People Before Profit blog

Ten Commandments and public square don't mix

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 17:49:00 +0000

While it's good that the Supreme Court refused Feb. 22 to hear cases put forward by some Kentucky counties looking for judicial sanction of their public Decalogue display - thus leaving intact a lower court's ruling banning it - it's unfortunate that such debates haven't yet been settled.

In 2005, the same counties were told to take down the Ten Commandments, but have since put them into a larger display that includes other public documents, such as the Mayflower Compact and the Declaration of Independence, that use the term "God." The ACLU argued that the counties were simply trying to change the content of the display so that they could legally convey the same message: America is a faithful, religious nation.

The ACLU didn't have a hard case to argue: the litigants admitted this as their goal.

The fact of the matter is that, while the word "God" appears here and there on federal documents, this was never a nation built on any single religion or faith. It also isn't a nation whose founders were unanimously religious. Some were Christians, some were opposed to Christianity and some were anti-religious.

This bears repeating: a good portion of our nation's founders were anti-Christian or anti-religious.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1800 in his journal, "Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of [Christianity] than did he himself." At another time Jefferson said that he didn't find any "redeeming feature" in Christianity, and even went so far as to rewrite the Bible, taking out references to the divinity of Jesus.

Benjamin Franklin, believed to be a Deist, said that he wished Christianity "were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity."

These quoted founders would likely be as appalled at Judaism, Islam or any other religion as they were of Christianity. The point here isn't to bash any particular religion. If we're to bash anything, it should be attempts to force any belief system on the American people.

Here is where another argument creeps in: The Ten Commandments, supporters of their public inscription insist, are not simply religious dogma but the basis of morality. This is nonsense.

To talk about the Ten Commandments, it's first necessary to ask, "Which version?" The Exodus version or the Deuteronomy? Both are slightly different - not a good quality in the bedrock of your morality - and it's hard to figure out where to actually divide them to make them into "ten" commandments, instead of the more than 15 directives in each set of Biblical verses.

Let's look at the list most people think of when they consider the Decalogue, as listed by Wikipedia. Even this list is suspect, as it shows different numbering systems for Jews, Catholics and Lutherans, other Protestants and the Orthodox. The first three or four (depending on whether you're counting the ban on making idols separately), all say the same thing in different ways: make sure you honor only the Abrahamic God, and do it correctly. (This isn't a viable option for atheists, Hindus, Buddhists and many millions of others, and it certainly isn't compatible with the Constitution.)

Some of the commandments are good: Don't kill, don't steal ("steal" may only refer to kidnapping, based on some interpretations, so it might be okay to pocket a few things at the store). It's good to honor your parents, though it's hard not to feel bad for the victims of child abuse. The commandment doesn't have an "except" clause.

Most people are against adultery, but is it really in the same league as murder?

And then there are the commandments that forbid thought crimes. Thou aren't supposed to covet your neighbor's stuff (anyone, apparently, wishing they had the same lawnmower as the people across the street is guilty of a something akin to murder). Nor are you supposed to covet his wife. (Only men count, apparently.)

Thankfully, these commandments are not the basis of American law, nor are they the basis of our founder's morality. Wouldn't it be awful if they were? Nearly half of all our rules would be in violation of the first amendment, and a fifth of our laws would, in the spirit of 1984, ban thought crimes.

The beauty of the U.S. is that, unlike Britain or France, it was set up as a secular state. All people, regardless of their beliefs, enjoy the same rights. Under our Constitution, a Catholic, an atheist, a Jew, a Muslim - whomever - have the right to believe what they wish.

But they'd better not try to make it the law.

This revolutionary "Cradle" still rocks!

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 16:04:00 +0000

Theater Review

If you're anywhere near Los Angeles, don't miss The Cradle Will Rock, the latest addition to the tide of political plays currently flowing across Southern California stages. The Blank Theatre Company's production of this proletarian theatre classic is as timely today as it was when Marc Blitzstein's musical premiered in 1937 on Broadway during the last Depression, emerging out of a wave of working-class organizing and sit-down strikes. Now, during the current Depression, workers in Wisconsin, Ohio and beyond are resisting corporate attempts to overturn labor's historic New Deal advances.

Cradle opens with Tiffany C. Adams' sultry streetwalker Moll trying to hustle a potential john, as they dicker over prices in Steeltown, USA. She delivers a moving, soulful rendition of the song "Nickel Under the Foot," which Blitzstein had written as an independent sketch a year previously. German playwright Bertolt Brecht inspired the composer to expand the song into an entire musical around the recurring leitmotif of the prostitution that the capitalist system forces many professionals into. These include members of the tea-party-like "Liberty Committee," which industrialist Mr. Mister (Peter Van Doren reprises the role he first played in The Blank's 1994 Cradle) and his "philanthropic" wife Mrs. Mister (Gigi Bermingham) have recruited and bankroll to stem Steeltown's rising tide of unionization. With great comic panache these sellouts depict what Marx called "ruling class, ruling ideas." (Blitzstein joined the Communist Party the year after Cradle debuted.)

The portrayal of the Committee in this production, skillfully and drolly directed by Blank founder Daniel Henning, verges on Theater of the Absurd, as the actors skewer various members of the scientific, media, religious, academic, and cultural elite: Dr. Specialist, Editor Daily, Reverend Salvation, President Prexy, musician Yasha and the pretentious painter Dauber. In this latter role, Roland Rusinek stands out in this big cast production, singing, hoofing and spoofing with a Paul Lynde-like gay abandon. This Cradle-robber achieves the near impossible: exquisitely timed scene stealing from superb peers, all of whom flawlessly deliver the theatrical goods.

Also deserving of special mention is Christopher Carroll's Rev. Salvation, whose sermons on war and peace evolve according to the bottom-line dogma his benefactor Mrs. Mister dictates. David Trice's Editor Daily is a great critique of mainstream media: He prints all the news that fits Mr. Mister's views and interests.

But can the Mister Family buy everyone? Have they met their match when they confront labor leader Larry Foreman (Rex Smith; back in 1937 Howard Da Silva originated the role)? Foreman sings the title number: The rocking cradle refers to revolution, which American socialist Eugene V. Debs called "the boldest word in any language." When the stage explodes with mass revolt, the workers' picket signs cleverly bear contemporary corporate references, as does the playbill's cover.

Cradle was the #1 "must see" play on my list of shows I hoped to experience one day; I'd somehow missed earlier local stagings. The Blank's production not only doesn't disappoint - it was well worth the wait. Henning's humorous take on Blitzstein's musical is surprisingly and refreshingly different from the grimmer version of the scenes glimpsed in Tim Robbins' stellar Cradle Will Rock (the best American feature film of 1999), which is more about the struggle to present the play than a representation of the show itself.

Except for a piano player (David O) masterfully bringing out the delights and the power of Blitzstein's score on stage right, the cast appears on a bare stage with few props. Scenic designer Kurt Boetcher thus cleverly recalls the stirring events leading up to Cradle's fabled 1937 Broadway opening night, which, as Robbins revealed in his thoughtful movie, and Blitzstein's biographer Eric Gordon details, almost never occurred.

Amazingly, three-quarters of a century later, as workers continue to fight for their rights, The Cradle Will Rock remains as relevant as ever and still rocks. Bravo!!! (Gordon's biography Mark the Music: The Life and Work of Marc Blitzstein, along with a CD of The Blank's 1994 Cradle production, are on sale at the theatre.)

The Cradle Will Rock is being performed Thursdays-Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 2:00 p.m. through March 20 at the Stella Adler Theatre, Main Stage, 6773 Hollywood Blvd., 2nd floor, Hollywood, CA 90028. For tickets: (323)661-9827; for online tickets go here. Group sales: (323) 871.8018. Incidentally, the performance of Sunday, March 13 is being sponsored by the SoCal District of the CPUSA.

Wisconsin and beyond: the conflict is irreconcilable

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 15:06:00 +0000

In a recent column in the New York Times, economist Paul Krugman writes, "It's amazing how this whole crisis has been fiscalized; deficits, which are overwhelmingly the result of the crisis, have been retroactively deemed its cause. And at the same time, influential people around the world have seized on the idea of expansionary austerity, becoming ever more adamant about it as the alleged historical evidence has collapsed."

He continues: "And where there is skewed vision, the economy perishes."

In other words, we are being sold a bill of goods by the Republican Party propaganda/attack machine (and some Democrats too) that will bring nothing good to the American people.

I fully agree.

If we track the growth curve of government deficits we will find that they lag, not lead the crisis. They are, as Krugman says, a result, not the cause of the economic malaise. They are a dependent, not an independent, variable.

This is not rocket science. It's elementary economics. Even many conservative economists acknowledge that the causal sequence in this crisis was as follows: Declining economic activity led to rising deficits as revenues going to government - taxes and otherwise - fell, and claims for government payments - stabilizing mechanisms like unemployment insurance and food stamps - rose (and of course when you add to the brew tax cuts for the wealthy, then the lid goes off).

Faced with this reality, sensible lawmakers in our nation's capital would have passed legislation to stimulate spending - public works jobs, aid to state and city governments, etc. - understanding that temporary deficits are a necessary price to be paid to get the economy going again.

Moreover, if anybody is going to sacrifice, it wouldn't be working people who are already pressed from all sides. Sacrifice would come from people and institutions that can afford it, namely the very wealthy and the transnational corporations who have exploited the Great Recession to their advantage.

Republicans in Congress and their counterparts in statehouses (some Democratic governors too) are not sensible people however. Out of touch, reckless, blinded by ideology, in bed with the corporations and military, yes. Sensible - no way!

Their singular crusade to radically slash spending for people's needs, especially when combined with spikes in oil, food and other primary commodity prices, is akin to throwing gasoline on a smoldering fire. The economy could well take another dip downward - a double dip - further pinching working people and other sections of the population and aggravating the fiscal/deficit mess.

So you might ask: if this is true why do right-wing extremists pursue this course of action? It's simple. Fixing the economy isn't at the top of their "to do" list. In fact, in their cynical political calculus, a poorly performing economy gives them a leg up in next year's elections.

What is at the top for them is restructuring the government in the interests of transnational capital, while at the same time eliminating, or at least greatly curtailing, union rights, social entitlements (Social Security, health care, aid to the poor and unemployed, etc.), civil and voting rights, women's right to choose, and other basic human rights Americans have won through struggle.

In the view of right-wing Republicans, government has no obligations to the governed nor do the governed have any citizenship rights worth respecting. Corporate property rights trump people's rights. And the state isn't anything more than a mechanism to transfer the earned income of working people to the very richest Americans and corporations and to guarantee the reproduction and profitability of capitalism.

Our vision goes in the opposite direction: Government attends to the common welfare. People come before profits. And people have inalienable rights (political, economic and social).

Since the election of Ronald Reagan three decades ago, these conflicting visions have been at the core of an unrelenting struggle between right-wing extremism on the one hand and the working class and people's movements on the other.

At the moment, Wisconsin, joined by other states, is the ground zero of this irreconcilable conflict. Nothing is more important than to extend solidarity to these heroic workers, joined by students, religious and civil rights leaders, football players, farmers, and more, whose fight is our fight.

Richard Wright: a great peoples artist and journalist

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 12:49:00 +0000

I was in college when I first read Richard Wright's Native Son. I didn't know what a "proletarian novel" was then, but I was struck by its powerful portrayal of a real world, a world I knew.

Bigger Thomas, the central character was no hero, like many of the petty criminals that I knew in my South Bronx neighborhood. And while the Communist Party USA of which Wright was a member when he wrote the novel, plays a significant role, it too is not portrayed in the "heroic" manner that postwar anti-Communists would sneer at as examples of "party-line socialist realism" (actually, virtually none of the literary works that the CPUSA actively supported reflected that crude stereotype).

Richard Wright was born near Natchez, Mississippi in 1908 and grew up in a world of poverty and degrading racism and struggled to free himself from it, to learn and grow. Even libraries in the South weren't open to him though.

In Memphis in the late 1920s, Wright had to take a library card from a white coworker and write this forged note to the librarian: "Dear Madam; will you let this "N" boy have some books by H.L. Mencken."

In Chicago, where Wright settled in 1927, an African American could at least get a library card. In 1932, Wright joined the John Reed clubs society of cultural workers led by the CPUSA.

Nurtured in this environment (he became a CPUSA member in 1933) Wright worked with the Federal Negro Theater and the National Negro Congress.

He also became chair of Chicago's South Side Writers group, which included African American woman writers Margaret Walker and Arna Bontemps.

Wright's relationship with his party was at times difficult. In 1935, he found himself at odds with the leadership over the John Reed clubs. Before he left Chicago, he was angry about a leadership decision to discontinue a journal, Left Front, of which he was an editor.

A pioneering Black journalist and writer, he came to New York and served as both a leader and contributor to left cultural journals and the Harlem editor of the Daily Worker, a forerunner of the peoplesworld.org.

He contributed articles to New Masses, the most important left cultural journal of the period and became a member of its editorial board.

He also worked for the WPA's Federal Writers Project, which produced among other things guidebooks to the U.S., many reflecting a celebration of working people's traditions and values (Wright specifically wrote the section on Harlem for the New York City book, New York City Panorama.

At a time when Communists were writing screenplays in Hollywood and struggling in New York and other cities to develop in theater, literature and independent documentary filmmaking work that would reach the mainstream and empower working-class people, Wright published a collection of stories under the title of Uncle Tom's Children (1938) which reached a larger progressive audience and won awards.

Although a well known African American communist and journalist, his gifts allowed him to reach the mainstream and enabled him to win a Guggenheim Fellowship which in turn helped him both do his political work, support himself, and work on Native Son.

Other collections followed and in 1940, Native Son was published and became the first best seller from the pen of an African-American novelist.

Native Son was a very serious work, and best sellers at the time were romances, mysteries, and adventure novels. Also, the venues for African-American artists of all kinds who challenged rather than conformed to racist stereotypes were very limited. Like Du Bois and Paul Robeson, Wright maintained a principled aesthetic as an artist and in Du Bois case, a scholar.

The success of his work, I would contend was made possible by the labor book clubs, community cultural centers, civil rights groups like the Southern Negro Youth Congress and the broad left and peoples movement in which the CPUSA played a central role.

Subsequently, Wright worked with Paul Green on a theater adaption of Native Son, directed by Orson Welles, which opened on Broadway in May, 1941.

Wright also wrote the text for Twelve Million Black Voices, A Folk History of the American Negro (1941) a remarkable collection of photographs drawn from the archive of the Farm Security Administration, which I believe deserves to placed alongside of James Agee's Now Let Us Praise Famous Men.

Richard Wright left the Communist Party in 1942. His differences concerned what he regarded as the party leadership's rigid top down approach to cultural questions. His opposition to capitalist exploitation, racist oppression and imperialism, especially as they were manifested in the United States, never weakened.

While an article explaining his differences with the CPUSA was later included in a collection of articles by former Communist writers, The God That Failed which the CIA published in many languages and used through its international "cultural freedom committees" Wright never lost his Marxist outlook. The CIA attempts to use him without his approval in the Cold War years, was clearly met with firm rebuffs.

Unwilling always to do their bidding he later faced extensive harassment.

The great novelist left the U.S. in 1946 and became a French citizen in 1947. In Paris, his work led him to friendships with Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and other prominent French intellectuals.

In Hollywood he was blacklisted and in the circles of the cold war intellectuals seen as a figure of the past.

Cold war critics were hostile to realism and to overtly political work and Wright's novels and short stories were both realist and overtly political.

Except of course for his article in the God That Failed collection and the existential The Outsider, the cold war cultural establishment sought to erase Wright work from U.S. literature. At the same time, McCarthyites and their bureaucratic servants sought to remove his work from libraries here and abroad.

While living abroad, Wright was in active in the emerging worldwide anti-imperialist movements. In 1954, he coined in his writing the phrase "Black power" which would later be picked up by African-American radicals like Kwame Toure (Stokely Carmichael)

His writings on those emerging in leadership of the new African nations, in essence new ruling groups, anticipated many of the arguments later made by Frantz Fanon in Wretched of the Earth, although Wright unlike Fanon was very critical of African cultural traditionalism.

In 1955, Wright attended the Conference of the Non-Aligned Nations in Bandung, Indonesia and wrote The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference which viewed the anti-imperialist movements in the world with great hope. It was from this conference that the concept of a "third world" emerged.

Wright's health was failing and he was in serious financial difficulties at the time of his death in 1960. The CIA, hovering like a vulture, had offered him rich rewards to participate in one of its "cultural freedom" conferences in India but he adamantly refused.

Wright apparently feared that there were CIA plots to kill him in this period (he knew through his experiences in Africa that the agency was not above this). While these views were long called "paranoid" in establishment circles, materials released long after Wright's death under the Freedom of Information Act show a long pervasive pattern of CIA surveillance and harassment.

Richard Wright's importance to African-American, U.S. and global political culture is enormous. This article has only addressed a small part of his achievement.

Native Son, Black Boy, the collections of stories that began to reach a large audience with Uncle Tom's Children, helped to smash the dominant racist stereotypes in which African Americans had been and were being portrayed in literature, theater, vaudeville, movies and radio since the end of Reconstruction.

His journalism, began at the Daily Worker, reached high standards of excellence and with his international reporting at Bandung, and his famous Pagan Spain, an international audience.

He was a figure of great political principle and retained close ties and relationships with his friends and party activists in the U.S. During the 1950s he headed a Franco/American committee to free his fellow Mississippian, Henry Winston, the African American Communist leader imprisoned under the Smith Act.

It is time to restore him to his place fully as a major people's artist and ground breaking journalist of the 20th century.

photo: Public Domain

Republicans should get their story straight

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:18:00 +0000

I am so sick of listening to the non-sequiturs out there, including those coming from Gov. Rick Walker himself.

First of all, it has been repeatedly pointed out that the vast majority of public and union workers "did their job" and did not come to Madison to protest. So, am I to deduce that the only people who want the bill killed skipped work and came to Madison? Obviously the swelling numbers who weathered the cold are only a small fraction of those who oppose the proposed bill. It is not a stretch to assume that there are countless people in Wisconsin who, because they have been so beaten down by the powers that daily exploit them, can't afford to take off of work (if indeed they are working) to come to Madison. The fact that there is such a large subset of the public workers who did show up clearly demonstrates how significant this movement is. And given the fact that the right wing has laid down millions of dollars to air commercials in Wisconsin attacking the protestors shows that there is a concern that this movement is more widespread then the rhetoric indicates.

Second, it has been argued that the people have spoken: after all, they elected Walker and a Republican majority in the legislature. So we are to suck it up and accept "the will of the people." That isn't democracy, that's stupidity. Hitler came to power with a majority; would the Germans be out of line to challenge his subsequent proposals? There are many reason people vote for this or that candidate. But this is a specific bill with long-term ramifications that people who voted for him, or not, can accept or reject. To connect the election results with the reaction to this bill is ultimately asking people to bury their heads in the sand until the next election. However, if people were inclined to do this, then our lawmakers would not know how their constituents feel about this or that proposal. They would be operating in a vacuum, which of course undermines the democratic process.

Third, many in the private sector have argued that their benefits have been cut, that their wages have stagnated, that they have been making countless sacrifices and that it is high time the public workers do the same. Putting aside the fact that the unions are willing to make cuts to help the economy, it should be pointed out that if it is the case that public workers are "doing better" it only shows the power of collective bargaining. Perhaps there should be more unions in the private sector and more of a positive attitude toward unions in general. If the public workers who are "compelled" to join a union now have it better, those opposing this disparity should put aside their jealousy and follow the dots. When we are organized, when we have one voice, we can stand united against those who want to run us into the ground because of their greed and reckless behavior. Workers, both public and private, did not cause this recession; Wall Street did. But private workers are helpless to defend themselves from Wall Street's (and our state and federal government officials who sleep with them) "remedies" to make those who are already hurting to fix the economy.

Fourth (and last), it has been argued that the Democratic senators that left the state are being "childish" and "irresponsible." What is childish about preventing a bill you and your constituents think is morally wrong? Is it irresponsible to buy time to see how many people see things the same way? It was a brilliant move to take advantage of a procedural loophole to delay the process in order to foster a dialogue about the long-term significance about what is being proposed. Is it so hard for critics to see the similarity between this move and the many filibusters the Washington Republican minority staged to slow down legislation these past two years? And yet opponents of the Wisconsin Senator's "stunt" have snorted, "Do your job!" How can they not see that they are doing precisely that? Haven't they heard the old bromide: what's good for the goose...?

Poem of the week: Nizar Qabbani’s “The Old World is Dead”

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 13:41:00 +0000

Wikipedia summarizes Nizar Qabbani (March 21, 1923 - April 30, 1998) as follows: he was "a Syrian diplomat, poet and publisher. His poetic style combines simplicity and elegance in exploring themes of love, eroticism, feminism, religion and Arab nationalism. He is one of the most revered contemporary poets in the Arab world."

Through a lifetime of writing, Qabbani made women his main theme and inspiration. He earned a reputation for daringness with the publication in 1954 of his first volume of verse, "Childhood of a Breast," whose erotic and romantic themes broke from the conservative traditions of Arab literature.

The suicide of his sister, who was unwilling to marry a man she did not love, had a profound effect on Qabbani. Thereafter, he expressed resentment of male chauvinism and often wrote from a woman's viewpoint and advocated social freedoms for women. By profession he was a diplomat for the Syrian government through the mid 1960s. His progressive and secular politics and outlook alienated him from some conservative trends in the Arab world, awash in "blood oil" or religious extremism.

Youth by the millions in every Arab country, and each generation since his fame and liberal spirit spread, still compose their declarations of love and new life in the light of Nizar Qabbani's poetry.

The unnamed verse below, written in 1970, seems as if it could have been written yesterday in half a dozen nations - and in some U.S. states as well.

1
Friends
The old word is dead.
The old books are dead.
Our speech with holes like worn-out shoes is dead.
Dead is the mind that led to defeat.

2
Our poetry has gone sour.
Women's hair, nights, curtains and sofas
Have gone sour.
Everything has gone sour.

3
My grieved country,
In a flash
You changed me from a poet who wrote love poems
To a poet who writes with a knife.

4
What we feel is beyond words:
We should be ashamed of our poems.

5
Stirred by Oriental bombast,
By boastful swaggering that never killed a fly,
By the fiddle and the drum,
We went to war,
And lost.

6
Our shouting is louder than our actions,
Our swords are taller than us,
This is our tragedy.

7
In short
We wear the cape of civilization
But our souls live in the stone age

8
You don't win a war
With a reed and a flute.

9
Our impatience
Cost us fifty thousand new tents.

10
Don't curse heaven
If it abandons you,
Don't curse circumstances,
God gives victory to whom He wishes
God is not a blacksmith to beat swords.

11
It's painful to listen to the news in the morning
It's painful to listen to the barking of dogs.

12
Our enemies did not cross our borders
They crept through our weaknesses like ants.

13
Five thousand years
Growing beards
In our caves.
Our currency is unknown,
Our eyes are a haven for flies.
Friends,
Smash the doors,
Wash your brains,
Wash your clothes.
Friends,
Read a book,
Write a book,
Grow words, pomegranates and grapes,
Sail to the country of fog and snow.
Nobody knows you exist in caves.
People take you for a breed of mongrels.

14
We are a thick-skinned people
With empty souls.
We spend our days practicing witchcraft,
Playing chess and sleeping.
Are we the 'Nation by which God blessed mankind'?

15
Our desert oil could have become
Daggers of flame and fire.
We're a disgrace to our noble ancestors:
We let our oil flow through the toes of whores.

16
We run wildly through the streets
Dragging people with ropes,
Smashing windows and locks.
We praise like frogs,
Turn midgets into heroes,
And heroes into scum:
We never stop and think.
In mosques
We crouch idly,
Write poems,
Proverbs,
Beg God for victory
Over our enemy

17
If I knew I'd come to no harm,
And could see the Sultan,
This is what I would say:
'Sultan,
Your wild dogs have torn my clothes
Your spies hound me
Their eyes hound me
Their noses hound me
Their feet hound me
They hound me like Fate
Interrogate my wife
And take down the name of my friends.
Sultan,
When I came close to your walls
and talked about my pains,
Your soldiers beat me with their boots,
Forced me to eat my shoes.
Sultan,
You lost two wars,
Sultan,
Half of our people are without tongues,
What's the use of a people without tongues?
Half of our people
Are trapped like ants and rats
Between walls.'
If I knew I'd come to no harm
I'd tell him:
'You lost two wars
You lost touch with children.'

18
If we hadn't buried our unity
If we hadn't ripped its young body with bayonets
If it had stayed in our eyes
The dogs wouldn't have savaged our flesh.

19
We do not want an angry generation
To plough the sky
To blow up history
To blow up our thoughts.
We want a new generation
That does not forgive mistakes
That does not bend.
We want a generation of giants.

20
Arab children,
Corn ears of the future,
You will break our chains,
Kill the opium in our heads,
Kill the illusions.
Arab children,
Don't read about our suffocated generation,
We are a hopeless case.
We are as worthless as a water-melon rind.
Don't read about us,
Don't ape us,
Don't accept us,
Don't accept our ideas,
We are a nation of crooks and jugglers.
Arab children,
Spring rain,
Corn ears of the future,
You are the generation
That will overcome defeat.

Image: Peter Smile // CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The greatest recovery?

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 17:45:00 +0000

In a January 2009 ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos, then president-elect Barack Obama said fixing the economy required shared sacrifice. "Everybody's going to have to give. Everybody's going to have to have some skin in the game," he said.

For the past two years, American workers submitted to the President's appeal - taking steep pay cuts despite hectic productivity growth. By contrast, corporate executives have extracted record profits by sabotaging the recovery on every front - eliminating employees, repressing wages, withholding investment and shirking federal taxes.

The global recession increased unemployment in every country, but the American experience is unparalleled. According to a July OECD report, the U.S. accounted for half of all job losses among the 31 richest countries from 2007 to mid-2010. The rise of U.S. unemployment greatly exceeded the fall in economic output. Aside from Canada, U.S. GDP actually declined less than any other rich country, from mid-2008 to mid 2010.

Washington's embrace of labor market flexibility ensured companies encountered little resistance when they launched their brutal recovery plans. Leading into the recession, the US had the weakest worker protections against individual and collective dismissals in the world, according to a 2008 OECD study. Blackrock's Robert Doll explains, "When the markets faltered in 2008 and revenue growth stalled, U.S. companies moved decisively to cut costs - unlike their European and Japanese counterparts." The U.S. now has the highest unemployment rate among the ten major developed countries.

The private sector has not only been the chief source of massive dislocation in the labor market, but it is also a beneficiary. Over the past two years, productivity has soared while unit labor costs have plummeted. By imposing layoffs and wage concessions, U.S. companies are supplying their own demand for a tractable labor market. Private sector union membership is the lowest on record. Deutsche Bank Chief Economist Joseph LaVorgna notes that profits-per-employee are the highest on record, adding, "I think what investors are missing - and even the Federal Reserve - is the phenomenal health of the corporate sector."

Due to falling tax revenues, state and local government layoffs are accelerating. By contrast, U.S. companies increased their headcount in November at the fastest pace in three years, marking the tenth consecutive month of private sector job creation. The headline numbers conceal a dismal reality; after a lost decade of employment growth, the private sector cannot keep pace with new entrants into the workforce.

The few new jobs are unlikely to satisfy Americans who lost careers. In November, temporary labor represented an astonishing 80 percent of private sector job growth. Companies are transforming temporary labor into a permanent feature of the American workforce. UPI reports, "This year, 26.2 percent of new private sector jobs are temporary, compared to 10.9 percent in the recovery after the 1990s recession and 7.1 percent in previous recoveries." The remainder of 2010 private sector job growth has consisted mainly of low-wage, scant-benefit service sector jobs, especially bars and restaurants, which added 143,000 jobs, growing at four times the rate of the rest of the economy.

Aside from job fairs, large corporations have been conspicuously absent from the tepid jobs recovery. But they are leading the profit recovery. Part of the reason is the expansion of overseas sales, but the profit recovery is primarily coming off the backs of American workers. After decades of globalization, U.S. multinationals still employ two-thirds of their global workforce from the U.S. (21.1 million out of 31.2 million). Corporate executives are hammering American workers precisely because they are so dependent on them.

An annual study by USA Today found that private sector paychecks as a share of Americans' total income fell to 41.9 percent earlier this year, a record low. Conservative analysts seized on the report as proof of President Obama's agenda to redistribute wealth from, in their words, those "pulling the cart" to those "simply riding in it." Their accusation withstands the evidence - only it's corporate executives and wealthy investors enjoying the free ride.

Corporate executives have found a simple formula: the less they contribute to the economy, the more they keep for themselves and shareholders. The Fed's Flow of Funds reveals corporate profits represented a near record 11.2% of national income in the second quarter.

Non-financial companies have amassed nearly $2 trillion in cash, representing 11 percent of total assets, a 60-year high. Companies have not deployed the cash on hiring as weak demand and excess capacity plague most industries. Companies have found better use for the cash; as Robert Doll explains, "high cash levels are already generating dividend increases, share buybacks, capital investments and M&A activity-all extremely shareholder friendly."

Companies invested roughly $262 billion in equipment and software investment in the third quarter. That compares with nearly $80 billion in share buybacks. The paradox of substantial liquid assets accompanying a shortfall in investment validates Keynes' idea that slumps are caused by excess savings. Three decades of lopsided expansions has hampered demand by clotting the circulation of national income in corporate balance sheets. An article in the July issue of The Economist observes: "business investment is as low as it has ever been as a share of GDP."

The decades-long shift in the tax burden from corporations to working Americans has accelerated under President Obama. For the past two years, executives have reported record profits to their shareholders partially because they are paying a pittance in federal taxes. Corporate taxes as a percentage of GDP in 2009 and 2010 are the lowest on record, just above 1 percent.

Corporate executives complain that the U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate in the world, but there's a considerable difference between the statutory 35 percent rate and what companies actually pay (the effective rate). Here again, large corporations lead the charge in tax arbitrage. U.S. tax law allows multinationals to indefinitely defer their tax obligations on foreign earned profits until they 'repatriate' (send back) the profits to the U.S. U.S. corporations have increased their overseas stash by 70 percent in four years, now over $1 trillion - largely by dodging U.S. taxes through a practice known as "transfer pricing". Transfer pricing allows companies to allocate costs in countries with high tax rates and book profits in low-tax jurisdictions and tax havens-regardless of the origin of sale. U.S. companies are using transfer pricing to avoid U.S. tax obligations to the tune of $60 billion dollars annually, according to a study by Kimberly A. Clausing, an economics professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

The corporate cash glut has become a point of recurrent contention between the Obama administration and corporate executives. In mid-December, a group of 20 corporate executives met with the Obama administration and pleaded for a tax holiday on the $1 trillion stashed overseas, claiming the money will spur jobs and investment. In 2004, corporate executives convinced President Bush and Congress to include a similar amnesty provision in the American Jobs Creation Act; 842 companies participated in the program, repatriating $312 billion back to the U.S. at 5.25 percent rather than 35 percent. In 2009, the Congressional Research Service concluded that most of the money went to stock buybacks and dividends-in direct violation of the act.

The Obama administration and corporate executives saved American capitalism. The U.S. economy may never recover.

This article originally appeared in Dissident Voice.

Capitalism sucks: more loyal to profit abroad than jobs at home

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 17:09:00 +0000

As a result of the Great Recession, states across the country are facing huge deficits.

In response, governors, particularly those from the tea party backed hard right, are attempting to relieve the crisis on the backs of the working class and people. But workers in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, are saying "hell no."

And for good reason: prospects for U.S. workers in the post-recession economy are grimmer than ever.

On the other hand, in the midst of the recession, American big businesses are making record-breaking profits. The American Prospect writes, "Corporate profits for the third quarter were the highest on record - $1.659 trillion - and were 28 percent higher than third-quarter profits one year prior, the highest year-to-year increase on record, beating the old record set in the previous three months."

Fourth quarter profits were also top notch, according to the Wall Street Journal. "With about 50 percent of companies already reporting, fourth quarter profits for the biggest U.S. corporations have been exceptionally strong and 2010 is poised to deliver the third-best full-year gain since 1998-with sharp advances in the telecommunications and energy sectors and a rebound in financial services."

Apparently much of the profit making is derived from investments abroad: "In 2001, 32 percent of the income of the firms on Standard & Poor's index of the 500 largest publicly traded U.S. companies came from abroad. By 2008, that figure had grown to 48 percent," writes Harold Meyerson.

This trend, warns Meyerson, is continuing. "A 2008 survey of 1,600 companies conducted by Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and the Conference Board, a group of leading corporations, found that 53 percent had an offshoring strategy - up from just 22 percent in 2005. "Very few" companies, the survey concluded, "plan to relocate activities back to the United States."

Thus, corporate America, notwithstanding the recession and the loss of 11 million jobs, have no plans to rehire U.S. workers and invest in the domestic economy. Increasingly, their business and profits lie abroad: "A study published last year by the Business Roundtable and the United States Council Foundation concluded that in 2006, 48.6 percent of profits of U.S.-based multinationals came from their foreign affiliates, compared to just 17 percent in 1977 and 27 percent in 1994."

A case in point is JPMorgan Chase, which is deeply involved in administration of the food stamp program, a "going concern" in times of recession. Chase, having played a big role in precipitating the housing crisis, which caused the recession, now profits from people going hungry as a result of it. As Mary Bottari wrote for AlterNet, "The firm is paid per customer. This means that when the number of food stamp recipients goes up, so do JPMorgan profits."

However, that's not it. JPMorgan Chase finds that offshoring the administration of food stamp administration is more profitable than hiring U.S. workers. Bottari continues, "JPMorgan is taking its responsibility to keep the U.S. unemployment rate high by offshoring the servicing of many of these contracts to India, according to ABC News."

Meanwhile, in order to increase their rate of profits, big U.S. capitalists seem hell bent on paying American workers wages comparable to a developing country.

For the past 25 years, wage stagnation has been a constant factor in U.S. economic life, but as Meyerson points out, more than that is at work: "The median annual wage of American workers declined by $159 in 2009 from the previous year, to a mere $26,261, meaning that half of all employed American workers make even less than that. The hourly wage for new hires in manufacturing plants, both union and nonunion, today is roughly $15 - about half of what it was just a few years ago."

Not only that, but as result of the recession, new jobs, largely among temp and service workers, pay barely livable wages. Meyerson continues "According to a survey this summer from the National Employment Law Project, only a third of the jobs lost in 2008-2009 were in industries paying less than $15 an hour, but fully three-quarters of the job growth in 2010 came in these same low-wage industries. Among the industries that grew in 2010, the top three occupations were retail sales clerks, cashiers and food preparers with a median hourly wage of less than $10."

By holding down wages, increasing productivity, busting unions, exporting jobs and capital abroad, making greater use of temp workers - in other words, by waging relentless class struggle - U.S. capitalism foresees a very different future for its workforce.

The battles being fought in the state legislatures of the once mighty industrial Midwest will doubtlessly shape whether big business will be able to fundamentally reshape the labor/capital relation in its favor.

The election of President Obama two years ago foretold a different future. The counter revolt of November 2010 seemed to dim these prospects. However, traveling at light speed via the internet, the revolutionary storms brewing last fall in west Europe and now in the Middle East are blowing through the U.S. Midwest. They have a common source: predatory lending and the consequent collapse of financial markets and revenue, now resulting high food prices worldwide and severe budgetary cutbacks. They also have a common solution: workers and peoples solidarity.

Let those who caused the crisis pay the price for solving it.

Reflections on Friday's protest in Madison

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 05:15:00 +0000

The aches in my bones from yesterday's rally in Madison, Wisconsin, were welcomed aches. My cold, wet feet, the kink in my neck and the pain across my shoulders reminded me of those courageous people in Egypt's Tahrir Square; or those fighting apartheid in South Africa; or the students in China's Tiananmen Square; or the freedom fighters in Montgomery Alabama; or the countless people in countless labor battles throughout the years, all who put not just their bodies to the test but their lives on the line. Those pains in my body paled in insignificance compared to their sacrifices, and yet were my connection to these people and to all the people throughout human history who have fought for a little more freedom.

Of course during the rally, I forgot my body. It was easy to do this. The infectious excitement of the crowd, the camaraderie displayed by people, many of which only knew each other by the cause that brought them together; the rousing speech by AFL-CIO president, Richard Trumka, and of course, the highlight of the evening, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, made it easy to put the needs of the body on hold. At one point I remarked to the people around me, "Just think, we just sang ‘We shall overcome' with Jesse Jackson-the man who sang with and was an important aid of Martin Luther King!" They all smiled and nodded enthusiastically in agreement.

The music at the rally was so wonderful-and powerful-that I longed to get the soundtrack, with the noise of the crowd left in, of course. I only hope someone recorded the entire rally.

Although the many chants and cries of the crowd varied, I was able to detect three distinct, but overlapping themes. One, we are here in peace, non-violently, and vow to remain that way. Two, we are committed to social justice which endeavors to help those whose lives are made unnecessarily hard by the choices of a few in power. And three, this rally, this demonstration, all the people who have come to Madison for and in the manner of the other two themes, is a living example of how democracy really works.

The banners and signs were also quite varied, but the one that struck me the most was the one I noticed when I began to leave shortly after Jesse Jackson's speech. With the Capitol building, that imposing edifice, lit up in the background against the black sky, a sign in the foreground caught my eye. It read:

Screw Us and We Multiply!

When I learned that on Monday there was about 10000 people here, and on Tuesday that number swelled to 13 thousand; on Wednesday the estimate was 20 thousand, and Thursday 30 thousand; finally on Friday, the day Jesse Jackson called what was happening here, "a Martin Luther King moment" and a "Gandhi moment," the estimate was 50 thousand, I smiled to myself and whispered aloud to no one in particular, "Yes, we shall overcome!"

Photo: Teresa Albano

Snyder budget means more pain for Michigan workers

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 16:25:00 +0000

DETROIT - It's as bad as expected but seeing it in black and white is jarring. The budget unveiled by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder yesterday creates winners and losers. The losers, working families and the poor, are many. The winners, the wealthy and big business, are few.

State budget cuts and belt tightening by state workers have been ongoing during the last ten years. However this budget takes it several steps further with another $1.5 billion in cuts. Vital government services - state parks, pothole repair, and fire and police protection, for example - will be cut.

The budget proposal is "trickle-down" but worse. Give tax breaks for those at the top and hope it trickles down. It didn't work under Ronald Reagan and it didn't work with the bailouts that have banks sitting on billions of dollars they refuse to lend.

The "worse" part is that not only are tax breaks given to those at the top but the budget deficit created by this wrong headed approach will be paid by working families and the poor.

The budget does not cut Medicaid, financial aid and a few other things, but it is not the "shared sacrifice" Republicans talk about.

The budget reduces business taxes by $1.8 billion. This deficit-creating proposal is made up for by increasing taxes on seniors and families by $1.7 billion.

As feared, the budget calls for the elimination of the Michigan Earned Income Tax Credit.

The Michigan League for Human Services issued a statement saying, "The elimination of the Michigan Earned Income Tax Credit would mean that 782,000 lower-income families will see their taxes rise dramatically. It would also return Michigan to a state that taxes people into poverty and taxes families already living below the poverty line. Some 14,000 children would be shoved into poverty with the elimination of the EITC."

The League vows the fight to save the tax credit is not over.

The budget also slashes revenue sharing with cities by 40 percent, cuts funds for higher education by 15 percent, cuts per pupil education funds an additional $300, on top of the $170 cut already budgeted, and reduces the state child credit thereby increasing the tax burden on families. The list goes on and on.

"This budget violates the principles Gov. Snyder set forth of shared sacrifice and leaving no one behind," Michigan Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer said in a press release. "Balancing the budget on the backs of our kids, seniors, middle-class and low-wage workers while wealthy corporations and CEOs get billions in tax breaks is unfair. We should be investing in our kids and our future, not slashing education budgets."

With the income tax rate in the budget being reduced from 4.35 to 4.25 percent, Karen Holcomb-Merrill, director of the League's state fiscal project wrote, "Modernizing the tax system by pausing the income tax rate reduction, enacting a graduated income tax and adding a sales tax on services would have positioned Michigan to solve its structural deficit and provide needed services in the future. We have missed a historic opportunity to do this.''

Image: John Stavely // CC BY-SA 2.0

"American Idol" makes comeback in 2011

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 15:56:00 +0000

After an unimpressive season last year "American Idol" is making a comeback in 2011 and many of the performances so far have been nothing short of stellar.

Now in its 10^th year, "Idol" has two new faces on the judge's panel this season, Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez, alongside veteran Randy Jackson.

"Idol" fans said goodbye to Simon Cowell last year. Cowell reigned as the supreme judge on "Idol" for years since its inception with his brute honesty and famed criticism.

Kia DioGuardi and Ellen Degeneres are also gone from the judge's panel.

Nonetheless the show must go on and Tyler and Lopez bring new life to it in a very positive way.

Tyler, to say the least, has been a hoot! His rock-and-roll experience as lead singer with band Aerosmith could be just what "Idol" needed. His unpredictable demeanor and unexpected singing outbursts, not to mention his flirtatious advice at times, highlight a new and amusing element to the show. Overall Tyler definitely brings a whole new level of entertainment to the millions of viewers tuned in every week at home.

And J-Lo, well, what can you say? Although many criticize her credentials as a singer and not so amazing acting career, Lopez nevertheless is incredibly successful in the entertainment industry. She's not just eye candy, J-Lo also brings a hard working attitude and a respectful point of view. She gets it, and understands what genuine star appeal looks and sounds like in the business. And as an iconic pop star, millions adore Lopez' community roots and assets.

But the real hype this year is the top-notch and raw unpolished talent by "Idol" contestants thus far.

Here are just a few of this week's highlights.

This week Jacob Lusk gave a rousing performance of "God Bless the Child," sampling a vocal range beyond words. His highs and lows were amazing and his vocal abilities, at least in this particular rendition, were right on the mark.

Others gave equal stellar performances in renditions of Ray Charles' "Georgia on My Mind," which is not an easy tune to pull off.

Casey Abrams sang "Georgia" while playing a standup bass as an accompaniment. He really knocked it out of the park. His bluesy-jazzy vocals, not to mention musical originality were all well executed.

Carson Higgins livened up the audience with his animated and theatrical performance of Bobby Brown's "My Prerogative." This guy has funk and knows how to work the stage.

Another exceptional performance was 16-year-old Lauren Alaina who sang Tyler's "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing." She nailed it, and being one of the youngest contestants she made a big impression on the judges. And she's cute as a button.

Country voice John Wayne Shultz - yes, he's named after John Wayne - wowed audiences with his gentle and crisp vocals, singing "Landslide." He's a real cowboy from Texas, with guitar, the hat, boots and all.

"Idol" contestants are bringing their A-game this year and many of them are already showcasing noteworthy talent. Many expect the competition to heat up. Fans can look forward to good old-fashioned live entertainment as their favorites continue to charm audiences and gain momentum in the coming weeks.

Photo: "American Idol" judges Steven Tyler, left, Jennifer Lopez, center, and Randy Jackson. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Stop the attack on Planned Parenthood

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 13:00:00 +0000

No question about it: Republicans in Congress are waging war on women.

In the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, as we write, they are working to slash the entire $317 million program of aid for family planning, known as Title X, in the 2011 spending bill, HR 1, that is expected to pass by this weekend. A proposed amendment to the bill, introduced by Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., would specifically bar Planned Parenthood from receiving any federal funds for any purpose.

These programs provide vital health care and health education to an estimated 5 million women and teens - birth control, cancer screenings, HIV testing and more. Planned Parenthood, in particular, is the nation's largest provider of health care and family planning education to low-income women, serving some 1.85 million women each year.

The Senate, which retains a slim Democratic majority, may not pass these cuts, but Republicans say they will keep introducing similar bills. Their aim is to kill the programs by a thousand cuts and a barrage of lies, hoaxes and intimidation.

Abortion is their main target, but not the only one. Birth control, sex education - all are in their firing sights. If these folks were so concerned to limit abortions, you'd think they would want to expand such programs, which help prevent unintended pregnancies. But no.

Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said this week, "Under the guise of deficit reduction, the House Republican Leadership is pursuing the most politically driven assault on women's health in American history."

It's a war on women, and in particular low-income women.

"There is no doubt: cutting off millions of women from care they have no other way to afford places them at risk of sickness and death," Richards said.

If Sarah Palin needed an abortion or cervical cancer screening, she would not have to rely on a federally funded provider. With the millions she is raking in via her self-promoting efforts, she could quietly pay top dollar to a private doctor to obtain these services.

We urge our readers to contact their congressional representatives today and tell them vote "no" on the Pence amendment to defund Planned Parenthood and on any measures to eliminate family planning funding.

You can phone your member of Congress here or call 202-730-9001 to be connected.

An open letter to free-market patriots

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 11:39:00 +0000

Dear patriots of capitalism,

I am a Communist, but I am a patriot. I am a better patriot, I dare say, than many of you who pose with flags, guns, teabags, and facsimiles of the Constitution.

Paying taxes is already an act of patriotism, in an age when so many who have so much treat progressive taxation as the cruelest of martyrdoms.

But I have another claim, incontestable, to the title of American patriot: I believe that the good of the country, the equitable pursuit of shared freedoms for all its people, takes precedence over whatever narrow interests bind me to myself.

I respect the sovereignty of the United States government, its solemn duty to make laws for the common welfare of its citizens and of all who have sought refuge within its borders.

Can you, for all your flag pins and three-cornered hats, make the same claim?

You bellow in chorus about the Constitution, about individual liberties, about loyalty to... what? A flag? A catchy country hit? An incomplete version of American history where there has only ever been one revolution, led by white, male property owners, and to hell with the courageous fights of women, of African Americans and other minorities, of the working class, to win a voice in our political process?

You claim adherence to the law, until some law menaces corporate hegemony; you turn then to the Constitution, to states' rights, and to the courts.

When the Constitution fails to comply with your fantasies, you push to amend it; when the courts declare your projects unconstitutional, you cry that rogue judges refuse to respect the will of the people.

Failing all that, you rush to the unholy sanctuary of "Second Amendment remedies," hoping that bloodlust will convince a tired people of your fervor and your good faith.

This you call dissent, and patriotism-proud, powerful words cheapened by your hypocrisy. It is not dissent; it is not patriotism. It is a betrayal.

It is a betrayal of the most basic tenets of American democracy, because your only real claim is that the law of the market-the law of ruthless competition, of deregulation and exploitation, of income inequality and rampant injustice, of the basest and most sociopathic individualism-should prevail against laws enacted for the common good.

It is a betrayal because you would have the government of our Republic cower before the throne of business as a humble supplicant, begging and cajoling firms of astronomical wealth to comply with rudimentary standards of social and environmental responsibility.

It is a betrayal, finally, because your only real loyalty is to money, and your only real homeland is the capitalist dystopia of shantytowns and gated communities, of private clubs and private prisons.

I am an American Communist, and I am a patriot. I hold that our government, as the representative organ of the whole people, is beggar and supplicant to no one. It is time for that government to govern, to make rules and enforce them, to demand that businesses respect workers and their rights in the interest of building a more just society.

The progressive left-socialists, anti-corporate populists and grass-roots activists, union members, documented and undocumented workers of every trade and profession-we who work for a better, cleaner, more equitable country, are the real patriots, and this is our revolution.

You may have the money and the guns, but right and the march of history are with us, and someday there will be liberty and justice-not to mention peace, fair work, and dignity for all ... and even for you.

Solidarity forever!

Harold Wallace lives and works in Chicago.

Photo: (Goldberg/CC)

Black unemployment, working class unity

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 09:22:00 +0000

It is obvious to anyone with eyes to see that the economic crisis has a nationwide reach. Except for the upscale urban neighborhoods and suburbs where the moneyed elite live, nearly everyone and every community is showing the effects.

Unemployment is high officially and still higher unofficially. Factories are shuttered. Infrastructure is in disrepair. Streets and highways are studded with potholes. Community hospitals and clinics are closing their doors. Houses are empty.

If you are a wage or salary earner, tough times are here, and they could get a lot worse if the Republican right in Congress and their corporate boosters have their way.

What isn't so obvious is the uneven impact of the crisis on various sections of the population and country. Nonetheless, it's real.

Take, for instance, the economic conditions of the African American people. According to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, Black unemployment rates are uniformly higher than the unemployment rate of white working people.

In St. Louis it is twice as high, in Memphis three times as high, in Los Angeles and Philadelphia 1.7 times as high, in New York and Atlanta metropolitan areas 2.1 times as high, in Baltimore and metropolitan Miami 1.9 times as high and so on.

Interestingly, of the 18 metropolitan areas from which data was gathered the lowest ratio of Black to white unemployment was Detroit where misery has plenty of company. There, Black unemployment was 20.9 percent - the highest of any metropolitan region - and their white counterparts topped off at 13.8 percent.

Overall, the average Black unemployment rate in the study of 18 metropolitan areas was 14.3 percent, while white unemployment was 7.4 percent.

In other words, as bad as the crisis is for the American people of every nationality and race - and it's terrible - it is at the same time exacting extra pain from the African American and other communities of color that are segregated and seem hidden from general view.

Thus general appeals for jobs and relief, for public works jobs programs and for full employment legislative measures have to be combined, as the EPI suggests, with targeted job creation in those communities where the hardship is the most severe.

Such measures are not divisive, as the ideologues of racist division and oppression claim. They are, in fact, at the core of racial justice and working class unity - both of which are cornerstones of any successful struggle against the economic crisis. In the 1930s, it was no accident that the slogan of the unemployed movement, "Black and White, Unite and Fight," was heard where working people gathered to press their demands for jobs and relief.

Millions at that time, locked into a seemingly intractable economic crisis, came to the realization that it was only in their unity that they could win some measure of economic reform.

Isn't that the case today too? Our enemies on the other side of the class divide understand this quite well. It's why the vitriolic racist ideological offensive that came in the wake of the election of Barak Obama shows no sign of subsiding. In fact, the ideological offensive has been accompanied by a coordinated effort to reboot segregationist and discriminatory measures, shamelessly designed to roll back civil rights and cause tensions along racial lines.

But I'm confident that the purveyors of racism and division will be no more successful than our enemies were in the Depression years. More to the point, the election of an African American president two years ago is proof positive that the possibilities of building a united, multi-racial, multi-ethnic movement are enormous.

Carpe diem! The time is now!

Photo: Old Sarge CC 2.0

16,000 marched on Wisconsin's capital fighting for democracy

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 13:30:00 +0000

History has lessons for us-if we only listen. Thirty years ago Reagan began his war on labor when he fired 13,000 striking air traffic controllers and destroyed their union. The message was clear: employers have no moral obligation to their workers, particularly when such a 'soft' sentiment conflicts with the bottom line: shareholder profits.

And so, during the Reagan years and beyond, thousands of employees were illegally fired when they sought to unionize. And yet Reagan continues to be treated as an icon, even canonized in some circles, as evidenced by the outpouring of praise during his centennial.

This past Friday, in Wisconsin, "Little Reagan," Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, revealed his attitude about the working class when he proposed a law to strip away collective bargaining rights for public workers. He did so, I believe, to mute the people into powerlessness.

Okay, he wouldn't put it that way; he is merely being efficacious as he endeavors to reduce the state's deficit. However, as one worker put it, why do it on the backs of the working class?

But even that response is beside the point. It gives Little Reagan an easy way out. The real question here is: however we solve our problems, do we suspend democratic principles? If you want to reduce the deficit and you see a way by making public workers pay more for their benefits, why would you take away the voice they have in at least arguing the other side of the issue?

If you want to win them over, do so with your arguments - not your might - and let the majority rule. A democracy isn't measured by results, but by the way it achieves results, whether pragmatically good or bad. If all you want is efficiency, a better way to achieve it might be through a dictator.

Democracies, true democracies, are often very inefficient. With public debates, voting, and the many checks and balances that keep overlapping powers from overstepping their bounds, they sometimes move tortoise-like. But the process nicely avoids tyrannies.

Noam Chomsky has repeatedly remarked that a country's attitude toward its unions is a good measure of their attitude toward democracy - their real attitude toward true democracy. If this is correct, we must deduce that Reagan and the Reaganites-and of course we must include "Little Reagan" in this assessment - have contempt for democracy - true democracy.

But "Little Reagan" was right about one thing: if workers didn't see this coming (and I might add, when they voted him in office), "they are in a coma." Was labor in a coma in 1984 when the majority of union workers voted to reelect Reagan?

Of course, some comas are induced through lack of education, hopelessness and despair, or from being inundated daily with propaganda from the powers that be. On the other hand, it should be noted that often patients emerge from a coma, and when they do, watch out!

Yesterday's demonstration at the State Capitol adequately proves the point. If indeed many of the 16,000 protestors were in a coma, they certainly looked alive as they marched outside the Capitol and then proceeded to enter (and stay) inside. Moreover, they were crystal clear on what is at stake, as evidenced by their shouts and cheers, and messages on hundreds of signs. (Story continues after video.)

Little Reagan wasn't in a coma, not at all. He adequately prepared for such a reaction as he put the National Guard on alert, ready to fill the positions of potentially striking employees. If push comes to shove, I wonder how many people he will fire in this age of obscenely high unemployment.

One of Reagan's cronies, Reagan-appointed Donald Dotson, who was the Chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees union representation elections and labor-management bargaining, quite revealingly stated that "unionized labor relations have been the major contributors to the decline and failure of once-healthy industries" and have caused "destruction of individual freedom." I am sure this sums up the reason why unions in this country are not in good standing, and why, at bottom, our own Little Reagan is doing what he is doing. But someone should have pointed out to Dotson and to all those who share this view, the rich man indeed is quite free to live under a bridge in the inner city if he so chooses, but is the poor man free not to?

Michael Synowicz is a community college teacher active in Citizen Action in Milwaukee. Image/AP

Obama’s budget tradeoffs leave vital steps missing

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 13:27:00 +0000

"It's significantly less bad than the Republican budget - but it's not going to bring down unemployment in my hometown in Wisconsin." That was a comment by one Madison, Wis., reporter at a Feb. 14 White House press conference where Gene Sperling, chair of the president's Council of Economic Advisors, answered questions about President Obama's newly announced budget for fiscal year 2012.

"Education, innovation, infrastructure are the 'win the future' investments the president will demand," said Sperling, "but there will be many cuts that go beyond simply eliminating waste and redundancy, cuts that will hurt." The cuts are in the name of "the national consensus on the necessity of reducing the budget deficit."

On the investment side, here are the chief White House proposals:

* An 11 percent increase in education, investing in 100,000 new science, technology, engineering and math teachers, and a $1.4 billion new investment in early childhood education. In addition Pell Grant funding is increased by over 20 percent.
.
* A 60 percent increase in transportation investments over six years, maintaining the current system and building out the transit and rail infrastructure. This includes an immediate $50 billion investment, and $30 billion for a National Infrastructure Bank, to attract private capital to partner in these investments.

* Doubling of energy efficiency research, development and deployment, increasing renewable energy investments by over 70 percent and vital investments in a national electric grid. Take away current tax subsidies to oil and coal industries.

* Double basic research at the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy's Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards and Technologies. The budget would also invest $15 billion in a national broadband network.

All these investments are absolutely necessary. The problem is: most if not all of this money will take years to have any significant impact on employment.

Proposed budget cuts:

Many of the proposed cuts will cause real-life pain, especially to low income families, including:

* Cuts to the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).
* Cuts to community development block grants and community service block grants.

In addition to line-item cuts, Obama is proposing a five-year budget freeze on "non-security discretionary spending," which will throttle any further direct stimulative action.

In all, nearly a trillion dollars is cut from the deficit, two-thirds through spending cuts, one-third through revenue increases.

Proposed revenue increases:

* The budget reprises Obama's campaign pledge to allow the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans to expire.

* The budget permanently extends middle-class tax relief for individuals earning less than $200,000.

* The current preferential tax rate on capital gains and dividends would increase from 15 percent to 20 percent for upper-income people.

*The president proposes budgeting for the annual patch of the alternative minimum tax (to protect middle-income earners) that will produce $321.3 billion (over 10 years) in savings.

* The president also proposes redirecting $46.2 billion (over 10 years) from tax breaks for the fossil fuel industry (oil) to funding electric cars, reducing buildings' energy use, and doubling renewable energy sources.

The use of the tax code to incentivize an industrial policy is less efficient than direct spending. If public policy is to build out an infrastructure that private capital will not spontaneously create because of excessive risk, a direct contract is the shortest, and cheapest, path to a planned result.

What will be the impact of this budget on unemployment? Not much. Can there be any solution for the budget with real unemployment at 10 percent or above? Not really. Is this the best we can do, as a country, in the midst of this crisis? No, it is not.

The Republican budget is much worse of course, proposing $500 billion in cuts. It is a fraud, in fact, since they will not touch the biggest item that causes the deficit, namely unemployment, about which the Republicans propose nothing, either long or hort range. Rather than their proclaimed "win the future," economist Paul Krugman calls the GOP approach "eating the future" since they propose investing only in the military, salted with further tax cuts for the rich.

Unfortunately, by agreeing to remove military spending and additional direct government hiring from the table, the administration's hopes for a progressive industrial reform may find its foundations firmly planted in mid-air. How can any serious progress be made if war and unemployment are not a primary focus of "constraints" and "belt-tightening"?

Clearly the political equation must change in Congress and the states before an economic recovery can happen. U.S. capitalism, as it is presently being governed, seems unable to correct itself. No one can make the reforms that recovery requires happen except the people themselves. Egypt, Tunisia and people across the globe are beginning to say "Enough!" It's time for a popular upheaval here too. Enough! Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!

Budget cuts must be fought

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 16:31:00 +0000

President Obama's new budget proposal, unveiled Monday, sets the stage for the coming 2012 election and the upcoming battles over people's needs. While far better than the right-wing governmental wrecking ball of a budget offered by the GOP, the president's budget unfortunately finds savings in cutting government assistance to help poor and working people and keep them warm.

Deficit or no, these cuts cannot in good conscience be supported.

It is important to recall that the deficit was created in the first place by a big-business-perpetrated financial crisis.

A solution existed: the elimination of Bush's tax cuts for the rich, which would have generated revenue almost equal to the size of the deficit itself.

However, last November's election and the compromises agreed to in the lame duck Congress has made this issue moot - or has it?

It seems that President Obama has recognized, correctly, that in large measure the outcome of the 2012 election will depend on reforging the historic center-left coalition that brought him into office in 2008. This budget, in its attempt to thread a needle between the concerns of sections of the electorate and the broad needs of the working-class and people, seems designed with this in mind.

However, a central part of this electoral effort must be to give the poor and most in need real elements of hope. Compromises cannot be made on the backs of those least able to afford it and fight back. Home heating, block grants to states that provide housing and other needed services: these cannot be sacrificed on the altar of lifestyles of the super-rich and famous and their tax cuts.

What will emerge from Congress and end up on the president's desk will be neither Obama's nor the Republicans' plan.

Struggle now will help shape the debate and the votes in the House and Senate. In the coming weeks and months the cuts must be vigorously fought. Those who profess to be on the side of the least of us cannot afford to be still and silent.

Right wing nuts are slipping in the polls

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 13:40:00 +0000

Republican claims that they have an overwhelming majority mandate do not square with the polls.

Ninety percent of the U.S. people approved of President Obama's Tucson speech.

In a Washington Post/ABC Poll nearly six in 10 now say Obama understands their problems, an eight-point increase over where he stood in September.

In a separate Washington Post/CBS poll, 52 percent of Americans now hold unfavorable views of the tea party, a new high.

Nearly three-quarters of Democrats - including as many moderates and conservatives - have negative views of the tea party movement, as do half of all independents. Only 35 percent actually like them.

While polls like this are subject to change, things are trending away from the Republicans.

In a recent Pew poll cited by Paul Krugman, Americans were asked whether they favored higher or lower spending.

Interestingly, most wanted more, not less spending in most areas including education and Medicare. There was a split on unemployment and defense but a majority wanted cuts in foreign aid.

A recent USA Today poll had similar results: 55 percent to 39 percent opposition cuts in anti-poverty programs, 64 percent to 34 percent for Social Security, 67 percent to 32 percent against cuts in education.

Also, 52 percent to 46 percent oppose cuts in arts and sciences, but 57 percent versus 42 percent oppose cuts in military and national defense and 56 percent to 42 percent oppose cuts in Homeland Security.

The Republicans are pushing their attack on public worker pensions. There is a lot of motion among public workers across the country against the layoffs and cuts.

But if you don't want to cut education how could you (like the Mayor of New York) support cutting teachers? If you don't want to cut anti-poverty programs how can you support not extending unemployment insurance for the 99ers? Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., is introducing a bill to do just that.

President Obama's proposed cuts have to be rejected as well, but the big fight ahead is to prevent the total catastrophe that the House Republican cuts will cause.

While Obama is going up in the polls, right-wing talk show hosts are losing listeners.

A recent article points out that Glen Beck, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh are losing fans in key markets. "The tide is turning against the wing nuts," says writer John Avlon in the Daily Beast. "Glen Beck's ratings are down 50 percent and major market radio stations are dropping him."

This drop no doubt is due to the position some of them took on the Tucson tragedy. Beck's statement that the popular democratic uprising in Egypt was a sign of a coming "global insurrection" also has added to listener dismay.

Consider that the same Washington Post/CBS poll, which showed 52 percent of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of the tea party, also showed a strong 35 percent had a favorable opinion of that group.

This poll also showed that 36 percent of Americans gave socialism a favorable rating. So is socialism slightly more popular then the tea party? This fact was not hidden away in an article announcing the poll results: it was the headline.

This is encouraging news in the struggle for peace, economic and social justice. Building broad unity on the issues is key to winning.

Social Security victory shows organizing is the way

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 16:33:00 +0000

The developing struggle to protect Social Security from the Republicans and the federal Fiscal Reform Commission won a victory recently in President Obama's State of the Union address. There's an important lesson for us here.

In his speech, Obama said:

"To put us on solid ground, we should also find a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations. And we must do it without putting at risk current retirees, the most vulnerable, or people with disabilities, without slashing benefits for future retirees, and without subjecting American's guaranteed income to the whims of the stock market."

This is a solid statement that won praise from activists fighting to defend Social Security. Obama took a position in opposition to the findings of the Fiscal Reform Commission that he appointed. His statement, further, is in opposition to the divisive push by corporate forces to split young folks from retirees, central to their drive to destroy Social Security.

Leaders of retiree groups had been told, right up until game time, that Obama might include language supporting the Fiscal Commission. However, retirees organized a grassroots campaign that built the ground beneath Obama, giving him room to fully support this essential program in his speech.

There has been a growing crescendo of deficit-cutting calls directed at Social Security and other programs aiding working folks. Obama, in a move that many saw as a dangerous concession to right-wing forces, set up the Fiscal Responsibility and Reform Commission. Its marching orders were to develop a "bipartisan approach" toward cutting spending.

Even though Social Security is funded by working people and has nothing to do with the nation's deficit, it immediately became the focus of the commission.

Commission co-chair Alan Simpson, the right-wing former Wyoming senator, called Social Security a "giant cow with 32 million tits." He went on to say he was "tired of people on Social Security sitting around in their gated communities, waiting to get in their Lexus to drive to the local Perkins to get their senior discount."

Worse than his arrogance, was the program that Simpson and the commission put forward to attack Social Security. They called for:

* raising the Social Security eligibility age from the present 62 to 70.
* cutting benefits for future recipients.
* introducing "means testing" for eligibility.

This was greeted with alarm by retirees and many others. Raising the eligibility age to 70 would be a death sentence for people working in hard physical jobs. The introduction of means testing for Social Security would make it more of a "welfare program" for only the poorest Americans, instead of the income base for all that it was enacted to be. This would make it an easier target for cuts. The commission said benefits wouldn't be cut for current retirees, only future retirees - trying to split youth from present retirees.

The anger at those extremist proposals made it impossible for the commission chairs to get the votes needed to officially send its plan to Congress. However, a majority on the commission did vote for the proposals. It helped create a poisonous atmosphere as the American people went to the polls last November.

The Alliance for Retired Americans and coalitions across the nation launched a fight. Many thousands signed a petition demanding that Social Security be strengthened, not cut. Mass meetings were organized. Delegations demanded their representatives NOT support the Fiscal Commission proposals. ARA leaders from every state co-signed a strongly worded letter to President Obama, urging him to oppose the commission proposals. Right up to the State of the Union, discussions continued in Washington.

A study titled "Social Security and the Future of the Democratic Party" was sent to activists. It was presented at union halls, churches and retiree centers and was given to Democratic elected officials. The study, backed up by polls and research, showed that when Democrats back Social Security, their support goes up strongly. It also showed that when they are associated with attacks on Social Security, their support plummets. It cited recent polls showing Democrats were now below Republicans in response to the question, "Which party is best at protecting Social Security?"

Clearly, the organizing bore fruit with President Obama's speech.

There has been an ongoing debate on what relationship the people's movement should have to the president and Democrats. Some have taken a "plague on both your houses" approach, saying there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans. Others have supported the administration but without doing enough to organize an independent fight for the people's agenda.

The Obama administration has corporate influences within its own ranks along with more progressive influences, and is facing heavily financed pressure from the ultra-right. Without pressure from an organized people's movement, the only push will be from the corporate side.

The ARA-led movement took a positive approach. They did not, even faced with real anger, break with Obama over the Fiscal Commission's plan. However, they were not going to sit on the sidelines and wait. What they did was mobilize and fight. This organized fight let all elected officials know that they attack Social Security at their own political peril. As a result, a victory was won, and retiree coalitions are stronger. With Obama's positive statement, support for him has also significantly improved.

Photo: California Alliance for Retired Americans responds to the State of the Union speech, Jan. 26. Alliance for Retired Americans / indybay.org / "More Jobs Now! Save Social Security!" www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/01/26/18670338.php

Not everybody is sacrificing: In Kentucky the rich take care of their own

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 13:25:00 +0000

LEXINTGON, Ky. - On Wednesday, Feb. 9, in an excellent example of how capitalism works, University of Kentucky President Dr. Lee Todd, Jr. gave his colleague and friend Mitch Barnhart, UK Athletics Director since 2002, a 3-year contract extension and a 6-figure salary raise. This means that Mr. Barnhart is guaranteed a job until 2019, and it means he now makes $600,000 annually. This situation highlights several distinct features of class in America.

For example:

1. Working class: no job guarantees, layoffs at the slightest downturn in production, constant job insecurity; Ruling class: job contracts, contract extensions, job guarantees;

2. Working class: stagnating wages, pay freezes, wage reductions via furloughs, inability to save anything, insecurity even in the best of times; Ruling class: 6 figure pay raises on top of an already bloated salary, the ability to save and invest, security even in the worst of times;

3. Working class: no say in how much money anyone makes; ruling class: the ability to give your friends 6-figure salary raises with no oversight or accountability to anyone.

The myth of America is that there is no class. Any talk about "ruling class" or "bourgeoisie" or "proletariat" is old-fashioned and not applicable to the egalitarianism of the United States, according to the mythology. In fact, any mention of class in the public debate is decried with shouts of "class warfare!"

But, in spite of our reluctance to admit the truth, there are indeed economic classes in America. As financier Warren Buffet said: "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."