People Before Profit blog

An urgent call: Hire the unemployed to help clean up the mess left by Sandy

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 15:14:00 +0000

New York City, New Jersey, and Connecticut are in a crisis after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy which left costal areas devastated from having been pounded by high winds and overflowing seas.

Whole communities are still waterlogged. Thousands have lost their homes, their cars and all of all their personal possessions.

In one day tens of thousands of mainly working families have lost almost everything they own.

They are heatless, homeless, without power, food and water. If living on one of the islands off of Long Island, New Jersey, or New York City a family has gone from homeownership with all that implies to homelessness and seemingly
no way out.

President Obama has come to the rescue and promised the full resources of the federal government, FEMA and has deployed the National Guard to help people survive.

Over 70 people have perished so far and unknown numbers are still trapped in their destroyed homes some probably clinging to life.

On television dozens of people are overwhelmed with emotion; crying out in anguish and demanding immediate help. Temperatures are dropping into the 40's and even 30's in the Northeast this time of year and huge numbers of people have no heat.

There is a severe mass communication and transportation crisis. Millions of people without electricty also can't power up their cell phones. Only a few lines are functioning in the massive New York subway system, many lower Manhattan stations are still flooded and they can't cut the power on.

The buses are free but overcrowded and the streets are gridlocked. The Long Island railroad and the commuter trains from New Jersey and the northern suburbs are mostly shut down.

People can't get to work assuming their job has power. People are asking, "How long is this going to go on?" The city, state and federal officials don't have clear answers to that question.

The president has promised to cut the red tape and expedite the issuing of supplies and checks to assist rebuilding.

But those in dire straits don't have days: They need food, generators, heat and pumps to drain millions of gallons of flood waters and thousands of tons of debris which represent a public health danger on the highest order.

Even Chris Christy, the Republican governor of N.J. has given high praise to President Obama, to the consternation of leaders of his own party. So has Mayor Bloomberg of New York, an independent, who endorsed the president saying it was because Obama understands climate change and Romney does not. Bloomberg made no endorsement in 2008.

It has been estimated that Sandy's cost to the U.S. economy will be in the billions.

The cost for New York City alone has been estimated at $200 million a day.

Over 4 million people are without power, 2 million in New Jersey alone.

The tragic consequences of Hurricane Sandy takes place on top of the already devastating effects of mass unemployment, poverty, homelessness and hunger magnified by the effects of the Great Recession.

There are 848,000 unemployment, in N.Y. state. Over 440,000 in Pennsylvania and 530,000 in Maryland suffer the same fate. In Connecticut some 414,000 are jobless.
Delaware boasts 30,000 and 174,000 are without work in West Virginia which was devastated by several feet of snow caused by Sandy.

Put these numbers together and there are almost 5 million potential emergency workers to help the hurricane victims. That is an unlimited supply of human labor power that could play a big role in meeting the crisis.
State and federal government must be called on to hire the unemployed to become emergency relief workers to help save lives, deliver food, water, generators and supplies and help transport people to safe shelter.

They can assist in many aspects of relief work and most of all they can speed up the recovery of so many communities.

And giving the unemployed jobs at living wage with benefits will also help the overall economy.

Sandy by any measurement was a tragedy in human terms but it also exposed the tragedy inherent in the Republican proposal to cut funds to FEMA and their unrelenting attacks on the role of government to say nothing of their stubborn denial of the existence of global warming.

The problems caused by global warming are not going away and like thousands of other social, economic, and human problem facing our nation they cannot be solved by the private sector.

Issues like poverty, health care, housing, nutrition, education and the environment can only be really solved by putting people before profits.

The Obama administration's position on these issues, while not going far enough, do open the door to real solutions.

Hopefully it will spur on supporters and increase votes in the big election next Tuesday. All democratic progressive forces have a huge stakes in the outcome.

Climate change and science - key election issues

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 18:41:00 +0000

The "Frankenstorm" bearing down on the East Coast is the latest reminder that voters in the 2012 Elections have a stark choice between radically different approaches to environmental policy, climate change and science.

According to polls, climate change and global warming could be a "sleeper" issue, particularly in close Congressional races. This reflects the concern of a majority of voters that global warming is a growing threat to the planet.

The dismissive attitude of Republicans toward climate change starts from the top the ticket. At the Republican Convention, presidential candidate Mitt Romney mocked President Obama's recognition of the peril of global warming.

"(He) promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family," said Romney

"How can we have a man running for the office of the president of the United States - denying global climate change and endorsing oil subsidies?" asked the actor Robert Redford, to a gathering of the League of Conservation Voters (LCV). "You really wonder what kind of world and what kind of a time is this man living in?

If Romney is bad on the environment, his vice presidential running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, an avowed climate change denier, is even worse.

Romney and Ryan embrace the environmental plank adopted at the Republican Convention, the worst in history. Its policy is based on unleashing capitalist market forces, turning environmental regulation over to corporate polluters.

The platform would remove environmental protections by severely weakening the EPA. It promotes a radical increase of fossil fuel use and fracking while scoffing at development of renewable energy and curbing CO2 emissions.

The LCV, Sierra Club, Clean Water Action Fund, Environment America and other major environmental groups firmly back President Obama. Despite criticisms and shortcomings of several administration policies, the groups see Obama's reelection as key to the fight for an environmentally sustainable future.

"From enacting the mercury safeguards to setting carbon pollution standards for power plants, President Obama and his exemplary Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator, Lisa Jackson, have tackled some of the most dire and pressing threats to our health, families, and planet," said Mary Ann Hitt, director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign.

Environmentalists also laud Obama for tightening fuel-efficiency rules as part of the auto bailout and increasing them to an average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

"The Obama administration has acted thoughtfully to address one of the biggest threats to her future -- climate disruption -- by first thoroughly reviewing the science, and then putting carbon pollution standards in place" to modernize the nation's energy production, said Hitt.

Also at stake is a pro-science, pro-environment majority in the US Senate and House of Representatives. Millions of dollars are pouring into key races from the likes of Wal-Mart, Koch Brothers, the tea party and others to elect some of the most extreme, anti-science, anti-environment Republican candidates.

Already, the Republican controlled House of Representatives are viewed as the most anti-environment in history.

If Republicans win a majority in the US Senate, the ranking member of the Committee on Environment and Public Works that would oversee the EPA would be Sen. James Inhofe, a virulent climate change denier who wrote a book about global warming entitled "Hoax."

Republicans aim to undo every gain made over the past four years in environmental policy. Most support rolling back or even the outright elimination of the EPA.

Nearly every Republicans running for US Senate is a climate change denier.

Among the worst is former Senator George Allen, running against former governor Tim Kaine, a Democrat, in Virginia. Allen got a 1 percent rating from the LVC and headed the American Energy Freedom Center funded by the oil companies and Koch brothers.

"(Allen) and I have a different point of view on science," Kaine said. "(He) does not believe that human activity affects climate. So carbon isn't a problem. So we don't need to do anything about it. I think activity affects climate."

State treasurer Richard Mourdock, the Republican tea party candidate is running against Rep. Joe Donnelly for the open senate seat in Indiana. Mourdock, already in the national spotlight for his reactionary view that pregnancy after rape is "something that God intended to happen" and a "gift from God," has an equally reactionary view of climate science.

"We are basing our energy policy on the greatest hoax of all time, which is that mankind is changing the climate," said Mourdock, a former coal-mining executive who is awash with oil, coal and tea party money.

Democrat Elizabeth Warren, running to unseat Republican Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts has vowed to eliminate subsidies to the oil industry, develop green technologies, and oppose the Keystone XL pipeline. Brown takes the opposite approach and repeatedly voted to block the EPA from reducing carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act.

In Connecticut, Republican Linda McMahon says she'd dismantle the EPA. Her opponent, Rep. Chris Murphy has an LCV lifetime environmental score of 98 percent.

The list could go on but one thing is clear. A lot is riding on the outcome of the 2012 elections - the future of humankind.

A battle to the finish over California’s Prop 32

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 09:54:00 +0000

The deceptively named Proposition 32, "Stop Special Interest Money," is being funded by shady corporate front groups unleashing a torrent of money as Election Day nears.

But the California Labor Federation and its community and social justice allies have mobilized an army of volunteers to defeat the proposition.

Prop. 32 is a corporate dagger aimed to cripple labor's ability to preserve and expand on hard-won social gains benefitting all working-class families and small businesses, especially in these hard economic times.

It's the third such attempt in the last 14 years; those in 1998 and 2005 were defeated handily.

Prop. 32 purports to treat corporations and unions equally by banning both from contributing directly to political campaigns, and barring both from automatically collecting dues for political purposes from employees.

But corporations rarely gather their political money from employees' directly. Instead, they draw from corporate profits squeezed out of workers' labor.

Corporations can pour unlimited amounts of money into politics through so-called "limited liability companies," super PACs and nonprofit outfits bankrolled by anonymous wealthy individuals and companies.

But unions rely mainly on membership dues for political purposes.

The California Labor Federation reported that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told an Oct. 17 rally there that Prop. 32 is "the most deceptive measure that I've ever seen," which if passed would "throw California back to the political stone age."

The mayor noted that corporations don't ask their shareholders for permission when they bankroll political causes, while unions decide which issues and candidates labor will support or oppose after a democratic vote of the membership.

The proposition would in effect give corporations and the rich even more power in California, while banning workers' collective voice, which the mayor called "The last best tool that working men and women have in this state to make their voices heard."

L.A. County Federation of Labor head Maria Elena Durazo told the large crowd of mostly Latino workers, "When we fight for changes in laws, whether they are health and safety, for a cleaner environment, for the rights of the LGBT community, in anything that affects social issues that affect your community, the labor movement is there. We change laws to make sure that all workers are protected, that all workers are respected, because we believe that all workers have dignity."

The anti-Prop. 32 campaign includes a wide cross-section of social and community groups and movements that see a strong labor movement as an indispensible partner in the struggle to defeat the right wing and promote a progressive agenda.

In a blast at the Koch brothers, Big Oil magnates who have so far put $ 4 million behind Prop. 32, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune declared, "It's not enough for (the Kochs) to pollute our air, our water, our atmosphere - now they want to pollute our elections as well!"

Brune recalled that in 2010, the Kochs were among the corporate interests boosting a deceptively worded initiative that tried unsuccessfully to overturn AB 32, California's landmark climate change law.

Prop. 32 is being funded largely through the Small Business Action Committee (SBAC).

But one won't find a single business owner, big or small, much less a "mom-and-pop shop" on SBAC's website.

Since it is technically an "issue advocacy" group, SBAC is exempt from disclosure requirements that cover campaign advertising, and would continue to be so if Prop. 32 were to pass.

In fact, all of SBAC's big backers would conveniently be exempt from Prop. 32.

Some of the same interests backing Prop. 32 are also seeking to defeat Prop. 30, a measure which would tax high incomes to fund public education. Prop. 30 is supported by Governor Jerry Brown and the state's labor unions.

Last week, in a move that drew a flurry of outrage and calls for scrutiny, the Arizona-based nonprofit Americans for Responsible Leadership (ARL) dumped $11 million into SBAC's coffers. The big business PAC seeks to defeat Prop. 30 as well as pass Prop. 32.

After California Common Cause asked the state's Fair Political Practices Commission to investigate, the commission filed suit in Sacramento County Superior Court. A judge ruled Oct. 25 that ARL must say by early next week why it refuses to reveal who donated the $11 million. A ruling is expected early next week.

Common Cause says the client roster of the law firm responsible for incorporating ARL includes groups tied to the billionaire Koch brothers and to infamous Republican operative Karl Rove's American Crossroads.

As an indication of how seriously unions are taking the threat of Prop. 32's passage, the Contra Costa Times reports that labor unions have collectively invested $43.4 million to defeat the measure.

Were Prop. 32 to pass, it is doubtful workers would be able to pull their financial resources together through their unions to effectively fight the right-wing corporate onslaught.

Photo: Image of anti-Prop. 32 literature, via the California Federation of Labor Facebook page.

Election 2012: Fog of right-wing lies is lifting

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 14:00:00 +0000

The most extreme voices in the Republican Party - who in fact control the GOP - have been quiet as church mice as Mitt Romney has migrated to more moderate positions on a range of issues in the closing weeks of his campaign for the presidency.

Should anyone be surprised by the deafening, yet noticeable, silence on the right? I don't believe so. It is very predictable for two reasons.

First, the right wing is ready to do anything - and I mean anything - to win this election. They see it as their political Armageddon, especially given their existential alarm about the changing demographics (majority minority) of the country.

If that means right-wing fundraising political action committees (superPACs) spending hundreds of millions of dollars on anti-Obama attack ads riddled with falsehoods, they will do it. If it means making racist appeals to white voters, they will happily do it. If it means suppressing the vote of people of color, young people and seniors, they will show no hesitation to strangle the laws on voting rights.

And if it means that their candidate has to temporarily shed his "severe conservative" positions because they aren't resonating with voters across the country, in the battleground states, and among women, these folks will be the last to object. Right-wing extremists never allow truth to get in the way of their cause.

The other reason that the extremists on the right are not going apoplectic about Romney's political makeover is that if there is a Romney victory it doesn't matter too much which Mitt shows up at the White House. Why? Because the center of political and legislative initiative, as they see it, will reside not with Romney, but rather with a right-wing controlled Congress.

In the New York Review of Books, Frank Rich penetratingly writes:

... in the event he [Romney] enters the White House, he will serve as a pliant errand boy for the elements in the base he tried and failed to placate throughout the campaign. Grover Norquist spoke for the real powers-that-be in the GOP when he told the Conservative Political Action Committee in February that the GOP candidate's only function as president would be "to sign the legislation that has already been prepared" by the Republican congressional caucus, starting with the government-slashing Ryan budget.

In other words, Romney would be little more than a puppet. He wouldn't call the shots; he wouldn't set the agenda. That would be done on Capitol Hill, particularly in the House of Representatives where tea party Republicans currently reign supreme.

And as we know, the right wing has an agenda to undo all the economic and social legislation enacted ever since the New Deal.

It would overturn the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") to get the ball rolling. And then it would move to destroy Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid in the name of "responsible" deficit reduction.

And from there the GOP extremists in Congress (and on the U.S. Supreme Court) would set their sights on other long-standing social legislation and policies that have protected people's rights and improved living standards.

Nothing in their mind is too sacred to undo; everything is subject to nullification and destruction. Whatever you might say about the right wing, one thing is for sure - when they have their hands on the levers of power, they have no hesitation to use that power in the interests of the 1 percent.

Indeed, they are salivating at the thought of overturning the great legislative achievements of the 20th century - achievements that have brought a measure of security and happiness to millions of Americans.

But what stands in their way at the present moment is millions of Americans who are seeing through the fog of lies and deceptions issuing from the propaganda machine of Romney and the right wing.

I believe - and polls in the battleground states reveal - in the end truth will win out. And people-to-people action will help make it so.

Photo: Corey Butler // CC 2.0

Japan's right: going nuke?

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 12:04:00 +0000

Behind the current impasse among China, Japan and Taiwan over five tiny specks of land in the East China Sea is an influential right-wing movement in Japan that initiated the crisis in the first place, a crisis it is using it to undermine Japan's post-World War II peace constitution and, possibly, break the half-century taboo on building nuclear weapons.

The dispute over the islands China calls the Diaoyus, Taiwan the Diaoyutais, and Japan the Senkakus, is long-standing, but it boiled over when the right-wing governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, provoked a confrontation with China by trying to buy the uninhabited islands from their owners. When the Japanese government bought three of the islands, ostensibly to keep them out of Ishihara's hands, China accused Japan of "stealing" the disputed archipelago.

Ishihara, who has long pressed for building nuclear weapons, is generally portrayed as a bit of a loose cannon - the Economist calls him the "old rogue of the Japanese right" - but he is hardly an anomaly. Toru Hashimoto, leader of the rightwing National Japan Restoration Association and just re-elected mayor of Osaka, is cut from the same cloth.

Hashimoto and Ishihara both deny Japan's record of brutality during World War II - in particular, the horrendous Nanking Massacre in China and the sexual enslavement of Korean women - sentiments echoed by some of Japan's leading political figures, many of whom advocate Japan acquiring nuclear weapons.

The recent election of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to lead the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is a case in point. The LDP is favored to win upcoming elections, and Abe - who would become prime minister - calls for revoking a 1993 apology for the Japanese Imperial Army's use of sexual slavery. He also seeks to remove Article 9 of Japan's constitution that forbids Japan from waging war.

And while Abe has recently been vague about nuclear weapons, before he became prime minister in 2006, he argued that Japan's constitution allowed the country to build nukes so long as they were defensive in nature. Many leading figures in his party openly advocate they do so.

Former foreign minister Taro Aso and Shoichi Nakagawa raised the issue of nuclear weapons back in 2006, when Aso was a member of Abe's government and Nakagawa was chair of the LDP's Policy Research Council. Abe refused to repudiate Aso's and Nakagawa's remarks on nuclear weapons.

But the LDP is not the only section of Japan's ruling elite that is considering ridding the country of its so-called "nuclear allergy."

Ichiro Ozawa - once a leader of the now defunct Liberal Party and currently heading the People's Life First Party, the third largest party in the Diet - says Japan should consider building nukes in order to confront "excessive expansion" by China.

According to Tokyo-based journalist Hiusane Masaki, "...what has long been considered a taboo subject after World War II is now being openly discussed, not just by the rightwing but even in the mainstream."

In 1970, Japan signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the following year the Diet adopted three "non-nuclear principles" to not build, possess, or host nuclear weapons. Japan currently has enough plutonium to produce about 700 nuclear warheads and the ballistic missiles to deliver them. Most experts think building a bomb would take about a year.

The Japanese right is also waging war on what it calls "treasonous history." Its current target is the enormously popular anti-war comic-book novel, or "manga," Barefoot Gen, by Hiroshima bomb survivor Kakazawa Keiji. The manga has sold millions of copies, been turned into a film, and is used as an educational resource in Japan's schools. Barefoot Gen is sharply critical of Japan's military and of the elites that fueled its rise to power.

Writing in Japan Focus, Matthew Penny, a professor of history at Concordia University in Montreal and an expert on Japanese nationalism, says "those with an interest in chipping away at Japan's anti-war norms...are now pushing for the work to be removed from the classrooms."

According to Penny, the right has created an organization called the "Association of Atomic Bomb Victims for Peace and Security," which apparently doesn't include any real victims. Its spokesmen are two right-wingers, Tamogami Toshiro and Kusaka Kimindo, both of whom deny the Nanking Massacre and "call for nuclear armament of Japan and expanded conventional military capabilities."

All this nuclear talk comes at a time when Japan is at loggerheads with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyus, with South Korea over the Dokdo/Takeshimas, and with Russia over the southern Kurlies, although the situation for each island chain is different. Japan currently controls the Senkaku/Diaoyus, while South Korea and Russia occupy the other disputed island groups.

Japan's claim on the Senkaku/Daioyus is shaky at best, dating back to the 1895 Sino-Japanese War. The islands were first claimed by the Ming Dynasty in 1368, and the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) considered the chain part of its western sea border. According to Japanese scholar Unryu Suganuma, "There is no ambiguity about the Diaoyu islands" being part of China, "because the islands belonged to the Middle Kingdom, period!" Suganuma says the US turned the chain over to Japan in 1971 during the Cold War "because they didn't want the islands to fall into communist hands."

Some of the right's rhetoric is aimed at embarrassing the ruling Democratic Party before the upcoming Japanese elections, but some goes further than election eve posturing, reflecting a long-standing illusion by Japan's right concerning the capabilities of its military.

Kunihiko Miyake, research director of the Canon Global Institute, told the Financial Times that he thought that the crisis would not come to blows because of the strength of Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Forces and its US alliance. "China will not use force because it would lose," he said.

While it is true that the Washington has said that it will honor Article 5 of the US-Japan Security Treaty and come to Japan's aid over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, the US is neutral on who owns them and would certainly be reluctant to let Japan draw it into a military confrontation with China.

Which might not stop Japan from trying to do exactly that.

Unless the US gets involved, Japan is no match for China. While Japan has more surface warships (78 to 48) it has far fewer submarines (18 to 71) and its air force is only about a quarter the size of China's.

The Japanese right likes to invoke the early days of World War II when it crushed British, Dutch and American forces on land and smashed a good part of the U.S.'s Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. But many of those victories were the result of stunning incompetence on the Allied side, rather than the superiority of Japan's samurai tradition. When Japan provoked a war in 1939 with the Soviet Union at Khalkin Gol on the border between Manchuria and Mongolia, they took a terrible shellacking.

Even in China, where Tokyo had enormous superiority in weapons and equipment, Japan never succeeded in defeating the Chinese, though they killed millions and millions of soldiers and civilians. In the end, of course, Japan was devastated by WW II, its economy shattered, its cities leveled by massive fire bombings and two atomic bombs.

The right is keen to erase those memories and has already managed to whitewash Japanese imperial history by expunging much of it from history books. Barefoot Gen is its latest target.

The dispute over the islands does not seem to be going away, in part because Japan keeps sending mixed signals. Japan's economic minister recently said Tokyo "cannot compromise," but according to Japanese news reports, Japan is preparing to take note of China's and Taiwan's claims, some thing they have refused to do in the past.

A drawn-out fight could inflict major damage on both economies, and there is always the chance of stumbling into a military confrontation. The recent US "pivot" toward Asia - which includes a major military buildup - adds to the regional tensions, particularly since it includes the possible collision of two nuclear-armed powers.

Japan's greatest modern tragedy was the triumph of militarism, but as memories of WW II fade, there are those that would like to take her back down the same road. Adding more nuclear weapons to what is already a dangerous situation could be catastrophic. It would sink the Non-Proliferation Treaty in Asia - South Korea and Taiwan would almost certainly follow suit - escalate an already dangerous regional arms race, and could bring Japan back that moment on the morning of Aug. 6. when, in the words of John Hersey, "the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima."

This article originally apeared in the author's blog, Dispatches from the Edge. Photo: On the 6th and 9th of each month, citizens in many locations take to the streets to collect signatures calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Via Japan Press Service.

Mitt Romney: the empty suit clueless about the empty chair

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 13:49:00 +0000

Billy Koehler died on March 7, 2009, for lack of health insurance. Mitt Romney said on Oct. 10, 2012, that's impossible.

The Republican nominee for President told The Columbus Dispatch newspaper last week:

"We don't have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don't have insurance."

Technically, that's true of Billy Koehler. He didn't die in his apartment. He died in his car. Koehler suffered cardiac arrest and perished slumped over his steering wheel at a stop sign in Pittsburgh because he didn't have health insurance and didn't have $60,000 to replace his implanted defibrillator.

Romney, a quarter-billionaire born with a silver foot in his mouth, has shielded himself from the world in which America's many Billy Koehlers exist. Their paths don't naturally cross. Billy Koehlers don't hang out with Romney's NASCAR owner pals. Billy Koehlers don't disparage the nation's elderly and impoverished at fundraisers in the homes of private equity moguls . FDR and JFK made an effort to understand the joys and hardships of the non-rich. But Romney hasn't. And that's why he so carelessly called America's Billy Koehlers a deliberately dependent underclass, albeit one comprising 47 percent of all citizens. Because Romney knows nothing of the lives of the nation's Billy Koehlers, the Republican nominee can dismiss their medical predicaments as nonexistent and assure wealthy donors he won't "worry about those people."

Romney told the Columbus newspaper that no one needs to worry about those lacking health insurance because federal law requires hospitals to treat emergency cases:

"We don't have a setting across this country where if you don't have insurance, we say to you, 'Tough luck, you're going to die when you have your heart attack."

He continued:

"No, you go to the hospital; you get treated; you get care, and it's paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital."

Logically, then, the solution would be for no one to buy insurance. Why bother? Hospitals must treat and bill someone else, according to Romney.

But it doesn't work that way. The late Billy Koehler is an example of how it actually operates - how it fails to work for 26,100 to 45,000 Americans who die each year for lack of insurance.

Billy's sister, Georgeanne Koehler, a retired hospital worker and member of the Service Employees International Union, told his story at rallies for passage of Obamacare, taking with her an empty chair in his memory . She celebrated the law's passage in 2010 , particularly its provision forbidding insurance companies from denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions. That might have saved her brother.

Billy was just 39 when he suffered his first cardiac arrest. An electronics technician, he had health insurance through his employer, and that paid for surgery to implant a defibrillator. Still, over the years, Billy spent his entire $25,000 in pension savings on medical bills that insurance did not pay.

In 2003, Billy lost his job and his health insurance when the company he worked for closed. He tried to get another job with health insurance but could not. He tried to buy health coverage privately, but every insurer in Pennsylvania denied his request because of his pre-existing heart condition. He didn't qualify for Medicaid because he earned slightly too much money in his new job as a pizza delivery driver.

While at work on Dec. 14, 2007, he collapsed in the pizza shop. He survived, but a cardiologist told him that his defibrillator needed to be replaced. Because Billy had no insurance, the doctor required payment up front.

Reposted from Alternet

Photo: Screen shot from Georgeanne Koehler video about her brother's death.

The reverse discrimination farce

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 17:08:00 +0000

History repeats itself: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, as Karl Marx famously said. So it goes for the Supreme Court case on affirmative action and campus diversity, Fisher v. University of Texas.

Sixty-two years ago, the University of Texas law school went to the Supreme Court to defend its use of race in admissions. Back then, the university used race to uphold Jim Crow segregation, the legal justification for keeping Black Americans as second-class citizens. The university's lawyers argued its admissions policies upheld the law, based on the now-discredited Plessy v. Ferguson "separate but equal" doctrine.

A Black postal worker from Houston, Heman Sweatt, challenged that tragic history of legal segregation and racism by taking the university to court. Sweatt had been barred entrance into the university's law school because of his race. The suit worked its way up the legal chain, finally reaching the Supreme Court in 1950, where a young Thurgood Marshall argued the case with an NAACP co-counsel. The high court's decision, which said in part that Sweatt was not afforded an "equal" graduate education since the university's law school for Blacks was woefully understaffed and resourced, became a legal keystone for the 1954 groundbreaking Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Some 60 years later, Abigail Fisher, a white woman, sued the University of Texas alleging she had been denied undergraduate entrance because of her race. "Less qualified" Black students were admitted, she claimed.

The university argues Fisher fell short of its academic standards, and race had nothing to do with it.

There were five Black and Hispanic students and 42 white students with lower academic scores than Fisher's who were admitted, according to a blogger at EdMedia. But there were also 168 Black and Hispanic students with higher academics than Fisher who were not admitted.

Fisher's case seems a farcical characterization of racial discrimination. It continues the ultra-right's attack on affirmative action by using its "reverse discrimination" ideology, which turns actual discrimination on its head.

What discrimination did Fisher suffer? She wasn't accepted into her top college choice. But she had choices and still got a degree from Louisiana State University. Apparently, for Fisher, LSU doesn't measure up to UT's prestige. Plus, she said, she couldn't continue her "family tradition" of attending UT. Sorry, but that doesn't sound like discrimination. Sounds like scapegoating and sour grapes. It's not like she needed the National Guard to escort her to enter LSU.

When Sweatt or James Meredith or Elizabeth Eckford and thousands of others acted to knock down racial segregation in education, they were also weakening the walls of gender, class, sexual orientation, disability and other forms of discrimination. They were expanding democracy and opportunity for all. They were laying the basis for future democratic struggles, including movements for marriage equality and immigration reform.

Yet even with progress made, campuses still are more white than racially diverse. Businesses, high-ranking former military officers and the U.S. government have joined with colleges and civil rights groups in support of UT's use of race as one positive factor in its "holistic" admission process because they - or the institutions they represent - benefit from such equality and diversity policies. The Supreme Court even said as much in a 2003 decision on a similar case.

Why the court decided to hear the Fisher case has more to do with ideology and politics than legal arguments. University of Houston history professor Gerald Horne, who authored "Reversing Discrimination: The Case for Affirmative Action," said via email, "If the court follows the law, they will rule against Fisher for they cannot prescribe a remedy for her since she has graduated already from college. U.S. law says the high court must not rule on abstract propositions but on behalf of actual litigants with the possibility of real remedies."

However, Horne said, "the high court has been dominated by conservatives for some years and their constituency is furious because of their upholding the Affordable Care Act. Hence, one should not be surprised if the court chooses not to follow the law in this case in order to reassure conservatives of their fealty to the cause."

Horne also pointed out that while the case is being "spun as being all about African Americans," the biggest losers, if the court sides with Fisher, may be "women of various backgrounds."

Horne said such an outcome would fit nicely into the "conservatives' ongoing war on women."

The court is not expected to reach its decision until after the November election. The American people can send a pro-equality message, if voters reject racism and ultra-right conservative ideology at the election polls.

Photo: University of Texas students staff an outreach table for a minority women's organization on the Austin campus. (Larry Miller/CC)

2012 countdown: Time for the left to step to the plate

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 13:27:00 +0000

For the past year the left has debated the merits of participation in the election process. As you might expect, not everyone is on the same page. Some say that the differences between the two presidential candidates, Obama and Romney, are not significant enough to warrant involvement in the elections, while others maintain they are.

At this point, nearly everyone on the left has made up his or her mind one way or another. And it is unlikely that their minds are going to change in the next four weeks, no matter how compelling the argument from the other side.

Thus it is time to draw down the curtain on this debate; it has exhausted itself. To continue it is counterproductive.

For those on the left like myself who believe that the outcome does matter, it is time to turn our attention in another direction - that is, to join labor, people of color, women, youth, gays and lesbians, and other social groups who have been concretely engaged in the elections since the beginning of this year.

Indeed, while the left has been debating the significance of this election over the past several months, ordinary people have been doing the hard grassroots electoral activity that is at the core of any successful strategy to defeat right-wing extremism at the ballot box:

* Registering voters and at the same time fighting off the campaign of the right wing to disenfranchise millions of eligible voters.

* Politically engaging voters in the workplace and neighborhood.

* Making phone calls and riding buses into swing states.

* Raising money.

In short, the broad democratic movement has been doing the sweated labor in the trenches of mainstream politics.

Now this may not sound sexy to some people on the left; it may not sound visionary enough; it may even feel much too pedestrian. But isn't this what the realistic left should be doing too as the clock ticks down on the 2012 elections?

In 1936, the left didn't sit out the elections. Nor did it stand apart from the main organizations of the people's movement. Nor did it confine its role to popularizing anti-capitalist alternatives. It was part of the on-the-ground mass mobilizations to re-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the White House and New Dealers to Congress.

With phone banks looking for callers, buses to battleground states searching for people to fill seats, and the organizers of labor and neighborhood walks welcoming volunteers, isn't it our time to step to the plate?

Photo: Labor walk in Virginia, Oct. 1, 2012. Bernard Pollack/AFL-CIO CC 2.0

Working class loses a leader: George Edwards, activist every day

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 15:19:00 +0000

The working class and people lost a great leader, activist, and fighter for justice and equality this past week when 94 year-old George Edwards died. While his accomplishments were many and will have positive influence on our lives for generations, what those who knew George will remember most was his all abiding humanity. While a lifelong champion of worker's rights, civil rights, and peace, George was as at home with a beer watching the game, gardening, hiking, camping, or visiting friends as he was at a meeting of his beloved steelworker unionists.

Born in 1918 in South Dakota, his family moved to Tennessee and homesteaded land in what is now the Great Smoky National Park. His father worked in the Indian Service until becoming frustrated with mistreatment of native peoples.

George obtained a bachelor's degree from the University of Tennessee, then received his graduate degree from Oberlin Seminary, studying to enter the ministry. After completing his studies, George went to work as a machinist at the huge U. S. Steel Works in nearby Lorain, Ohio, making less than $1 an hour. His goal was to set up a "labor church."

However, he quickly joined the Steelworker's Organizing Committee, which was campaigning to organize that mill, and joined the Communist Party USA, along with many of the other organizers. He was active as a member/leader for the rest of his life.

Denise Winebrenner-Edwards, George's wife of 31 years, said, "He was absolutely convinced that the only way working people could achieve justice was for the people, not the wealthy, to control our economy. He saw that inherent in capitalism was inequality and injustice and that the system needed to be changed fundamentally to meet the people's needs."

After winning unionization in 1942, George founded the local union newspaper, the Lorain Labor Leader, founded a veteran's committee, and was part of the local's Political Action Committee. He was elected the local's vice president.

When America entered World War II, George immediately joined up, fighting to defeat the fascist menace in Europe.

After victory, he came back, but to a much different political climate. McCarthyism was rearing its ugly head. Still, George was elected to the 1948 United Steelworkers of America (USWA) convention, where he raised the first resolution calling for an African American vice president of the union. Although this wasn't won at that convention, George was a leading part of the movement that achieved that goal at the USWA convention nearly 40 years later.

For George, the 1950s were difficult times. Hounded by the FBI, spied on, and ostracized at the union he helped found, his name was even chiseled off of the founders' plaque at the union hall. He suffered isolation and tough times, even going through a divorce.

However, George used this time to become a photographer, setting up a studio in Lorain, became involved in hiking, camping, and became a serious artist, painting and producing metal sculptures. His metal chess sets are highly valued and are on display as gifts in presidential offices in Vietnam and other nations.

Even in these hard times, George still found ways to fight for justice. Seeing Puerto Rican workers brought in to work at the mill housed in railroad cars on company property, without running water, heat or sanitary facilities, he invited leaders of the Puerto Rican independence movement to Lorain to help the workers understand what rights they had and to push for decent housing. When African American steelworkers were unable to buy homes in still-segregated areas, George purchased homes which he resold to those workers. As the civil rights and peace movements developed, George jumped on board.

In the '70's, George really began to put his stamp on policy changes that would shift political ground for all of us. Seeing a lack of democracy, a slackening of the fight against the big corporations, in the USWA, George formed the National Steelworkers Rank & File Committee. It pushed for democracy, membership involvement and solidarity. He literally ran the budding rank and file movement from an old mimeograph machine in his front room, almost permanently having blue-stained fingers. Local committees were formed in Steelworker locals across the nation, mainly made up of younger workers.

The Lorain committee did not come about because George made great speeches, but grew out of what will forever be known as the "Pink Hard Hat" incident. By now, George was a machinist instructor, teaching young apprentices the trade. But the shop foreman was making life hell for the young workers, harassing them in numerous ways, including forcing them to shave beards and cut their hair short (a big deal for those guys in those days). George painted his hard hat pink, stating that it looked like "the boss's bald head."

He was suspended for his protest, but the union, especially the young workers, rallied to his side and he won his grievance and back pay.

This was during a time that the mainstream media all trumpeted the "generation gap," the idea that only young folks were progressive and that if you were older, you couldn't possibly relate to young people. Throughout his life, and especially during this period, George showed this concept up for the lie it was. He was beloved by the younger workers and he fought for them, as well as all workers.

An important principle of the rank and file movement that George often spoke of during this period was: "We have no enemies that are workers. We are fighting for all workers. We need a rank and file movement always, to involve regular workers in the union. It needs to support union leaders when they're right and push them when they aren't!"

The rank and file movement that George began expanded and won many gains during this period. The right of workers to ratify their own contracts was won, as well as the election of an African American USW vice president. The movement fought against an experimental negotiating agreement that would have ended the union's ability to strike. The well-known Consent Decree, which ended practices of keeping minority workers in the worst, most dangerous and low paid jobs, opened up all jobs to bidding and brought women and minorities into the trades, was a major victory of the movement. All these had George Edwards' fingerprints on them.

The Steelworkers union began to shift, becoming the progressive union it is today, mobilizing its members, building coalitions, standing up for solidarity with other workers and unions across the globe.

After retiring, George married Denise Winebrenner and moved to Pittsburgh. Winebrenner, a USW activist in her own right, was elected to the Wilkinsburg City Council.

Hardly ready to relax and enjoy "golden years," George spoke of these as "the best years of my life." He was a founding member of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR) and was a member of SOAR's ruling executive board. With his wife Denise, they formed a local coalition, Wilkinsburg for Change, which stopped privatization of the local elementary school and pushed for better services and more access for the community to local government.

George was especially proud of the fact that he was "the first one arrested" for sitting in, blocking trucks carrying copies of the Pittsburgh Press, when workers there were on strike. The strike was successful, especially due to the massive solidarity movement.

Even into his 90s George Edwards was active, mobilizing steel retirees to rallies for health care and retiree security. When Occupy Pittsburgh held demonstrations and news conferences this past year, George was out front, attending and bringing friends.

Finally, in his late years, George got something he'd never asked for: credit for his work! He used to say, "It's amazing what you can get accomplished if you don't care who gets credit!"

Certainly, at least for the rest of us, it was wonderful to see some credit finally go his way.

At the 70th anniversary of the United Steelworkers union in Cleveland last year, George Edwards was honored with a long, very loud, standing ovation. He was recognized for his work and as the only one present who was at the founding USW convention as well as the present one.

George had just returned from a USW Civil Rights Conference in Cincinnati when he fell into a coma. At that conference, USW President Leo Gerard had honored George, saying, "He was an activist every single day of his life." The comments were occasion for another long, standing ovation, which brought tears to many eyes, including George's.

George died peacefully. He didn't live that way!

He is survived by his wife Denise, a son, daughter, and three sisters.

Denise has asked that those wishing to send flowers instead send donations to SOAR, or Next Generation (USW organization for young workers). Both of these can go to:

USW-Attn. Sec'r./Treasurer

60 Blvd. of the Allies

Pittsburgh, PA 15222

Donations may also be made, in George's name, to People's World:

235 W. 23rd St.

New York, NY 10011

Jim Centner, national president of SOAR, probably said it best when he said the best way to honor George is to "live life like George, be an activist every day!"

Photo: George Edwards (SOAR)

Pundits premature in crowning Romney the winner

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 18:18:00 +0000

The airwaves were flooded for at least 48 hours this week with declarations telling us who won the first of the three big presidential debates. It was a confident, bullish Romney, they declared!

Their declarations reminded me of the seemingly countless times now, since 1960, that they have told us, just minutes after the debates ended, who won and who lost.

The media crowned Democratic challenger John Kerry the winner three times in 1994, after each of his debates with President George W. Bush only to find, on Election Day, that Kerry was the one who didn't get 270 Electoral College votes - making him the real loser of all three of his debates.

My high school, Xaverian High in Brooklyn, N.Y., had a great debate team. There the winners were indeed picked right after the debates - sometimes by judges using point systems and sometimes by vote of us boys who made up the audience.

But Wednesday's presidential debate had no winner because there were no judges armed with point systems as Romney and Obama squared off. The audience, the people of the United States, doesn't vote until Nov. 6. So all the talk by the punditry regarding who won and who lost is either guesswork is just plain b.s.

History teaches us that people make their voting decisions based on how they perceive the choice of a candidate will meet their needs, not on the prognostications or interpretations of the punditry. Often the people make their decisions based on something quite outside of what the media has determined is important.

This Thursday, the day after the debate, I was in "Bainport," a protest encampment set up by Mitt Romney's victims, workers outsourced by Bain Capital, in Freeport, Ill. The workers, many of them long-time Republicans in a Midwest Republican stronghold, have turned their town into an epicenter of the fight against Romney-nomics.

When asked about the debate, they and their neighbors focused like laser beams on what they called Romney's "lies." A town of tens of thousands in the heart of GOP country is abuzz with anger about Romney and has thrust itself to the front lines of the struggle against what Romney stands for.

None of the pundits, who began flapping their jaws as soon as the debate ended, got around to visiting Freeport the day after the debate. We looked. We didn't see one of them.

My brother lives in Brooklyn where he grew up to become a court officer. After the debate he said he didn't agree for a minute that Romney had won anything. He told me how for years he has listened to high-priced lawyers wow the courtroom with clever lines and a big show. Later, he said, came the jury's decision, very often arrived upon after they viewed or heard evidence not even mentioned in the slick summation.

Before the debate the Ipsos/Reuters poll had Obama with 47 points and Romney with 41. After the debate, it had Obama with 48 and Romney with 43. Nothing statistically significant there!

So don't get swayed by the opinions of a punditry that covers debates not as how they relate to the Bainport encampment, but as if they were nothing more than sports contests. Don't be swayed by the reportage in a paper like the Denver Post, which saw the debate as a bullfight!

The Denver Post noted how,"over and over" again Romney was the "bull," charging at Obama. It noted how, "over and over" again Obama, like a matador, got out of the way and didn't charge back.

Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC's "Last Word" mentioned that article in his show Thursday night and probably said it best: "In the end, we know what happens to the bull."

Photo: Reporters converge upon David Axelrod, a top political adviser for President Obama, at the Oct. 3 debate. University of Denver

Jailed in the land of the free

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 17:45:00 +0000

McKINLEYVILLE, Calif. - In the middle of last year, due to a traffic violation, I spent a few months as a guest of our local county correctional facility. What I saw and experienced there was both hard and enlightening, and also says something about the future of our burgeoning police state.

I realize that prison is not meant to be a walk in the park. But we should expect reasonable, professional, humane treatment, and fulfillment of basic human rights and needs.

The Humboldt County Correctional Facility sits in the heart of the town of Eureka, Calif. This very drab building also houses the courts and their offices. The prison population is almost always at or beyond legal capacity. The "dorms" inside are divided by male and female prisoners, have no windows with an outside view, and are filled 24 hours a day with artificial light and heavy, stale air.

There is no recreational yard, just a basketball court that those on good behavior can visit for a short while each day. There is no daily access to newspapers, absolutely no radio, and the little television there is comes from a set mounted too high to see well. Most prisoners spend their day walking in a large circle around the "day" room.

When mealtime comes, food is very strictly rationed. I saw many fights over gambling for and trading for food. Liquids are limited to water and a small glass of milk. The occasional coffee is awarded those with special jobs. The short time that inmates are given to eat forces many to try to sneak food back to their bunks -- a punishable offence.

Medical and dental treatment is minimal, and provided by a few questionably professional attendants. I myself suffered a transient ischemic attack, or mini-stroke. When I complained about needing a hospital, I was rewarded with a trip to the maximum-security block. It took two more days to be seen by a physician's assistant. I stayed in "max" for a week.

In this jail most of those incarcerated either have dental abscesses, infections, a cold, the flu and/or mental illness. And the vast majority are there for minor crimes such as substance abuse associated with psychological disturbance.

In making a point, I did my "time." I'm glad to be out but, but I'm truly sorry for those who are "in, or on their way in.

Prison doesn't need to be cruel. But if prisons are going to be run as private profit-making businesses (as many now are), offenders, their families and the general public will suffer needlessly to insure the corporate bottom line of making the most money while providing the barest of public services.

We in the United States incarcerate a full 25 percent of all those imprisoned in the entire world. The land of the free?

Photo: Inmates are screened for contraband after leaving the exercise yard at a facility in California, March 2. Rich Pedroncelli/AP

Romney is not a vulture, he’s a parasite

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 16:07:00 +0000

Ever get that creepy feeling you are being followed? In 1969, a friend and I were walking down a street when that spooky feeling crept over me. My friend agreed. Determined to keep walking and appear unconcerned, we maintained our gait. I turned my head slowly and peered over my right shoulder. It confirmed our fears but in a nonplussed way. Waddling about 15 feet behind us was three of the largest black birds I ever saw. Vultures.

The street was in the town of Manaus, Brazil, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. My workmate had drawn a low draft number during the Vietnam War. He was bound for the military. We left the U.S. for a time, as so many youth did during that tumultuous time, to figure out what to do.

However, that problem seemed distant at the moment as three, ravenous-looking vultures were stalking us. My mind began trolling for what little I knew about vultures. They are known as secondary carnivores. After a primary carnivore predator, like a lion, takes down its prey, these meat-eaters move in for the scraps.

Of late, I've had the same icky feeling of being stalked. The wealthiest man ever to head the ticket of a major party for the presidency, Mitt Romney, wants to do to the country what he does to workplaces through his company Bain Capital - decimate them.

Capitalism has always had its booms and busts. Manaus is an example. It boomed in the early part of the previous century when rubber there was the main industry. When the rubber industry shifted to Asian plantations, it went bust in the Amazon. Manaus, a town of 120,000 people, plunged to 20,000 by the time the two young and questing North Americans arrived there trying to figure out war and how to keep their rear ends out of it.

Alongside this usual functioning of the system came another way to make mega-profits. Swoop in on a company that's struggling. With Mitt Romney at the helm, Bain Capital did this to 17 companies. Workers were thrown into the streets and communities were left in the lurch.

But Bain also wrapped its tentacles around 60 other companies. What happened there? They were in the venture capitalist mode that became a focus during the heinous rein of President Reagan during the 1980s and since. It is part and parcel of what the Occupy movement calls financialization.

Let's go outside of Bain Capital for a classic example. Pacific Lumber Company was family owned since the beginning of the last century. It logged redwoods in Northern California using selective cutting, leaving much of the forest intact.

Capitalists of the venture kind saw this as an "undervalued" business. Translation: With an infusion of high tech capital, fewer workers, and financing from Wall Street, the forest could be devastated at a high rate of profit. Despite a valiant struggle by environmentalists, that's what the Texas conglomerate Maxxam Inc. did when it took over Pacific Lumber. Then, after clear cutting the forest, much of the logging shifted to the Southeast, leaving working families and communities devastated in the Pacific Northwest. Yet another kind of boom/bust.

So is capitalist Mitt Romney a vulture?

Vultures move in on their dead prey or carrion when they detect a distinct odor. Rotting flesh, including that of humans, emits an odious chemical called ethyl mercaptan. It draws sniffing vultures to their meal like bears to honey. In fact, the natural gas industry adds a bit of the chemical to odorless natural gas to make it more detectable. At times, a gathering of vultures at a pipeline actually helps detect gas leaks.

Back in Manaus, my friend and I decided, as we were very much alive, to simply pick up our pace. We left the vultures to find their usual prey.

Calling Romney a vulture capitalist gives vultures, as wolves in another setting, a bad rap. Mitt Romney and other vulture capitalists prey on their own kind. Vultures, in the wild, do not.

A better name for these capitalists, including Romney, would be parasitic capitalists. They latch onto a workplace, cut wages and health benefits. They make pensions disappear. These capitalists slowly but surely devour the place. Often, they finish killing the jobs there and, in the ultimate insult, outsource the work offshore. The unemployed workers then have to rely on a helping hand from government, the very helping hand that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan want to cut.

Vultures in the wild are a sign of a healthy ecosystem. Vultures of the capitalist kind are the opposite as far as workers and communities are concerned. It is up to those very same workers and everyone in the caring movements to prevent a Mitt Romney, or any of his ilk, from gaining control of government.

Photo: Adams999 // CC 2.0

Barry Commoner put science to service of the people

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 13:41:00 +0000

The environmental movement lost one of its most passionate voices when Barry Commoner, ecologist and political activist, died on Sept. 30 at age 95. Known for his key roles in the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the 1970 Clean Air Act, Commoner served as founder and director of the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems for much of his professional life. His seminal book The Closing Circle: Nature, Man and Technology (1971), is widely recognized as one of the key works of the environmental movement.

Commoner saw science as a weapon in the fight against industrial abuse of the environment. As he told a New York Times reporter in 1976, major political questions have both scientific and economic components. In The Closing Circle, he argued that capitalist production leads to extravagant use of resources and energy, and is inherently thoughtless when it adopts anti-social and environmentally short-sighted methods of production. These in turn have negative consequences throughout the social fabric. "Everything is connected to everything else" was one of the basic laws of ecology promulgated in The Closing Circle.

Commoner was an ecologist who learned to love nature in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he grew up. He studied zoology as an undergraduate at Columbia University and received a doctorate from Harvard in 1941. He relocated to St. Louis to teach at Washington University, where he taught until he moved to Queens College in 1981.

Commoner first combined science with activism in the 1950s, when scientists were growing increasingly concerned about the effects of radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing.

At the time, the Atomic Energy Commission claimed that any danger was strictly limited to the immediate test-site. Commoner and his colleagues devised an ingenious way of challenging the AEC's claims. They appealed to local children in St. Louis to donate their baby-teeth to science. The teeth were then tested for strontium-90, a byproduct of nuclear weapons testing. Commoner's research demonstrated conclusively that even children far from testing sites had enough strontium-90 in their bones to put them at risk for developing cancer later in their lives.

Simultaneously, Commoner spoke at St. Louis churches and lecture halls about the dangers of radioactive fallout from nuclear tests, and he established the St. Louis Committee for Nuclear Information (CNI). The CNI circulated a petition calling for an international agreement to stop testing nuclear weapons, and over 11,000 scientists signed on.

It was a compelling combination of sound science and community empowerment. Commoner's work served as the scientific foundation of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that was signed in 1963.

That early victory set the stage for Commoner's combination of science and activism throughout the 1960s and later. He saw himself as informing the public, enabling people to take a more active and informed role in decisions to protect the environment. In 1963 he founded, along with anthropologist Margaret Mead, the Scientists' Institute for Public Information, which served as a conduit of communication between scientists and the public well into the 1980s.

Commoner's Center for the Biology of Natural Systems defined "natural systems" broadly and investigated problems like lead poisoning in impoverished neighborhoods, pollution caused by fertilizer run-off, and the economics of organic and conventional farming. At the same time, Commoner was a tireless speaker, bringing scientific information to union halls, community churches and college auditoriums.

The year 1970 brought Commoner to the height of influence. That April saw the first Earth Day, and Commoner spoke to countless audiences as the modern environmental movement came together. A Time magazine cover story dubbed him "the Paul Revere of Ecology" for his early leadership in the field. His persuasion was felt in the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970 and in the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency the same year.

In 1979, Commoner helped to found the Citizens' Party in an attempt to bring together community activists, disaffected trade unions, consumer groups and anti-nuclear energy advocates into one progressive coalition. Commoner was the Citizens' Party candidate for president in 1980, running on a platform that called for greater citizen control over corporate decision-making, reductions in military spending and discontinuance of nuclear energy development. Though Commoner won less than a percentage point of the popular vote, the campaigners felt that their message was heard. When asked about his campaign by the New York Times in 2007, he said that the best question of the campaign was from a local reporter who asked, "Dr. Commoner, are you a serious candidate or are you just running on the issues?"

Asked what legacy he hoped to leave, Commoner said simply that he had devoted his life to learning things about science that are useful to people where they live. His practice of bringing science to the service of the people serve as a model for activist-scientists for generations to come.

Photo: Via ohiocitizen.org

Smiling, Romney stuck a dagger in your heart

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 13:33:00 +0000

Smiling, he stuck a dagger in your heart. That about sums up Mitt Romney's performance in Wednesday night's debate.

Of course, if you're Big Oil or Big Capital, it's not your heart we're talking about.

In the debate Romney said a lot about not raising taxes, but said not a word about eliminating the continuing Bush/Republican tax cuts for the super-rich. And, claiming to defend "small regional banks," he slammed the consumer protections in the Dodd-Frank bill. Funny, Romney's top contributors are PACs and individuals from Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Credit Suisse. (By contrast, Obama's top contributors are listed as people/PACs associated with the University of California, Microsoft, Google, Harvard, and folks in the U.S. government. Learning, technology and the public - versus Wall Street.)

Romney twice attacked funding for green energy. That's a dagger in the heart of our planet's survival and jobs in a growing economy. But it's good for Big Oil. And Big Oil is overwhelmingly backing Romney and the Republicans.

He advocated vouchers (though he stayed away from that word) that hand taxpayer money to people so they can "choose" where to send their kids to school - religious schools, for-profit schools, you name it. That's a dagger in the heart of public education in our country.

He said if you're receiving Social Security or Medicare, not to worry, but he'll throw your kids and grandkids under the bus with vouchers so you can "choose" your supposed health/retirement options - in other words, privatize these highly successful programs. That's a dagger in the heart of our families' health and security. Yup, he stayed away from the v-word, but instead preached "individual initiative" and "free market." How's that been working for you so far?

Vowing to repeal "Obamacare," Romney said "free enterprise" and "free people" are more efficient than government. Does he mean Aetna? Blue Cross? Humana? Big Pharma?

Romney said he would slash the federal government, a dagger through the heart of public services we rely on every day, thousands of jobs, and, yes, Big Bird.

Romney smiled and told a million lies. He denied his own program, but specifically presented the right-wing agenda.

President Obama presented the numbers and the case for investing in the common good. Citing Lincoln on the role of government, he said "There are some things we do better together." The federal government's role, he declared, is to help people do what they can't do alone.

And in fact, that IS the American way. Contrary to Romney's "You're on your own" society, our country has always been about "We're in this together," and raising all boats. That's what our historic struggles have always been about.

Romney smilingly stuck a dagger in working-class American hearts in the first debate. That makes him a loser in our view.

The winner will not be declared by debate pundits. It will be declared by all of us on Nov. 6. In the weeks remaining til then, pay attention to the issues at stake for ordinary Americans: workers, the jobless, immigrants, women, young people, gays and lesbians, seniors, people of color - the 99%.

Photo: Sailors watch the presidential debate, Oct. 3. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Declan Barnes.

Eric Hobsbawm, great Marxist historian who kept his cool

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 17:11:00 +0000

I was saddened to hear of the death of Eric Hobsbawm, one of the great Marxist historians writing in the English language of my lifetime. Hobsbawm died Oct. 1 in London at age 95.

I met Hobsbawm on a number of occasions when he came to Rutgers University in the 1970s and 1980s: the first time with his friends and fellow British Marxist historians Edward and Dorothy Thompson; the second, at the end of the 1980s, when he gave some lectures under odd circumstances once more at Rutgers.

First, Eric Hobsbawm the man. He was a little persnickety, something of a putdown artist when I first met him. I was taken aback when he said that he had heard about my dissertation, hadn't read it and probably wouldn't read it. I thought that he was some kind of British aristocrat, maybe even like some careerist leftists at the time that I called "Gucci Marxists," but I was very wrong. I hadn't read his work, which was not about U.S. history, but I began to read it.

The next time I saw him was a decade later at Rutgers, where he had come as a distinguished lecturer. Felix Browder, Rutgers' academic vice president and the son of former Communist Party USA leader Earl Browder, had signed off on the lecture, which was held in a very noisy area attached to a dormitory, with people going in and out, banging doors, etc. I was mortified, told Hobsbawm that he shouldn't stand for such conditions, but Eric kept his cool - I now knew a great deal about his work and saw him as a stiff-upper-lip Englishman in the best sense.

Although he was a longtime member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (now the Communist Party of Britain) which he joined in 1936, Hobsbawm did not suffer the fate of U.S. communist historians like Philip Foner and Herbert Aptheker, not to mention many other scholars associated with the CPUSA: firing, blacklisting, becoming in the language of George Orwell "unpersons." Hobsbawm kept his position at London's Birkbeck College, but like Foner, Aptheker and others, he also continued to write and edit major general works for the people.

Niall Ferguson, a leading historian of the contemporary Anglo-American right who is the exact opposite of everything that Eric Hobsbawm was - hip defender of imperialism, former Thatcherite, adviser to McCain in 2008, writer for Newsweek and Time, opponent of the Obama administration and supporter of Mitt Romney today - actually wrote that Eric Hobsbawm's four-volume general world history (The Age of Revolution, The Age of Empire, The Age of Capital, The Age of Extremes - also published collectively as The Making of the Modern World) was "the best starting point for anyone I know to begin studying modern history."

The Eric Hobsbawm I remember would have smiled at that and suggested that Ferguson take his own advice.

Eric Hobsbawm loved jazz, which the great CPUSA critic Sidney Finkelstein long ago rightly called "a people's music." Hobsbawm wrote about it under the name of Frankie Newton (Billie Holliday's Communist trumpeter) for the left British publication The New Statesman.

He wrote as prolifically as Foner or Aptheker and continued to do so for the rest of his life, as they did.

For what might be called the academic establishment (work that graduate students are supposed to remember on examinations) his best known works were probably Primitive Rebels (1959) and, with George Rude, Captain Swing. I have long used two of the general histories that Ferguson alluded to, The Age of Empire (1875-1914) and The Age of Extremes (1914-1991), in courses that I teach on the history of socialism and communism. Along with the first two volumes in the series, The Age of Revolution (1789-1848) and The Age of Capital (1848-1875), they are more than an introduction to modern history. They provide a framework for understanding history.

Eric Hobsbawm was involved in many battles within the Communist Party of Great Britain over the decades and as a scholar and an activist took positions that I and many readers would both agree and disagree with. Up to his death he was still active, still reading and still writing, fighting his last battle against leukemia. To the end, from my readings and personal acquaintance, he was both his own man and a man of the left. He lives on through his work and through all who knew him.

A plutocrat epiphany: All votes needn’t count

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 13:18:00 +0000

CLEVELAND - America's billionaires have realized they really don't have to bother convincing a majority of people to vote their way. They can put their cash instead into campaigns to keep the hard-to-convince from voting.

Our two major presidential candidates descended on Ohio in late September, and legions of reporters followed closely behind. Those reporters filed tens of thousands of words on what they saw and heard on their quick in-and-out Ohio excursion.

But not one of those reporters filed a word about what may have been the most nationally significant news out of Ohio last week: The release of a new analysis on income inequality from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

This new Cleveland Fed analysis examines both "labor" and "capital" income in America since 1980. Labor income includes everything we make from our jobs: wages and salaries, pensions and health insurance benefits.

Capital income comes from the ownership of assets. Interest, dividends, and the capital gains from buying and selling stocks, bonds, and other forms of property all count as capital income.

Labor income, the Cleveland Fed analysis shows, "has been declining as a share of total income earned in the United States for the past three decades. " The capital share, by stark contrast, has been increasing

In other words, Americans have been making less from work and more from wealth. But only a relative few Americans, the Cleveland Fed observes, have significant quantities of that wealth. The unsurprising result: We have witnessed a significant "spike in inequality" over the past generation.

In a vital democracy, the candidates who seek our votes would be agonizing over this new Cleveland Fed study. How could we possibly have evolved a society, they would orate, where wealth counts more than work? But we don't live in a vital democracy. We live in a plutocracy, a society where the rich rule.

Some Americans dismiss this "plutocracy" label. The rich can't possibly rule, the argument goes, because the rich often don't get their way. Look at the Mitt Romney candidacy. Romney clearly has most of America's wealthy on his side. Yet, according to the polls, he now appears headed to a thumping defeat.

All true enough. The polls certainly are predicting a hard slog for Romney. And the nation's rich have, by and large, lined up Romney's way. These Romney rich have mobilized on a grand scale. They're taking full advantage of the recent court rulings that have essentially thrown out all limits on how much money rich people - and the corporations they run - can spread around at election time.

But these super rich can also read public opinion polls. They've known for some time now that the majority of Americans support public policies - most notably, higher taxes on the rich - that the rich themselves deeply oppose.

All the ad campaigns our rich have bankrolled over the years haven't made much of a dent on this public support for higher taxes on America's wealthy. In a real democracy, that would be the end of the story. The public policy positions the majority favors, in a truly democratic society, eventually wind their way into law,

But not in a plutocracy. In a society where wealth has concentrated at the top, the awesomely affluent don't have to gamble on convincing skeptical voters. They can simply keep these skeptical voters, as America's contemporary super rich have now realized, from voting and having their votes counted.

In 2012 America, we have a phrase for this phenomenon: Voter suppression. And no journalist over the past dozen years has done more to shine a light on this suppression than Greg Palast, the BBC reporter who first gained global attention with his coverage of the disputed 2000 U.S. presidential election.

Now Palast has a new book out that chronicles how many of America's super rich - the Koch brothers, hedge fund titan Paul Singer, Texan corporate raider Harold Simmons, among many others - have been patiently and prodigiously subsidizing campaigns not to "get out the vote," but to keep it down.

"To win an election, you need votes," Palast explains in Billionaires and Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 7 Easy Steps. "Or, just as good, you need to take away the votes of your opponent."

This getting votes to disappear takes money. Notes Palast: "Purging and blocking voters on a grand scale - thousands and millions of registrations and ballots - isn't checkers. It's complex and very, very expensive. "

And this purging and blocking is working. In 2008, details Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, no fewer than 488,136 absentee ballots went uncounted, as did 767,023 provisionally cast ballots, and 1,451,116 ballots thrown out as "spoiled."

Another 2,383,587 would-be voters, Palast points out, "had their registrations rejected," and 491,952 more already registered voters had their registrations purged from the rolls. Finally, an estimated 320,000 other voters were turned away at the polls by poll workers who found their IDs insufficient.

Palast calls all these Americans the "Missing Six Million." They come especially from minority voting groups that tend to vote against super-rich priorities.

"Elections aren't stolen in the vote count," as former U.S. Commission on Civil Rights chair Mary Francis Berry puts it, "they're stolen in the no count."

Santiago Juarez, a voting rights attorney with the League of United Latin American Citizens, places this plutocratic disenfranchisement in the context of the broader trends that the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank has tracked so well.

"You take away people's health insurance and you take away their right to union pay scale, and you take away their pensions," notes Juarez. "Taking away their vote is just one more thing."

Palast has organized a Web site that links to citizen efforts that aim to counter billionaires and their voter suppression. But the long-range answer to voter suppression, he stresses, demands an assault on inequality, a relentless struggle to keep wealth from concentrating at America's economic summit.

"You can't stop billionaires from spending their billions," his new book reminds us. "The only way to put an end to billionaires buying our elections is to put an end to billionaires."

Until that end, income from work will continue to stagnate - and income from wealth will continue to soar.

Veteran labor journalist Sam Pizzigati edits Too Much, an online newsletter about wealth and inequality and a project of the Institute for Policy Studies.

Romney’s wrong on deficits

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 11:39:00 +0000

According to Mitt Romney, the top economic priority is to put our fiscal house in order. If we don't do something almost immediately, he says, we will walk off a fiscal cliff beyond which is nothing but economic disaster. Our future will resemble Greece's present and worse.

So how does he propose to do this?

On the spending side, he would either ruthlessly cut or eliminate or privatize social programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, while Obamacare, whose benefits are increasingly enjoyed by tens of millions of American people, would be overturned.

A chunk of the spending cuts would also come directly from programs that make life much easier for low and middle income Americans. Spending for infrastructure, education and research that are necessary for economic growth and restructuring would be slashed too. Romney's fiscal plan would place the responsibility of rising health care costs squarely on the shoulders of those least able to afford them.

The food stamp program that is essential for tens of millions in a stagnant economy would be drastically scaled back by a Romney presidency. Housing assistance and Pell Grants would meet a similar fate.

On the revenue side, the main element of his fiscal plan is not what you would logically think, that is, to increase taxes in order to enhance government revenues. Rather Romney would cut taxes of the 1 percent by a whooping $5 trillion (that's on top of the Bush era tax cuts), while increasing taxes on you know who - the 99 percent.

What is the upshot of all this? Do the numbers add up? Would it bring order to our fiscal books and jump-start the economy? Would it put people back to work?

By no means! Instead of reducing the deficit, most analysts say the Romney plan would result in bigger deficits as far into the future as the eye can see.

And instead of stimulating economic activity and creating jobs, his plan would further depress an already depressed economy.

All of which makes me (and many other people) conclude that the Romney plan has other objectives in mind than balancing the federal budget and rebooting the economy.

What interests him and his backers, in fact, is turning the current fiscal and economic crisis into an opportunity (never pass up a crisis) to roll back the social safety net, slash living standards, and radically redistribute income to the very top tiers of our society. Yes, he's a redistributionist!

Luckily, more and more people are seeing through the demagogic fog of Romney, Ryan, and right-wing extremism. The jig may not be quite up, but his defeat on November 6 will be not only send Romney back to Bain Capital - it will also give the people's movement leverage to battle austerity and reactionary redistributive politics in the post-election period.

Fiscal deficits at some point have to be addressed to be sure, but now is not the time. The main focus of public policy now should be on creating good paying jobs and stimulating an economy that remains in the doldrums.

Once people get back to work and once the economy recovers, then we can turn our attention to reeling in deficits, but along very different lines than proposed by Romney (and too many politicians on both sides of the aisle for that matter).

On the table must be cutting military spending, ending corporate subsidies, and increasing corporate taxes. This is a working-class as opposed to a corporate-class approach to our fiscal problems.

Photo: Occupy Wall Street sign, October 2011. Kimberlyki CC 2.0