

1) A moratorium on home foreclosures, and giving bankruptcy courts the power to renegotiate mortgages. 2) Extend unemployment benefits and increase funding for food stamps, heating assistance, and other survival programs. 3) Aid to state and local governments so they can avoid layoffs and reductions in vital services. 4) Rebuilding the infrastructure of America: clean energy, roads, bridges, water systems, schools, and housing, providing good-paying jobs.

Bailing out Wall Street without fixing Main Street is like fixing the cracks in the wall while your foundation is crumbling. The measures listed above, as well as more basic changes, are necessary. But with more than 100,000 families losing their homes each month, I would like to focus on one critical part of the foundation -- stopping foreclosures and keeping families in their homes.

The root of the crisis is that working families have been squeezed from all sides, especially since the recession of 2001. Household income has been falling behind the increasing cost of necessities. The squeeze has been aggravated by the decline of medical coverage and retirement plans, shifting these costs, along with soaring costs for education, food and energy, onto over-strained family budgets.

Many have dealt with this strain by going into debt. They were pushed deeper by the mortgage brokers, real estate agents, appraisers, and credit card vendors, who piled on fees, charges, and hidden interest rates, often based on wildly inflated housing prices. Even when this debt was not the result of outright fraud and conspiracy by the financial and real estate industries, it was in violation of any reasonable banking standards. Financial institutions, staffed by MBAs, PhDs and other highly-trained experts, made loans that no first-year economics student should have approved.

The immediate cause of the financial crisis on Wall Street is this mountain of debt smothering people on Main Street. In simplified form, here is what happens. ● Hard-pressed families fall behind on their mortgage and credit card payments. ● When homeowners can't make payments, the banks foreclose, but the home frequently stands empty and the bank is unable to recover much of the outstanding loan.. ● The bank, with less money coming in, has trouble paying other banks and investors that it borrowed money from. ● Those other banks and investors have trouble paying banks and investors they borrowed from. ● Banks, investors, and ordinary businesses are afraid to lend money to other banks, investors and ordinary businesses.

Families owe more on their mortgages and their credit cards than they can ever pay back. And their effort to save their homes and meet creditors' demands is undermining their families, their neighborhoods and the local economy, as family members work multiple jobs and cut back on health care, local purchases, local taxes, utilities, and home maintenance.

The bailout package just approved by Congress doesn't address this problem at all. Homeowners and consumers still have the same debt, still face the same monthly payments. The only change is that the U.S. government has become a collection agent for the banks and investors.

The solution is to reduce the amount that working people owe. Reduce homeowners' and consumers' debt to the level it would be at if reasonable lending standards had been applied in the first place. Conservative practice is that families should pay no more than 25 percent of their income for housing. So a people's bailout plan would mandate that mortgages be reduced so that monthly payments will be 25 percent of household income. But in no case should the debt be for more than the real value of the house, as determined by historical price levels adjusted for inflation. Credit card debt, second mortgages, and home improvement loans, college loans, and medical debt could also be adjusted by similar calculations, to a maximum of 10 percent of household income.

This would not cost the government a penny -- it would force banks and investors to recognize the losses resulting from their own bad judgment and fraudulent practices. Millions of people would still be in their homes, and neighborhoods and local tax bases would be stabilized. And the financial system would be more stable because the banks could now be confident of receiving a steady stream of payments, even though these payments would be less than what they originally expected.

The proposals to revive the economy, listed at the beginning of this article, should still be adopted. The economic stimulus package that was blocked in the Senate by a Republican filibuster a few weeks ago included some of those provisions. And major reform and regulation of the financial industry is necessary; there are some excellent proposals to take over failing banks, regulate the financial industry, and tax financial transactions and exorbitant compensation to control speculation and help pay for the program. But until we clear up the massive, unfair, and often illegal debt that has been fastened on working families, it will act as an anchor dragging down the economy, and Main Street will be haunted by insecurity and misery.

Democratic leaders in Congress had a number of proposals that would have reduced the amount families owe on their mortgages. They were blocked by the Republicans, who don't support any meaningful relief for homeowners.

During the vice presidential debate, Senator Biden expressed support for bankruptcy reform to reduce the amount owed by homeowners, and said that he thought that McCain opposed it. Governor Palin said that Biden was wrong, implying that McCain also supports the measure, and said that McCain is on the side of the people against “the greed and corruption on Wall Street.”

There is a simple test to see if Palin's claim has any substance. Will McCain show leadership and bipartisanship by proposing that Senators Obama and Biden join him in pushing to pass this bankruptcy legislation immediately? The proposal was killed in the Senate last April after encountering “stiff opposition from many Republicans as well as the banking and mortgage loan industries,” according to the New York Times. (April 4, 2008) But with McCain's backing, there should be no problem getting this legislation through Congress now.

Art Perlo (econ4ppl@cpusa.org) is chair of the Communist Party’s economic commission.

OPINION: Midway Airport privatization -- another rip-off of the public

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 04:45:00 +0000

CHICAGO -- Without much public discussion, the Daley Administration is set to privatize Midway Airport for $2.5 billion. The new operators will be Midway Investment and Development Co., a consortium of transnational corporations: Vancouver based YVR Airport Services that operates several large airports, Citi Infrastructure Investors, an arm of Citi Bank, and John Hancock Life Insurance. The deal requires the approval of City Council, which meets this coming week.

If the deal goes through, Midway will be the first airport privatized in the US under a program initiated by Congress in 1996. About 100 airports are privatized around the world with about a dozen global corporations competing for the spoils. Unless stopped this will be a rip-off of a huge public asset. It begs the question, should public assets be used for the common good or sold off to become instruments to maximize corporate profits?

Privatization and gentrification have long been the Daley administration’s concept of economic development. It is a neo-liberal free market economic model applied to local development. Daley has plowed ahead with privatization of public schools, the Chicago Skyway and downtown public parking garages.

The economic pressures on Chicago are immense. Tax revenues are nose-diving in the current deepening economic crisis and are expected to worsen. Chicago, like other municipalities, is facing immediate and long-term budget crises. The 2009 city budget is $450 million in the red and the city will layoff over 1,000 city workers to close the gap.

In addition the city pension fund is $10 billion under funded. Pension obligations of $475 million are 15% of the city’s operating budget, a situation also shared by states and municipalities across the country. It’s not clear to what extent city finances will be harmed by the recent meltdown on Wall Street.

Chicago is also burdened by continued airport financing, including general maintenance and upgrade to both Midway and O’Hare airports and projected massive public outlays for the possible Olympics here in 2016.

Daley made the decision to get quick upfront cash to pay down the debt. Unfortunately in doing so he’s selling off the future for the present. He is creating the conditions for worse economic problems, for a bigger budgetary hole future administrations will have to deal with.

Mayor Daley boasts the city will receive $2.5 billion for the 99-year lease to Midway Investment. But after covering a $1.3 billion Midway airport debt, scheduling $450 million for the city pension fund and $450 million for infrastructure, that really leaves $100 million.

The private firms who took over the airport will pocket annual airport revenues that topped $130 million in 2006. Over a 99-year span this would amount to $13 trillion in revenues. It is claimed the city doesn’t get anything out of Midway revenues. But if this were true why would a transnational corporation seek the deal?

That’s just for starters. Midway will no longer be a public asset whose main purpose is to provide a service to the public (aside from the private airline corporations that use it). It will now become a private asset whose purpose is to generate maximum corporate profits. To generate maximum profits, Midway Investment will be compelled to raise revenues and or cut costs.

Contrary to the claim that privatizing public assets creates greater efficiency of operation, the experience here and around the world has been the opposite. Privatization has led to rising fees and decline in service. The experience with most airport privatization in Europe hasn’t been pretty. In addition to skyrocketing prices in nearly every airport, the Campaign for Public Ownership in Britain states,

“(The nation’s) privatized airports are a national disgrace, with BAA [British Airports Authority] preferring to fill space with retail outlets instead of providing adequate seating for passengers. At Heathrow’s new Terminal 5, there will be only 700 seats for an average of 80,000 passengers a day when it opens in March 2008.

“In their relentless quest for increased profits, privatized companies have not only consistently raised prices above inflation, but have cut back on their workforce and failed to adequately invest for the future. Short-term profiteering has replaced long-term investment, gravely affecting Britain’s long term economic prospects.”

As the Chicago Sun Times Lewis Lazare notes, “Anyone who has traveled through London’s busy, privatized Heathrow Airport in recent years may have gotten a taste of the future at Midway, if YVRAS [jointly owned by Vancouver Airport Authority and Citi Infrastructure Investors] and its partners do what they must to make money. One can barely turn around in any of Heathrow’s public departure lounges without bumping into one of the vast number of retail spaces – large and small – that have been stuffed into a finite space.”

While the Midway deal includes a cap and freeze on gate charges to airlines for six years, once that period is over those fees will begin to increase. The fees will be passed along to the flying public. In addition the price of everything at Midway -- from food to parking fees will increase.

Midway investment will be forced to jam more flights into the airport, increasing congestion and noise, a prospect that troubles the surrounding community. In addition, while the deal includes agreements with the labor unions representing Midway workers, expect efforts to cut the workforce and services to the bone, speed up workers and reduce wages and benefits.

One can also expect pressure from the transnational corporations for additional governmental subsidies in various forms. For example a privatization law that passed the Illinois legislature in 2006 guaranteed property tax exemptions on Midway Airport to the new investors!

To see what privatization may mean for Midway one only has to look at what is projected for the Chicago Skyway, where the city received $1.8 billion from global corporations in return for a 99-year lease. Tolls have risen 50% since 2004. Parking at Millennium Park Garage has risen 31% since it was privatized (to Morgan Stanley) in 2006. Meanwhile city finances continue to decline.

What a sweet deal for the corporations, but it’s no answer for the public!

John Bachtell is Illinois state organizer for the Communist Party USA.

This article was originally posted to

Letters: OCTOBER 4

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 09:38:00 +0000

Bailout

Former Communist Party Chair Gus Hall stated in the opening of his book “Imperialism Today”: “The French have a saying: ‘The more things change, the more they remain the same.’”

This is most interesting because two pages later, he adds: “As a part of the general crisis the economies of most of the major imperialist powers faced a series of crises. Greater use of the government to bail out the monopolies and repress revolutionary movements was required by the ruling classes.”

Seems kind of prophetic with all of the talk of “bailouts” this week.

James M. Bradford Philadelphia PA

In perspective

Forbes tells us the world now has 358 billionaires. Their combined net worth exceeds the combined net worth of the world’s poorest 2 billion people. The World Bank points out that “the grain required to fill the tank of a sports utility vehicle with ethanol could feed one person for a year.”

As Lily Tomlin once said, “No matter how cynical you get, it’s impossible to keep up.”

David Kuehn Atlanta GA

Rosenbergs betrayed

Thanks for a great article by Susan Webb, “The Rosenberg case revisited: heroes and betrayers” (PWW 9/27-10/3). At last the details of the frameup are exposed. We always knew it was a frame, but now the horror of the government’s actual role is plainly shown.

Lew Lubka Fargo ND

The most disgraceful part of the execution of the Rosenbergs is the haste to execute them on Friday afternoon, as the government fully knew as Jews it was not permitted to carry out such an act on the Sabbath or Shabbat! They would then have to wait till after the weekend! So they rushed to execute them before sundown, before the start of the Jewish Sabbath, on Friday afternoon. I remember because I stood in the crowd in downtown New York and cried as their deaths were announced. I was only a child and barely understood what a terrible event was occurring.

Viviana Weinstein Colorado Springs CO

Editor’s note: In a previous letter by Viviana Weinstein the information on offshore drilling she gave was provided by Jim Hightower. In editing that credit was cut. We regret the error.

Socialism, capitalism and public takeover

The terms “socialism” and “socialism for the rich” have been bandied about recently in relation to the $700 billion Wall Street bailout proposed by the Bush administration. But, as the 9/27-10/4 PWW editorial, “Shock and awe revisited,” states, this bailout “has nothing in common with socialism.” I don’t agree, however, with the reason you give for this assessment, namely, that it “leaves the companies controlled by the same greedy capitalists who ran them in the first place.”

In fact, in some versions of the proposal, the government would actually take ownership of the companies and, while this would be a good idea, I think we can be sure that even then we would not have socialism. There have been many government takeovers of failing private companies in our history including, for example, the New York City subway system.

The Wall Street bailout is just the normal functioning of state monopoly capitalism, which always seeks to mobilize public resources to maintain and strengthen private corporate power.

It is a mistake to equate socialism with public ownership. There are examples of countries, including New Zealand, Austria and Sweden, where during prolonged periods virtually all industry was publicly owned. And yet they did not have socialism. Nor did Iraq, with its nationalized oil under the regime of Sadaam Hussein.

Socialism cannot be reduced to a blueprint for economic organization as some 19th century utopians mistakenly thought. In essence, socialism means working class power. It is the outcome of a fierce political struggle between the two contending classes. The intensity of that struggle is certainly growing and will be an important factor in determining the outcome of the November elections. But, while this outcome could greatly affect the balance of power between the two classes, even the most massive landslide for the Democrats would still be some considerable distance from socialism.

Rick Nagin Cleveland OH

Notes of appreciation

Please pass along our thanks to Marilyn Bechtel for a superb article: “Veterans tell VA, ‘Open front door’ to disability claims” (PWW 9/27-10/3).

Paul Sullivan Washington DC

Paul Sullivan is executive director of Veterans for Common Sense.

We wish to thank you for “A dose of ‘socialism’ to forestall financial disaster” by John Case on pww.org. It has been translated and will appear in resistenze.org. Not withstanding other considerations your analysis is breaking stereotypes that the U.S. government measures to save Wall Street are simply “a way to privatize profit and socialize loss” without other implications. It is evident that we must understand the fluid and complex period we are currently in.

Giuliano Cappellini Turin, Italy

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EDITORIAL: An insult to women

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 09:32:00 +0000

Sarah Palin’s selection as the Republicans’ vice-presidential candidate is an insult to women, and to the American people. It sent several disgusting messages.

One: We can use women for window-dressing.

Two: Women voters are dumb. They’ll be so enthralled by our lipsticked candidate that they won’t notice that a) she has no clue about the issues that matter, or about much of anything else, and b) she opposes every social measure that would make women’s lives better.

Three: putting any old woman on the GOP ticket, no matter how vastly ignorant and unqualified, makes it ok to vote against Barack Obama because he’s African American — in other words, now racism is ok but we don’t have to say so because we’re all for women, though we’re not for any programs that would actually help women move forward and achieve real equality.

National Organization for Women head Kim Gandy writes, “For me, this election has never been about getting one woman into office. It’s about opening doors and opportunities for all women. … And make no mistake, the McCain-Palin ticket will leave millions of women behind.”

“Sarah Palin, like John McCain, vows to overturn Roe v. Wade. In fact, she opposes abortion even in the case of rape or incest … Has she no human compassion? She wouldn’t even allow an abortion to protect a woman’s health — only to prevent her ‘imminent death.’ Wonder how many of a woman’s internal organs would have to shut down before ‘Dr.’ Palin would consider her death to be imminent?”

Further, Gandy notes, while Palin was mayor of Wasilla, rape victims were required to pay up to $1,200 for the cost of processing the police evidence (called “rape kits”) in their cases. “Just imagine — during perhaps the most traumatic moments of their lives, Sarah Palin made women pay, before the law would protect them. And it didn’t stop until Democratic governor Tony Knowles signed statewide legislation prohibiting the practice.”

As governor, Palin slashed funding for schools for special needs children, and for programs helping teenage mothers and troubled youths.

She and her running mate both oppose the equal pay bill stalled in Congress — the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

And now Palin wants to sell you John McCain.

David Greenberg, head of Oregon’s Planned Parenthood, called McCain “among the most extreme members of Congress who voted against common sense measures on family planning, sex education and access to basic health care.”

Here’s the record Palin is peddling:

• McCain voted against requiring health care plans to cover birth control (3/22/03).

• He voted against comprehensive, medically accurate sex education (7/25/06).

• He voted against international family planning funding (3/14/96).

• He voted against funding to prevent teen and unintended pregnancies (3/17/05).

• He voted against public education for emergency contraception (3/17/05).

• He voted against restoring Medicaid funding that could be used for family planning for low-income women (3/17/05).

• He voted twice against reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

Last year the nonpartisan Children’s Defense Fund rated him the senator with the worst voting record on children’s issues, which so vitally affect women.

Women live longer than men, and rely heavily on Social Security. Palin-McCain’s privatization plan will wipe out that safety net.

The list goes on.

Palin’s effort to grab the image of typical “working mom” trivializes the reality of how hard it is to be a working mother and women’s serious pressing needs for support — for laws, programs and funding to enable women to be fully equal in our society.

What a phony.

Why McCain suspended his campaign

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 09:21:00 +0000

Behind The News

John McCain got lucky last week. Less than 24 hours after the New York Times broke a story about McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis’ ties to the Freddie Mac, the big home lender that failed during the Wall Street collapse, the story disappeared from the headlines.

According to the Sept. 23 New York Times article, despite a McCain order earlier this year that no campaign staff could be currently earning income from lobbying work, Davis’ Washington lobbyist firm, Davis Manafort, continued to receive payments of $15,000 per month from the mortgage lender.

The payments began in late 2005 and continued until this past August. Altogether, Davis Manafort reportedly took about $500,000 from Freddie Mac. Though on “leave” from Davis Manafort, Davis as an owner of the firm continues to earn income from its profits.

The violation of the McCain campaign promise wasn’t the whole story either. Former Freddie Mac officials, responding to McCain’s claim that Davis had not received payments from Freddie Mac, could not recall Davis’ lobbying firm “doing much substantive work for the company in return for the money.” They claimed the payments were meant to purchase access to the McCain campaign, the Times reported.

Prior to accepting the payments from Freddie Mac, Davis accepted about $2 million dollars to head a “coalition” called the Homeownership Alliance, a group co-founded by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. On paper, the Homeownership Alliance was supposed to help families buy new homes. In reality, The New York Times reported, the Homeownership Alliance, headed by John McCain’s campaign manager, was created “to help them oppose new regulations and protect their status as federally chartered companies with implicit government backing.”

As the Times reported, Davis’s job was to help Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae keep a legal “status that let them borrow cheaply, helping to fuel rapid growth but also their increased purchases of the risky mortgage securities that proved to be their downfall.” Simply put, Davis helped the two big lenders do the very things that caused their failures as well as the general financial collapse on Wall Street.

The day after The New York Times published these revelations, the Washington Post, in addition to reprinting their own version of the same story, published the results of their new joint poll with ABC News that had Obama ahead nationally by nine points. That evening, Sept. 24, the first part of the CBS News interview with Sarah Palin proved so embarrassing to the McCain campaign that some Republicans started to demand Palin’s recall as vice presidential nominee.

In the end, McCain got lucky. The financial crisis allowed him to “suspend” his campaign, go to Washington as a deal maker (or as it turned out a deal breaker), threaten to cancel the first presidential debate and stir the pot with other distractions, avoiding the fallout from the Davis revelations, the Palin fiasco, and sinking poll numbers.

Or maybe it wasn’t luck at all?

jwendland @political-affairs.net

OPINION: How to solve the mortgage meltdown

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:43:00 +0000

It had to happen: Some Republicans are trying to blame the Democrats for the mortgage meltdown, and for the stock exchange crisis that this has triggered, because Democratic politicians have allegedly pushed laws to make it easier for lower income, inner city householders to get mortgages. Also, some are asking what’s the big deal about owning property anyway? Wasn’t it presumptuous and stupid for people who are one paycheck away from poverty to take on mortgage debt they couldn’t afford?

It is true that some people, including President Bush with his “ownership society” nonsense, promote an ideology of property ownership as an indicator of moral worth. Living in inner city Chicago from 1973 to 2004, I saw plenty of occasions in which renters were disparaged as shiftless and dangerous. I even heard property owners yell that people who rent and don’t own should not be allowed to vote in local elections — a throwback to the property qualifications of colonial times.

But the main reasons inner city apartment dwellers want to buy their own houses and move to better neighborhoods are mostly practical. The most frequently voiced concerns are about the safety of their children in gang-infested areas, and the quality of the schools.

There is often a sharp contrast between schools in mostly minority inner city communities and those in surrounding suburbs. A number of factors are involved, but one of the most important is the practice of basing school funding on local property taxes. Valuation of property for tax purposes is generally much higher in well-off suburbs than in older working class cities. So city governments would have to tax their property owners at a much higher rate than governments of wealthy suburbs to get the same income. This situation was eloquently denounced in Jonathan Kozol’s 1991 book “Savage Inequalities.” Unfortunately there has not been substantial improvement since then.

Furthermore, inner city schools are likely to have more expensive special needs than the suburban schools. State and federal grants reduce the funding gap somewhat, but not nearly enough. The truth is that more money needs to be spent on troubled inner city schools than on ones in wealthy suburbs, to overcome the special problems faced by inner city children and their families, but the opposite is the case.

So if you want your kids to go to a better school, you may conclude that you have to go to the suburbs. But if your household income is too low to keep up with mortgage payments, why buy a house you can’t afford? Why not just rent an apartment in the suburbs instead?

In many cases, you can’t. Zoning laws in bedroom suburbs often preclude construction of sufficient quantities of affordable rental housing. This is not accidental; it is deliberately done to “maintain the quality of our community” and to keep “certain kinds of people” out. This is the method of choice for exclusion now that racial covenants and “sundown laws” are illegal. And when lower income working class families try to team up and buy a house collectively, or one member of the family buys a house and several other adult members of the family move in and chip in for the mortgage payments, zoning laws and even fire safety laws are deployed to stop it.

Thus thousands and thousands of families have been desperate to get a mortgage, and the rule of the market has had the result that there have been lenders willing to make shaky or deceptive mortgages. The choice for the families was, or at least seemed to them to be, to take on a risky mortgage, or give up their dreams of a better life for their children.

What would you do, faced with a choice like that?

The net result of the current crisis may be that it becomes even harder for lower paid working class and especially minority families to escape from inner city slums and try to improve the safety and educational opportunities of their children. Cracking down on sleazy mortgage lending practices is essential, but people trying to get out of urban poverty conditions may be collateral damage.

Solving the mortgage crisis requires radical action to solve the affordable housing crisis and the inner city youth and education crisis. This tangle of neglect, inhumanity and cruelty has to be taken on together.

This will not happen without a massive, united struggle involving every kind of labor, community and religious organization. But it also will not happen with “let them eat cake” McCain and his Republican colleagues running the federal, state and local governments. This is another reason to sweep them all out in November.