People Before Profit blog

In the wake of Katrina Political songs zoom over the Net

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 05:07:00 +0000

When hip-hop artist Kanye West said, “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people,” he caught the imagination of rebellious artists everywhere. People find it refreshing to hear such a bold, truthful and militant straight-from-the-heart speech in time of profound crisis.

The Legendary K.O., a Houston-based group, took West’s illustrious quote and has turned it into a song with the same name. One of the most powerful post-Katrina anti-Bush messages, the song is making an impact in the “underground,” Internet-based music world. With West’s Ray Charles sample from his hit “Gold Digger” in the background providing the driving beat, The Legendary K.O. skewers the administration’s criminal response.

Five days in this [*#&*@!] attic I can’t use the cellphone I keep getting static Dying ’cause they lying instead of telling us the truth Screwed ’cause they say they’re coming back for us, too but that was three days ago and I don’t see no rescue

The song, available for free through www.k-otix.com, was downloaded 10,000 times in the first day alone, with listeners ranging from the U.S. to Europe and Japan. After posting the song on five other sites it “pretty much snowballed” after that, Legendary K.O. member Damien told the World. “We’ve recorded 500,000 downloads – the most we’ve ever gotten.”

Damien said the incredible response comes from twin reasons — the speed of the Internet itself and the message. “We’ve had numerous discussions since the song came out and 98 percent of the people agree,” he said. “It was on most people’s minds, especially the victims here in Houston felt that way.”

Legendary K.O. member Micah, who lives minutes away from the Astrodome where many Katrina victims are being housed, came up with the song concept immediately after hearing Kanye West’s remarks.

“I had really wanted to write about this in the first person, as someone stuck in New Orleans and left by this administration to basically fend for myself, but was having trouble putting the emotions I felt into words. When I heard Kanye during the benefit, the rest, as they say, was history,” Micah said.

“Personally, I think Katrina has provided the opportunity for a more open and honest discussion on race and class. These are untouched topics,” Damien said. The Bush administration’s position of a “colorblind society” means race and racism are easier to ignore, he continued.

“I think we can all agree that this situation represents the ultimate human tragedy, and highlights the need for sweeping improvements in some of the most fundamental segments of society. The safety and well-being of all people should always be considered first, and we felt compelled to express that through song,” Damien said.

The Legendary K.O. is not staying on the sidelines during this tragedy, simply making music. Micah and Damien have also donated food, clothes, and time to local organizations and urge anyone that has not donated to please do so.

Other political Katrina hip-hop rhymes can be heard on the Internet. Mos Def came out with “Katrina Clap,” using the beat of “Nolia Clap,” created by New Orleans’ Juvenile. The song has already made its way to the net with Mos Def adding his voice, full of both anger at those not doing anything and empathy for the people caught in the events.

talbano @ pww.org

If the rich and right wing were treated equally

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 05:03:00 +0000

In 1940 playwright and humorist George S. Kaufman, who made his living mocking everyone, wrote a satirical story titled “The Great Caviar Riots” for The Nation magazine. In the story he mocks both the culture of protest and members of the upper classes, who take to the streets to regain their culinary class privileges.

Today, Cindy Sheehan, a heroic woman who refuses to be the “good mother” sending her son to his death in a foreign war with the heartfelt thanks of her government, has challenged the right-wing media who defame her for speaking truth to power by telling them to either join the Army and go to Iraq themselves or send their sons and daughters.

Sheehan’s remarks and Kaufman’s old story inspired me to come up with this tongue-in-cheek idea: a “Patriot Draft” for the rich and the Right.

Since liberals and the Left are neither brave nor trustworthy, according to the Right, why not give them all deferments and restrict the draft to conservative Republicans aged 18-62 (those old enough to vote and not old enough to collect Social Security). Since lower-income people and the poor are also not trustworthy, according to the Right, give them deferments, too, and restrict the draft to families with household incomes above $200,000.

Protests would of course begin immediately. On the New York Stock Exchange, hundreds would step forward to sign Vouchers of Resistance to the “Patriot Draft.” Draft counselors would tell clients to sell their condos and donate stocks to charities to reduce their incomes. Country-clubbers would buy audiotapes of the collected works of Marx and Engels to prove to the Bush administration that they were not “patriots,” at least as George W. Bush would define patriotism. Wealthy women would march in the streets denouncing the government for forcing their millionaire middle-aged husbands to desert them.

Colonies of millionaire draft dodgers would spring up in Monaco and Bali and the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation would relocate there. The heavy drafting of Federalist Society members would create a real crisis in right-wing judicial appointments.

But this would be just the beginning. Faced with a growing upper-class insurgency, the administration would try to accuse the protesters of being foreign agents, but it would be difficult to create mass fear against Monaco, Liechtenstein, or even Switzerland, whose banking laws would attract many of the protesters.

Finally, Bush would accuse his enemies of being sushi-munching agents of Japanese empire and ban sushi from all menus on the grounds that it was encouraging draft resistance (except of course for an American version, which would be officially called “freedom fish”).

Opposition to administration policy would begin to trickle down to the masses of people when multimillion-dollar NFL quarterbacks were drafted. The Country Club Draft Resistance movement would be joined by a new mass organization, the HCLF (Howard Cosell Liberation Front). A national beer boycott would follow, along with Japanese creditors withdrawing funds because of the sushi ban.

The administration’s bombing of Monaco, which it accused of harboring draft dodgers, terrorists and weapons of mass destruction, would be answered by a NATO counterattack. As the economy collapsed, Bush would seek asylum in Taliban-controlled areas of Pakistan along with Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bolton.

An Interim Government of National Salvation, including liberals, communists, socialists, and NFL football players, would then be established and a policy of deRepublicanization would be launched. The government would try to repair relations with the United Nations and hope that the UN would intervene to compel the Taliban to extradite Bush and the other fugitives, short of military action.

In the U.S., most people would see the events as the result of a government that had gotten away with so much that it thought it could get away with anything, including making its upper-class supporters act out its ideology as draftees. They would ask: Why did they launch the Patriot Draft? Why did they invade Iraq to fight terrorists and find weapons of mass destruction? Why did they call Iraq, Iran and North Korea an “axis of evil”? Was it blind pursuit of profit, as the Marxists (who were now being taken seriously) said? Was it a combination of religious fanaticism and sheer stupidity, as the liberals generally believed? The only thing that everyone was sure about was that the Right stole the 2000 election to gain power and after that called everything they did an extension of democracy.

Satire aside, today the Bush administration has shown us that it is capable of saying and doing anything to defend the privileges of the rich and powerful. The only way to have a “happy ending,” Hollywood or otherwise, for the U.S. and the world is to concentrate all of our efforts, 24/7, on driving the Republican Right from power and repairing the damage they have done for so long.

Norman Markowitz is a history professor at Rutgers University.

Military bases are no solution for jobs, economy

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 05:00:00 +0000

The people of Groton and New London, Conn., breathed a loud collective sigh of relief last week when the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) voted to remove their naval base from the list of bases to be closed. For months, since the Pentagon’s list was first published, the entire community was on edge.

The elimination of 8,000 jobs would have put a large percentage of the area’s working-age population on the unemployment rolls. The future of the state’s largest employer, nearby Electric Boat shipyard, owned by General Dynamics, was called into question. The ripple effect would have reached miles away. As many as 31,000 additional workers would have lost their jobs.

Suddenly, the Republican governor and the area’s congressman allied with the state’s Democratic senators to create “Team Connecticut.” Military personnel, business leaders, unions and community agencies joined hands with one plea: Save our economy by saving the naval base.

This story was repeated in the Portsmouth, N.H./Kittery, Maine, community and across the country where base closings were announced. Some were successful in getting off the close list, others were not.

In Connecticut, the winning argument was that the synergy between the naval submarine base and the Electric Boat nuclear submarine production and repair facility made for a strong military.

However, the collective sigh of relief that the local economy was saved remains on shaky ground.

Even as families hurried to catch up and shop for back-to-school clothes, the economy remains hostage to the military-industrial complex, and could collapse at any time.

A decade ago, when the Cold War was declared over, the country was filled with the promise of a “peace dividend.” Finally, it was hoped, instead of putting the nation’s resources into weaponry, the pressing needs for rebuilding infrastructure and meeting social needs could be realized.

But the peace dividend itself became the first post-Cold War casualty.

For years during the nuclear weapons buildup, fears of world destruction fueled a significant movement of unions, peace groups and allies for economic conversion to peacetime production.

In the Groton/New London area, this movement became so strong that the state Legislature was pushed to offer a million-dollar check to Electric Boat to study alternative products that could be made at the nuclear submarine facility. General Dynamics simply tore up the check, proclaiming they were not interested in other production which would not yield such a high profit margin. The company then helped facilitate the defeat of their congressional district’s pro-conversion representative who had served the community so well.

Now, the BRAC hearings have temporarily rescued the production and use of nuclear submarines once again. Even as the collective cheers went up for the BRAC commission vote to save these bases, a majority of people polled in the country expressed opposition to the war on Iraq and to use of nuclear weaponry.

This episode places squarely on the agenda the question of how to achieve a truly sound economy based on fulfilling the crying needs of our country for renewable energy systems, for health care, for mass transportation, for affordable housing. The naval base and submarine production facilities could potentially be used for any of these goals.

Imagine what could be accomplished if a “Team Connecticut” came together around these priorities and pushed the federal government to fund peacetime construction that would insure a firm foundation for jobs and economic development?

The debate in military circles about which weapons are needed to combat terrorism and which are obsolete ignores the reality that none of these weapons make us more secure and most make us less secure. The Bush administration policies of never-ending war and first-strike use of nuclear weapons are clearly aimed at world domination, placing the entire planet in jeopardy.

Both the country and the world would be better served if financial, material and labor resources were devoted to meet the very real needs of the people in this country.

Thousands of communities have been thrown into crisis not only by military base closings, but also when major employers decide to close or move elsewhere for higher profits. Federal legislation to provide substantive aid to workers and communities would make it far easier to arrive at decisions regarding military bases or production facilities on the basis of what truly is in the best interests of the country, rather than blackmailing whole communities and states into supporting aggressive and destructive foreign and military policy to temporarily save jobs.

Peacetime production can be won. It will take a strong labor-peace coalition concerned with the economic well-being of working-class communities to organize mass support for a broad program to meet human needs and create millions of good jobs.

To be a world leader and truly make our country stronger requires retooling of priorities and retooling of production facilities for the people’s needs, not Pentagon and military corporation greed.

Joelle Fishman (joelle.fishman @ pobox.com) is chair of the Connecticut district of the Communist Party USA and also chairs the party’s Political Action Commission.

Katrina oil companies are the real looters

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 04:33:00 +0000

Following Katrina’s devastation, the president could crack down on the real looters by sending the National Guard to Houston and Irving, Texas, and San Ramon, Calif., the headquarters of ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and ChevronTexaco.

In the wake of the hurricane, the retail price of gas shot up by as much as a dollar a gallon. A week later, gas was still up by 46 cents, and the next week by 34 cents. Because of the shortage of refining capacity, it is unlikely to fall to pre-hurricane levels any time soon.

U.S. consumers and businesses use about 400 million gallons of gasoline every day. At an average of 40 cents extra per gallon, that amounts to $2 billion in the first two weeks after Katrina. If we add diesel, jet fuel, heating oil and other refinery products, the extra profits could exceed $4 billion. With predictions of big increases in heating oil and natural gas prices this coming winter, the gravy train is likely to continue.

Most of the increase in prices undoubtedly goes to the multinational oil companies, with the “independent” refiners getting a smaller share. In either case, they are paying about the same for crude as they were before the hurricane. And it still costs the same to turn crude oil into gasoline. But they are charging an extra 40 cents for every gallon they sell.

What a sweet deal! Add to the extra $2 billion per week they are extracting from U.S. consumers the substantial profits from worldwide price increases. No wonder the stock prices of oil companies rose after the hurricane — even those that sustained the worst damage.

By contrast, on Sept. 2 the Boston Globe reported that several big oil companies had pledged a total of a measly $11 million for relief efforts. They made this amount in extra profits in the first hour after the levees burst.

Even before Katrina, the price of crude oil was three times its pre-Iraq war level. An MSNBC report quoted oil analyst Fadel Gheit: “They have so much profit, it’s almost an embarrassment of riches. They don’t know what to do with it.” The mountains of cash — more than $125 billion in the last three years — have gone primarily to enrich oil company owners, executives and bankers.

Katrina knocked out much of the Gulf Coast oil industry temporarily, and it could be months before full production is restored. The oil industry could have used some of its extra cash to build adequate reserve capacity for emergencies. But then there wouldn’t be a shortage of refined petroleum, and they wouldn’t be able to raise prices. There is more profit for the oil industry when it is not prepared for disaster.

For Californians, this is a rerun of 2000-2001. The regulated utilities sold off their generating plants to unregulated companies with no obligation to provide new capacity or reliable service. As growing demand for electricity squeezed reserve margins, the generators and marketers like Enron manipulated supplies and transmission capacity to create artificial shortages and blackouts. Prices went through the roof. Consumers and taxpayers paid tens of billions of dollars in extra charges, while federal regulators refused to stop the profiteering.

While there is no evidence so far that oil companies have deliberately created the current shortages, their neglect of the nation’s oil and gas infrastructure and their profiting from those shortages certainly bring Enron and California to mind.

In Congress, some Democrats have called for an excess profits tax on the oil companies’ profits. There have also been calls for a cap on gas prices at the state and federal levels. These proposals deserve support, but they are a piecemeal approach to a problem that needs to be tackled systematically.

After the Enron disaster in 2001, California took steps to re-regulate electric utilities. We should do the same to the oil and gas industry. A federal regulatory agency should be established with participation by labor, consumer, environmental and community organizations. The agency would:

• cap prices after allowing for legitimate expenses, but not for excessive executive salaries or speculative investments.

• require a long-term investment program including geographically dispersed reserve capacity in production, refining, transportation and storage.

• audit company books and publish real costs of producing, processing and transporting petroleum products.

• regulate energy trading exchanges to prevent wild price swings which are not connected to costs of production.

There are many other elements to a sane energy policy — but that is a topic for another day.

economics @ cpusa.org Chuck Williams contributed to this article.

Is this Bushs day of reckoning?

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 02:13:00 +0000

NEW ORLEANS — I had never visited a city ravaged by war, but as I drove across the Mississippi Bridge into the heart of this devastated city with People’s Weekly World reporter Tim Wheeler last week, I felt that I was in a war zone. Debris filled the streets and a dreadful stench filled the air. Buildings were boarded up and the city’s celebrated music had gone silent.

Except for first responders, military personnel in Humvees, stray dogs and a handful of souls who had ridden out the storm, there were few signs of life.

Up close, the death and destruction are nearly incomprehensible. I had never seen anything like it. But what was apparent from the harrowing stories we heard and our own first-hand observations, was that much of the loss of life and devastation is attributable to man-made failures.

It wasn’t Katrina that issued death sentences to thousands in New Orleans and elsewhere. It wasn’t Katrina that left tens of thousands, including the very young and the very old, stranded in the rising water.

It wasn’t Katrina that herded thousands of people, overwhelmingly Black and poor, into the Superdome as if they were cattle and provided neither food, nor water, nor comfort, nor safety to the most vulnerable of the storm’s victims.

Katrina was a deadly, destructive hurricane to be sure, but it was human actions, incompetence and, above all, indifference that were the perpetrators of much of the death and dislocation.

Katrina lays bare for all to see the callousness of the George W. Bush administration and the system of capitalism that it sustains. Katrina shines a harsh spotlight on this administration’s twisted priorities, based on policies that favor corporate profits and war over human needs and the natural environment. Katrina exposes the rampant cronyism and nearly unimaginable ineptitude of this White House. And Katrina reveals the fault lines of race and class that continue to divide our nation — fault lines that the Bush administration has aggravated to the extreme.

After Katrina, how can Bush think anyone will believe that the Republican Party and the extreme right are color-blind upholders of family values and apostles of a “culture of life”?

How can Bush claim that poverty is disappearing or that institutionalized racism is a thing of the past?

How can he continue to assert that a shrunken government stripped of resources for the people’s welfare is a good thing?

How can he claim his “war on terror” is making our country safer?

How can he insist that the war in Iraq is not robbing our communities and postponing necessary infrastructure work?

How can he at the same time insist on cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy and bankrupting the federal treasury?

How can Bush sidestep the indisputable fact that the mixture of poverty, racism and urban decay is not peculiar to New Orleans, but festers in every city of our country?

He can try, but how many will believe him?

His administration has received a heavy body blow to its moral authority, ideological armor and political standing. Once lost, these are difficult to regain.

In Katrina’s wake, the terms of the ideological debate in our country have been reframed and the terrain of political struggle has shifted to the advantage of the working class and people’s movement.

Millions of people, including many who voted for Bush less than a year ago, are connecting the dots of Iraq, soaring gas prices, stagnant incomes, infrastructure disrepair, poverty, racial oppression and attacks on democratic rights. They see those dots leading to the truly criminal group that occupies the White House.

Are we at a turning point in the fight against the Bush administration and, more broadly, against the extreme right that began its ascendancy in the Reagan years and now controls all three branches of the federal government? Nothing in politics is inevitable. But the possibility of delivering a decisive blow against the right is evident in the shifting ideological and political relationships of this moment.

If 9/11 was a tragedy that the Bush gang — and the reactionary section of capital that he represents — turned into a pretext to pursue a policy of global domination with an accent on raw power and force, then Katrina is a tragedy that could turn out to be their “day of reckoning.”

However, only the involvement of millions of people in struggle on every front will sweep away the cancer that has distorted our political life for a quarter century, eating away at everything that is just and decent about our country.

One immediate front of struggle is to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq, but now another is to support the people of our own Gulf — New Orleans in the first place — in their battle to rebuild the region in the interest of the people, Black, Brown and white.

Any reconstruction plan should be under democratic control and should accent public projects with affirmative action provisions and union wages, to build homes, schools, hospitals, roads, parks.

Sure, it will take money, but our country has plenty of it. Rescind the tax cuts for the big corporations and the wealthy, raise their taxes, and seize the scandalous profits of the oil and gas industries. And slash the military budget in half.

The administration has its own plan, to turn the Gulf region into what Bush calls an “opportunity zone.” Its aim is to hand the region over to the corporate elite to make it a vast zone of unregulated capitalism and a laboratory of right-wing schemes, such as privatization of public education. It would be “freed” from burdensome democratic rights that impede capitalist exploitation, “freed” from public services that are a buffer against the worst depredations of unrestrained capitalism.

This scheme can be defeated by the broad, united action of the people, especially as millions see through the spin and become aware of its details and implications. In this process, the working class and people’s movements are setting the stage for a much broader offensive in 2006.

Sam Webb (swebb @ cpusa.org) is national chair of the Communist Party USA.