People Before Profit blog

Making a nuclear-free world

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:57:00 +0000

EDITORIAL

The Obama administration's important efforts to place nuclear disarmament at the top of the world's agenda, and its efforts to engage in diplomacy with Iran, should not be derailed by controversy over Iran's nuclear enrichment

Nor should that cause a rush into sanctions.

Apparently Iran violated the requirement that signers of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty inform the International Atomic Energy Agency180 days before fissile material is put into a plant. But focusing on this and diverting from a comprehensive approach will only lead to failure on the main goal - a nuclear-weapons-free world.

Prevention of the unthinkable - a nuclear holocaust - means much more than jumping onto a hysterical anti-Iran bandwagon. It means staying on course to encompass all the nations that possess these weapons of mass destruction and engage them in talks about mutually beneficial agreements that can at long last rid the world of the threat of nuclear annihilation.

Beyond Iran, other concerns include a secret plutonium enrichment plant in Israel, said to be capable of manufacturing 10 nuclear bombs; nuclear weapons in Pakistan that could get into the hands of unstable forces; nuclear weapons in India, which is often in confrontation with Pakistan; the ongoing issues with North Korea; continuing efforts to keep nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union away from dangerous political elements; and efforts by militarists in the U.S. to steer our country back into nuclear buildups.

Warhawks are working overtime to attack Obama's initiatives. This is the moment to stand with the president and educate yourself and others on why nuclear disarmament is fundamental to U.S. - and world - security. A good place to start is none other than the 2007 Wall Street Journal article by George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, "A World Free of Nuclear Weapons," posted on the Friends Committee on National Legislation web site.

Out of Afghanistan

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 07:14:00 +0000

EDITORIAL

President Obama is conducting a "strategic assessment" of the Afghanistan war. He is expected to announce his conclusions in late October. He is right to take his time.

With an uptick in U.S. and NATO casualties, what appears to be increased Taliban momentum, the problematic Afghan elections, and continued chaos and violence, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and other U.S. military leaders are pressing for more troops.

There is talk of anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 more U.S. troops "needed" - some project even more - on top of the approximately 68,000 already slated to be deployed by the end of this year.

McChrystal is reportedly warning that the U.S. risks "failure" if more troops are not sent.

Retired Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, bemoaning declining public support for the war, suggests that Obama ask Americans to "endure years of sacrifice" to pursue the military campaign.

Obama faces tough decisions. If he decides to buck the generals, and then something catastrophic happens in Afghanistan, it could jeopardize the vital Democratic congressional majority, especially the hair-thin Senate margin, in next fall's midterm elections. And what happens in Afghanistan could spill over into neighboring nuclear-armed Pakistan.

All this, of course, is the legacy of viciously misguided U.S. Cold War policies in the region.

If there is one lesson that a wide swath of political and military experts have drawn from that history, and from the Vietnam War disaster, it is that there is no military solution to such conflicts. Continuing to pour in troops and military hardware, and dressing it up with "new" old strategies like "counterinsurgency," leads to nothing good, either for the U.S. or for the people supposedly being "defended."

That awareness is reflected in the growing chorus of voices in Congress calling for a clear exit strategy and timeline for getting us out of Afghanistan.

"With every bomb dropped and every civilian and military death," says the United for Peace and Justice coalition, "we are no closer to helping the Afghan people and the region to grapple with their problems. In fact, the U.S. presence is the biggest obstacle to doing so."

Oct. 7 - the anniversary of the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan - is an opportunity to organize and join in teach-ins, vigils, rallies, phone call and letter writing campaigns and delegations to congressional offices pressing for a halt to eight years of death and dying in Afghanistan.

Reforming CEO compensation — how much is enough?

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:40:00 +0000

Lonesome Hobo Economics

... Kind ladies and kind gentlemen ...
Stay free from petty jealousies
Live by no man's code
And hold your judgment for yourself
Lest you wind up on his road ...

- Bob Dylan, "Lonesome Hobo," 1967

Compensation over the long run reflects the market value of labor as a commodity. The market value oscillates around the cost of production, and sustainability - of the worker. Many factors influence the oscillation. To this writer it seems important to consider that advancing technical, artistic, athletic, scientific and leadership skills requires advancing social wealth and increasing social investments in human potential. This principle holds true for both capitalist and socialist societies and reflects an important objective feature of the socialization processes that any advanced and highly integrated technological/economic foundation must strongly favor.

Wherever the products or services of creative labor are in demand - labor that cannot be alienated from a human brain, or cannot be effectively or permanently appropriated via employer copyright or patent (the subject matter of much of what is now called "human capital" and "intellectual property) - these labor markets are not exchanges of labor-power as in classic manufacturing scenarios. They are exchanges for the full market value of a service or product.

In the case of a CEO, the owners (via their board of directors) negotiate a contract that aims to align compensation with their interests. Sustained, maximized profitability is the dominant interest. However, in practice, in order to win the "best" CEO, the contracts have been compelled to reward short-term profit maximization, usually in the form of stock options and bonuses.

The awards of stock options in particular have encouraged high-risk behavior that pushes up the stock price in the short term (quarterly) but often undermines the long-term interests of the corporation. Further, a struggling company in the market for a CEO has difficulty enticing the "best" candidates without handsome "golden parachutes." The reason for this difficulty is simple: why would a successful CEO leave a successful company for a struggling one? Answer: very high bonuses, and an escape clause (parachute) in the event of failure.

The result of the bargaining process is a CEO whose interests are in fact NOT aligned with the long-term interests of the company. In economics this is called the "principle agent" problem, and it has made a substantial contribution to the still ongoing financial crisis. It also has damaged many other non-financial enterprises - like auto. The short-term incentive dilemma is passed down to other top executives, whose interests are also aligned with short-term results.

Three proposals for reform of executive compensation are being considered, both in the U.S and globally. The first is to mandate that bonuses be paid on longer-term performance. The second is to set caps on executive compensation via regulation, and the third is higher tax rates. The last won't have much effect on improper risk decisions - but will help society protect everyone else from the crises that high-risk behavior favors. All will certainly generate across-the-board resistance from the financial lobbies.

The problem with caps is that they may not be effective unless applied universally, and globally. Otherwise we might quickly find most of the financial industry operating from the Cayman Islands, instead of Wall Street. High tax rates have been the favored solution in most European countries, and they have certainly made it possible to afford much greater social protection against economic crisis there than in the U.S. But even with high tax rates, the UK, for example, had a substantial financial meltdown, and is now very highly leveraged.

Obama's position emphasizes the longer-term bonus solution. The opposition of Wall Street to this is mostly born of greed. There is a broad consensus among a large and influential group of very skilled people opposed to accepting significant rollbacks in their lifestyles. They argue there is an objective downside to long range as well. Just like weather prediction is notoriously inaccurate beyond a week, economic prediction and planning in the real world is also hardly scientific beyond the fiscal quarter year. They argue the result of long-term bonus restructuring may lead to an excessively low-risk economy, an unresponsiveness, or sluggishness in responding quickly to economic opportunity, undermining investments in much needed innovation.

It is easy to discredit this argument by pointing to the absurdity of Bush economics, but it would not be completely true. The dilemma of what to emphasize in top-level leadership, enterprise, cultural and scientific incentives is profound for both socialist and capitalist economies, by the way. It may seem like a planned economy is less vulnerable, but the vicissitudes of nature, and society at large, tend to undermine the best laid plans. Adaptability to changing conditions, and much better forecasting tools, will return big value.

Nonetheless, for the next few decades, we have all had quite enough "financial innovation" - and its horrendous unregulated consequences. And we definitely need revenue for the big unmentionable - global climate change. I would recommend forgetting the caps in the U.S., and going for the long-term bonus restructuring - at least in the financial services and banking sector. Higher taxes on the rich, of course, are needed regardless, to restore positive income growth for working people. A fundamental change of direction in the distribution of wealth is needed - even if, no matter what rules we put in place, eventually someone will likely find a way around them. But we could do with some possibly slower but more stable growth for a while!!

John Case (jcase4218@gmail.com) hosts the morning radio show "Winners and Losers" out of Shepherdstown, W.Va.

Reclaiming a lost decade

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 06:58:00 +0000

It also shows that times are even tougher for young workers of color, workers without college degrees and women.

One of the most stunning findings reveals that more than one in three are deferring their dreams of adulthood and still live at home with their parents.

On the upside, the report shows that young workers are ready to take action to turn this around. Thirty-five percent say they voted for the first time in 2008, and three-quarters now keep tabs on government and public affairs, even when there's no election going on.

Also on the upside, young workers believe things can get better. A clear majority overall and 70 percent of first time voters among them are confident that President Obama will take the country in the right direction.

But they cannot be left to fight alone.

The opportunity to organize millions of workers will open up with passage of labor law reform. A huge part of this effort must be directed at young people, 75 percent of whom already say that things would be better on the job if they had a union.

Right wing legislators who call for cuts in government spending and "balancing" the budget in the name of the future well being of generations to come are not hearing what young workers are saying. The report shows they want and must get health care reform and massive programs that create good, green jobs.

Spending to do these things is not, as the right wing would have us believe, some type of reckless frittering away of the future. It is instead the most common-sense investment in everyday people, particularly young people, that we can possibly make.

The labor movement is taking important steps in reaching out to this new generation. Labor allies and progressives of all ages can join hands with young workers who are telling us that they are willing and ready to fight for that future.

Letters

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:54:00 +0000

General Stanley McChrystal has issued a near panicky report in which he concedes that, after eight years in country, the Pentagon is approaching "failure" in Afghanistan, as the designated enemy controls more territory than ever before and the population is tiring of foreign occupation.

Our brilliant general therefore imaginatively concludes that he needs more troops -- tens of thousands of them -- and quickly. And, oh yes, that storied Afghan army, which US taxpayers have for years been training, arming and paying, simply must be enlarged, as well.

The fact that our nation is bankrupt with trillions of dollars in debt seems never to enter the minds of Pentagon planners. But, neither did it dawn on Soviet managers, until the late 1980s when the costs of their Afghan adventure became untenable, soon leading to their societal collapse.

Largely since he's made such a big deal of it, Barack Obama is now faced with a momentous decision that will determine the fate of his presidency and the course of our country for many years to come. Either he intends to address the pressing needs of the American people or he will fight a doomed war against the Afghan people. He can't do both, as these two missions are mutually exclusive.

Cord MacGuire
Boulder CO

Will the real socialist health care please stand up?

While in a Florida union hall recently, I heard several members discussing the right-wing attack of Obama's health care plan as a gateway to socialism, at which point, one woman asserted, "If the public option is socialism then socialism is what we need!"

Ironically, when stopping at a turnpike rest stop this weekend I was overwhelmed by three busloads of New Jersey's Tea Party activists returning from this weekend's "anti-Obama-care" rally in DC.

From these two brief and wondrous experiences, I wondered why we weren't taking more opportunity to engage working people in this battle of ideas.

Just like the Florida union activist, the "tea-baggers" (a recently popularized, but not so recent, homophobic term) are typically working-class individuals who are facing job loss, housing foreclosure, cuts in social services, etc. Just like the union activist, these extreme conservatives are angered by the negative impacts on their lives of global finance capitalism in the form of factory closings or increased gas prices.

Yet, unlike the union member they blame the public sector, are persuaded by racism, and live in constant fear that the federal government, and President Obama in particular, is going to take away their freedom. You know...the freedom to not have health care, the freedom to not have a job, the freedom to not have a house.

The Tea Party, supported by the large insurance companies and other sectors of finance capital and the ultra right, offers simple solutions to otherwise complex problems, not unlike the BNP in Britain or the Nazis in pre WWII Germany. This we all know.

But what solutions are pro-socialists offering?

In the current political moment, we obviously want the public option to prevail. If it doesn't, not much else will.

To do so requires a strategy different from simply defending the Obama administration and the public option. Instead, our unique contribution to the fight back should differentiate a public health insurance option from socialized health care.

As the real socialists, we should step up and define real socialized medicine where doctors, pharmacists and hospital administrators are government employees. After all, the Tea Party, the general public, and the members of Congress that will ultimately make or break the public option, need to know that this is actually a compromise, and we the people ("tea baggers" included) need much, much more.

Erica Smiley
Via e-mail

Spanish Civil War help

We are looking for anyone who might have recollections of Edward Muscala. Edward was raised in Minneapolis, was a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and died in Spain in April 1938.

Recently, a graffito that Edward carved in a ruined chapel in Aragon, Spain, has come to light. The graffito includes his name, the date (Christmas Day 1937), his hometown of Minneapolis and the words "Lincoln-Washington Battalion 15th Brigade." It is likely that he carved the graffito before the battle at Teruel.

A number of comrades became aware of Edward's graffito while on a tour of battlefields of the Spanish Civil War last fall. They, along with friends in Spain, have become involved in efforts to preserve the graffito. They are also hoping to learn what they can about Edward's life. They have located family members who have shared their recollections of Edward, but also hope to locate political friends.

If you knew Edward, or knew of him, and would like to share your recollections, please contact me at 505-858-0115 or at niphilp@aol.com.
Nancy Phillips
Via e-mail

Help get story out

People's World recently covered the demonstration at the Army experience center.

After the demonstration, six protesters were arrested. One of our reporters, Managing Editor Cheryl Biren, was at the event strictly as a reporter and photographer. She was arrested by the police as she was taking photos.

We'd like to get this story wide coverage. I've written this article:

www.opednews.com/articles/OpEdNews-Reporter-Arrested-by-Rob-Kall-090914-331.html and Linda Milazzo has written this one: www.opednews.com/articles/OpedNews-Journalist-and-Si-by-Linda-Milazzo-090914-985.html

Rob Kall
Newtown PA
Rob Kall is publisher of opednews.com, which reaches 350-800,000+ unique visitors a month, ranked in technorati.com top 200.

California moves on ENDA

The California State Assembly passed a resolution Sept. 12 in support of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2009 (ENDA), which would expand federal employment laws to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. House Resolution 20, authored by Assembly member Mike Eng, D-Monterey Park, calls on the United States Congress to pass and for President Obama to sign the ENDA into law.

"Too often Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender workers do not report harassment or discrimination for fear of being fired," Assembly member Eng said after the Assembly adopted HR 20. "It is time our laws provide equal protections and security for all of our nation's workers."

HR 20 is a companion to Senate Resolution 27 by Senator Mark DeSaulnier, D - Concord, which was approved last week by the California State Senate. Both legislative resolutions are sponsored by Equality California.

Dave Martin
Via e-mai

Memo for the G20

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:42:00 +0000

EDITORIAL

From: The people
To: World leaders
Re: Work assignments

As you, the leaders of the G20, the world's "wealthy" nations, gather in Pittsburgh, some of you still debate whether to call the world economic crisis a "recession" or a "depression," and, whatever it is, whether it is ending.

We don't care about that debate. After all, even the ominous-sounding term "depression" was a word that other world leaders tacked onto what happened in 1929 because it sounded milder than "world panic" or "economic collapse."

What we do care about is lifting billions of people on this planet, who are beyond recession or depression, out of the misery of poverty that is killing them and hurting those of us who live and work in the "wealthy" nations.

One year into this latest crisis, most of the countries you lead have taken some bold steps to rescue big investors. Some of you have done a little, but far from enough, to ease the pain of ordinary people with economic stimulus. Most of you, however, have done little to regulate the speculation and corporate greed that created this world disaster.

You have heard the warnings of the big-name economists: despite recent market upticks the world economy is far from a true recovery. You will hear the union and other activists in the streets of Pittsburgh remind you that the neoliberal policies that plunged the world into this mess will not get us out of it.

You must make the first moves this week to devise entirely new systems of economic governance in each of your countries and globally.

The critical first step you must take is to trash the World Trade Organization's 1999 Financial Service Agreement.

That agreement essentially launched the wild finance deregulation party in the United States and exported it all over the world. Good times for the rich became economic disaster for ordinary people everywhere.

Beyond just capping outrageous CEO salaries, you must write and enforce strict new regulations for the entire finance industry. Along with this you must push for massive new economic stimulus programs, devise plans for sustainable development, address poverty and take on global warming. That means you will have to challenge corporate power and greed.

The job of a leader is to solve problems. Please get to work on them and report back as soon as possible.

Morality is the key issue in the health reform battle

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:34:00 +0000

The problem is that before President Obama's moving closing remarks in his recent address to the joint session of Congress, this one big question has not been at the heart of our nation's health care debate. At least on the progressive side.

The right-wing movement figured out a long time ago that most Americans make their political decisions not on facts, figures and fine points of policy but on personal values and fundamental beliefs. Progressives might think the other side is absolutely nuts with their references to "right to life" and "death panels," but right-wing leaders know that these phrases evoke the emotional response and establish the moral framework that attracts many Americans to their side and stirs them to action.

As political phrases, "public option" and "single payer" fail to elicit that same response.

Up until now, the health care reform movement has focused so much on facts and figures that even our most ardent supporters' eyes glaze over. Health care as a moral issue and human right may be one of many talking points, but it is never the primary one.

Today's movement is pretty much following in Bill Clinton's footsteps of 1993 in how to frame the health care debate. In his first State of the Union address, he spoke in terms of health care reform as a key element in "our efforts to strengthen the economy."

"Over the long run, reforming health care is essential to reducing the deficit and expanding investment," he said.

At this same time in Taiwan and Switzerland, efforts were under way to reform their health care systems, as well.

In Taiwan, though, where 60 percent of the citizens were not covered by health insurance, the Democrats there emphasized that "on a moral level, a prosperous country like Taiwan had a basic ethical duty to provide access to medical care for all its people," reported T.R. Reid in his book, "The Healing of America."

In July 1994, while the Clinton plan couldn't get out of congressional committee, Taiwan's National Health Insurance passed, and by March 1995 the NHI began offering universal coverage modeled after Canada's single-payer system.

In Switzerland, where only 5 percent of the country's citizens were without health care insurance, the unions, farmers and liberal parties argued that "universal health care should be an essential element of Swiss solidarity," wrote Reid.

"Americans love to invoke freedom and independence while Swiss constantly talk about solidarity, community, equal treatment and 'despite all our differences, we're all in this together'," he wrote.

By national referendum vote, Switzerland, the home base of many of the world's largest insurance companies, created a multi-payer, 70-plan universal health care system where health insurers were forced, by law, to operate as nonprofit entities whose role is collecting government-regulated premiums, offering government-regulated basic benefits, and paying out all doctor and hospital claims within five days without denials according to strict government regulation.

In his study of health care systems around the world, Reid interviewed Professor William Hsiao, a Harvard economist who understands the financing and delivery of health care, having designed successful systems in more than a dozen countries.

"Before you can set up a health care system for any country, you have to know that country's basic ethical values," Hsiao told Reid, "If the people believe that medical care is a basic right, you design a system that means anybody who is sick can see a doctor ... Your ethics, your sense of justice, determines how you distribute goods and services, including health care."

So while many decisions have to be made in creating a health care system - political, economic and medical - the primary decision to be made is a moral one, Reid concludes.

We have yet to see a national debate on the morality of universal health care take place here. Fortunately, it is not too late for the American health care reform movement to seize the moral high ground from the right.

The president's closing remarks to Congress serve as a model for the movement to emulate in how to talk to Americans about health care. They should be e-mailed far and wide. Better than anyone on the national scene, President Obama understands American values and culture. Yes, we are the land of rugged individualism and fierce devotion to freedom, but we are also the land of compassionate and caring people who hold dearly the belief that government exists to insure life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It then makes sense to raise the question, "So how can there be a right to life without a right to the health care that sustains life?"

These values are not Republican or Democratic, the president reminds us. They are American values. They are part of our character as a nation and they include "our ability to stand in other people's shoes. A recognition that we are in this together; that when fortune turns against one of us, others are there to lend a helping hand." These are the words that stirred Americans that night.

Therefore, health care reform is not just another piece of legislation that will cost us more money. It will define who we are as a people. Universal health care will not be just another drain on the national treasury. It will be one of our national treasures, something we can hold up with pride to show the whole world and tell them, "This is what America is about. This is what we believe in."

Sam Stark is a UAW retiree in Michigan.

I visit Wall Street and get Obama’s speech

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:26:00 +0000

Lonesome Hobo Economics

... Kind ladies and kind gentlemen ...
Stay free from petty jealousies
Live by no man's code
And hold your judgment for yourself
Lest you wind up on his road ...

- Bob Dylan, "Lonesome Hobo," 1967

Obama's main points:

1. The rescue of the financial system was necessary.

I agree with him. Wall Street and Main Street are closely linked. Now, the government's public stake in some huge bailed out banks gives it the right and responsibility to - at the minimum - curb excessive risk, especially in non-productive investment.

2. The wreckage of the near-collapse of the financial system is already worldwide and deep, and severe recession has followed. "Five trillion dollars of Americans' household wealth evaporated in the span of just three months," as Obama said.

Some on both the left and Libertarian sides of the political stream are quick to oversimplify the current crisis as a cyclical crisis of overproduction, ho hum, "that's capitalism," love it or leave it. But I think there is more going on.

There is a powerful structural crisis as the economy struggles to find new ways to pursue the ongoing diffusion of more efficient technologies into the marketplace, with the constraint of a much weakened financial sector. The scale of public and regulatory intervention needed for this to happen must go far beyond management of a business cycle. The scale of debt already taken on - maybe 70% GDP - is not unprecedented (it was110% in World War II) - but it is huge nonetheless, and we are hardly at the end of the road. The 1930s represented a comparable but not identical era of structural and financial crisis followed by major institutional and regulatory interventions.

3. Despite the wreckage, and the huge sums of public money injected into the financial system, Obama said, "unfortunately, there are some in the financial industry who are misreading this moment. Instead of learning the lessons of Lehman and the crisis from which we are still recovering, they are choosing to ignore them. History cannot be allowed to repeat itself."

Was he surprised? The biggest banks are now ... even bigger.

4. Obama went on to state his principle that will govern public intervention: "Clear rules of the road that promote transparency and accountability. That's how we'll make certain that markets foster responsibility, not recklessness, and reward those who compete honestly and vigorously within the system, instead of those who try to game the system."

It remains to be seen if a standard of transparency and accountability will be sufficient. Yes, it will help reduce risk, which is important. But will it solve "too big to fail"? For ordinary commercial lending operations that match borrowers to savers, these need to be heavily regulated, much like a public utility, to remain low-risk.

Investment banking is a different and very diverse animal. Public investment priorities have a big impact through the federal budget. These priorities, like rapid mass transit expansion, are beyond the capacity of private investors. At the same time, private investment banking has historically played a key role in introducing innovation into the real economy with sustainable business models. However, its excesses are well known, and, for a time, they need to be a much smaller part of the economy, busted back to partnerships from corporations, so they have some skin in the game when they are placing their bets with other people's money. We can let them loose some time in the future when there is better fuel for them to burn than their own gas!

Many Obama critics propose that reform go much farther than transparency, including a major reorganization of the banks so that the commercial sector does indeed function as a public utility, and investment banking is broken up and made smaller. Many support adoption of European Union-style bank regulation to stabilize world finance (opposed by the U.S. and UK). Many believe "too big to fail means TOO BIG, period."

Of course the banking lobby has already proven itself more powerful than the insurance lobby _ and look what the latter is doing to health care reform efforts. So perhaps strong transparency is the only dog that will currently hunt.

The Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) is the most important reform proposal, empowering regulation of credit markets in commercial as well as the shadow and investment banking worlds. Enhanced resolution authority gives the government the power to take over insolvent institutions outside commercial banking and dispose of their assets in an orderly way. Establishing increased powers for the Fed, but increased oversight over the Fed, and cooperation with EU efforts to impose greater global capital controls (lowered risk) on all banks round out the list.

Obama got a cold (but polite) reception for what many might think modest demands. Hard to expect the bankers to be happy being told they will have to adopt policies making them get smaller. They will clearly mobilize to bring hell to breakfast trying to defeat such proposals.

More than one commentator has remarked that all the reforms sought by the president could arguably been implemented under current law, but Bush simply chose not to. There is some truth to that, but the staunch opposition to CFPA by the banking lobby shows where it stands on "accountability" - and a new legislative mandate on financial reform and its mission are needed.

Of course, no matter how successfully a new reform regime is navigated - a time will come when its compatibility with requirements of the NEW, NEW thing will be challenged! Best case though: we will get 50 years of improved stability and rising incomes!!! Worst case: Let's don't go there!!

John Case (jcase4218@gmail.com) hosts the morning radio show "Winners and Losers" out of Shepherdstown, W.Va.

UE and the Cold War

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:13:00 +0000

The struggles and the conditions of electrical workers through the Cold War years of the late 1940s and the 1950a are examined in depth in "Generation of Resistance" by John Bennett (Ben) Sears.

The Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), founded in March 1936, supported F.D.R.'s policy of friendship and fair trade with the Soviet Union. That policy fell into disrepute as the Truman administration turned to Cold War politics. The book, subtitled The Electrical Unions and the Cold War, contrasts the positions of UE and the IUE, a rival union, regarding Cold War policies. By exploring the Cold War's origins, reactionary labor leader's acceptance and UE resistance, the book shows the damage that the contrived Cold War did to labor and to the country.

Sears writes that, in 1945, at the end of World War II, two trade union leaders, one the UE president and the other a former president visited the Soviet Union. They viewed the devastation from the war and called for continuation of a policy of cooperation between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Both trade unionists were impressed by Soviet resolve to rebuild. Albert Fitzgerald, the UE president throughout the Cold War, remained convinced of President Roosevelt's policy. As the Truman administration abandoned the wartime policy of friendship and fair trade, the former union president, James Carey, also ditched his support and joined the "Cold War Establishment." Thus Carey not only avoided the job-threatening Cold-War inquisitions, but he also received and accepted positions in the Truman administration, as the establishment considered acceptance by labor a Cold War requirement. But Carey never did succeed in bringing all of labor into the intended Cold War consensus.

Sears notes that official Washington policy had its start in a 1947 meeting of Truman's State Department. The Cold War and "containment of communism" was not the State Department's first choice. There had been discussion of ways of getting Soviet agreement for expansion of U.S. big business interests into post WWII Europe. Only "when this hope proved false" did the Truman administration begin its Cold War campaign. Apparently even the Cold Warriors couldn't believe their own rhetoric.

A split in the CIO began in 1947 around the same time as the Truman administration began to turn away from F.D.R.'s call for cooperation with the Soviet Union. Several CIO leaders moved into the Cold War camp. By the year 1956, merger with UE became an important topic in the labor movement. But IUE leaders replied, "Unity Yes! Merger No!" Their reason was IUE's carefully cultivated "world-wide reputation as a prime destroyer of Communist unionism." A merger with UE would gravely affect the IUE's "prestige."

Sears notes that there is little evidence that those who accepted Cold War ideology did so because of belief that the Soviet Union was a threat. Some AFL-CIO leaders considered foreign policy "excursions" good for labor, and seeing their "respectability" was at stake, joined the anti-Communist crusade.

The book makes it clear that the UE "never abandoned its commitment to seeking alternatives to the nation's foreign policy." The UE "drew a connection between labor's support for the Cold War and the passive attitude of many labor leaders on domestic issues." Speaking at the 1958 UE convention, Brigadier General Hugh Hester "urged productive negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union." He reported, "Neither the Russian people nor the Russian leaders want war with the United States." In response to the claim that "Stalin's intransigence caused the Cold War while the West was perfectly willing to have a co-operative effort," the brigadier general said, "I submit that is simply not true."

The Truman administration also viewed the Cold War as a way of avoiding economic depression. IUE leaders accepted the Cold War as a means of creating jobs. UE disagreed and maintained that the Cold War was an expensive, inefficient, and contrived way of running the country. UE's calls for shorter work week (with no cut in pay) and health care for all were stifled by key trade union leaders acceptance of the Cold War.

During the Cold War UE faced many crises: raids by IUE and other unions, economic dislocations, and menacing hearings.

When asked at one of the McCarthy hearing about whether he attended Communist Party meetings at his home, Arthur Owens, an African-American worker at a Schenectady, N.Y. plant and trustee of the national union, replied, "I certainly would like to answer that question the way it should be answered, but I realize that I am not before a good American democratic committee. I am before a Ku Klux Klan outfit. So because of that, I must use the privilege of the first and fifth amendments."

UE leaders at 1952 hearings were permitted to give a prepared statement. They said in their statement "a careful and objective look at the facts thoroughly exposes such slanderous allegations.... The UE is a trade union, and as such, the overwhelming bulk of its activities have to do with basic trade-union questions and related domestic policies.... Without deviation, the UE had followed the policy developed by the late Franklin D. Roosevelt.... Had the members of this union declared that war profiteering is fine, we would not be here today. If our members had put their stamp of approval on the tax-price-wage squeeze that is wrecking the country's living standards, we would not be charged with endangering the country's security.... Had we called for atomic war, for $60 billion arms budgets, and for distributing America's wealth to corrupt dictators like Franco and Chiang Kai-shek, we would not be under attack here."

Author Ben Sears lists two objectives for this work: to describe the overwhelming adverse circumstances facing electrical unions in the Cold War, and to show UE's success "in presenting a program and a vision of trade unionism that can be considered a viable alternative to the Cold War brand of unionism pursued by the leaders that dominated the AFL-CIO during the period covered." Ben Sears has made a valuable contribution to the history of trade union struggles.

Book Review

Generation of Resistance: The Electrical Unions and the Cold War

Publisher, Buy Books on the Web.Com

352pp, paperback, $17.95

Union was in her soul

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 07:30:00 +0000

Commentary

Crystal Lee Sutton, the North Carolina textile worker played by Sally Fields in the 1975 movie "Norma Rae," has died of cancer. Many have pointed to her death as another tragic example of the impact of profit-driven health insurance - which in this case delayed payment so long that the treatment she needed was ineffective.

I am outraged and saddened that decades after Crystal Lee so courageously fought against one corporate practice -- denial of workers' rights, another such practice -- denial of health care -- contributed to her death.

But what stands out for me is the act for which J.P. Stevens fired her.

The company, desperate to prevent unionization, had posted a flyer warning the workers that the union would be run by Black people. Crystal Lee made a copy of the flyer, intending to use it against management, and was fired -- the moment in the movie when she stands up on her work table holding a handmade sign reading, "UNION!."

That moment (the drama of which still gives me goose bumps) was a turning point in the organizing drive. Despite the company's attempts to frighten white workers away from the union by appealing to racism, the workers voted the union in.

For those white textile workers to refuse to side with management against their fellow workers was a tremendous victory.

It reminds me of the struggle being played out on the national stage around the legislative agenda of President Obama.

The right wing -- as desperate as JP Stevens was to prevent working people from coming together -- is using and appealing to racism to undermine support for the president, and derail the change in direction for which he was elected.

That is the message of the "take our country back" gang; the meaning of the insult in Joe Wilson's behavior towards the President, and of the over-the-line tactics at the town hall meetings on health care.

As those North Carolina textile workers did when they rejected racism and chose solidarity, so must the American people reject the racism that can blind them to the potential of the Obama presidency to elevate the standard of living and expand the democratic rights of all working people.

As Crystal Lee Sutton did, so must we act -- and expose the despicable use of racism for what it is: a divide and conquer tactic, with no place in our multiracial, multicultural, 21st century America.

Tale of two worlds

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 06:48:00 +0000

Editorial
At the AFL-CIO labor convention, teabaggers, birthers and other haters seem a world away. Firefighters, ironworkers, teachers and office professionals all took the floor making the case for a labor movement fully engaged on fighting for racial and gender diversity within the labor movement's ranks and leadership.

And action is louder than words. In the last fourteen years, a quiet revolution has taken place in the labor movement. More women and more people of color are in leadership positions. In 1995, only 6 percent of top officers of state federations were women. Today it's 21 percent. For people of color it has gone from 8 percent to 15 percent. The delegates at the 2009 convention are 43 percent women and people of color. There are translations going on for Spanish-speaking members and guests, and others who are guests in their languages.

Unions freely admit there is still a way to go, but it's a good start.

It's this kind of commitment to equality and equal opportunity and understanding that it "lifts all boats" that builds working-class power. As Mineworkers President Cecil Roberts told the convention in his W. Va. preacher style, "The labor movement is wide open for all, we celebrate diversity!" They see diversity and inclusion as strengthening worker rights for all.

The labor movement is also fighting for equal opportunity for lesbians, gays, bi-sexuals and transgender people and the actors unions initiated a program to increase representation in the media of people with disabilities.

Young workers are one of the populations least likely to be unionized and have some of the worst economic statistics compared to other age groups, and the AFL-CIO has initiated a new program to reach out and organize this new generation.

Some 3,000 union members and allies greeted President Barack Obama with a prolonged standing ovation -- and rose to their feet at least four more times before he was done.

It was a far cry from the hate-inspired crowds claiming to represent America. Shown nightly on the news holding racist anti-Obama actions, these protesters may be working class but these actions only serve Big Insurance and other mighty economic interests. Some are bought and paid for, selling out their long-term interests for short-term gain.

The labor movement knows that. And that's why you have union members, including big, beefy white guys, taking on these far-right protesters. For labor knows which side it's on.

LETTERS, September 19, 2009

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 06:27:00 +0000

Tucson for EFCA

Tucson, Arizona, became the latest city to endorse passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. Tucson's Republican Mayor, and the all Democratic city council voted unanimously to pass a resolution extolling the proposed legislation which will make organizing unions fairer and simpler for U.S. workers. The resolution urges Arizona's congressional delegation to support the Bill. The action was taken at the initiative of the Tucson Chapters of the United Steelworkers Association and Jobs with Justice.

Joe Bernick

Via e-mail

Fake photo

It was really sad to hear about the "massive" rally in D.C. over the weekend against Obama, health care, and what the right wing calls "reckless spending."

I knew that something was wrong and I was right. The photo that many right wing forces were showing in their effort to portray an image of a massive protest against Obama, anti health care rally is a fake! The Vote Blog at the Christian Science Monitor points out that the photo is actually 12 years old! Absent from "Their Picture" is the National Museum of the American Indian. The museum was built in 1997, or twelve years ago!

Also not reported by major media: throughout the crowd some people were displaying Confederate Flags. The "tax payer protest" was obviously nothing other than a racist anti Obama rally.

Ironically, the anti Obama protesters were not alone on the on the mall. Another rally was also being held, the 24th annual Black Family Reunion. That rally was ignored by the major news media.

Yes we can, yes we will,

Ken BeSaw

New York City

Excellent piece in The Lutheran regarding CPUSA

I was so very pleased to read the piece that appeared in The Lutheran entitled "Communist, not always atheist" (p. 15)

September 2009, www.thelutheran.org/article/article.cfm?article_id=8393. The piece was well written and made me very happy to see us break down such barriers. I am assuming that it is based on the article that

Tim Wheeler wrote entitled "New Religious Commission

Begins Work," in the People's Weekly World:

www.pww.org/index.php

/article/articleview/16012/

To all at the paper: Great job, everyone!

I just submitted this reply to the piece, showing my support for such articles:

I served on the Religious Commission of the CPUSA back in 2004-2005 with its first meeting in Des Moines Iowa and with a follow-up meeting at the Quadrennial Convention of the Communist Party USA in Chicago. I was blessed and fortunate to meet and work with other members of the Communist Party who come from a wide variety of faith backgrounds. All of whom shared a common vision of social justice, equality for all people, and for seeking ways to alleviate suffering among the poor. I am a member of the ELCA and am pleased to see this piece appear in The Lutheran.

Peace,

Michael Adam Reale

Via e-mail

Two who died too soon

I was sad to read that Crystal Lee Sutton, the real-life "Norma Rae," died at age 68 of cancer. The news report said she went two whole months without possible life-saving medications because her insurance wouldn't cover it at first. She called it another example of abusing the working poor.

The same day, I also received sad news that my brother's long-time, very dear friend passed away. He got a call from her employer that she hadn't come in to work and he found her on the sofa. Apparently she died in her sleep.

She was a tiny tough woman who led a hard life waiting tables and running a bar. She had been a drinker and smoker but gave that up a few years back when she had a small stroke. Like a lot of people with little money she was a generous soul - she often brought little gifts for everyone to family gatherings.

She had no health insurance, no health care at all except what she could afford to pay for. She was 54.

Health care for all can't wait! And we need to slam the insurance companies hard and force them to stop putting profits ahead of people's health.

Barbara Carpenter

Chicago

Sept. 12 DC March

Why is it that the 9/12 DC marchers said it had nothing to do with President Obama being Black? No one said anything about race, yet, for some reason. they feelt they had to explain themselves to others. Now after viewing many YouTube videos from the march itself, I have a question. Where is the minority representation that the marchers say was attended by people of all color?

Here's a simple math fact ... Reagan tax cuts resulted in a deficit, Clinton tax increases resulted in a surplus and George W's tax cuts resulted in a record-setting $1.3 trillion deficit. Republican government is to blame for this mess not President Obama himself. Now, 9/12 DC marchers, don't you think you're about a year too late protesting run-away big-government spending?

Alexander Monarrez-Maldonado

Tucson AZ

Crystal Lee Sutton: Thunder in North Carolina

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 05:34:00 +0000

In the 1960s and early 1970s, textile workers in North Carolina inspired labor and workers everywhere with their successful assault on the Southern, non-union fortress, built by JP Stevens. In 1967, the Steven's sweatshop empire included 44,000 workers in 85 plants, mostly in the Carolinas. The critical union victory came when 3,000 textile workers at Stevens' flagship Roanoke Rapids mills won union recognition in 1974.

That union foothold took over ten years of constant struggle. It took concentrated and permanent commitment from the textile workers union, intense grassroots organizing by rank and file Stevens workers and boycott solidarity from labor and community activists.

Crystal Lee Sutton, in particular, captured people's imagination. Sutton's outstanding and dramatic role in the victory also inspired a book and the award winning movie, "Norma Rae." As a 33-year-old mother of three, who earned $2.65 an hour, Crystal Lee was fired for her union activity. As the movie immortalized, she was fired for challenging a racist ploy by Stevens management. While the movie changed her name for legal reasons, Sutton really did write union on a piece of cardboard and climb on a table holding it up and turning around the factory slowly. And her fellow workers did shut off their machines in solidarity.

"It is not necessary I be remembered as anything," Crystal Lee said in an interview, "but I would like to be remembered as a woman who deeply cared for the working poor and the poor people of the U.S. and the world."

Sutton continued that battle throughout her life. Then diagnosed with brain cancer several years ago, she began a battle for her life with her health insurance company. For several critical months the insurance company denied her claim for expensive drugs that could have saved her life. Though they finally gave-in and agreed to pay for the drugs, the cancer had set in and led to her death.

Sutton was quoted in the Burlington (N.C.) Times-News last year saying the insurer's behavior was an example of abuse of the working poor:

"How in the world can it take so long to find out [whether they would cover the medicine or not] when it could be a matter of life or death," she said. "It is almost like, in a way, committing murder."

We can't help but feel that Crystal Lee Sutton would have responded to the health care reform struggle with the same kind of fighting spirit that inspired Mother Jones to proclaim, "Mourn for the dead, but fight like hell for the living."

The Baader Meinhof Complex: a movie review

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:02:00 +0000

The Baader Meinhof Complex
Directed by Uli Edel
2008, German with English subtitles, Rated R

I've seen strange things at demonstrations.

Some of these protests had half a million people, mostly just regular Americans voicing their opinion, but there was another element as well, among a much, much smaller group. These were the people carrying signs with the word "Bush," where the letter "s" was replaced by a swastika. Others of the same ilk included odd grouplets that set up tables along the margins, literally and metaphorically. They sold books and newspapers describing how everything, even the leaders of the protests themselves, were evil tools in some capitalist/fascist/imperialist/Zionist system. I was lucky enough to avoid a particularly horrifying example, but not enough so that I missed the photographs: a group of men who used some sort of saline solution to inflate their scrotums to the size of soccer balls. Somehow, filling their reproductive organs with salt water was to be taken as a protest against the war. (It seemed more like they were protesting sanity.)

At every political gathering, it seems, there are those who decide to go off in some strange direction, people who decide that something more "radical" needs to be done. These little are the true believers, seeing themselves above the foolish masses of people.

I never understood the psychology of this. I still don't, but I did gain an inkling, thanks to Uli Edel's The Baader Meinhof Complex, released August 21, but still in the process of opening in cities across the country.

Meinhof tells the story of the Baader Meinhof gang, the notorious Red Army Faction, a group of left-wing terrorists in the old West Germany. Far from romanticizing them, as several previous German productions have, the film casts an even-handed gaze over contemporaneous society and the political cult itself.

The film opens with a state visit by the Shah of Iran and his wife to the Federal Republic. On one side of the street are men dressed in suits - the Shah's supporters. On the other side, those protesting the dictator are behind a line of police. After the Shah and his entourage pass, the strange suited men cross the street and attack the anti-Shah crowd. Far from lending a helping hand, the police trap the protestors, eventually joining in with the Shah's friends. The rest of the story is well known: during the melee, West German officer Karl-Heinz Kurras (incidentally, the world found out in May that he was a double-agent, but there was no way for the filmmakers to have known this), shoots and kills a student demonstrator, a picture is snapped, and a protest movement is invigorated across Germany.

Out of that milieu arises the Red Army Faction, led by the academic Ulrike Meinhof and young thug Andreas Baader. The film chronicles the rise and eventual fall of the group, and delves into the underpinnings of their psychotic tendencies. The question of how an academic, who has a nice house and is often interviewed on respectable talk television, links up with a violent young "revolutionary" and begin a series of terrorist acts is explored realistically and in detail.

In its condemnation of left terrorism, though, Complex isn't conservative. If anything, the West German regime is portrayed as abusive and the overall movement heroic, if somewhat naïve, with state support for the tyrannical Shah just one example of the former, and the large indoor demonstration against the Vietnam War one of the latter.

The terrorist group comes to fetishize the Palestinian and Vietnamese armed struggles, somehow thinking that they can or should take place in West Germany. They start off by blowing up a department store and end with the failed highjacking of an airliner and an eventual group suicide. The film indicts the political cult, not through glorifying a bankrupt regime or by smearing the Baader Meinhof group; instead it simply presents the facts, the group indicting itself through its actions.

The psychology, not the history, is what's most interesting. The growing isolation of the group (though the film does allow that a large number of young people in West Germany did have some romanticized notion of them), mixed with a set of volatile personalities and idealized notions of armed struggle move the protagonists further and further along into a group psychosis, in which they begin to believe that they "operate between the state and the masses," to quote a character's quote from Mao. Seeing themselves as Messianic, they are able to justify all that they do as a response to the "enemy" - which they increasingly see in everything.

While there has luckily been no American version of the Red Army Faction, some more minor version of their psychosis does seem to be prevalent in those small leftist groups that were active in the above-mentioned demonstrations. They have the same grand self-delusions as did Baader and Meinhof, and the same self-imposed isolation from society. Luckily for us, these groups sell books, and the more extreme ones are content to inflate their testicles, not blow someone else's off. And fortunately (for the left's image, at least), this insanity is now more prevalent on the fringe right, though the rightists seem to be more inclined toward violence. (Witness the "patriots" walking around with huge guns in front of town hall meetings in Arizona and New Hampshire.)

Though the film is full of in-depth character study, it would be wrong to classify The Baader Meinhof Complex (the title itself implying a psychological disorder) as something other than an action film. It keeps the pace of any Hollywood blockbuster, while at the same time delivering much deeper insight. With Edel doing a fine job behind the camera, all the actors (of which there are several hundred with speaking parts) hand in excellent performances, Nearly flawless, Complex is a film worth seeing on a number of levels: Sheer entertainment value is only one.

Also, it gives you a glimpse into the mind of the man with the soccer-ball sized scrotum you may find yourself standing next to at some upcoming demonstration.

Money can’t defeat outrage against Bloomberg

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 04:44:00 +0000

The incumbent mayor of New York City, opposed by Democrat Bill Thompson in the upcoming mayoralty election, is multi billionaire business tycoon Bloomberg. The recent endorsements of Bill Thompson by two powerful New York City unions, TWU Local 100 and DC37 of AFSCME, have given a big boost to the Bill Thompson campaign just as pools show more and more New York voters swinging towards Thompson.

Years ago Bloomberg financed his campaign with tens of millions of dollars from his own fortune and captured the mayor's office. This time, under severe threat from Thompson, Bloomberg is once again poring millions into his campaign. He has spent almost $40 million already and Election Day is still almost 2 months away. Although $40 million sounds like an enormous amount, and to ordinary working people it is, it represents only a tiny fraction of billionaire Bloomberg's personal wealth.

But Bloomberg's use of his vast fortune is disgusting many New Yorkers. In fact, as was recently reported, the constant barrage of direct mail and TV ads churned out by his campaign is turning off an ever-growing number of voters. Many people are coming to the understanding that Bloomberg's enormous campaign spending represents the efforts of an arrogant business tycoon to use money to buy everyone and everything and to subvert our democratic political process. That's correct; Bloomberg is using his economic power to subvert the democratic system. Government officials, like the mayor, win office through popular elections, elections in which everyone can vote, regardless of their economic status or their relation to capital. The representatives so elected are then accountable to the people. This is our method of political organization.

But, there is an irreconcilable tension between this and the profoundly undemocratic organization of economic life under capitalism. Speaking in terms of capitalist economic organization, those who have the money, (capital), to control the means of production, such as factories office buildings, machinery and technology, or those who own such means of production outright, can exercise total control over all the productive forces, both the means of production and the workers whose labor they buy.

Bloomberg, the multi billionaire, wants to use the personal fortune he made via the undemocratic, capitalist method of organization to extend the control of capital into the political realm. He and his ilk want to exert the same autocratic control over the political process that they now have over their businesses. A great example of this is the way Bloomberg used bribery and intimidation to subvert New York's "term limits" law. This law, originally pushed through on the initiative, and with the money, of right-wing business interests, was discarded by the mayor and his moneyed supporters when it no longer served their interests and would have, in fact, prevented him from using his fortune to buy another term in office.

Bloomberg's willingness to spend his unlimited personnel funds on the election has led some people to despair but there is really no cause for such negativity. Capital in general, and Bloomberg in particular, have unlimited power and funds to fight labor and the peoples movement, both at the point of production and at the point of distribution, but labor and popular movements, particularly the organized sections of these fight and win all the time. Nobody said that this struggle is easy, or that it won't have its ups and downs, but history is on the side of the people and barrels of money can't change that fact.

Bloomberg's billions may seem overwhelming to some but dollars alone can't stand up to a united peoples movement. A movement that brings all of the core peoples forces - labor, organized and unorganized, poor people, the nationally oppressed, women and youth. Such a people's movement can defeat Bloomberg and the retrograde forces behind him no matter how much money he spends on his campaign. A united peoples movement cannot be turned back simply by money. This is why Bloomberg, and the system he represents are, ultimately doomed.

Minefields in the health care endgame

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:23:00 +0000

COMMENTARY

Lonesome Hobo Economics

...But I did not trust my brother
I carried him to blame
Which led me to my fatal doom
To wander off in shame...
Bob Dylan, JWH, Lonesome Hobo 1967

I was ecstatic at the temper and pitch of President Obama's health care address. I accept in principle the president's position that the political instability arising from too dramatic a shock to the existing complex US health care system argues strongly for exerting every effort to avert the spread of panic or fear. The crazy, racist, Christian or theocratic right is playing hard on these fears, and it is important that they be isolated.

That said, the "public or non-profit" option alternative - never mind anything less than that, or the status quo -- is hardly risk free. Introducing a public or non-profit option that competes with a large, complex private sector of the US economy, however, can have large, unexpected effects. Large market power is necessary to drive Mayo-clinic style delivery reforms that are required to overtake the very large initial subsides needed to launch and maintain the promised levels of coverage, including pre-existing conditions, and capped out-of-pocket expenses not covered by many existing plans.

The tax and subsidy challenges to get it right are daunting. I confess, after a day's consideration, serious questions remain, the sum of which point to the high price in costs -- and risks -- paid for each step away from a single-payer system concept. Each concession to the insurance companies, drug and medical equipment companies, private hospitals, the wealthiest doctors and the danger of uncontrolled costs, instability and conflict are also increased.

One important question is will individual mandates become a hit, or an enhancement, of working people's income? The president has bought into the individual mandate proposition. Will there be any mandate, or effective incentive, for employers to actually purchase, rather than drop health insurance, and turn en masse to the public option? Will it be like Massachusetts, which has not controlled or reduced costs because the public option there has little market power and private insurers still drive the market.

Some mandate is essential. Of the millions uninsured not a few are healthy individuals who choose not to obtain insurance. Thus, adding all these healthy people to the insurance pool is one of the major means by which universal coverage costs per person should be reduced. In addition, those now covered are paying approximately $1000 a year to cover the costs born by hospitals and emergency rooms and clinics serving uncovered patients.

Obama was leery of mandates in the campaign. He often cited strong ties to the South Side of Chicago and his days as a community organizer. He knew there were millions of Americans who would be hard pressed to pull even a $100 a month out of their disposable income to pay for health insurance. Workers take-home pay has been flat or declining for most of the past 30 years. Many workers covered under company plans already cannot afford to pay the co-pays and other out-of-pocket deductibles and caps on dependent coverage for their families.

While not having this coverage results in ruin and bankruptcies, workers are often forced to choose between food, housing, clothing vs health insurance Such co-payments run from $50 to $100 or more per week. So now that the president is committed to an individual mandate, we are talking big time subsidies being required for "those who cannot afford to pay". If the public, or non-profit, option is too weak relative to insurance companies, there is no telling how high such costs could go, which would imperil further moderate reforms.

Which brings us to another issue. In order for mandates to work, there will have to be substantial subsides for many working Americans. However, keeping his promise to not add to the exploding federal deficit puts a lot of pressure on the president to set too low a level on qualifications for subsidies, resulting in a decline in disposable income for everyone above the qualification who must purchase coverage from either private, or public or other non-profit options. Such a result could unravel the pro-health care coalition. A large unknown here is exactly how the labor market will influence, or be influenced by, employers who choose (or are compelled) to reduce or drop private insurance coverage altogether.

In a recession with unemployment near 10% and rising, qualified workers will now be tempted by offers that do not include health insurance, that before would have been rejected. Deals already done -- for example the one with the pharmaceutical industry, to pay them $80 billion to agree to cover the donut hole in Medicare prescription drug coverage -- make the sum of concessions already hefty.

The president has further pledged that any public, or non-profit, option will be required to fund itself entirely on premiums. That might work if it could be scaled up fast enough to have the power, combined with Medicare Medicaid , the VA, government employees and Schips to restructure the delivery of medical services away from defensive and toward an outcomes-based health system. But that's a lot of bureaucratic re-shuffling that will not be done overnight.

My takeaways for the road ahead are: 1) the subsidy must be large, especially in the beginning - to avoid any drop in working people's income; and;

2) the non-profit sector must scale to a large portion of the total health care system and use its power to drive reform and gain the cost savings needed.

Statement from ACORN regarding recent news reports

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:26:00 +0000

The following is a statement from ACORN Chief Organizer Bertha Lewis, September 12, 2009, Regarding Recent News Reports

The relentless attacks on ACORN's members, its staff and the policies and positions we promote are unprecedented. An international entertainment conglomerate, disguising itself as a "news" agency (Fox), has expended millions, if not tens of millions of dollars, in their attempt to destroy the largest community organization of Black, Latino, poor and working class people in the country. It is not coincidence that the most recent attacks have been launched just when health care reform is gaining traction. It is clear they've had these tapes for months.

We are their Willy Horton for 2009. We are the boogeyman for the right-wing and its echo chambers. If ACORN did not exist, the right-wing would have needed to create us in order to achieve their agenda, their missions, their ideal, retrograde America. This recent scam, which was attempted in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia to name a few places, had failed for months before the results we've all recently seen. I am appalled and angry; I cannot and I will not defend the actions of the workers depicted in the video, who have since been terminated. But it is clear that the videos are doctored, edited, and in no way the result of the fabricated story being portrayed by conservative activist "filmmaker" O'Keefe and his partner in crime. And, in fact, a crime it was - our lawyers believe a felony - and we will be taking legal action against Fox and their co-conspirators.

We will not be intimidated by this international conglomerate, which has made as its mission the destruction of our organization. ACORN members are committed to the empowerment of their communities - Black, Latino, poor, and working class - at the deepest level. We are an organization committed to halting the foreclosure crisis and keeping people in their homes. We are an organization committed to ensuring quality, affordable health care for every American. We are an organization that will not be stopped in our commitment to our members and our communities which has included:

Helping hundreds of thousands of African-American and Latino voters register to vote and get to the polls in recent years;

Preparing, since 2004, approximately 150,000 free tax returns totaling $190 million in refunds and increased earned income tax credit participation;

Providing effective foreclosure prevention advocacy saving thousands of American families from losing their homes to foreclosure.

ACORN's website: www.acorn.org

It's a lie

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:23:00 +0000

But I did not trust my brother
I carried him to blame
Which led me to my fatal doom
To wander off in shame...

Bob Dylan, JWH, Lonesome Hobo 1967

Lonesome Hobo Economics

Like a Samurai sword catching a silk scarf full of dung, President Obama eloquently separated the silk from the shinola in his speech to Congress on health care reform. To the Joseph Goebbels style slanders and phony hysterics fomented by creepy talk show hosts and Republican leaders like Sarah Palin, he "called them out". And he promised to keep it up until much needed reform is enacted.

More importantly - in the long run - he argued for a principle underlying the appropriate role of government in the economy, and society in general, that says: Americans are right to distrust excessive government, and it is the expansion of democracy and civil liberties - and national character - that have been a bulwark against over-reaching executive power; but where markets fail, as they have with regard to health care, government must act to ensure fundamental equity and security. From Republican Teddy Roosevelt's first efforts at reforms until today the struggle over where to draw the line between public and private domains has been fierce. But the country has moved forward toward "a more perfect union" at each critical juncture: Anti-trust legislation, wage and hour laws, child labor; suffrage; social security; unemployment insurance; the right to organize unions; voting rights; Medicare and Medicaid.

Now to a flawed socialist - like the Hobo - it may seem dismal to await the fullness of time for all things public to come to pass, and for wealth in commodities to recede before a vision of wealth of public goods: rich in culture, rich in environment, rich in education, rich in science and arts. Yet all the brightness of high ideals pales beside a single, modest step that millions begin to take in concert.

It is a truism that life is always deeper than ideology. But it still catches your breath when a moment of clarity arrives. The President's openness to reasonable compromise, but adamant refusal to be bullied by hysteria was such a moment. I sense now that there WILL be a health care reform bill. It WILL move toward universal, affordable health care coverage; and it WILL mount an assault on the dominance of the insurance "industry".

There is a tough fight ahead. Republican Representative Joe Wilson is the face of the opposition. His tea-bagging "you lie!" outburst was shunned and called "shameful" by even his Republican colleagues. At the same time, Republicans are already crying that the President's speech was "too partisan". But everyone who has watched any of the filth spewing forth from right-wing talk radio and TV, not to mention many of the phony town-hall masquerades of late, knows that the Republicans jumped off the bi-partisan train months ago when their default spokesman - Rush Limbaugh - argued that the most important principle was for Obama to fail, period.

Well, Rush, now its coming right back at you. And none too soon. The Hobo has no insurance, no job, and will be joining pickets at the insurance companies from now until reform is passed!

The persecution of Van Jones and the struggle for democracy

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 19:52:00 +0000

The circumstances that led to the resignation of Van Jones should be strongly protested. Mr. Jones was a victim of the current racist and red baiting attack aimed at bringing down the Obama administration.

Jones was targeted after calling attention to Beck's labeling of the president as a racist who "hates white culture."

It's not good that the likes of Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh could succeed in forcing the removal of one of our country's best experts on green jobs and environmental racism.

Van Jones's departure is a set back for the Obama administration and a real loss for the country. Only those who believe environmental racism doesn't exist or that government should play no role in creating green jobs could think otherwise.

Capitalism is a cult-like religion to such people. George Soros called them capitalist "fundamentalists."

To them the concept of people before profits is "sacrilege". Their survival-of-the-fittest corporate mentality makes them opposed to economic and social justice for all.

Sadly this brand of conservative extremism and market fundamentalism now has unchallenged control of the Republican Party. The GOP has become more like a cult than a political party - a cult in search of a personality to blindly worship.

That a cult now runs the Republican Party in no way diminishes the danger and should not be treated lightly. It remains extremely powerful and influential with wide corporate sponsorship and media influence.

It employs the Big Lie with unique skill: the bigger and more outrageous the tale, the louder and shriller the amplification, the more people they think will believe it. "Obama is Hitler," "socialism is fascism," government by definition is tantamount to dictatorship.

Make no mistake: at the heart of right-wing propaganda is deep-going anti-communism and racism; the evil twins of the most reactionary sections of big capital.

The question has to be asked: why such Joe McCarthy like hysteria in conditions of relatively weak and disorganized left? Given the degree of the economic crisis and the growing left leaning radicalization process in which broad sections of the people particularly youth view socialism favorably, perhaps they seek a preemptive strike.
It should be remembered that none other than Vito Mussolini came to power in Italy in similar circumstances in the sense that the left was weak, the working-class movement disorganized, and the crisis great.

What did Jones do to earn the wrath of the bigots? First he dared to frontally challenge their mouthpiece Glen Beck. Second, he signed a petition to thoroughly investigate the role of the Bush administration in the 9/11 attack. Arguably this was the straw that broke the camel's back. However, in this writer's opinion there are too many unanswered questions about the role of the former administration. More minor concerns were names given to Republicans by Mr. Jones that may not have been appropriate coming from a member of the Obama administration.

However given some of the vile obscenities used by the Bush administration this too has to be kept in perspective. In comparison Jones's remarks were mild.

Lurking behind all of the charges was the environmentalist's work with a socialist-oriented group in the ‘90s, an association deemed unacceptable by the far right.

It is a setback that in today's circumstances a principled struggle was not made on this important question, one which is vital to US democracy. Over a decade ago the AFL-CIO and other organizations got rid of anti-communist clauses creating an atmosphere where socialist and communist trade unionists once again work alongside others and win union elections. The result has been a boon for labor.

In the US Senate, Bernie Sanders a democratic socialist elected as an independent from Vermont is a voice of principle and reason on behalf of poor and working people.

US democracy can only gain from those who believe in socialism playing a role in public life including in high office.

Jones is an expert in his field and was an excellent addition to the administration. He is a fighter and the Obama administration needs more fighters in its ranks because the other side is playing hardball.

Needed today is a strong voice against the right coming from inside and outside of the administration.

If that doesn't happen the health care fight could be lost and it won't be a loss for Obama only. It will be a loss for the American people most of all. It will be a loss for the left in a special way.

If they can force Van Jones to resign who will be next?

It's time for action. Contact your representative and let them know what you think. Support the local demarcations candle light vigils, demonstrations and house gatherings being sponsored by Move on and Organizing for America. The right wing is already planning a Washington demonstration.

It's time to plan a large demonstration in Washington specially around health care reform before the vote. That would be a strong way to send a message: "Don't mess with our health care reform."

Letters: September 12, 2009

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 09:42:00 +0000

No guns at political rallies

Progressive Secretary (http://ProgressiveSecretary.Org) suggested this letter to elected officials and I sent it to mine:

Armed attendees have been allowed at town hall meetings and public rallies where the President and other national officials were speaking. Paradoxically, Cindy Sheehan wore an anti-Bush t-shirt to a Bush rally and was arrested! Other protesters were herded off to remote protest areas.

Such tolerance is incomprehensible when one considers the very real dangers of assassination attempts and violent confrontations.

Please introduce legislation to outlaw the carrying of guns and other lethal weapons at non-military functions where not only the safety of the President, Vice-president, members of Congress, and related staff are at stake, but also that of all the ordinary citizens in attendance. The prohibition against the bearing of arms to such gatherings has nothing to do with the Second Amendment and everything to do with saving human lives.

Barbara Carpenter

Chicago IL

American worker

To Steve Halle, Mechanic

To Javier Peralta, Teaching Assistant

To Randy Ruppert, Handyman

To Sharon Hanes, Manager

To Pete Seeger, Musician

To Luis Barrios, Subversive Priest

To all migrant workers, legal or not

and to the Astronaut

who went out today

to clean up the space debris

that was damaging the station.

You all work your daily life

avoiding death

from a labor accident.

Your dreams fly

beyond the space ships

while your feet hurry

to the stations and streets

where you work hard.

American worker:

this country would be nothing

without your sacrifice

for our everyday bread.

Teresinka Pereira

Toledo OH

Want to irritate a right-winger?

I attended Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' town hall meeting at a local high school in Tucson, Ariz. Over 2,000 people from both sides of the health care reform debate were in attendance. The auditorium was filled to capacity and the outdoor courtyard along with closed-circuit TV was also filled. During the evening, Giffords made two announcements. The first was announcing herself as a Blue-Dog Democrat, something I'm not too crazy about, as this means she's a Democrat on the ticket but conservative in belief. Sort of an oxymoron.

The second was that she was in favor of the public option, to the boos and hisses of the conservatives. During this meeting I came to one very basic conclusion, conservatives are rude and boisterous people when it comes to someone speaking in opposition to them. At one point, Giffords nearly ended the town hall meeting when the conservatives got too loud.

All in all, misinformed conservatives complained from their usual talking points that are fed to them. But more and more pro-public option proponents are showing up to these town hall meetings. Wanna irritate a conservative? Just say two words - public option!!!

Alexander Monarrez-Maldonado

Tucson AZ

What health care reform means for me

Another benefit of health insurance reform, if enacted, is that health insurance companies will be force to accept people, even if they have a pre-existing health problem. Even if a person already has cancer, kidney problems, ulcers, etc. The insurance companies will have to accept these cases and pay for their medical expenses.

Health care is a human right. Health care reform will force doctors, nurses, hospitals, and health insurance companies, like Blue Cross and Blue Shield and Rush, to abide by the Hippocratic Oath that doctors take.

Hopefully, health insurance will be extended to include the homeless, unemployed people, undocumented workers and their families, tourists from other countries, etc. Health care coverage must be universal in order for it to work. If an undocumented worker has the flu because he/she was denied the flu shot, the flu virus does not care about legal status in this country. It will spread to other people, regardless if they are American or any other nationality. The flu virus does not recognize legal status, documented worker, undocumented worker, criminal, law abiding citizen, child, adult, man, woman, etc.

In order for a vaccine to have the best result, everyone who wants to vaccinated must be vaccinated. (Some religious groups may be opposed to accepting medication and care of a physician because they believe in only faith healing and divine healing directly from God.) This is why the best medical care must be extended to everyone regardless of their status.

The members of Congress, their staff, the president and his staff, the justices of the Supreme Court, and many other federal employees have the best health care and the government pays for it. Everyone else in this country should also have government provided and paid for health insurance just like the members of Congress and the President who should be working together to extend the same health care benefits that they already enjoy to the rest of us.

Kelvin Ward

Via e-mail

What happened to Junior?

I really enjoyed reading Richard Bennett's piece "Will the Communists nationalize Junior's junkyard?" What a hoot! Hope you will publish more by this writer.

Jane Sheridan

Chicago IL

Editor's note: We are happy to report that more tales from Junior's Junkyard will be turning up in our printed edition and online soon.

Speaking for the common good

It seems to me that the Democratic and the Republican parties both promote the interests of trans-national corporations using the military as a lethal weapon. Both oppose ballot access to third parties. Consequently discussion of the common good does not occur and news has become entertainment and the public is inadequately informed.

I think that the Communist Party must convince the public that it speaks for the common good, especially the needs of the working people. This cannot be done effectively when the means of communication are dominated by corporate-owned media. There are many calls for reform but corporations will not reform. Government intervention is necessary.

As a start, coalitions should demand a large reduction in postal rates for publications concerned with public affairs that do not accept advertising or religious-based material. This could be one step in encouraging the type of discussion essential in a true democracy.

Donald Yerg

Houghton MI