Labor and Worker Justice, Opinion

A Worker Looks In From the Outside of the ‘Labor Community’

With the latest focus on actions across the country by Wal-Mart workers, many middle class people who have the privilege of not having to work a low wage job announce their solidarity with the workers. But their focus is narrow and their solidarity rings hollow. Until a smaller more active union stepped up to support some of the workers who have had the courage to step up, Wal-Mart workers were and (still remain largely) the butt of classist jokes, derisive comments and dismissal by most Americans.

In fact most low-wage work has the stigma in this country of being work occupied by lower educated, slower witted persons who by their lack of the exceptional talent of their middle class betters, have failed to advance economically. This classist attitude rings hollow in the face of the fact that as the American job pool shrinks, more and more people are forced into working low-wage jobs. Jobs traditionally shut-off from the traditional unions. Like a self-serving circle of hell, low-wage workers get stuck in a system where their poverty and desperation feeds an inability and fear to agitate for better wages and working conditions. Short working hours and low hourly pay that leads to poverty existence squeezes the reserves of workers who lack the flexibility to move to other, better paying work. Armchair libertarians and the like love to argue ad infitnitum that all workers have mobility to “take their labor else where”. Such fantasies serve only to blame the worker, leaving better paid workers, the employer and government policies that enable working poverty off the hook.

Sorely missing from the popular perception and focus of the Wal-Mart workers’ action is the acknowledgement that similar workers struggle everyday, unnoticed and unrepresented. The theme in American politics reflects the tacit willingness of Americans to be separated by class distinctions with signage and slogans that cry out the lame theme, “Protecting the Middle Class”, as if there exists a fear of associating with the ‘unwashed’ and the invisible class — including day laborers and those who languish on unemployment that washes them into the fast growing river of workers struggling to make ends meet with barely crumbs.

Does the American ruling class consist of middle class workers? Are not all workers struggling the same? It appears that instead of seeking to embrace all workers, the traditional labor unions have made the strategic decision to “grow” their dwindling movement only among those that fit their aged and concrete-clad vision. All workers share the same basic struggles. As traditional unions beg and work hard to gain support in their struggles to defend collective bargaining rights, where are these unions to defend the millions of workers who don’t work for the most hated retail chain in America?

And also, when will the American “middle class” realize that their never-ending thirst for cheap goods, cheap services and ‘lower prices’ comes at the price of people’s livelihood and standard of living? Is it necessary to have a Wal-Mart in every town in America? Or a K-Mart? Or a Home Depot? Has the spread of the corporate conglomerate retail market led to better wages and increased living conditions, or has it created a silent, suppressed, isolated and ever-growing sub-class? While there is much to applaud in the efforts of the Wal-Mart workers those smaller unions that have come out in support of them and other workers, the focus needs to widen to all workers. The time has come for realization that, as the I.W.W. adage coined nearly a century ago, an injury to one is an injury to all— all workers must come together, ready to represent themselves at the table of labor in solidarity with all labor as One Big Union, united in the fight against the scourge of corporate global capitalism.

From artist Mike Flugennak: http://sinkers.org/stage/

Unfortunately the labor unions presently making up less 12% of the population naturally, have continued their isolation from many workers. Workers in low wage jobs that larger unions have decided long ago not to organize have suffer from the lack of union representation. Exploitation of low wage workers has increased as the economic depression increases the labor pool and emboldens employers. Some union organizers claim that the old ways of organizing do not work as jobs in lower wage fields tend to have a large turn-over, tend to offer little incentive for workers to remain and thus such a fluid membership base leads to instability and inability to organize long term.

This is disputable when one considers that the largest proportion of the workforce with the most direct exposure to the public is the low wage worker, whether in service jobs, healthcare or retail. They provide the opportunity to larger trade unions to increase support for and understanding of the struggle to keep legal protected rights such as collective bargaining and (although diminishing and very limited today), the right to strike. In exchange, formerly neglected workers should justly expect some support for their cause, where such has been historically lacking.

Diminished representation has weakened support for the union movement nationally. As workers feel further and further distant from what many perceive as weak, disaffected or out of touch union representation, frustration within the ranks increases. Many members complain bitterly of lack of rank and file participation in meetings, apathy among members and even many members who enjoy the benefits of their union job while supporting exactly the opposite in political ideology and public policy, hypocritically assisting those who wish to undo the union and keep more workers out while benefiting from union members themselves. Ironically, union leadership and members do nothing to stop this inside sabotage while more and more workers linger on the outside looking in, unable to find a slot in increasingly unavailable union work.

Also membership reduces as well as the cost of carrying a card and paying dues while unemployed becomes prohibitive. Unions have shrunk not only due to assaults on worker’s rights to organize and act for their betterment, but also due to attrition as a result of the dwindling union protection. Started by Ronald Reagan, the Republican and ‘New Democrats’ have unraveled protection for worker expression with only barely audible squeaks from union leadership. Sold down the river on the idea that some kind of gentleman’s agreement exists between labor and big business that they must continue to protect, big labor unions have chosen to bargain with the devil than to reach back and lend a hand to their brother and sister workers who could offer strength in their effort to finally resist big business’ assaults on labor.

The labor movement cannot survive in its current state. Dwindling membership rates and even more diminished actual power when one considers participation rates and support in current unions, has a ripple effect on all workers everywhere. As John O’Reilly points out here, the larger unions smirk and snub workers they consider beneath them at their peril. Only with all workers united together to fight the nihilistic and dehumanizing forces of corporate capitalism will workers succeed and together bring the living standards of all workers to enable peaceful, dignified existence.

John O’Reilly on how the labor movement talks about itself and how he interprets it as a member and organizer of the IWW.

I’ve been thinking recently about the way that the labor movement sees itself and talks about itself. Labor movement activists often talk about labor as a kind of community, a place where individuals can reach across differences and speak to each other based on a shared connection to their unions and unionism more generally. There are big, well-funded internal publications that the large unions produce which help move this discourse. But there are also independent voices which participate in this discourse. I can think of Labor Notes as an example that I’m most familiar with.

Labor Notes and magazines, blogs, or other publications like it have this particular way of speaking about the labor movement and the changes that it needs to implement that I’ve always had a lot of trouble connecting with. I like Labor Notes, I think its a useful piece that praises rank-and-file struggles and shows how the bosses and the business unions are strong and powerful but also have weaknesses. It’s the kind of publication that shows that working people can have independent publications that highlight our stories of success and explain why and when we fail with a good analysis (usually).

But I’ve always had trouble connecting with the language that LN and similar publications use to talk about the labor movement. There’s a positioning of “inside and against” that I’ve always been unable to connect with. The discourse often goes “we are the labor movement, we need to do better, we need to get better leadership and democratize our unions, we need to organize the unorganized.” I like all the reclaiming of the labor movement narrative, that’s a great step I think. Saying that “we,” being rank-and-file workers, are the labor movement and that unions are not just the union leaders, is really important. But to me as an IWW organizer, I’ve never felt part of some community of labor.

Read more: Outside the House of Labor, by Jack O’Reilly, IWW organizer, originally published in Labor Notes.

Tagged Democrats, economic justice, human rights, IWW, labor, low-wage workers, Save the MIddle Class, social justice, US Unions, Wal-Mart strikes, workers

Oct 15 2012

Leave a comment

National Politics

How Psychologists Subvert Democratic Movements

Here is a posting of a very good article on how the institution of psychiatry in America has fallen in the last few decades. From a field that with psychology, at one time devolved from a practice that worked to support the quest for human peace of mind into an arm of the capitalist state. The popularization of the use of drugs as a means to ‘correct’ anxiety and depression are based on the idea that there exists nothing inherently wrong with living in a system that is increasingly oppressive to most working people and children.

No doubt the profit-driven pharmacology sector has banked well on the popularity of fixing the individual instead of fixing the social problems the individual struggles with. In addition, the practice of singling out individuals as opposed to looking at the inter-play of groups and social structures that individuals function under allows the continued dehumanization of state sanctioned capitalism to go unchecked and unanalyzed.

In this article a former practicing psychologist testifies to his first-hand witness of the use of drugs and individual therapy in the alienation and dismissal of dissent as an indicators of mental disease rather than being the proverbial canary in the coal-mine, warning of the increasingly oppressive economic and social conditions of our present day society.

How Psychologists Subvert Democratic Movements

By the 1980s, as a clinical psychology graduate student, it had become apparent to me that the psychology profession was increasingly about meeting the needs of the “power structure” to maintain the status quo so as to gain social position, prestige, and other rewards for psychologists.

Academic psychology in the 1970s was by no means perfect. There was a dominating force of manipulative, control-freak behaviorists who appeared to get their rocks off conditioning people as if they were rats in a maze. However, there was also a significant force of people such as Erich Fromm who believed that an authoritarian and undemocratic society results in alienation and that this was a source of emotional problems. Fromm was concerned about mental health professionals helping people to adjust to a society with no thought to how dehumanizing that society had become. Back then, Fromm was not a marginalized figure; his ideas were taken seriously. He had bestsellers and had appeared on national television.

Workers Continue to Defy the EU’s Oppressive ‘Austerity’ Demands

More news that gets little to no air play in the American corporate media: Greece continues, along with other southern countries of the EU, to resist the “austerity” methods of the finance/capitalist sectors in the EU. Flexing their muscle through the leadership of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, leaders of the major finance and banking interests attempt to keep the lid on the boiling pot. No doubt, to much consternation of the powerful elites, workers in the southern tiers demonstrate that they will not be cowed, demonstrating that an educated workforce will not accept reduction to the role of capital commodities for the benefit of plutocrats.

From Socialist World:

German chancellor Angela Merkel is expected in Greece on Tuesday, 9 October. She will be greeted by an increasing bitterness and anger against the ongoing destruction of the Greek economy and living conditions of working people. An escalation of the struggle against the latest Troika-imposed austerity is developing from below. It has the potential to bring down the Samaras government and challenge capitalist austerity. We publish here an article by Xekinima (CWI in Greece) on the latest developments and the steps which need to be taken by the workers’ movement.

Greek society is in uproar. Everybody knows that the situation cannot continue. The so-called Troika (European Union, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund) have led the Greek economy into a collapse, and are now demanding another round of savage austerity cuts.

The Samaras government of New Democracy with the participation of its fake “left” allies (DIMAR and PASOK) are preparing cuts that will lead to untold misery for millions of workers, pensioners, the poor and the unemployed.

Here are the key statistics that themselves explain the type of war that has been launched against working people:

Official unemployment stands at 23.6% (real unemployment is more like 30%) and among young people is 55%. According to the European statistical agency Eurostat (July 2012), 68% live at or under the official poverty line. Gross Domestic Product has fallen by 22% since the beginning of the crisis. The “national” debt is estimated to be 179% of GDP in 2013, according to the government’s new projected budget, while it was 109% of GDP in 2008 (’Imerisia’ newspaper, 2 October 2012).

In reality, the Greek people have no choice but to try to stop the criminal plans of the Troika leraders and that can only mean trying to bring down the government that collaborates with these criminals. The government (which at the moment faces a serious crisis as scandals are exploding) can be brought down with mass strike action, mass occupations across the country and an indefinite general strike.

Tagged anti-austerity, Austerity, economic justice, german chancellor angela merkel, labor, left allies, social justice, socialism, unions

Oct 08 2012

Leave a comment

Economics, International

In France Hollande tells Plutocrats to Pay Up

So France now offers the world a vision of the hope of the fall of global corporatocracy. The people have spoken and overwhelmingly and enthusiastically embraced socialist Hollande for President, having had enough of the capitalist boot licking of Sarkozy and his participation in the increasingly crushing pressure of global capitalists on the last vestiges of government for the common good.

Unfortunately most Americans know very little about this revolutionary act on the part of France’s people as the corporate press is quick to pass over such news. With little critical mass over the masses, so to speak, the real story gets buried between the Kardashians and fluffy puppies.

But, a bright light shall shine out of the darkness and on September 27th, news ran over the internet such as this post from Addicting Info that summarized the news of Hollande rolling out a reversal on capitalist created impoverishment:

France Tells Austerity ‘Go To Hell’

September 28, 2012

By Nathaniel Downes

Across Europe, the failure of austerity is clear. However with the weakness of the Eurozone’s de-centralized government apparent, France took upon itself a very different path to rectifying its financial woes. Instead of cutting services, punishing its population for the excesses of the élite, France has taken a page out of history, and taking the old tactic of raising its taxes.

The new tax rates top off at 75% of income earned over $1 million euro (approximately $1.3 million USD) for individuals. Some economists are quick to proclaim that such a tax rate would cause the economic conditions to become worse and that it sends a message that France does not like the rich and is not open for business.

This of course is nonsense. France, like many nations, has a tax penalty for taking money out of the country. France also utilizes a value added tax on goods going into the country. This means if a business decides on moving, to say Africa, to avoid the higher taxes, it would find any of its goods at a severe penalty when they returned to sell their goods and services to one of the largest economies in the world. Any business which decides on not selling to the market, of course, is being stupid. They are doing the metaphorical cutting off of their nose to spite their face. Every business can be replaced, so if a market is there, a company will come to fill it.

Instead of being anti-business or anti-rich, it is instead very pro-business. Now a business cannot waste its resources in supporting overpriced leisure-rich. Instead, the businesses which for invest in expansion, in its customers, and in its employees will find themselves rewarded. This becomes a very business friendly environment, companies which work in France will be very pro-growth. This will in turn expand their owners fortunes and overall wealth.

This is not a record for taxes, the United States once sported a 94% income tax rate. What this is, however, is a rejection of the Chicago and Austrian school of economics which have dominated the world for the past 40 years, and an embrace of the American school of economics, a school which has been sorely missing from the austerity debate.

But it all seemed too good as they say and as typical, all one need to do is wait for the wakes to break the shore line from the rock falling into the muddy, still waters of capitalist propaganda. Today, October 7th, the Huffington Post runs (a willing servant of the corporate class, despite its ruse of being left leaning) an article on Hollande and his socialist agenda run with the usual requisite capitalist outlook.

Quick to assert that Hollande’s policies of taxing the rich and daring the corporatists to play chicken with him has failed after only a few whole days of real time, the Huffie-Post writers beat the drum. In this paragraph they claim that France has had it with Hollande and his economic plan, after not making change in three days:

But the freefall in his popularity ratings shows that many erstwhile supporters are already asking whether he has a plan at all, as his inexperienced ruling coalition is buffeted by events rather than shaping them.

Then in the next few paragraphs we hear from “Stephane Rozes, head of political consultancy Cap” who then goes onto characterize France’s social safety net as “generous welfare state and high level of labour protection.”

Of course, those silly silly French with their lattes, red wine and protectionist trade policies. You know the country is just on the brink of disaster, the streets teeming with welfare queens and labor thugs running around in berets, eating government issued Crème brûlée and quoting Proudhon or hiding in dark alleys with guillotines and singing the Internationale, waiting to beat up poor capitalists trying so hard to ~~suck the labor out of everyone and give back nothing~~ make the economic system work for ~~just plutocrats~~ everyone.

But we digress..what deserves attention the most is the paucity of critical information regarding France and Hollande. Reuters refers to Stephanie Rozes of the consultancy Cap or CAP. Since many news organizations use Reuters as their resource, the story with his quote has been repeatedly dozens, if not hundreds of times in the US press without further analysis. This scrap about Rozes was dug up after extensive plowing through French language news publications. Apparently he’s quoted quite a bit, but one might make the assessment that “advises companies” places him firmly in the pro-capitalist camp. Which one could logically infer would not jump to approve Hollande’s refusal to coddle plutocrats and capitalist speculators.

The former director general of the CSA polling institute, now head of the Cap (analysis and perspectives), which primarily advises companies, communities or states such as Monaco or African countries, confirms: “I work with Francis on the fundamental issue of the country.“

In May before Hollande’s President’s chair had a chance to be warmed, Timothy Geithner, commenting on the apparent but rarely spoken fact that impatience with economic policy can be self defeating. But then Geithner’s comments are followed quickly by

New York TImes, May: Change in Paris may Better Suit the US

“If every time economic growth disappoints, governments are forced to cut spending or raise taxes immediately to make up for the impact of weaker growth on deficits, this would risk a self-reinforcing negative spiral of growth-killing austerity,” Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told a Congressional committee in March, comments echoed since then in his statements at many international forums.

But the article was quick to add correction to Geithner’s statements by adding commentary from an a senior fellow of a think-tank that carries a heavy industry representation on its board.

“The administration hopes, in broad terms, that this election will change the conversation,” said Edwin M. Truman, a senior fellow at the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics. “In principle, you’d be saying, ‘Don’t tighten your belt!’ to the countries with the scope to do so,” Mr. Truman said.

Indeed, possibly the US and France has more belt tightening room than many other countries, the question of course is what group within these countries should do the belt tightening. Their silence on that speaks volumes.

Opinion article in Financial Times of May 14, 2012 : What to Expect from Francois Hollande

First, France’s future depends on delivering all three of growth, social inclusiveness and budgetary discipline. No one element can be achieved without the other two. Without a belief among the French that burdens are shared, it is hard to elicit the necessary sacrifices to achieve budgetary discipline. In turn, fiscal discipline should allow the government to conduct more expansive fiscal policies to boost growth if demand is depressed. Fiscal reform and spending cuts will also allow France to fund investments that support growth.

Make no mistake “fiscal reform and spending cuts” meaning deep cuts in social programs that benefit the public. The capitalist speculator cannot suffer a little without making sure the rest of the world does too, even though the rest of the world has already suffered much more and far longer. A call for the plutocrats and corporatist to pay their fair share gets reduced to ‘sharing the burden’ so to speak. Exactly its time for the ones who created the current condition to step up and pay for it. The proletariat has paid enough.

The Economist in September : France’s Economy: The Performance Gap

The end of the early shift, and workers at the Peugeot car factory at Aulnay-sous-Bois, near Paris, are streaming out through the turnstiles. The anger is raw; the disappointment crushing. In July, when the company announced that the plant, which employs 3,000 workers, was to close, President François Hollande loudly branded the decision “unacceptable”. Two months and an official report later, his government has now accepted its fate. “Hollande said that he would look after us,” says Samir Lasri, who has worked on the production line for 12 years: “Now we regret voting for him.”

The decision by Peugeot-PSA, a loss-making carmaker, to shut its factory at Aulnay, the first closure of a French car plant for 20 years, and to shed 8,000 jobs across the country has rocked France. It has become an emblem both of the country’s competitiveness problem and of the new Socialist government’s relative powerlessness, despite its promises, to stop private-sector restructuring. Tough as it is for the workers concerned, the planned closure may have had at least one beneficial effect: to jolt the country into recognising that France is losing competitiveness and that the government needs to do something about it.

Of course the key problem is that the glue that kept all developed countries together; trade that supported higher labor rates has collapsed. Pressure from global companies that can force “competitiveness” by cheap labor extraction coupled with lower regulation in new hosting countries, has caused the current crisis. Lower labor rates and lax regulation have become the new markers for competitiveness. Which begs the question, can any socialist system exist when surrounded by unregulated capitalism?

Bloomberg in May: Merkel Rejects Stimulus in Challenge to Hollande’s Growth Plans

German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected government stimulus as the way to spur economic growth in Europe, setting up a clash with French President-elect Francois Hollande before he’s even taken office.

In her first response to Hollande’s victory in yesterday’s French election, Merkel rejected a return to the “huge” stimulus programs following the financial crisis in favor of business-friendly economic changes. She and Hollande will talk “very openly” about the form of growth to pursue, a discussion now taking place across Europe and “to which the new French president will bring his own accents.”

Germany, the center of the banking community in the EU fell in line, demonstrating its preference for recovery from the capitalist/banker point of view; let the market regulate itself. Promoting “business friendly” recovery certainly comes from the pro-capitalist library of euphemisms Bankers and capitalist will not let go of the trajectory that business looks out for the national and global interests, even when clear evidence exists to the contrary.

Then finally we get to the meat of the issue: but we have to get to the French press to get it:
From France 24, from October 9th: Hollande Unveils Two Year Plan, Billions in New Taxes

French President François Hollande pledged on Sunday to honour his campaign promise of a 75 percent income tax on wealthy individuals as he unveiled a two-year economic recovery plan featuring strict budget targets and 20 billion euros in new taxes.

Well there you have it, what the mainstream global press will not say, Hollande shall follow through on his promise to put the squeeze equally on the plutocrat class as well as the working, who have already suffered job losses and other devastation of what has become essentially, Prime Minister Merkel’s efforts at constructing the EU into the miniature domain of bankers and casino capitalists.

With Greece, Portugal and Spain beaten nearly to its knees, global capitalists have turned their attention to reigning into and destroying socialists all over the EU. The upstart France as usual must turn her head otherwise and lead the charge against the take-over.

While certainly this constitutes a simpler analysis, the distillation remains the same; the global capitalists have made their intent clear. They wish to crush the power of labor in some portions of the EU to turn them into their own speculator’s dream market to exploit to produce goods to sell to the wealthier, plutocrats, protected by government support of speculative monetary and economic policy which feeds the global uppers. In addition, as long as the middle classes in countries remain intoxicated with cheap goods, gross consumption that exceeds need and short-term gratification, the money will roll in.

Tagged Austerity, economic justice

Sep 27 2012

Leave a comment

Economics, Labor and Worker Justice, National Politics

The Poor and Low Wage Workers Pay More in Taxes than Romney

cartoon by David Horsey, LA Times

Article by John Funiciello published in Issue 487 of Blackcommentator.com

Once again, the Republican candidate for president has expressed his contempt for a large percentage of the American people, by claiming that they are “dependent” on government for their very lives and, therefore, will automatically vote for President Obama.

The real wealth of the nation is in its people.

Comments by the GOP standard bearer, Mitt Romney, were caught on tape in Florida last spring and released last week by Mother Jones magazine. In a matter of hours, the comments were seen by tens of millions and caused Romney to call a press conference to explain himself.

What he had said at a private fund-raising dinner was that 47 percent of Americans pay no federal income tax and that they are Obama’s supporters. USA Today his explanatory statement: “The president believes in what I’ve described as a government-centered society, where government plays a larger and larger role, provides for more and more of the needs of the individuals,” Romney said in Orange County, Calif. “I happen to believe instead in a free enterprise, free individual society where people pursuing their dreams are able to employ one another, build enterprises, build the strongest economy in the world.”

By now, it is clear to virtually everyone that Romney doesn’t have a clue about what real Americans’ lives are like. He certainly doesn’t know what it is like to try to stretch a $15,000 annual income and keep a family from starvation. And, he never will. In fact, living on low wages or a low fixed income is one of those weekly miracles that happen and the plight of those millions of families goes unnoticed. Out of sight, out of mind and Romney wants to keep it that way.

The rich are going to be swimming in the same pool as the rest of the country if the whole thing collapses

The GOP, as expressed by Romney in constant campaign rhetoric, wants to reduce the government, so that it never will be able to provide for that 47 percent of the electorate, which likely would never vote Republican. Only the irrational would vote for a party, the main philosophy of which is to cut taxes for the rich and corporations and cut social programs and most functions of government, except for the military and defense. But, books have been written, speculating on why average Americans, who are only one or two paychecks away from needing government assistance, continue to support the GOP platform and its philosophy. They’re out there and they do, indeed, vote Republican.

Democrats are on the horns of a dilemma. They have been subject to the same propaganda from the right wing think tanks and Corporate America for decades and have weakly fought the GOP’s efforts to diminish every function of government at every level. At the same time, they have presided from time to time over a country headed in the same direction, no matter which major party is in charge. The difference is that they don’t sing the same no-taxes-no-social-programs song that the Republicans sing.

For that alone, they have a leg up on the coming election, but this does not leave them in the clear, by any means. Many of their policies on the important issues of our time are much the same as those of the Republicans. These issues include, but are not limited to: global trade, the continuing growth of militarism, the magical vanishing manufacturing base (except for those things that are made by robots), the lack of sustainable and low-cost housing, the food system that is damaging the people’s health, the lack of an affordable universal health system, the staggering cost to students of higher education, endless war, diminishing civil rights, and the continuing assault on virtually every vital aspect of the environment. Other than that, Obama is doing better than the party of Romney.

Many of their policies on the important issues of our time are much the same as those of the Republicans.

Back in the 1980s and 90s, over-the-road big trucks had painted on them something like, “This truck pays $4,467 in road use taxes every year.” That was supposed to show everyone driving a car or pick-up that the truck bearing the sign and weighing some 80,000 pounds was paying more than its fair share to use the roads. A quick check of the “road use” taxes that a car or pick-up truck paid at the time showed that, pound for pound, the car paid about four times what those trucks paid in road use taxes and they didn’t crumble the roads to dust.

So it is with the Republicans and their insistence that the behemoths (wealthy) pay all the taxes, and that there are so many poor and low-wage Americans who pay no income taxes. (We’ll leave aside for a moment that there are giant transnational corporations that pay no taxes and lots of rich folks who pay no taxes, but that’s a subject for another discussion.) The fact is that the poor and low-income wage earners pay plenty of taxes: sales taxes, payroll taxes, gasoline taxes, excise taxes, and endlessly increasing fees for everything from driver’s licenses, to fishing licenses. Low-income Americans pay a much greater percentage of their income than the wealthy or even the middle-income earners.

Somehow, this fact of life has escaped Mitt Romney and people like him, George W. Bush and virtually his entire administration, for example. These are people who are so alienated from the lives of most Americans that they don’t know that the country’s emergency rooms are not universal health care and they are not free.

Thinkprogress.org recently noted: “For example, if you look at state and local taxes, the working poor actually pay a higher percentage of their income in these taxes (all of the other taxes and fees) in every state except for Vermont. (In) Alabama, for example, low-income families (which make less than $13,000) pay 11 percent of their income in state and local taxes, while those making more than $229,000 pay just 4 percent.”

And, Wealth for the Common Good also noted recently that the top 400 taxpayers (those who have more wealth than half of all Americans) pay lower taxes today than they have in about two decades. Their tax responsibilities have declined sharply in 70 years and, during that time, wage-working men and women have been asked to pay more. There was a time when lawmakers discerned a difference between those who could afford to pay taxes and those who were not able to pay taxes and occasionally, they adjusted the tax code to lighten the burden on the poor. This is not one of those times.

Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and most of the Republicans and many Democrats seem to have forgotten that the Democrats once stood for the New Deal (putting people back to work and giving them the means to maintain their living standards, through union organizing), the War on Poverty, and the Great Society.

Instead, at this time, in the midst of a presidential election campaign, the word poverty is barely mentioned. And, if the word “poor” is used, it is to call them lazy, parasites, and a drag on the economy and the national budget. There is no apparent plan from either party to deal with the severe problem of poverty in the U.S. Certainly, there is no plan for the two parties to come up with a plan, and that’s what it takes to solve the problems of a nation that owes its soul to the company store, that is China, Europe, Japan, and several other countries.

Romney doesn’t have a clue about what real Americans’ lives are like.
The right wing (in politics and Corporate America) in this country would do well to hold its tongue when criticizing any of those creditors, because it is people who look and act just like them who have removed the manufacturing base from the country to seek ever lower wages and lower “labor costs.” They are the ones, along with the people they employ in the Congress, who have caused the economic problems, with their constant push for lower taxes for the rich and corporations and the push for rewards for taking their plants out of the country. They have received all of that.

As we have seen, the working class and the middle class, however it is defined, are the ones who pay (remember, they somehow have morphed from citizens into consumers). When they lose their jobs, there’s no one left to pay. How hard is that for the politicians to understand? We’ve had a steady decline of jobs for decades, we have people in mid-life living off their retirement savings, and we have college graduates who might be able to pay off their student loans by the time they are 50 years old.

Like or not, the rich are going to be swimming in the same pool as the rest of the country if the whole thing collapses. Then, they will be seeking out people who have real skills for living, to show them how to do it. Generally, the rich are engaged in enterprises that produce nothing but money and we are beginning to realize that this money is worth about as much as the paper used for printing it.

The real wealth of the nation is in its people. When they are healthy, the nation is healthy. When the people are weakened or sick, the nation is sick. Poverty weakens and sickens a nation and the disparity in wealth in the U.S., at a level not seen in 80 years, has weakened the nation. No one in government at any level seems to be willing to proclaim the danger out loud and, so, the problem is not addressed and the nation is in deep trouble.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist,John Funiciello, is a long-time former newspaper reporter and labor organizer, who lives in the Mohawk Valley of New York State. In addition to labor work, he works with family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers. To contact Mr. Funiciello, please go to BlackCommentator.com.

Tagged Austerity, economic justice, human rights, labor, politics, social justice, Tax Cuts, Trickle Down, unions

Sep 25 2012

Leave a comment

Healthcare

Cooking the Books: More Proof (as if you needed it) That Drug Companies Have No Interest in Your Health

“Bad enough when this scandalous unchecked medication roulette occurs with established, scientifically-endorable diseases. Prescribing psychotropic drugs as if the pros know what they are treating and how, ignoring potential side effects across domains such as psycho-social-biological, and congratulations all around at the expense of the “mentally ill” takes it to another level.”

A very well written comment about an article written for the Guardian and posted in Reader Supported News about the corporate corruption of drug testing and vetting worldwide. Unfortunately, this is not new but has been entrenched in the United States for decades and as demonstrated in this UK article, has become a global practice.

Also worth adding is that as the article states, drug companies will leave no potential profit channel untouched, unexploited or blocked. Prescription drug addiction in America continues to climb at exorbitant rates with little sign of let-up, supposedly depression is climbing in the US and states and municipalities are increasingly pressured to allow pain clinics where heavily addictive synthetic opiates can be marketed.

One has wonder what incentives exist to control the continued prescription of highly addictive drugs and what controls exist as well on diagnosis that possibly could have an effect on the doctor’s own interest that may run counter to that of the patient, or the public welfare.

The doctors prescribing the drugs don’t know they don’t do what they’re meant to. Nor do their patients. The manufacturers know full well, but they’re not telling.

eboxetine is a drug I have prescribed. Other drugs had done nothing for my patient, so we wanted to try something new. I’d read the trial data before I wrote the prescription, and found only well-designed, fair tests, with overwhelmingly positive results. Reboxetine was better than a placebo, and as good as any other antidepressant in head-to-head comparisons. It’s approved for use by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (the MHRA), which governs all drugs in the UK. Millions of doses are prescribed every year, around the world. Reboxetine was clearly a safe and effective treatment. The patient and I discussed the evidence briefly, and agreed it was the right treatment to try next. I signed a prescription.

But we had both been misled. The Drugs Don’t Work: A Modern Medical Scandal

Tagged big pharma, drug companies, economic justice, human rights, medical science, prescriptions, social justice

Sep 20 2012

Leave a comment

Labor and Worker Justice

O’Brien of Worcester City Council Gets It

“When someone tosses out venom and inaccurate statements, they must be answered,” he said. “This will pass legal muster, I am confident of that. The doomsday scenario that the city will have to pay legal costs is a red herring. The statement that is based on politics is also a red herring. I could care less whether this hurts me politically; I’m more concerned about whether this hurts my moral compass. To me, this is an important first step for this council and this city.” [bold ours]

This said by a city councilman at a meeting of the Worcester city council on which a new Responsible Employer ordinance was voted on this week. The ordinance will specifically focus on contractor bid jobs for the municipality. The words reflect a moral courage that we need to see more often. As Mr O’Brien states, doing the right thing often has nothing to do with getting another vote, opinion polls or the endless chatter of the media. Instead when one sits in a position of government, with the power to decide on their city’s future, they must consider the residents of that city. Mr. O’Brien did.

Those who voted against the measure threatened that it wouldn’t stand up to the courts and of course end the world as we know it.

“Before the vote was taken, Mrs. Lukes spoke against it, saying the council would in effect be managing competition for city construction projects by limiting the companies eligible to bid on them to union shops.

She contended that the ordinance will increase the costs of city construction project by 20 percent to 30 percent.

“To what extent does free enterprise exist?” Mrs. Lukes asked. “This is bad for taxpayers, it’s bad for business and it’s bad for this country. This is more of a political decision than anything else.

“We are taking a vote that is going to lose in the courts,” she added. “I expect the courts to throw this out. The taxpayers seem to lose all around in this process.”

Ms. Laken has a point. As construction company’s practices now do not resemble anything like the union’s and do not favor worker’s interests, yes, they might have some catching up to do. But, that has to do with prioritizing business strategies. Unions demand that companies, in exchange for stable, trained and well managed workers, agree to certain sets of standards in their operational priorities. Sure cost adjustments will be required, but large companies fit to bid on commercial projects generally aren’t going to suffer the small monetary gains in order to possibly reap advantage.

The model that Ms. Laken draws upon as calling unions uncompetitive — which she does when one considers her claim that now that the tables are shifted, the non-union shops no longer have the competitive edge; that edge is based on priorities. As a municipality that represents all people and must have within its logical interest, the financial welfare of all, then worrying about the bottom lines of businesses is not her business, especially when protecting wealth accumulation of the few over the benefit of the many — the residents she supposedly represents.

Ms. Laken uses the tired and worn-out claim that somehow looking out for the workers will not benefit employers. Threatening that companies could suffer a 20 -30% loss of business. While one can certainly dispute the figures, when Ms. Laken cries about a “free market” to whom shall it be free? Then one wonders, what interest would a representative of workers in a city have above that of the workers that make up the majority of their electorate? This begs the question on all levels of the public interest. Why would any civil servant believe that policies that benefit the few, especially at the expense of the many constitute worthy policies?

When this country has suffered nearly a quarter century under deregulation and now has started to reap its results, how can anyone of reasonable mind continue to support such “free market” ideology, the very ideology that has soiled this democracy.

The issue at dispute in this city council meeting encapsulates the attack on all working people that has caused the erosion of the value of a workday for all from waitresses to teachers, to mechanics to office workers. Workers have taken on the chin the stagnation of their wages and the simultaneous rises in the cost of living. Strangled by the false prophet of supply-side, Laffer Curve driven economics that intentionally benefited the chosen few, workers have had enough.

Attempting to claw through by leveraging their lives and hopes of bank offered credit, continuing to have faith in the educational system, taking on debt sometimes larger than a first house mortgage, suffering a pock-marked safety net and an increasingly unavailable healthcare system, workers have had enough.

Then along comes someone in a city council to belly-ache about the businesses. Along comes a presidential candidate that sneers at the masses like so many ignorant peasants. Workers have watched and sat quietly at home, thrown out, removed, disposed of, laid waste and left to rot on unemployment checks, as their source of sustenance moves off the continent or into oblivion; a shell of flaking bricks and crumbling mortar.

Workers have struggled alone, in silence, like champs, like martyrs from the most extreme religious sect, long hoping for redemption from something, even if it has no relation to the hell of earth. Struggled with the pain of cancer eating their bodies, struggled with their bodies screaming in pain, rotting away with no relief. Turned away by blind bureaucratic bodies designed for profit and not for care, they suffer alone and do not blame the system they grew up to believe in; the system of free enterprise.

They never blame the businesses, protected by petty politicians and plundering plutocrats. Plutocrats who with the politicians as their soldiers, point the finger back at the worker and tell them, “Find your enemy within, it is not us.” while they have their hand on the noose on every worker’s neck. Plutocrats hire those who will work for less so they can profit more and when those not hired express anger, the plutocrats point their finger, “Find your enemy within, its not us.”

And so it is, the man from another country, the weak, the hungry, the jobless, the ones less able to fight back.

Now that has finished as well. Finally workers have begun to figure out, to learn that all of us together are workers, whether born here, whether a woman or a man. Workers know that the sick were workers too, could be workers in the future. Workers know the hungry is a worker without a job, the family has workers that need jobs, that need sustenance and when all workers fight together, in unison, against the forces of the plutocrat, the worker wins.

Read the entire article in the News Telegram.

Tagged city construction projects, economic justice, government, politics, union, unions, worcester city council

Sep 17 2012

Leave a comment

Opinion, War on Women

Wanton Feminist Sex at the Colleges Killed My Privilege: Cry of a White Man

“Oh wouldn’t you like to come
Back underneath my thumb
In a Patriarchy’s Garden
In serfdom?

You would know your place,
Below the human race
In a Patriarchy’s Garden
Without mace.”

That and more at Sadly No! where writer Cerberus cuts into David Brooks and commits beautiful slaughter. Slaughter on Brooks’ pulling out every tired stereotype of women to make a siren call to the men that the wymenz are taking over and they’d better, um, do something. Like maybe wake up to the fact that the OMG! the roles of women they are a changing and this is nowhere better reflected than in the poor economy. Well ok, he didn’t say all women are ruining the economy, just the loose ones that go college; the ones who put getting a degree and an education as a top priority. Brooks laments the good old days where women knew their place and went to college to find a doctor to marry. Oh the bloody horror! Now with contraception and all, they are having wanton sex, learning things and get this! Getting jobs! Not good paying jobs, that’s not important and not all women, that’s not important either.

When you need to force attitudes that force ridiculous, prejudicial policies that protect a narrow group from another larger group, best to make that group really, really big and scary. Women shouldn’t have reproductive freedom, look, they are all turning into educated sluts! And then taking our jobs! Wasn’t that the frat boy’s job? The privileged snot getting in on daddy’s dime with his white-boy, super polished shine, who studied and had wild sextapades with willing coed sluts? Brings to mind a little diddy someone told me long ago, that’s one of those custom made stories that dad’s tell their young stud sons about to embark into the world of teh wymenz:

A little dog sat next to the railroad tracks all forlorn, contemplating his future. He let his tail fall over the rail. A train came by and as he felt the pinch on his tail he turned his head and whack!

So unfortunately, the puppy’s gone but hopefully you’ll remember to not lose your head over a little tail.

Those femi-nazi mothers must be telling their daughters that story, which of course is bringing in the collapse of all ~~civilization~~ partriarchy.

But I need add no more, let Cerberus take it away!

Bitches Be Responsible for Everything Bad

Tagged economic justice, reproductive rights, social justice, war on women, women

Sep 13 2012

1 Comment

Healthcare, NH Politics

Compassion: A Value, Not a Marketing Commodity

When H. W. Bush phrased his party as the party of “compassionate conservatism” in an attempt to change the perception of the Republican party as the party of Scrooge, the oxymoronic effort derived immediate derision from the more sensible corners of the country.

But that hasn’t stopped the Republicans effort to continuously lie to the public and hide the intentions of their cuts and denial of funding for programs and legislation that would help the citizenry.

Maggie has big shoulders.

The picture above shows Maggie Hassan, the democratic candidate for governor hugging a woman. We received this picture via a message from Facebook, which tells the story of a cold day in March on 2011 during the most dramatic anti-labor rally held that year. At the state house union members had camped out and staged a huge protest.

When the protest was over and the crowd was leaving, a woman came running out of the state house and down the stairs crying and holding a sign. The sender said that the woman had apparently had words with a Republican (possibly O’Brien?) unsympathetic to the plight of parents of children with Autism, the sign reads, “Support Connor’s Law” and has a picture of what everyone learned later was her son.

While most everyone present stood in stunned silence, Maggie had the courage and presence of mind to act and quickly approached the woman and held her while she cried. Our friend also sent along a picture of the woman showing her sign, you can see tears in her eyes.

Democrats have backed and been the source of some of the most major legislation in this country that protect the rights of workers, created the New Deal, advocated for the Civil Rights Act, pushed to get out of the past wars we’ve waged, advocated for full freedom of rights for women. We were the party that supported gay rights, that turned to listen when the streets exploded with riots in LA and some Democrats were even ready to talk about legalization of medical marijuana long before it became the cause du jour for the young libertarian.

The Republicans can make up every excuse they’d like to justify their inhumane practices in supporting corporations and the 1%, but they can never claim to have compassion. That is the realm of the Democratic party and despite its faults, it remains their core value. Not conservative compassion, not pre-qualified, approved, pre-packaged and market tested compassion, but the kind of compassion that comes from understanding and knowing what it is to suffer injustice.

While Democrats, Progressives and others on the left can argue compassion in degrees, we know its where we stand in solidarity at the core. We know its the kind of compassion that rises out of the heart, that realizes that government represents real people, not statistics. Its the kind of compassion that comes from a warm, breathing, flesh and blood person who has cried, who has loved. It is the compassion that burns like a fire inside the heart of every Democrat who is determined to get up, get in the game and do something. Just like Maggie did that day.

Tagged autism, economic justice, human rights, maggie hassan, new hampshire democrat, NH Democrats, social justice

Progressive Action New Hampshire

To encourage progressive action events and discussion in New Hampshire

Tag Archives: economic justice

In France Hollande tells Plutocrats to Pay Up

France Tells Austerity ‘Go To Hell’

French President François Hollande pledged on Sunday to honour his campaign promise of a 75 percent income tax on wealthy individuals as he unveiled a two-year economic recovery plan featuring strict budget targets and 20 billion euros in new taxes.

O’Brien of Worcester City Council Gets It