Workers' Press

Mary and Mike Boehm's Holiday Foreclosure Nightmare

2010-12-27T18:17:00.000-06:00

in this video Mary and Mike Boehm of St. Louis, MO tell the hear-wrenching account of their 408day struggle with the HAMP mortgage modification program and Bank Of America, who is planning for foreclose on their home over the holiday weekend.

Big Banks Abandon the People who Bailed them Out

2010-12-22T01:04:00.001-06:00

Bank of America's Holiday Gift to the People: Foreclosure!

written by Paul J Poposky

On Monday, December 20^th nearly 100 local activists, concerned citizens, friends and supporters of Mary & Mike Boehm mobilized to march on Bank of America’s (BOA) Clayton, MO branch location to protest the Boehms’ pending foreclosure, set to begin on Dec 26^th, 2010. Six dedicated activists were arrested at the demonstration when they attempted to approach the bank, seeking to negotiate to keep the Boehms in their home this holiday season. It seems the Grinch came early, this year… but who are the Boehms, and how did they come to find themselves in such an unenviable position at Christmastime, no less?

Living – and Losing – The American Dream

Mary and Mike Boehm were two happy South St. Louis home owners who thought they were living the American Dream. Mary works as a home school teacher, and Mike worked as a division manager for a company contracted to build equipment for the oil industry. Mary and Mike made their house payments, in full, on time; every month.

Things seemed to be going great for the Boehms, that is, until June of 2009 when Mike got laid off. “I was on unemployment for over six months after my former-employer downsized by 80%” Mike said, “and we kept current with our payments, every month during my unemployment. I’ve got work now, but it’s come at a big cut in pay. In Nov of ’09 we realized we needed help.” So the Boehms went to their local Bank of America, and applied for a Making Home Affordable (HAMP) loan modification.

What is HAMP? Remember the program that was supposed to sweeten the bailout of the financial sector, which was supposed to help 8million struggling American homeowners avoid foreclosure by working with lenders to lower monthly payments? The same program which president Obama and Congress spent the past couple years telling us justified shoving the $700billion bailout pill down the American taxpayer’s throat? THAT is HAMP. It’s SUPPOSED to be helping average American homeowners and families coping with economic or medical hardships in the wake of the Great Recession. So how could this happen to Mary and Mike?

In an appeal posted online, Mary Boehm explained how what she and her husband believed to be a lifeline to preserving their American Dream turned into a nightmare: “On November 8, 2009, we applied through Bank of America, and were told we qualified, that we needed to turn in paperwork in order to be permanently approved, but that the entire process should take 45 days.” In a brief interview at the Dec 20^th rally, Mary told reporters “we were told to start making trial payments – and we did that – we made every trial payment on time, in full, just like the bank asked” but Mike explained further, “then they started charging us late fees on the difference between our old payments and the trial modification payments… we were doing everything they asked us to. We filled out their applications and all the paperwork two or sometimes three times after they said they lost it or couldn’t find it or never received it.”

At the rally, Mary shared the heart-wrenching account of her family’s now-408 day ordeal with BOA, and how “Not once has Bank of America called us. Every call—the hundreds of calls—we have initiated. Oh, except the other day. Yes, once, they called us, and that was a collection call.” The Boehms allege that BOA never told them “never, at any point” that they could still be foreclosed upon, EVEN if they made all their trial payments on time, during the application and approval process. In her online appeal, May Boehm revealed just how underhanded BOA has been in handling of their case: “we also figured out that Bank of America had posted two of our monthly payments into a Fees Due account, despite the fact that, as we understand it, charging fees for MHA modifications is strictly prohibited by the government.”

“You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch…”

Not surprisingly, this is not BOA’s first major incident of holiday Scroogery. Some may remember the Chicago-area Republic Windows and Doors workers who were forced to occupy their workplace and picket BOA in Chicago during the 2008 holiday season after the bank colluded with the owners of Republic to deny workers their severance packages, in violation of federal law. The Republic workers, organized through United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers, won that battle through direct action, pressure of public sentiment and media attention.

If stories like these hit close to home, it should come as no surprise. More and more reports of mortgage modification nightmares have been flooding the national media for months, and it’s not just small-time scam artists. Earlier this fall one BOA executive admitted during legal proceedings that she routinely signed up to 8,000 foreclosure notices a month without reading them. This, from the same bank that has, so far, received up to $50billion in taxpayer bailouts from the federal government.

Just last week 22 were arrested in downtown Los Angeles during a demonstration outside Chase Bank, protesting unfair home foreclosures. Once again, a large bank (another recipient of taxpayer funded bailouts) and the HAMP program were front and center.

“Fired Up, Ain’t Takin’ No More!”

Understandably fed-up with BOA, Mary and Mike Boehm again found themselves looking for help, “I contacted the Attorney General, and was told to call the housing counselor. Then I had to call Catholic Charities, through HUD, who connected me to the people at MORE, and here we are…”

Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE), a grassroots campaign described on its Facebook page as aiming to “organize low to moderate income people across Missouri… around issues relevant to their communities” recognized the urgency of the Boehms’ plight, and its connection to a disturbing pattern of foreclosures emerging across the country. Cathy de la Aguilera of MORE explained “our vision is that all these issues that affect low income people; jobs aren’t being created, our environment is being destroyed for profit, the way the banks are treating the taxpayers who bailed them out… these are issues everyday people can rally around. We need to organize to fight back against corporate greed, and that’s what MORE is trying to do.”

Perhaps the Boehms or the organizers at MORE had heard about the 22 arrested outside Chase bank in L.A., some may have been familiar with the direct actions taken against BOA by the Republic Workers in Chicago or the multitude of smaller direct actions against big banks since, or maybe they’d just been watching Michael Moore movies lately; whatever their inspiration, they were fed up, fired up, and weren’t going to take it anymore.

With a Facebook event ad and a few dedicated activists, Mary, Mike and MORE were able to rally nearly 100 supporters for the demonstration outside BOA in Clayton, MO. The protest was peaceful and many demonstrators brought their children, sang Christmas carols and carried signs with slogans cleverly pointing out the obvious greed of big banks like BOA. The Boehms’ supporters demanded BOA halt their foreclosure of Mary & Mike’s home, cancel the fraudulent late-charges and accept their application for a mortgage modification.

Bank of America: Abandoning the People who Bailed You Out

Even after six protesters were arrested while peacefully attempting to enter the bank, BOA refused to comment, except to say that the Boehms’ HAMP application was “under review” but would “likely be declined… because they are already paying less than the government program would provide.” Bank of America issued this statement from an out-of town office, and assured the Boehms that their home “is not in foreclosure at this time. Once started, the foreclosure process takes some time to complete. There is no immediate threat of their home going to a foreclosure sale.”

While BOA may not have had much to say, Mary and Mike Boehm certainly did. Mary said this “The banks were bailed out with the understanding that they’d help average people who are undergoing hardships. I mean, these days, what happened to us could happen to anyone.” Despite everything they’ve been through since their troubles began, Mike Boehm offered this glimmer of hope, and a perhaps an answer to anyone asking the question “what way forward?”

“The banks are getting bigger and bigger all the time… it’s like they run the country, now. I hope… I hope these community actions can get more people to see what’s really going on in our country.”

Greater St. Louis' Left Wing School builds Solidarity

2010-12-11T21:28:00.000-06:00

Second Annual Left-Wing School builds Solidarity in St. Louis

written by Paul Joseph Poposky

Sunday

December 5, 2010

Over 60 local activists and organizers from dozens of Leftist and progressive organizations, political parties and coalitions came together at Southern Illinois University - Edwardsville for the second annual Left Wing School (LWS). This year’s Left Wing School was organized by the Greater St. Louis United Front (GSLUF), a coalition of Left-leaning organizations founded in the wake of the 2009 LWS.

As promised in GSLUF’s promotional literature, the second annual Left Wing School presented participants an opportunity to learn about a variety of ideas, presented by a diverse gathering of organizations and individuals on the political and social Left, and offered a unique opportunity for organizations to come together, exchange their ideas and learn from one another.

The free, all-day event featured tabling displays, workshops, and open discussion in a safe and supportive environment. Autonomy Alliance, organizers of the first Left Wing School, provided a healthy breakfast and lunch – free of charge – featuring artisan bread donated by Black Bear Bakery; a restaurant in the historic Cherokee neighborhood of South St. Louis run as a workers co-operative.

The Left Wing School was co-endorsed by over a dozen local organizations, an improvement over last year’s event. This increased participation was reflected in the diversity of views represented. The Campaign for a Mass Party of Labor (CMPL), new to the LWS this year, explained why CMPL calls for the Left and Labor to break away from the Democrats and found their own mass-party. Gary Gaines of the Southern Illinois Committee on Occupational Health and Safety explained “Your Rights in the Workplace”. Darrin Gilley and Glenn Kage, local labor leaders and former United Auto Workers, offered a course on why we should all be “Buying American”.

Nick Gilliam and Jim Hamilton of the Socialist Organizer (SO) and Workers Emergency Recovery Campaign (WERC) discussed “Fighting Downsizing in the Public Sector” and explained why it is so important for organized labor and the Left to protect public sector jobs and benefits as an anchor for the labor movement and to preserve the public services they provide. The afternoon workshop sponsored by SO presented immigration from the perspective of the Mexican people in “Immigrant Workers and the Fight for a Socialist USA”, in which Dr. Deborah Cohen of the University of Missouri – St. Louis History Dept. showed the film “Cosecha Triste” and lead a discussion of the highly exploitative Bracero “guest worker” program.

Autonomy Alliance (AA) presented two workshops; David Feldman of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and Andy Lucker of AA showed us what an example of a Left-alternative economic model might look like in “Participatory Economics”, while Lucker and E.J. Rollins sought to tie together multiple social theories in a comprehensive and coherent manner in “Complementary Holism”.

Don Fitz and Angelika Mueller of the Gateway Green Alliance asserted that we need less (stuff) to have more (happiness) in “De-Growth: Left Wing Myths and the Environment”. The Instead of War coalition explored the roots of war today in “War and Capitalism”, and the Workers International League explained the crisis of the Cuban Revolution and sought to explain “Where is Cuba Going?” During the lunch hour, an impromptu circle discussion of anarchism also occurred. The Palestine Solidarity Committee helped close the school by showing ways everyday Americans can do their part to change public policy in Israel and respect the rights of Palestinians to live in “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions”, a workshop consistently described by participants as “excellent!”

But two presentations in particular stood out ahead of the pack in terms of content, audience participation and enthusiasm. Steve Fusch’s show-stealing workshop “The Big Gay Breakout” chronicled the trials and tribulations of organizers in the LGBT movement in the 1970’s from Fusch’s own personal experiences. Fusch discussed the modern challenges for LGBT people, concluding with the question: “what way forward for the movement?”

Stephen Houldsworth of Saint Louis Effort for AIDS answered that question in his workshop “Radically Queer”, which concluded the Left Wing School. Houldsworth delved deep into the hidden history of radicalism in LGBT history, and sought to educate LGBT folks and Lefties alike on the foundational role radicals have played in the LGBT movement and the movement on the Left as a whole. Houldsworth showed how time and again the LGBT movement has become dominated by centrist, reformist and assimilationist activists, and how the shift from radical to assimilationist and back again is, in fact, a cyclical process endemic within progressive movements; understanding the historic roots of this process and how the Left is often co-opted by reformist elements is essential to moving the Left forward and back on the offensive.

The closing session of the second annual Left Wing School saw organizers celebrate the general improvement of this year’s effort over the first LWS in 2009 and offer constructive criticism aimed toward building upon the success of this year’s event, expanding and improving it for 2011, and continuing this fine tradition of building solidarity on the Left in St. Louis.

Paul Poposky is a St. Louis area Labor activist and member of CWA local 6653, the Campaign for a Mass Party of Labor (CMPL) and citizen member of the Greater-St. Louis United Front (GSLUF)

Robert Weissman is right about GM

2010-11-18T00:05:00.000-06:00

Robert Weissman of "Public Citizen" is right on, with regards to his recent comments against GM opening up a new stock offering and the government selling off huge portions of its share.

This was indeed a golden opportunity to make real change in the auto industry and set GM out in front of its competitors again. Too bad there wasn't a Labor government in place, to do that. More to come on this topic soon...

You know what's disgusting? Union-Busting!

2010-11-11T13:17:00.000-06:00

My fiance stumbled upon something this week when asked by her supervisor at work to check the company email for a pending order. The owner of the business where she is employed - who knows Julie's political association and my history working with unions and helping organized membership in St. Louis' SD MNEA SEEA - has been receiving email offers to attend an online "webinar" course on how to identify and squash union organizing drives in the workplace.

This is nothing new, of course, as the bosses have been keeping each other up to speed on the best tactics to counteract workplace unionism since the beginning of the organized Labor Movement. The link to this particular training course, however, reveals a network dedicated to the purpose of busting workers unions and allowing management to maintain and tighten their dictatorship over the average worker and thereby increase exploitation of labor.

This is just one more concrete example of why legislation like The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is absolutely ESSENTIAL reform legislation, one which workers and their unions ought not compromise on, under any circumstance. Also, ongoing oppression of workers and ever shrinking workers' unions in the private sector and the continued reliance of Organized Labor upon the "democratic" Party for struggle on the political front further necessitate that Labor break cleanly away from the Dems and found a party of our own, truly of, for, and by the vast Working Class majority; a mass Party of Labor. Only thus can we build the sort of grassroots, local campaigns to build a mass basis for a strong national campaign for legislation like EFCA and to fight uncompromisingly for the REAL interests of America's Working Class majority.

The link to this "webinar" is posted below. I think I just found my next project, investigating and exposing the networks employers and management use to prevent workers from organizing and establishing even the faintest hint of workplace democracy or collective bargaining.

Here is the link:

http://www.businessmanagementdaily.com/glp/34507/index.html?campaigncode=268BWN

Where Is Labor's Voice in the 2010 Elections?

2010-11-01T23:25:00.002-05:00

CMPL Statement on the Midterm Elections

WRITTEN BY CMPL

FRIDAY, 29 OCTOBER 2010 16:00

(If you agree with the perspective outlined below, we urge you to join the Campaign for a Mass Party of Labor and help us raise these ideas in our unions, workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods.)

The 2010 midterm elections are now less than a week away, and the media is ramping up its coverage of the candidates and the “issues.” There is plenty of coverage about the need to make “hard choices” when it comes to budget cuts and the deficit, the latest declarations of the Tea Party, or the debate over raising or lowering taxes on small businesses in order to create a handful of jobs. But little attention is paid to the real root of the problem facing American workers: an economy unable to generate the millions of jobs needed to replace those lost during the last few years and to keep up with the growing population. Nor do the media pundits state the obvious: the budget shortfalls which now require such drastic sacrifices on our part are the result of billions being spent on foreign wars, and even greater amounts handed out with few or no strings attached to bail out the banks, insurance, and mortgage giants.

And yet it is not these massive Wall Street corporations, responsible as they are for the crisis, that are being made to pay. It is the workers, who bear no responsibility for this mess, who are being made to shoulder the load, directly and indirectly. And yet, with so much at stake for the working majority of the country, in terms of who decides budget priorities at the federal, state, and local level, the voices of labor are few and far between. Where is labor's voice in the midterm elections?

The limits of third party campaigns

Although there are a handful of candidates across the country standing against the Democrats and Republicans and their well-oiled electoral machinery, the fact is that few if any of these candidates stand any chance at being elected, even to local offices. On top of the millions spent by the major party candidates and their campaigns, there has been a 367% increase in outside spending this electoral cycle, as compared to the 2006 midterms. It is a big money race, and only those with deep pockets or well-heeled friends in high places need apply. Without resources and a mass backing, third party candidates will almost always end up in third place, no matter how good their platform is. In most races, therefore, we are once again left with more of the same: a race between corporate-backed candidate #1 and corporate-backed candidate #2.

In light of this, some have compared the U.S. electoral process to a “work” in professional wrestling. In public, the wrestlers from opposing camps are mortal enemies, say the most outrageous things about each other, and even smash chairs on their opponents' heads in order to build up a rivalry that will attract interest from the fans. But backstage things are very different. They are all friends and part of the same show business production, partners in the business of filling seats and selling pay-per-views. The parallels with big business politics would almost be funny if it weren't so tragic for the working class. But it isn't at all funny when millions are losing their homes, their jobs, and their hope.

Hope for real change is a powerful motivator. Just two years ago, the deep-seated desire for change in this country was heavy in the air. Literally millions of Americans flocked to catch a glimpse of Obama on the campaign trail, many with tears of joy in their eyes. People saw in him what they wanted to see: jobs, health care, education, and an end to the wars. For a few months, they were willing to “wait and see” what he would do to make things better. Then a year passed. Then another. Now millions Americans are starting to realize what seemed unthinkable to them just two years ago: the real Obama is much like every other big business politician.

Obama continues in Bush's footsteps

The proof is in his policies, many of which echo Bush's down to the letter. There has been no significant help for families whose homes have been foreclosed; No Employee Free Choice Act (card check); No repeal of Taft-Hartley or other anti-union laws; No universal health care; No universal education; No massive program of useful public works to create millions of jobs and rebuild the country's crumbling infrastructure.

On the contrary, it has been “business as usual” as corporate CEO pay has skyrocketed to even more absurd levels while the rest of us wonder whether we'll have a job or even a roof over or heads next month. No wonder the majority of American workers are unimpressed with the options before them in the midterms. No wonder the Democrats have to deal with an “enthusiasm gap.” No wonder it is seen by many as a referendum on Obama. And yet, after two years of near total inaction on issues of importance to labor, Obama is now desperately appealing to the unions to help keep the Democrats in power. And unfortunately, instead of calling him out as a defender of big business and proposing a concrete alternative, most union leaders are bending over backwards to oblige him.

All too often, American workers are compelled to vote “against” this or that, as opposed to “for” something they actually want. Instead of presenting a positive plan to not only save, but expand Social Security and Medicare in the face of Republican plans to privatize the system, raise the retirement age, and cut benefits, the labor leaders try to scare us into voting for the Democrats, who in reality only offer variations on the same policy. Instead of offering an optimistic vision of what is possible in the richest and most productive country on earth, we are told by the labor leaders merely to vote “against” the Tea Party. This is the result of their policy of economic and political partnership with the bosses. But pressure is mounting for them to change tack.

Thousands of union members are saying “enough is enough!” They instinctively understand that it's high time the American working class had its own political party, a mass party of labor based on the unions.

The problem with "lesser evilism" is eventually, when voters rebel and throw the bums out, you wind up getting the "greater evil" anyway; either way, you're still stuck with plain old EVIL

Changing mood

Already, there are signs of this changing mood. Under pressure from the rank and file, union contributions to Democratic Party candidates are down this electoral cycle. In North Carolina, the NC Families First Party, a state-wide labor party organized by SEIU has laid the groundwork for future campaigns against the Democrats and Republicans. In South Carolina, the Labor Party has been revived and is running a candidate for the SC House of Representatives. In Pittsburgh, the Steelworkers at least flirted with the idea of running one of their own against the incumbent Democrat in the midterms, although in the end they didn't run a candidate.

In addition, the modestly successful October 2nd mobilization for jobs in Washington, DC was the first significant stirring of the American workers since the crisis began. It was an indication that workers are willing to fight against the cuts and for jobs. Although many speakers tried to turn it into a pep rally for the Democrats, it wasn't so easy to do, as many of the tens of thousands of workers present weren't having it. Just two years ago, the union tops had no problem calling openly for a vote for the Democrats. Now they have to call for a vote “against” the Republicans.

Also under pressure from below, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka has made increasingly militant statements in the run up to the elections. For example, he recently said that “Charting a new course for our economy requires that we understand the causes behind wage stagnation and growing inequality over the past 35 years. And prominent among those causes is the free market orthodoxy that has served the interests of our nation’s wealthiest families and most powerful institutions but left the vast majority of working families behind.”

Condemning “free market orthodoxy” for the crisis facing “the vast majority of working families” is a bold statement coming from the leader of millions of organized workers. Unfortunately, Trumka has also done his utmost to mobilize a disillusioned rank and file to get out the vote for the Democrats, who, like the Republicans, are defenders of that same “free market orthodoxy.” In a pre-election conference call with president Obama and thousands of union activists, Trumka outlined the support the unions have given the Democrats, which Obama has called the “backbone” of the electoral campaign: “For every dollar spent by corporate CEOs, you’ve knocked on one door, dialed one number, handed out one leaflet. One voter at a time, you’ve been erasing those millions of dollars to let our opponents know that democracy isn’t for sale. We’re not for sale.”

It's time for the labor leaders to draw the necessary conclusions from their statements. The solution to the problem facing workers is right there in Trumka's own words. The labor movement is strong enough to be the “backbone” of a national political campaign. But instead of mobilizing to elect candidates from the pro-corporate Democratic Party, it's time for our leadership to break with the parties of the corporations and build our own mass political party. It's time for them realize that there can be no meaningful “partnership” with parties that will never in a thousand years represent anyone but the rich. It's time to stop throwing good money and resources after bad. It's time to use the substantial resources of the labor movement to run independent labor candidates in 2012, and lay the foundation for a mass party of labor in the years ahead. Instead of making excuses for the Democrats' lack of action, it's time for labor to stand on its own two feet, both at the workplace and at the polls.

Even bigger attacks coming

Whichever corporate party gets control of Congress, the states, and local government, we can be sure of one thing: the working majority of this country will not have a real political voice to fight in our interests. A whole series of austerity measures and cuts are already in the pipeline, and without genuine political representation for the workers, the rank and file will pressure the labor leadership to fight back against these attacks. Trumka and the rest of the leadership should give a bold lead on this front as well, using the unions' structures and resources to mobile the organized as well as the unorganized in the workplace, in the schools and universities, and on the streets. The recent mass workers' and students' strikes and blockades against cuts in Social Security in France, where even fewer workers are unionized than in the U.S., shows that it is more than possible for unions in the U.S. to lead such struggles, provided the leadership does what they were elected to do: lead.

However, even the most successful fight back against this or that cut or closure will have a limited effect in the long term unless it is linked with a broader political struggle. Unless and until such militant actions in the workplace and on the streets are backed up with legislation and enforcement to protect the gains we achieve in these struggles, they will always be in danger of being rolled back. This is just another reason we need a labor party, to fight on the political plane in concert with mobilizations on the streets.

Winners and losers

It would be impossible, and frankly, not very productive to try to predict the exact results of these elections. We'll know the results soon enough. But we can predict that frustration with the two party system will likely be expressed in high abstentionism. Many people can't see the point of voting when no matter what, things seem to keep getting worse.

So the Democrats may well squeak out a “victory” for their party by retaining control of Congress. With the memory of Bush and co. fresh in their minds, just enough voters may hold their noses and go to the polls anyway, to try to keep the so-called “lesser evil” out of power. But it is also possible that the millions of demoralized Obama 2008 supporters will simply stay home in disgust, giving Congress over to the so-called “greater evil”.

Either way, the “will of the people” will be determined by just a fraction of the population, and in most cases, the only ones with any real chance at winning will be those with enough personal riches or wealthy backers to spend hundreds of thousands and even millions on their campaigns. So in the end, no matter who “wins,” we can predict the loser: the American workers. Because it's six of one or half a dozen of the other. Or as the great rock band The Who sang in their classic Won't Get Fooled Again: “Meet the new boss… Same as the old boss...”

But we don't need to keep losing elections. We don't need to keep voting for “boss #1” or “boss #2.” We don't need to keep getting “fooled again.” We don't need to limit ourselves to “third” parties and third place. There is another way forward. Since workers are the majority in this country, we should strive to be the “first” party, in first place. It all starts with the unions breaking with the bosses' parties and building a party of, by and for the working majority.

If you agree with this perspective, we urge you to join the Campaign for a Mass Party of Labor and help us raise these ideas in our unions, workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods.

Letter From the Editor: Updates, New Contributors and Content, and Exciting News!

2010-10-22T11:55:00.003-05:00

Readers,

It having recently come to my attention that I've developed a small reader base, I have recently made the decision to revive TheWorkersPress blog in the coming days, with additional content, contributors, a change in direction, and a few surprises in store.

This is coming following a several-month long series of financial, personal and family crises for me and those close to me which necessitated my leave of absence from the world of online freelance journalism. But fear not! All is well now, and I am negotiating with some like-minded comrades to bring in additional contributors and increasing the content of the website to ensure that - even in the event of another, future absence - TheWorkersPress stays up and running with cutting edge, honest news, commentary and analysis from an unapologetically, uncompromisingly Working Class perspective.

The most exciting news of all, though, is that we are currently working on moving TheWorkersPress... YES, moving TheWorkersPress! The target date for moving to a new server - one which will allow me to offer vastly greater content and superior layout, design and upgraded services to my readers - is set tentatively for January, 2011, though this location will remain active as a beta site until further notice. This move feels natural to me, as there has been a change in direction and the type of content and tone of the commentary offered by this blog in recent months. As editor of TheWorkersPress, I am very excited that this change should coincide with expanding our content and moving to a newer, more visible local online.

I have no way of knowing on this particular server and platform exactly how many of you are out there, reading this, but I hope you are as excited by these coming changes as I am. Keep reading, and please do send your comments, suggestions or criticisms to my email: PaulJosephPoposky@hotmail.com

Solidarity, forever

Paul J Poposky
Editor,
TheWorkersPress

Paul Poposky is a Socialist activist in the greater-St. Louis area involved in local and national social justice campaigns, advocate for Working Class consciousness, political, social, and economic issues, supporter of the Campaign for a Mass Party of Labor (CMPL), and a proud member of CWA Local 6355 (speaking and writing as an individual, NOT in an official capacity for the CWA).

Reporting on the St. Louis Launch of the Campaign for a Mass Party of Labor (CMPL)

2010-10-16T19:26:00.001-05:00

Labor Advocates Seek a New Way Forward for Workers

Tuesday evening, September 28^th 2010; New and familiar faces from St. Louis’ activist and Labor Left alike came together at the Carpenter Library to hear an appeal from the Campaign for a Mass Party of Labor (CMPL) on the pressing need for a New Left political alignment in America to combat the rising tide of corporate power and poverty, and give real voice to America’s Working Class, minorities, immigrants and the oppressed alike.

Their solution: a mass Labor Party, based in the Unions and Working Class communities across the country.

The CMPL is a broad coalition of Left and Labor activists, community leaders, students and workers founded by the Workers International League (WIL), a national organization which advocates for the interests of the Working Class. The purpose of the campaign, as described on their website, is to:

1. Explain the need for the labor movement to break with the Democrats and Republicans, run independent labor candidates, and build a mass labor party based on the unions.

2. Connect this idea with the struggles of workers and youth.

3. Show how a mass labor party could change society for the benefit of the working class, which makes up the vast majority of the population.

Speakers at the event included Nikhil Kothegal, an unemployed full-time college student and former educator in St. Louis Public Schools and member of the WIL; Tim Kaminski, a retired UAW local 110 committeeman and production line worker at the Fenton, MO Chrysler plant; and David May, a local production line worker and also member of the WIL.

While the panel made a solid argument for the need for a mass Labor Party to continue the economic struggle of the Unions on the political stage, speaker Tim Kaminski stole the show with a fiery critique of decades of corrupt Union leadership, joined at the hip to the Democrats and often closer to the corporate executives on the other side of the table than they are to their own rank and file.

In his critique Kaminski was clear “we need to base this campaign on the unions, because they are the only true mass organizations the American Working Class has got left, but we can’t repeat the mistakes of the National Labor Party Advocates in the 1990’s. We’ve got to base this campaign on the rank and file – NOT the leadership – because when the leadership defends the interest of the corporations, of the bosses, instead of the workers; they are not on our side. If people want to ignore the truth like its still 1937 – it ain’t! – we won’t be able to sort out any of these problems which we, the working class, face each and every day. It’s got to come from the rank and file.”

The panel did not get by without some criticism, though. A lively discussion followed in which participants in the diverse audience raised questions on issues from the circular nature of the “race to the bottom”, the destruction of our communities and the ways in which workers are kept divided (union against non-union, white against black, immigrant vs. citizen and male vs. female workers).

Questions were raised as to the nature of the historic “Labor’s Giant Step” and the conflicting roles of the militant Congress of Industrial Organizations (the “CIO” in today’s ALF-CIO) opposed to Labor’s alliance with the Democrats, the production and prosperity boom of the post war period in the 1950’s, the current period of retreat and decline in the Labor Union movement, and the failure of the National Labor Party effort in the late 1990’s.

In reply to the panel’s answers to the questions and points raised by the audience, local activist Don DeVivo said “clearly you’re right about one thing; the two-party system isn’t working.” One participant, a local Labor activist and member of the Laborers, Bradley Veltry asked “this all sounds right, but what are the nuts and bolts of getting this started?”

The panel closed with David May of the WIL answering that question with an appeal to join and support a local committee that is tasked with reaching out to unions, community organizations, churches, student groups, the homeless and working class communities besieged and threatened by the economic crisis; to advocate for local independent Labor candidates and 3^rd Party candidates when their campaigns are strongly pro-Labor; to advocate within union locals for the withholding of PAC funds from Democrats; to make contacts, build bridges, rally around struggling communities, and uncompromisingly raise the demands and interests of the Working Class majority.

Before the audience dismissed and rallied around a CMPL sign-up sheet on the other side of the room, David May proposed a thought: that the real reason we’ve not seen a serious fightback against cuts in public services and against attacks on working people’s communities is because our fractured Labor Movement is fighting on the economic front – but giving financial and political support to a pro-corporate, pro-capitalist party (the Democrats) who keep Wall Street especially close in their “Big Tent”, closer than Labor can ever be – and our fractured political Left is torn between one single issue campaign after another. Isn’t it time our unions, the fighting organizations of the Working Class, carried the economic struggle onto the political field and united all America’s oppressed minorities under their own organization, A mass Party of Labor?

May ended with a quote by Victor Hugo, which seemed strangely appropriate: “there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

Paul Poposky is a Socialist activist in the greater-St. Louis area involved in local and national social justice campaigns, and a proud member of CWA Local 6355.

Reporting on the 2010 Commemoration of the General Strike of 1877

2010-08-16T08:27:00.000-05:00

This is a video record of the 2010 annual Commemoration of the General Strike of 1877

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw5V_sVOckY

Event to Remember Metro-East Labor Ties
suburban journal, June 2nd

http://suburbanjournals.stltoday.com/articles/2010/06/02/madison/news/0530gcj-labor000.txt

Workers of the World Unite and Celebrate the General Strike of 1877!
riverfront times, July 9th

http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2010/07/workers_of_the_world_unite_and_celebrate_the_general_strike_of_1877.php

Historian Compares Oppressive Conditions Today with those that Sparked 1877 Strike in St. Louis
labor tribune, July 15-21

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B1n_XVswJFOzMWI3YWI4YmYtNjc5ZS00NTJkLWFkZDMtNjk0NDdhMGVkMzUx&hl=en

Labor History Celebration in St. Louis: Commemorating the Strike of 1877

2010-06-21T13:41:00.004-05:00

Come celebrate the boldest moment in workers' history in the Greater St. Louis area, The General Strike of 1877, when everyday people ran our cities and workplaces on their own!

For more information on the General Strike of 1877, see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1877_Saint_Louis_general_strike

or this excerpt from Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States: http://libcom.org/history/1877-the-great-railroad-strike

Nationally known speakers, Jeremy Brecher (author of Strike!) and Rosemary Feurer (NIU Professor and author of Radical Unionism in the Midwest 1900-1950), will be speaking at this commemoration, as well as musical performances by the world famous, David Rovics and local musician, Wayne Schell.

Light refreshments will also be provided.

Jeremy Brecher: http://www.southendpress.org/authors/70
Rosemary Feurer: http://www3.niu.edu/history/facultyp.html#FEURER
David Rovics: http://www.davidrovics.com/

This event has been organized by the Greater St. Louis United Front. If you have any questions, or are interested in participating in the event, please email GSLUF at:

gsluf@gsluf.org

or follow us on FaceBook at: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/event.php?eid=106393766068698&ref=ts

and visit our website at:

WWW.GSLUF.ORG

If you would like to have a table or a speaker at this event, please, contact us at gsluf@gsluf.org. Tabling will require each organization to donate $10. Organizations seeking to speak at this event will need to pay $25; each organization will be allotted five minutes to speak at the microphone, at the event.

STATEMENT OF RESIGNATION FROM THE IMT

2010-06-14T11:23:00.000-05:00

Dear Comrades,

We, the undersigned, have not taken the decision to leave the International Marxist Tendency lightly.

The expulsion by the British central committee (CC) of Comrade Melanie McDonald, a talented comrade who has given unbounded time, energy and commitment to the organisation during the seven years she has been a member, is, for us, proof positive that the leadership of the IMT is beyond reform.

Mel tendered her resignation at CC meeting but this was not accepted in order that her expulsion could be carried out ! Mel was expelled for posting videos of interviews with Pakistani Marxists working in the PPP on Facebook.

Comrade Jonathan Clyne recently visited Pakistan and engaged in lengthy discussions with these comrades. His report and analysis is in the Appendix in the attached word doc. His account differs very widely from the reports given to comrades by the IS of the IMT – that these comrades are not only bending under pressure but are agents of the State and counter-revolutionaries. This is consistent with the siege mentality that the IS are building up in the organisation, with claims that it’s critics, those who dare to present a different account of events or raise questions are enemies who are out to destroy the IMT.

Workers internationally have a right to information about the situations our class sisters and brothers in other countries find themselves in, and what measures they take to defend the class and work towards the overthrow of capitalism. The crisis in the IMT, which has seen it reduce in size and significance in the last few years, was not the result of ‘enemies’ undermining it from within or without. In our opinion it stems from fundamental flaws in the approach of the organisation, its application of democratic centralism and it’s practical orientation to the working class.

The flawed methodology of the leadership of the International has been outlined in the document called 'Forward to Democratic Centralism' (see appendix). We believe that a concern for personal prestige by some of the leadership has outstripped a realistic approach to what are the extent and depth of the tasks needed to arm Marxist cadres for the overthrow of capitalism in the modern world.

Instead, the current leadership has prefered to fetishize our small group, putting its numerical growth and its control over it above the needs of the objective situation. This is revealed by the fact that we have failed to prepare a base for a serious presence of Marxists in the mass organizations, especially in Britain. Despite decades of opportunity, we have failed to grow or build a second line leadership. A conservative attitude to internal democracy and a narrow, top-down conception of internal structures and member inter-communication has meant that the participation of the rank and file is truncated and our structures are insufficient for on-going discussion. This stagnancy has resulted in mistakes on theoretical questions like the nature of capitalist crisis, the nature of the transitional economy as related to the debate on China and what is a revolution, the leadership has reacted to detailed criticism by placing its prestige above accuracy. Almost all the ideas of the members are appropriated from the top by a leadership that is self-referencing, self-perpetuating and unable to respond to differences within the ranks of the IMT without conflicts ending in splits of whole or partial sections, or the falling away of long standing, experienced comrades. The following examples illustrate this (see attached word doc for the appendices):

Greece – Most rank and file members may be unaware of the split/expulsion of the majority of worker comrades and PASKE (PASOK Trade Union faction) activists from the Greek section six years ago. Over 35 experienced trade union comrades and those with strategic positions in PASKE/PASOK were accused of being opportunist and “not obedient enough”. Now, the current section has little more than 15 active members who are mostly youth. In hindsight, we believe that the leadership, in a formulaic application of tactics that produced some results in France and Italy, made a mistake in instructing the current Greek section to turn towards the Stalinist, almost impenetrable KKE. When that failed, the section briefly, publicly dissolved itself in order to work in a petit-bourgeois formation called SYNASPISMOS/SYRIZA at a time when PASOK youth conferences had attendances of 2000 people. When members of the international were informed of the FACT of the public dissolution of the Greek section (in order to work in those organizations) the leadership lied about it and accused HK of fabricating it.

Pakistan - Two years ago the international was misinformed about the extent of a split in the Pakistan section. Less than one month after the expulsion of 22 year veteran comrade MA on flimsy allegations of opportunism, sabotage and corruption, over 900 comrades that included 3 entire regions were suspended and expelled from the section for supporting MA. Any opportunity to hear their side of the story (like responding to Atif Khan's pleas to AW to speak to anyone from the IS and their demands for a proper control commission into the split) were ignored unless MA resigned his positions – including one he never held! The original reason for the expulsion was not BESOS, it was not the PTCL strike it was the idea that taking unelected positions that are too close to Zardari. Later, the IS had to admit that there are NO positions in the entire PPP that are genuinely elected. ALL positions or tickets to run are appointed by the top leadership.

Instead, the truth behind the conflict has been contorted to fit their bureacratically arrived at decision while relying on the loyalty of the membership not to bother to investigate or substantiate the allegations themselves. In a Stalinist way, they launched into a series of serious pesonal attacks on MA and the comrades around him. The most serious of which is the eroneous statement that MA sabotaged a telecommunications strike, a completely unsubstantiated claim that has been refuted by two of the leaders of the strike. Again, without substantiation, they catagorically stated MS is corrupt, in the pay of Zardari when in fact all of his positions are unpaid. The BESOS program has been described as outright privatization when it is in fact the distibution of dividends from a part of the state controlled shares (12.5% is not a controlling interest and the government retains state control) to workers which cannot be sold. One can be critical of supporting this scheme but the expulsion, the distortion of the truth and the defamation of a long standing comrade is unacceptable.

Lost with MA are many long standing comrades with decades of trade union experience in the railways, steel, telecommunications, electricity sector, palm oil industries to name but a few – who have been defamed and demoralized in the most uncomradely manner. The international has also been misinformed about the the immense benefits of MA's position as head of the People's labour bureaux which includes having access to every trade union in the country as well as uniting them under the banner of one left wing trade union federation that will build solidarity and give them international reach to the working class of trade union bodies around the world.

- Spain - The recent split in the Spanish section resulted in the loss of about 450 comrades with about 40 remaining in the IMT. Trade unionists and workers from the petrochemical, shipyard, janitorial, metal and hotel workers in what was one of our most proletarian sections in Europe has been lost. Control of the student union and the Frederick Engels foundation are gone. Without including the membership in the decision making process, the Spanish leadership split away from the IMT and proceeded to block any efforts of minority members to stop the split or advocate a different position. Needless to say, this is very poor behavior and a serious analysis as to why they saw it fit to behave this way is necessary.

It should be taken into consideration that over 17 very serious criticisms were made against the leadership of our once star European section in two documents produced by the IS not long after members of the IS had attended the Spanish national conference and voted in favour of all the documents produced by the section. The criticisms included ultra-leftism, sectarianism, mechanical marxism, inability to understand the nature of the epoch or the consciousness of the working class, substitutionalism, and Stalinist bureaucratism - criticisms guaranteed to isolate a leadership who until then considered themselves good Marxists doing some of the best work in Europe.

We believe that instead of pointing out mistakes in a comradely, measured way, this sudden onslaught resulted in the leadership of the Spanish section (who suffer from their own issues of arrogance and prestige politics) to leave abruptly, taking most of the section with them instead of facing the political issues that had been tabled. This is a pattern of behaviour very similar to that which the IS has adopted in the recent period.

- Venezuela - The majority of the section that gave our international so much inspiration and credibility went with the Spanish section with the loss of over 76 comrades. About 38 remain. We have lost the UNT trade unionists in the Sidor plant, we have lost the coordinator of FRETECO, the General Secretary of Singetram, the General Secretary of Sutravivex, Mitsubishi workers, INVEVAL leaders and workers as well as many PSUV activists. They left the IMT because of allegations of bureaucratic degeneration of the IS and factional activity outside of the official structures of the section to which they responded in kind. This section now is being characterized by the leadership as ultra-left and unwilling to intervene in the PSUV.

- Mexico - This section also split following the Spanish and Venezuelan sections with the loss of about half of the membership leaving the IMT section with about 40 comrades.

- Sweden - The split that took place at the Swedish section annual conference resulted in the loss of about 25 comrades with about 10-15 remaining in the IMT. Many of the trade unionists, including 10 from the blue-collar union federation, 6 from the white-collar union federation, the union branch chairman of Lagena who helped lead the Lagena strike and many who are well-known to the workers at Lagena and 2 in the Left Youth/Left Students League. Comrades with an average of 20 years experience in the labour movement, with a very high theoretical level have left to begin the work toward forming a new international. (See appendix)

- Iran – In a truly shameful way, against all statutes and basic democracy, the Iranian section was expelled without being present on the basis of totally false allegations about compromising the security of two IMT members of Iranian origin. These allegations have been easily disproven and are absurd given that they are working openly in other countries under their real names (see appendix). In an article on Marxist.com by Ted Sprague called "An interview with and Iranian socialist", the comrade allegedly in so much peril from the Iranian state uses his real name openly catergorising himself as a socialist. He also calls himself a socialist, Marxist and atheist on his Facebook page with photos of himself. This is just one example of the alarmist lies the IS used to pressure the IEC to expel this section without factual substantiation of the allegations or hearing the other side of the story. We are very dissappointed that no member of the IEC saw fit to openly oppose this behaviour.

We believe that the real reason for the expulsion of the official Iranian section of the IMT was because they had for a long time requested a more critical class position towards Chavez's relationship with Ahmadinejad. (This became a vital demand of the IRMT after the June street protests and Chavez's whole-hearted support despite severe repression by the state).

We believe that in an opportunist fashion, the IS has chosen to ignore the inconvenient position of the official Iranian section fearing it would harm their future work in Chavez's 5th International in an attempt to re-gain some form of authority, some sort of foothold in Venezuela after the devestating split in that section and loss of all the bases that gave that section its credibility.

What is a revolution? is another difference between the IS and the former Iranian section. The IS says Iran is in revolution. The former Iranian section says that a revolutionary situation is maturing. We believe that because AW initially got some media attention in Iran to his sensational headline 'The Iranian Revoluiton has begun' the leadership has not wanted to qualify this slogan despite its inacuracy in hopes of bolstering AWs noteriety.

One might ask that if Iran is in the throws of a revolution why we would not want to help correct any mistakes made by this important section no matter what its size? Instead, the leadership has used totally false allegations against them and accused what were so recently our comrades and allies of now being no better than police informants.

For a detailed account from the Iranian comrades themselves see: http://www.militaant.com/.

- Poland – The Polish EC co-authored the document 'Forward to democratic centralism'. The comrades from the IS were very keen on investigating who had signed the platform in Poland but, having assumed the political responsibility for the section back in Autumn, they completely neglected addressing any of the very serious concerns and problems with building the tendency that comrades experienced. Instead they looked to undermine the position of those comrades who signed the platform. As a result of the whole dispute with the IS and after considering what happened to WF on the IEC, comrades feel their intellectual and organizational potential cannot fully be realized within the IMT as it functions. The comrades wish to continue to build something completely fresh. They do not wish to quarrel with the IMT and loose time on discussing about the past. Those who are in the IMT plan to resign soon. The status of WF is not clear as the IS representative refused to clearly state in writing whether after his walk-out from the IEC and the subsequent resolution passed by this body he is or he is not an IMT member. Therefore, instead of arguing about the IMT, the comrades prefer to use their capabilities for developing their ideas and building. They want to discuss about the future. In the Polish trade-union movement there are lots of opportunities to meet activists keen on doing political work – like the recent provincional trade-union semminar comrades attended with 100 participants. They will organise a series of events where they will be able to exchange their ideas and experiences and build together with a broader layer of trade-union activists.

- Belgium - A group of about 10 comrades, among them 5 former CC members from the Belgian section have left the IMT leaving about 15 active members. The group, who is in agreement with the 'Forward to democratic centralism' document left because the IMT leadership refuse to openly discuss the internal regime it implements. On the CC meeting at the end of march, a resolution was moved to disaffiliate the Belgian section as a whole - with the possibility of IS supporters paying subs directly to London. A short majority rejected the resolution. Two weeks after, most of the comrades critical to the policies of the IS left the organisation.

Co-incidentally, the most influential activist and spokesperson of SP.a rood Erik De Bruyn who was nominated by the Antwerp Socialist Party branch - the biggest in Flanders - for the position of national chairperson of the Socialist Party (SP.a) has resigned for similar reasons.

- Germany - There is a serious fissure within the small German section. The Berlin branch---who is in agreement with the document 'Forward to democratic centralism'---is in opposition to the majority of the German leadership. They put forward a critical motion (see appendix). The German leadership decided with a majority to cancel the annual conference this year and are not ready to discuss the issues with all the German comrades.

- US – For those members of the International who are unaware, another version of events that preceded the departure of the San fransisco and Portland branches two years ago is available. (See appendix)

More recently, a leading EC comrade asked to resign from the EC and another 2 rank and file comrades are deeply critical of the methods of the leadership of the IMT and the way the organization is developing.

- Canada - 3 members and a group of about 10 contacts from the Ottawa branch left the IMT accusing the Canadian leadership of bureaucratic centralism and over differences on the class nature of China. The leader of this group, AF sent a letter explaining his reasons for leaving the IMT when it was repeatedly stated that he left because of emails sent by HK. (See appendix)

- Britain - In the recent period we have lost key experienced trade union comrades and comrades with a high theoretical level like ASLEF elected official AV, PCS regional chair RH and BECTU activist and former fulltimer for the Militant II and some very good young trade union comrades like JA who as a fulltimer played an excellent role in recruiting the majority of the new youth comrades who joined two years ago. Veteran comrade MR (See appendix for a short biography) resigned who is an expert on economics and whose writings gave the tendency credibility and a serious factual base for economic analysis. He used his access and understanding of the latest in bourgeois statistics to apply a Marxist analysis to forsee with a great deal of accuracy the housing slump and the great recession. More recently, a faction called the faction on Internal Democracy of 10 signatories was denied faction rights.

Conclusion

We believe that how Marxists deal with differences is one of the keys to building a strong, healthy revolutionary organization filled with a membership and a leadership that are mutually strengthened by the process of airing, investigating and discussing out ideas and differences. This can help make better leaders and prepare cadres for their concrete interventions in the labour movement and create a Marxist vanguard of scientifically based, independent minded fighters who can intervene in the labour movement as it is in order to work and fight arm in arm with our fellow workers to overthrow capitalism and change society for the better. The methods that we employ to do this and how we bolster our own Marxist forces is a key political question. We take exception to the claim that our grievances are not political. If the claims we are making are not considered political then the IMT is even less prepared for the task at hand than we previously thought.

Therefore, the comrades signed below which includes a shop steward in UNISON who tirelessly helped to build the Spanish section of the Militant out of the ashes of fascist dictatorship (PW) and dedicated, fighting trade union official in PCS (MW) and others with knowledge, skills and talents are leaving the IMT. We remain convinced of the ideas of Scientific Socialism. We will continue to work in the labour movement, putting forward these ideas. We also continue to believe in the need for a revolutionary party organised on democratic centralist lines. To this end we will continue to fight for the overthrow of Capitalism and the construction of a Socialist society. We give our solidarity and respect to all the members of the IMT and wish them our sincere best wishes in the future.

Comradely, in Solidarity and for Socialism !

Signed: PW, DP, AP, MW, DR, PJP

Price Gouging the Poor to Death...

2010-04-05T22:38:00.001-05:00

Written by Paul Joseph Poposky
Wednesday, 03 March 2010

In the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, both working families and the unemployed – whose numbers continue to defy economists’ calculations – are feeling the pinch of benefit cuts, wage freezes, forced furlough days, and austerity measures designed to gut social programs and government aid. With fully a third of the American population now living on less than $21,000 a year and the cost of living continuing to skyrocket, it should come as no surprise that basic necessities like nutritious food, decent housing, medical care, and winter heating are priced outside the means of so many. In the middle of one of the coldest winters in decades, it is a crime that so many are struggling just to keep warm – even as for-profit utility companies report record profits.

The number of US households seeking assistance with heating and cooling bills in the past year increased by 25% over 2008, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association report for 2009. Literally millions of households across the nation have received notice this year that punitive fines will be charged to their accounts for non-payment and millions more (over 300,000 in New York alone) have had their heat or power shut off as energy and heating assistance programs’ funding has been axed in one state after another. Heating assistance is yet another victim of city and state budget cuts and one more way the working class is being made to pay for the bosses’ economic crisis – sometimes with tragic results.

In what is becoming a terrifyingly familiar story, newspapers and media outlets all over the US have issued one report after another of families who have lost their homes and even their lives to fires caused by the desperate measures which many are being forced to resort to in order to keep warm. For example, the elderly family who died in a house fire in Detroit earlier this winter, likely sparked by the overtaxed space heaters they were forced to use to beat the freezing temperatures. Or the three children who died last year in Toledo in a house fire, caused by the candles the family had to use to light their home since their power had been shut off. Or the 63-year-old woman and her 90-year-old mother who were found in their home dead of frostbite and exposure in Kalamazoo. The list goes on and on.

All this has come despite the multi-billion dollar aid package promised by Congress to help state and local municipalities provide relief to those at risk or already suffering utility shutoffs. Why? Because throwing a little money at the problem simply isn’t enough, and even that is being taken away now. In several states, assistance programs are cutting staff in response to budget shortfalls, and eligibility requirements to receive aid have tightened up at precisely the time when more people need help. Even the amount of government money available to each qualifying grant applicant has been reduced.

It seems that at the exact moment Fox News pundits are defending the “rights” of corporations to pay out massive bonuses to their executives, America’s elderly, poor and working class are being told to tighten their belts, yet again! Meanwhile, President Obama says of JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs: “I don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That’s part of the free market system.”

So what is the solution to all of this? The skyrocketing rates and heartless practice of shutting off utilities is a development of the trend over the past 30 years for local and state government to privatize formerly municipal utilities, selling them to the highest corporate bidders for a profit, then de-regulate the industry at the behest of the same corporate lobbyists and big campaign contributors.

As we have explained previously in the pages of Socialist Appeal, the deregulation of the utilities sector is “a direct attack on working people.” Those words ring all the more true today, and reminds one of the adage, “you can’t control what you don’t own.”

Energy is indeed a necessity, and for-profit corporations must not be allowed to profiteer on the backs of beleaguered working class consumers.

For this reason, the Workers International League calls for the drastic reduction of energy costs through the nationalization of the energy companies as part of a democratically planned economy to care for human needs – not profits – which will ensure everyone has affordable access to gas, electricity, heating oil and other basic necessities.

The Internationale Unites the Human Race

2010-04-05T22:36:00.000-05:00

Arise, ye workers from your slumber,
Arise, ye prisoners of want.
For reason in revolt now thunders,
and at last ends the age of cant!
Away with all your superstitions,
Servile masses, arise, arise!
We'll change henceforth the old tradition,
And spurn the dust to win the prize!

So comrades, come rally,
And the last fight let us face.
The Internationale,
Unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally,
And the last fight let us face.
The Internationale,
Unites the human race.

No more deluded by reaction,
On tyrants only we'll make war!
The soldiers too will take strike action,
They'll break ranks and fight no more!
And if those cannibals keep trying,
To sacrifice us to their pride,
They soon shall hear the bullets flying,
We'll shoot the generals on our own side.

So comrades, come rally,
And the last fight let us face.
The Internationale,
Unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally,
And the last fight let us face.
The Internationale,
Unites the human race.

No saviour from on high delivers,
No faith have we in prince or peer.
Our own right hand the chains must shiver,
Chains of hatred, greed and fear.
E'er the thieves will out with their booty,
And to all give a happier lot.
Each at his forge must do their duty,
And we'll strike the iron while it's hot.

So comrades, come rally,
And the last fight let us face.
The Internationale,
Unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally,
And the last fight let us face.
The Internationale,
Unites the human race.

Hands Off Venezuela Campaign Public Event in StL, MO

2010-02-11T20:08:00.004-06:00

The World and the Latin American Revolution

Join us to learn more about the recent elections in Bolivia and the ongoing revolutionary process in Venezuela and what this means for working people & youth around the world.

Date:	Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Time:	6:00pm - 7:50pm
Location:	Carpenter Branch Library 3309 South Grand Blvd, St Louis, MO 63118-1001

In Memory of Howard Zinn: The People's Historian 1922-2010

2010-02-01T20:01:00.004-06:00

By Paul Joseph Poposky

Wednesday, January 27, 2010--Professor Howard Zinn, the Peoples' Historian, died of a heart attack today in Santa Monica, CA, where he was vacationing and preparing for his next round of public speaking engagements. At the age of 87, Zinn was one of the most recognizable names of the American left and a fixture in a wide array of struggles: from the women's liberation and civil rights movements to gay and lesbian rights and marriage equality, the anti-war and student movements, anti-imperialism/anti-colonialism, and the ongoing struggles of organized labor; wherever and whenever he was asked to go, Zinn was there.

Born into a family of working-class Jewish immigrants in New York City, 1922, Howard Zinn lived many of the struggles which he chronicled. As a young man Zinn worked at the Brooklyn Navy Shipyards and participated in some of the early struggles of organized labor in the 20th century. With the outbreak of World War II, Zinn joined the armed forces and served as a bombardier, where he witnessed firsthand the horrors and futility of war and leading him to forever-after reject the notions of "good war" and nationalism.

After the war Zinn attended New York University on the GI Bill. Upon graduation in 1956 he took a job teaching at Spelman College, Atlanta's historically black women's college, until he was fired for his personal involvement in the civil rights movement. Zinn was hired as an associate professor at Boston University in 1964, where he taught until his retirement in 1988, and became deeply invested in the anti-war movement, wrote his books on People's History, sought to unionize the university and entered into a long and storied conflict with then-Boston U President John Silber. Howard Zinn not only survived Silber's politically motivated sabotage and public smear campaign, but went on to re-write the narrative of American history.

Howard Zinn was best-known as the author of A Peoples' History of the United States and was responsible for preserving and teaching two generations of young Americans the proud history and traditions of working class struggle, militancy and protest, radicalism and rebellion and resistance to all forms of oppression. In A Peoples' History Zinn plainly rejects the "Great Man" theory of history and instead used the actual history of the United States - a history so often ignored, buried or slandered by the ruling class - to show how REAL change comes from below, from the organization of everyday people who stood tall and stood together to confront power, to say no to exploitation and death.

A Peoples' History has been and continues to be a resounding success, inspiring a broad array of Peoples' History related projects and spin-offs, such as Zinn's A Young People's History of the United States, Chris Harman's A People's History of the World, and sports writer Dave Zirin's A People's History of Sports in the United States. In 2008 Zinn teamed up with fellow radical historian and lecturer Paul Buhle and labor cartoonist Mike Konopacki to produce A People's History of American Empire, a graphic adaptation of Zinns most famous work, in which a new generation can discover the history of struggle brought to life by a rich and vibrant visual narrative which makes the content feel more like current events to new readers.

Perhaps one of Howard Zinn's greatest achievements was bringing his narrative and the message of A People's History and its companion volume, Voices of A People's History of the United States, into the homes of millions of Americans this past December when the History Channel aired the two-hour special The People Speak. This groundbreaking program -- which ought to be taught in each and every school where American history is taught -- featured some of the most talented actors, musicians and poets in the country reading and performing selections from Voices, as well as songs of protest and the everyday hardships of those who've lived, fought and all-too often died for a better world.

This amazing project, which brought the TRUE radical history of the United States to life in the mainstream media, survived one far-rightwing attack after another from such conservative talking-heads as Matt Drudge and Patrick Courrielche, who petitioned to have the special broadcast cancelled and sought to smear The People Speak and Zinn's name; since they could not dispute the actual historic content and the words once spoken and written by such historic American icons as Muhammad Ali, Eugene V. Debs, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Mother Jones and Dr. Martin Luther King. Regardless, the broadcast of The People Speak is a historic event in that it validates the very history which the capitalist ruling class and their bourgeoisie media tools have gone to great lengths to ignore and trivialize.

To truly understand Howard Zinn one must look-not only to his work preserving and sharing the People's History, but also Zinn's intent in doing so. This was no simple man of the past, this People's Historian; Zinn's grasped the importance of preserving the memory of struggle, even when the class conflict seemed insurmountably stacked against the oppressed, and applying the lessons to be learned from those past struggles, victories and defeats to build greater class-consciousness in our struggles today. From Zinn's autobiography, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, in his own words:

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places -- and there are so many -- where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of the world in a different direction."

But perhaps it was Howard Zinn's hope and vision for the future that most clearly defined him. Once, in a Q&A with David Zirin, a leftist sports writer and columnist for The Nation, Zinn said:

"Let's talk about socialism... I think it's very important to bring back the idea of socialism into the national discussion to where it was at the turn of the [last] century... Socialism had a good name in this country. Socialism had Eugene Debs. It had Clarence Darrow. It had Mother Jones... It had several million people reading socialist newspapers around the country...

Socialism basically said, hey, lets have a kinder, gentler society. Let's share things. Let's have an economic system that produces things not because they're profitable for some corporation, but produces things that people need. People should not be retreating from the word socialism, because you have to go beyond capitalism."

Howard Zinn and the work he so sincerely and completely dedicated his life to touched the lives and inspired the work and struggles of countless individuals for the past two generations. Though the death of this courageous man who struggled against all injustice and selflessly made himself a voice of the voiceless, both of the past and today, is a terrible loss to all of us on the left; we ought to remember Howard Zinn not only for his ideas, but also for the way he lived his life. Zinn was a humble titan of the movement of the oppressed and exploited everywhere, a prolific author and exceptionally authentic and approachable public figure, a great orator, an artist and playwright, and a dedicated and loving husband and father. Zinn was a shining example of the newly-resurgent motto and axiom "be the change". He was an inspiration to us all.

R.I.P. Howard Zinn, 1922-2010

Senate Health Bill: Early Gift or Lump of Coal

2010-01-06T14:02:00.000-06:00

By Paul Joseph Poposky
originally published at SocialistAppeal.org

On Christmas Eve morning, Senate Democrats followed through on their promise to pass their version of a health insurance reform bill before the Christmas Holiday, delivering what has been hailed by many liberal commentators in major media outlets as an “early Christmas gift.” However, American workers concerned about the rising costs of health care, the poor quality of service provided by private insurance for those who can even afford it, and the millions of people left behind by for-profit, market based health care ought not get too excited about the Affordable Health Care for America Act. This “early gift” is more like a lump of coal!

Health care workers, activists, and patients, as well as labor leaders and rank workers in general -- many of whom voted the Democrats back into power in the “hope” they’d deliver a Universal, National Health Service -- have been left feeling confused, frustrated, and downright betrayed. The Senate bill, like the House version, cedes even more power to the already influential private, for-profit insurance industry: the same industry that financed the Democratic Party and President Obama’s victorious electoral campaigns in 2008 while simultaneously padding the war chest of the Republican Party. They also bankrolled the fear-mongering and reactionary tea party “movement,” which turned the longstanding American tradition of town hall meetings into an “at your own risk” excursion in 2009. That is to say, the health care industry funded both “sides” of the “debate,” and now stands to reap a tremendous profit from their investment; all at the expense of the American working class.

The Senate bill differs little from the version passed in the House back in November. For the first time, individuals will be required by law to purchase insurance policies and maintain coverage, or pay punitive tax fines for non-compliance. Much of the language of the regressive Stupak Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds “to pay for any abortion or to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion,” is included in the Senate bill. A tax on so-called “Cadillac” insurance plans will hit unionized workers especially hard and undermine generations of struggle by workers for a decent standard of living. The insurance industry will receive billions of dollars in additional profits, guaranteed by the personal mandate, fine scheme and taxpayer funded subsidies, and gain access to new markets as the privatization of Medicare/Medicaid continues unabated and Medicare faces upwards of $400 billion in cuts. The industry also gets to keep its decades-old anti-trust exemption.

This scheme will cost American taxpayers over $800 billion dollars over the next decade and will do next to nothing to control costs; handing the great bulk of that money to the same private, for-profit insurers who have made a killing (literally!) denying Americans coverage or providing extremely limited and unreliable coverage, driving up costs and forcing many working class individuals and families into bankruptcy and poverty. Even more despicable is the 12 year market protection extended to Big Pharma for name-brand and high-tech prescription drugs, effectively a government guarantee of private corporate profits. Over 20 million people will still be left uninsured by the Senate bill, and countless more will be left without access to the health care they really need because, as many people have learned in the recent economic crisis, insurance does not guarantee access to actual care, especially not “affordable” care.

Of course, the only health care guaranteed to be “affordable” to all is universal, FREE health care and we can only have this by demanding, organizing for and winning a “Medicare for all” reform that includes everyone and leaves no one out, along the lines of the now-defunct HR 676 or SB 703. Public opinion polling has consistently shown for nearly a decade that Americans prefer such a national universal program over market-based proposals, and back in 2005/06 many leading Democrats paid lip service to such legislation, even promising to pass it if only American voters would deliver Democrats a “super majority” in the House and Senate. Well, the Democrats got their wish, and all American workers got was this lousy bill for $800 billion, which we get the “gift” of paying for over the next decade.

As many Americans crowd the post-holiday lines at our local department stores, seeking to return or exchange unwanted gifts, we ought to remember that the party-line vote to approve the Senate Democrats’ bill was 39-60, with the Republicans favoring doing nothing and the Democrats supporting what amounts to a multi-billion dollar handout to the industry which is directly responsible for the death of 60 people in the US each and every day and the bankruptcy of thousands. Neither of these corporate, capitalist political parties represents the interests of the American working class, who make up the vast majority. America needs a working class party, an independent, mass party of labor based on the unions to fight uncompromisingly for the real interests of the majority. Only thus can we end the rationing of health care services based on economic privilege and win FREE, QUALITY health care for all as a human right!

Left Wing School a Resounding Success!

2009-12-10T17:27:00.005-06:00

report by Paul J Poposky

Sunday, 6 December 2009
Edwardsville, IL

The first biannual Left-Wing School of the Greater St. Louis/Metro-aast saw attendance and participation from local students, educators, concerned citizens, and Left activists which exceeded ALL expectations. The one-day event, held for the first time at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville (SIUE) was organized and hosted by the Autonomy Alliance (AA), and co-sponsored by the MetroEast Green Party. The School featured a diverse array of speakers from the AA, The Workers International League-International Marxist Tendency (WIL-IMT), the Gay-Straight Alliance at SIUE, and the Metroeast Progressive Movement (MPM), as well as college professors and representatives of a local workers’ collective. Discussion on a wide range of topics was lively, stimulating and civil, fulfilling the events stated mission to provide:

“an opportunity for Leftists to learn about a variety of ideas presented by local organizations… for organizations to come together to exchange their ideas, learn from each other and grow in solidarity with one another.”

Other Leftist groups set up information tables and distributed literature, including Hands-Off Venezuela, Radical Education Against Capitalist Tyranny! infoshop/library, Well Red Books, Socialist Organizer, and the Workers Emergency Recovery Campaign. A documentary film on gay marriage buses, produced by Ed Reggi of Show Me No H8, was shown during the lunch recess.

Highlights from the School include a fascinating course detailing the history of "Feminism and the Kinship Sphere", co-taught by representatives of the AA; a presentation on "The Need for a Mass Party of Labor & Role of the Revolutionary Party" and a class titled "Capitalism is the Problem: Socialism is the Solution" by the WIL-IMT; a highly informative Q&A on what it is like "Working in a Workers’ Collective" by Black Bear Bakery, an anarchist run worker collective, which also catered breakfast at the School; and a class taught by SIUE Professor Steve Tamari on the need for "A Democratic Secular Solution for Israel and Palestine".

The Left-Wing School culminated in a closing session where dialogue, reflections, comments and constructive criticisms of the organization of the school and the ideas presented were welcome and encouraged. Participating organizations agreed to continue and expand the Left-ing School in the year to come. To encourage greater participation and democratic planning, a steering committee was established to coordinate future Left-wing School events and build solidarity with local May Day actions and celebrations, as well as the annual Commemoration of the General Strike of 1877 and the St. Louis Commune.

The most significant development to come out of this event was a proposal, which was approved by participating leftist groups, for the establishment of the St. Louis/metroeast United Front (SLUF), a positive first step toward building a strong united front of leftist tendencies for the St. Louis/Metro-east area. This is particularly important for moving forward for solidarity in common struggle in a region of the United States with a long and storied, proud history of militant working class-labor struggles.

2009 Leftist School in Edwardsville, Illinois

2009-12-07T15:10:00.006-06:00

1st Annual Left-wing School of Greater St. Louis/Metro-East

Host: Autonomy Alliance (AA)
Date: Sunday, December 6, 2009
Time: 9:00am - 4:00pm
Location: Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
Street: Peck Hall 2413 and 2414
City/Town: Edwardsville, IL

PURPOSE AND GOALS:

This School, or in-service for people interested in Left-wing ideas, is an opportunity for people to learn about a variety of ideas, presented by various organizations. This is also an opportunity for organizations to come together to exchange their ideas and learn from each other.

For new Leftists, this offers the potential to interact with a variety of ideas and organizations, while learning their strengths, ideas, and a lot of raw information. It also offers the potential to become plugged into an organization and become more active, as well as understand Left-wing issues and perspectives more clearly. Please, engage everyone you can to learn as much as you can!

For organizations, this offers the potential to interact with new Leftists and newly formed organizations, possibly to develop a united front. You will get to propose your ideas and not have them misrepresented by other ideologues, and you will have the opportunity to engage other groups and new Leftists with your ideas.

All organizations involved should have taught the lesson(s) for the Left-wing School to their own organization prior to the actual event. This allows members from each organization to attend OTHER organizations' workshops to maximize the exchange of ideas, maximize engagement, maximize critical inquiries, and have discourse that is essential for any healthy solidarity in our future.

Participating Organizations:

Autonomy Alliance

Workers International League

Metroeast Progressive Movement

Gay-Straight Alliance (SIUE)

Radical Education Against Capitalist Tyranny! (REACT!)

Socialist Organizer

Metroeast Green Party

Workers Emergency Recovery Campaign

Black Bear Bakery

Show Me No H8

Hands Off Venezuela

SCHEDULE:

9:00 – 9:25 - Peck Hall 2413: Breakfast (Black Bear Bakery); Introduction and Explanation - Alec Plant (Autonomy Alliance)

9:30 – 10:20

PH 2413: – The Need for A Mass Party of Labor/Role of the Revolutionary Party - Dave May and Ryan Raymond (Workers International League)

PH 2414: The Need for A Popular Revolution - Metroeast Progressive Movement

10:25 – 11:15

PH 2413: Capitalism is the problem. Socialism is the solution. - Paul Poposky and Nikhil Kothegal (Workers International League)

PH 2414: History of Schooling in the US - Andy Lucker (Autonomy Alliance)

11:15 – 12:30 Lunch; Documentary on Gay Marriage Buses - Ed Reggi (Show Me No H8)

12:30 - 1:20

PH 2413: Feminism and the Kinship Sphere - Amber Robins and Andy Lucker (Autonomy Alliance)

PH 2414: Co-presentation 1) LGBT Information and Politics - Stacy Hansen; 2) "What it's like to be a gay Republican..." - Joel Durham (Gay-Straight Alliance (SIUE))

1:25 - 2:15

PH 2413: Working in A Workers' Collective - David Feldmann and Eric Boschen (Black Bear Bakery)

2:20 - 3:10

PH 2413: A Democratic Secular Solution for Israel and Palestine - Steve Tamari

3:15 – 4:05

PH 2413: Technology, Computers, Software, and Organizing with Them - Ben West

4:05 – 4:30

PH 2413: Ending Comments; Reflection; Open Dialogue; Do we want to do this again?

If you or a Left-wing organization would like to participate in these discussions or table at the School, please, let us know by messaging here, or emailing autonomyalliance@gmail.com.

DIRECTIONS:

St. Louisians, The following items will be useful for getting to and throughout SIUE. SIUE has one of the geographically largest campuses in the U.S., though, it's not a big school. It's easy to get lost and can be difficult to find.

For GoogleMaps, here are the simplest directions to get to SIUE's Campus:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=st.+louis,+mo&daddr=38.77657,-90.046005+to:1+Hairpin+Dr,+Edwardsville,+IL+62025+(Southern+Illinois+University+Edwardsville:+STARBUCKS)&geocode=Fc-0TQIduUaf-in5ju36qbTYhzFb4Lsiyuo5vg%3B%3BFf7tTwIdLr-i-iHcY-760PXU7w&hl=en&mra=dpe&mrcr=0&mrsp=1&sz=11&via=1&sll=38.734804,-89.977341&sspn=0.234064,0.617294&ie=UTF8&ll=38.716055,-90.096817&spn=0.234126,0.617294&z=11

From there, it may help to view this interactive campus map on your computer:

http://www.siue.edu/maps/

ALSO, PRINT THIS OFF, or, at least take a close look at it and make note of directions:

http://www.siue.edu/maps/map_campus.pdf

The event is in Peck Hall (#4 on this map), but you will have to park in one of the countless parking lots and walk to Peck Hall. (I advise the lot by Lovejoy Library.) Please, be in Peck Hall BY 9:00.

My Health"care" Nightmare

2009-12-02T08:31:00.006-06:00

Written by Julie Utley
Tuesday, 01 December 2009

originally posted at SocialistAppeal.org

My fiance, Paul, is a member of the Workers International League and I follow the Socialist Appeal paper very closely. Lately I’ve been reading a lot about the debate over health care reform and the struggle by some for REAL change in the way we handle health care in America, so I am writing SA to share my own personal health care nightmare.

Sometime in late 2008 I learned the hard way that I had a severe allergy to a particular brand of laundry detergent. An ER visit and thousands of dollars later I’ve also learned that simply having insurance does nothing at all to guarantee that you’ll get the care you need when you need it. My high deductible insurance policy, which I had purchased out of pocket, refused to cover the ER visit and several subsequent doctors visits until I could pay the annual deductible in its entirety.

Fast-forward to June of this year: though I had mostly recovered from my allergic reaction I was now battling chronic eczema - which had resulted from the irritation of the allergic reaction - and making tough choices; cutting whatever corners I could to try to keep expenses under control and keep Paul and I out of the red while paying down my medical debt. Considering I was paying thousands of dollars a year for an insurance policy which refused to cover just about anything I decided to take a risk and drop my insurance, saving us $100 per month, and joined the 50 million Americans who hope against hope that they don’t get sick.

A short time later, as these things always seem to go, I got sick after all! An underpaid, overworked Nurse Practitioner at Walgreens’ for-profit “take care” clinic diagnosed a nasty skin infection on my legs as staph - resulting from my eczema and ultimately from the allergic reaction last year. The NP referred me to a dermatologist who I had to pay up front and who I had to fight for the antibiotics I really needed (the “Dr.” wanted to sell me skin care products instead!).

Its been several months since and I’m still not out of the woods yet as the staph may have found its way into my blood and I cannot afford to find out right now. What should have been a minor skin infection - fully treatable with antibiotics - morphed into a potentially life-threatening illness. To make matters worse; my full-time job at a school district in St. Louis County offers no benefits and no paid sick days or time off for illness because the district has succeeded for years in keeping out the union. When my employer found out I was on antibiotics for staph and two of my co-workers were sick with pneumonia they sent us home and told me not to come back for 48 hours. When we came back to work we were harassed and my co-workers’ jobs were threatened because we’d been absent - but it was the boss who told us to go home! How is it that you can be punished for being sick?!?!?

What it comes down to is this: People get sick sometimes, even the really healthy ones who exercise and eat right and can afford really expensive insurance and doctors and preventative care. There are certain things you just cannot plan for and have no real control over when they happen. No one should be punished for being sick, either by their bosses or by crushing debt incurred by those seeking treatment - or further illness or even death for those of us who have no choice but to put off treatment as long as possible, like me and my family.

Under capitalism life isn’t fair -- its downright tragic! None of this can begin to change so long as health care is a privilege reserved for a few; so long as insurance company death panels can ration care to the most profitable, already healthiest customers and condemn the rest of us to illness and death - for a profit! What we need in this country is Free, Quality health care for all as a fundamental Human Right and that is why I support H.R.676 for single payer health reform as a first step toward real reform, because the only health care guaranteed to be “affordable” to all is free health care.

Support H.R.676 and S.B.703 for a Single Payer, Universal NOT for-profit National Health Service; for a socialized system to guarantee FREE, QUALITY health CARE for ALL as a human right!

The Myth of the "Middle-Class": "middle" of what?!?!?!?

2009-11-16T09:20:00.001-06:00

I originally posted this little rant in response to a friend's original rant on how annoying the persistent myth of the "middle-class" is, especially when you're trying to organize for a revolution amongst the exploited working masses... ENJOY!

PjP

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It is never good when activists or liberals or preachy college intellectuals try and talk to me about the "middle-class"... When I was growing up - and still today - I never felt like I was in the "middle" of nuthin'. besides, where exactly is this "middle" and how much $ do I have to bring in a year to be a part of it?

It seems, if you listen to all the crap about the so-called "middle class" that we're ALL "middle-class", anyone who isn't homeless and jobless is part of it. Where does it end, though? failed Repub Prez hopeful John McCain has the answer: apparently, the cap income to qualify as "middle-class" is..............

$5million dollars! yep, that's right folks; $5million dollars... thats a dollar sign ($) a number five (5) and then six consecutive zeros (000,000) and when you put it all together it looks like this: $5,000,000 (!!!)

has anyone here ever seen that much money in person? ever held it? ever had that much in their bank account? ever had that high a "net worth"? if so, please punch yourself in the genitals for me bc I cannot be there to do so myself. seriously... $5million?!?!?

the middle class is a sham, a myth. I'm Working Class and proud of it! I cannot believe I lived to see the day when so many of my working class friends and family started to wake up and realize that the American Dream of the "middle-class" was always a lie. Some have even started applying the term Working Class to themselves, and a few are starting to do so proudly. This makes me think of something Dr. MLK once said:

"only when it is dark enough can you see the stars"

Crime and Punishment is BIG Business

2009-11-16T09:06:00.006-06:00

Written by By Paul J. Poposky

Saturday, 14 November 2009

originally posted on SocialistAppeal.org

A recent report by the Pew Center on the States reveals that in 2007 a record 7.3 million Americans -- 1 in every 31 adults -- served time in jail, prison, on probation or parole. This according to Justice Department and Census Bureau statistics. The report found that the United States, which has 5 percent of the world population, has 25% of all the world’s prison inmates, based on comparative studies. The U.S. -- the “land of the free” -- locks away far more of its own citizens than Russia and China or any of the tyrannies that the U.S. props up around the world; and the problem is only getting worse!

In 1999, statistics placed the number of Americans incarcerated at 1 in 149. By 2008, the Pew Center reported that the number had skyrocketed to 1 in 100. It should come as no surprise that, in a nation founded on the enslavement of Blacks and the near extermination of the Native population, the prison population is primarily made up of minorities. Since the 1990s, over 50% of those incarcerated have been non-white. Consider that Black men are 4 times as likely as whites to be locked up. One in 3 Black men are in the corrections system when you include those on probation or parole, and 1 in 11 are in jail or prison each year. The rate of incarceration for women also continues to grow, but is outpaced by men of all races at a rate of 5 to 1.

The comparison to slavery doesn’t stop there. While some states still field chain-gangs for forced hard-labor, most states have legalized forced prison labor; 37 states to date have made it legal to contract prison labor to private corporations like Boeing, AT&T, Target and Microsoft. Prison laborers routinely make pennies per hour and profits on prison labor have reached into the billions of dollars. Since prisoners have no rights to form a union or struggle for better labor conditions under U.S. law, it is no wonder that companies that once exploited sweat shops in Mexico, China and S.E. Asia are returning to exploit the prison labor available in the U.S. penal system.

When you consider that crime has been on a two-decade long decline, it seems strange that incarceration rates have increased by over 300% in the past 30 years. Not coincidentally, an explosive growth in for-profit prisons and privatization of the prison systems parallels the increase in rate of incarceration. Because a private prison cannot turn a profit unless it is kept full, the prison industrial complex has a vested interest in keeping prisons overcrowded and pressuring lawmakers and judges to increase the rate of convictions and enforce more harsh “mandatory minimum sentences” for minor offenses. Over 70% of U.S. prisoners are locked up for non-violent, drug related offenses, and 79% of the growth in drug-related convictions in the 1990s came from arrests for marijuana possession.

Michael Moore’s recent hit documentary Capitalism: A Love Story further exposed the lengths to which privately owned corrections centers will go to guarantee their profits. In Wilkes-Barre, PA, Luzerne County judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael Conahan are awaiting trial after admitting to accepting $2.6 million in kickbacks from two privately run detention facilities in exchange for helping secure $30 million in county contracts and wrongly convicting and sentencing hundreds of juveniles to serve time at the facilities. The case has made national headlines as a federal corruption investigation has now expanded to members of local school boards, and a class action law suit has been organized on behalf of the scheme’s juvenile victims.

These and many other examples have become typical in an age of the dismantling of the public sector and the social safety net. In the current crisis of capitalism -- and for decades before -- massive cuts and privatization schemes, the capitalist class’ answer to the decreasing rate of profits, have ravaged the “welfare state” and all the concessions won by the American working class through organized struggle in the post-war period of economic growth.

Even as both major political parties pour billions in taxpayer dollars into wars on poor people in foreign lands, and into our domestic prison industrial complex, they are carrying out a slash and burn policy toward funding for public education, health care, public works, job creation, infrastructure, and social investment; the very factors essential to changing the conditions which lead to crime in the first place.

It may seem as though some lawmakers are beginning to soften their “tough on crime” stance. For example, in California, where, in February, a federal judge ordered that the state must reduce the number of inmates in its prisons by 40% to put an end to the violation of prisoners’ constitutional rights. However, this has little to do with any “change of heart” and far more to do with the crushing financial burden on the state in keeping these people locked up in the midst of epic budget crises. As America learned in the 1980s under the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, the state turning desperate people out onto the streets does nothing to solve the bigger problems which lead them there to begin with.

To eliminate crime we first have to address the conditions which lead to crime: unemployment, desperation, poverty and despair. We must fight for quality, stimulating jobs at a living wage, free cradle-to-grave education, affordable-quality housing and free, quality health care and access to healthful, nutritious food for all. We must struggle to put an end to the exploitation of labor in the prison system, as well as in the work place.

Ultimately, we must put an end to the greatest crime of all; the appropriation of the wealth created by the working class by the capitalists and their laws, police, troops, political parties, courts and prison system. Of course, only by fighting for and achieving Socialism can we truly put an end to this state of affairs and build a better world for all humanity.

HealthCARE-NOW! 2009 National Strategy Conference to be held in St. Louis

2009-11-04T17:00:00.004-06:00

This is pretty big news for single payer activists in the midwest and HUGE news for Lefts and activists in & around the Greater St. Louis area. Here's a cut'n'paste of the registration page and a link so you can sign up and join us in the fight for FREE, QUALITY HealthCARE for ALL as a fundamental Human Right!

http://www.healthcare-now.org/campaigns/strat-conf/

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HealthCARE-NOW!

2009 National Strategy Conference

Join Us in St. Louis!

You are invited to join Healthcare-NOW! activists from around the country to plan our strategy to win guaranteed single-payer national health insurance. By learning and sharing from one another we can build on the tremendous successes of the last year and develop the plan to push Congress to implement single-payer national health insurance NOW.

When: Saturday, November 14th and Sunday, November 15th

Where: Sheraton Westport Plaza, 900 Westport Plaza, St. Louis, MOTime: Sat, 4pm – 9pm (dinner on your own)Sun, 8am – 4pm

DOWNLOAD THE CONFERENCE AGENDA

Please Take These 3 Steps to Register

1. Registration Form Please complete the Registration Form at the bottom of this page, or call Katie Robbins at 1-800-453-1305.

2. Pay Registration Fee A $30.00 Registration fee is required. Pay by check or money order to Healthcare-NOW!, at 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY, 10012. You can also pay online here. This fee is to help cover the conference expenses.

3. Hotel Reservations Hotel accommodations with the Sheraton Westport Plaza near the airport are available at a special Healthcare-NOW! discounted rate until October 30, 2009. Rooms are $89 each, with two double beds. Please go here to reserve your room and learn more about the hotel.

Free airport shuttle, free continental breakfast, and free wi-fi included in hotel reservations.

For questions, comments, or financial hardship concerns, please don’t hesitate to call Katie Robbins at 1-800-453-1305 or email info[at]healthcare-now.org.

Obama Awarded Nobel "peace" Prize: "Nothing Important Happened Today"

2009-11-02T09:19:00.002-06:00

Friday, October 9th 2009
written by Paul J Poposky

THE news today - the ONLY news, apparently - is that Barack Obama has become the 3rd standing US President to be awarded the Nobel "peace" Prize. If you get your news primarily from the capitalist media you could be forgiven for thinking that nothing else - nothing important - happened today. The Nobel Committee awarded Obama the "peace" Prize on the basis that his election has "created a new international climate". Ed Schultz of MSNBC said "Only very rarely has a person – to the same extent as Obama – captured the world attention and given its people hope for a better future”. This "hope for a better future" might come as news to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, who - if this author is not mistaken - are still living under the yolk of US military occupation; or the people of Iran, Pakistan, Syria, Somalia and Sudan who certainly are "hoping" they don't find themselves on the receiving end of another predator drone air strike.

I don't think I heard anything in the news about the 60 people who will perish in the US today because we don't have equal access to free, quality health CARE here as a fundamental human right -- AND Obama and the Democratic Party REFUSE to fight for it! How many people in the wealthiest nation in history are working hard at 2 or 3 jobs at places like Starbucks, Wal-Mart or Whole Foods and still not getting by? How many poor kids might be enticed to sign up at their local army recruitment office, often in their high school cafeteria, because their parents lost their jobs, their health care, their homes or all of the above in the current world economic crisis?!? How many of those kids will soon be pointing a gun at other poor people in another country? How many scared working class kids in Iraq or Afghanistan will find themselves on the business end of those guns, looking back at our sons and daughters? How many Iraqis or Afghanis or Americans were murdered today by the cruel hand of the Pox Americana, of capitalist interests; profit, greed and empire? I don't know the answer because the capitalist media didn't tell me today...

What I did learn was that early this morning Obama accepted his award, saying "I am both surprised and deeply humbled by the decision of the Nobel Committee". Far-right talking heads like Fox News' Glen Beck quickly pounced, criticizing the award and inexplicably suggesting that the participants in the Tea Party "movement" (?!?) should receive a "peace" Prize instead. Liberal shill Ed Schultz fired back, saying "the ONLY people in the world who are condemning Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize are Islamic terrorists and the intellectual terrorists in the Republican Party". Conservative pundits Rush Limbaugh, Michael Steele and Ron Christie decried the choice of the Nobel Committee, claiming it is unfair the President was nominated only 12 days after his inauguration but Rachel Maddow, a liberal intellectual and commentator for MSNBC, explained that "it doesn't always work that way" echoing Obama's earlier statement that the Nobel "peace" Prize is often awarded to "give momentum to a set of causes".

Perhaps by "specific causes" we are to understand that the bourgeoisie intellectuals on the Nobel Committee mean the cause of western imperialism, the cause of world capitalism. This week we learned that President Obama is considering sending 60,000 additional US troops to Afghanistan, bringing the total US forces in that country to over 140,000. Already the US War OF Terror has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and around the world. Today Obama said "I will accept this award as a call to action". It is no surprise that the best front man western imperialism and capitalism ever had, a man who has continued and is now escalating the war, torture and murder around the world should get the nod of the international capitalist elite. Perhaps the Nobel "peace" prize should be renamed... The Nobel Imperialist Prize! As the sun goes down this evening I can only wonder: is this "change you can believe in"? I think not. It seems instead we are being told plainly "War is Peace you can believe in".

As I flick off the TV and tune out the voices of liberal and conservative flapping heads, praising or condemning Obama's award but reporting nothing, I cannot help but remember something I heard years ago. On July 4, 1776 George III King of England scribbled an ironic entry in his journal; it read "Nothing important happened today". Considering the mainstream media’s feature distraction today, those words seem strangely-appropriate; for all the wrong reasons...

Single Payer ACTION! at the National Day of Action on Health Care Reform

2009-10-19T19:34:00.004-05:00

Let’s take to the streets and spread the word: It's Time to Deliver REAL Health Care Reform!

PASS HR676 for SINGLE PAYER HealthCARE!

Dozens of organizations and hundreds of St. Louisans will be demonstrating in support of health care reform during rush hour on Tuesday, October 20 to tell Congress, the media, and our neighbors that It’s Time to Deliver REAL HealthCARE Reform!

Please Join Us at:

the intersection of Kingshighway and Lindell in St. Louis, MO

Tuesday, October 20th

7 to 9 am and 4 to 6 pm

Help us spread the word: The Obama health insurance reform plan is NOT ENOUGH!

America wants and needs REAL healthCARE reform, Sinlge Payer; a publically funded & run, EVERYBODY-in NOBODY left-out National Health Service. The only healthCARE guaranteed to be truly universal and "affordable" to ALL is FREE healthCARE.

Please bring yourself, family, friends, neighbors and co-workers and bring your single-payer signs and flyers. Additional sigs, flyers and other materials will be made available at the event.

Help us get the word out about Single Payer HealthCARE Reform: Change we ALL can REALLY believe in!

for more information, please contact:

Paul Joseph Poposky

Workers International League

314-723-0432 (cell)

or email

PaulJosephPoposky@hotmail.com

EVERYBODY IN, NOBODY LEFT OUT

Health"care" Nightmare in the USA

2009-10-16T11:34:00.003-05:00

since Halloween is just around the corner, please let me tell you a scary story... the story I am about to share with you all is all the more terrifying because it is a TRUE story...

My fiance is currently sick with a staph infection which should have been controllable. She and I both work in Special Education. But because the Special School District of St. Louis County has inexplicably succeeded for years in preventing the Autism Therapists and Teachers' Aides from organizing a union, we have NO CONTRACT and no representation, no collective bargaining. The district has created a favoritism based two-tiered system, both tiers are hourly and considered "work at will", though the higher tier - which I fall into - comes with (crappy) paid benefits and paid sick days. Julie, my fiance, falls into the bottom tier which offers NO benefits and NO paid sick days. She was bitten by a mentally handicapped student earlier in the year who frequently comes to school with a persistent "rash". A short time later my un-insured fiance inexplicably came down with a staph infection and two other aides in her building came down with pneumonia (caused by staph). Julie sought treatment at Walgreens' "take care" clinic but the overworked, underpaid nurse practicioner prescribed her the wrong medicine and her infection worsened. Because Julie was uninsured she avoided going to the hospital and because she had already had bad experiences with insurance when she had it once (a policy she purchased out-of pocket) and Julie has a history of eczema (pre-existing conditionn) she risked DEATH all because of a totally preventable and treatable condition, what should have never moved beyond being a MINOR infection.

When our employer found out Julie was on antibiotics for a staph infection and two other employees were sick with pneumonia, a supervisor and the school nurse sent them home and told them not to come back until they'd seen a doctor. How was Julie supposed to see a doctor she couldn't afford to pay?!?!? so Julie got a referral to a dermatologist who tried to sell her cosmetic cremes for her eczema instead of treating her potentially fatal staph infection. Julie had to fight with the doctors office to get on an oral medication to finally wipe out the infection, and we still don't know if she's out of the woods yet. When Julie returned to work three days later with a doctor's note she learned that her two uninsured co-workers had their jobs threatened for being out sick, BUT THEY WERE ALL TOLD TO GO HOME! They get no paid sick days! NO HEALTH BENEFITS from the employer who sent them home and told them not to come back without a doctors note but was now threatening their jobs!

Julie, who has no union to turn to, is now working a second job in the evening to pay the bills and quitting in disgust next month to take a HUGE pay cut, leaving education to go work as a cashier/food prep at a bakery. She found out this week that if she'd been referred to an infectious disease specialist instead of a dermatologist she could have saved money and gotten the treatment she needed more quickly without having to fight the dermatologist for it. But how was she supposed to know any of that? Julie is an Autism Therapist, not a medical professional. Without insurance Julie had no idea how to navigate the healthcare system and had to rely on an overworked, underpaid employee of a for-profit clinic AND she had to pay 100% of the cost for her treatment out of pocket. Anyone who works in education, especially at an entry level, could tell you that we don't make enough to plan for such things, don't make near enough to put away any $$$ at the end of the month.

A lot of people don't have that extra money. That is just one of the many, many (47million) reasons why we need a Single Payer, EVERYBODY in, NOBODY left out, improved and expanded MEDICARE FOR ALL; a National Health Service akin to what France, Spain, the UK or Canada has. We need to toss out the baby with the bathwater where health"care" is concerned. Obama"care" won't cut it, the "public" option is a joke, and the real problem is the Private Option; the for-profit insurers and HMOs and big PhRMA who bankrolled the Democrats AND Obama's electoral campaigns and who Obama and the Dems are pulling out all the stops to protect. Insurers practically wrote the Baucus Bill and Obama and Co cut quiet backroom deals with big PhRMA and the big for-profit hospitals before public the public debate and media coverage even began this spring.

The "uniquely American" system (as Prez Barack Obama calls it) of health non-care, rationing based on economic privilege, nearly KILLED my fiance, as it could have killed my father last year (diabetes), as it denies my mother care for her MS, as it denies my baby brother care for his congenetal heart defect or denies my sister care for her asthma. My family isn't profitable enough so it makes sense by the ill-logic of this twisted system to just let them die; when anyone raises concern at this the system points the finger AT ITS VICTIMS, says maybe they made "bad choices"... I don't know how many mentally healthy people I've ever met who "chose" to get sick.

ANY plan that involves and maintains any role at all for these murderous bastard insurance companies is worse than doing nothing at all, and I don't care if its Obama's plan its still worse than doing nothing. Mandating individuals purchase benefits from for-profit insureres and punishing those who don't with tax fines (like they do in Massachusetts) will NEVER achieve universal coverage - besides, insurance "coverage" does NOTHING to insure that sick people receive the HealthCARE they need - only by completely removing health insurance companies from the healthcare equations - not surgically, but with a chainsaw - can we truly have universal healthCARE for ALL. The only healthCARE guaranteed to be "affordable" to ALL is FREE healthCARE!

we need our unions to stop talking and start showing us some action on Single Payer! Single Payer or NOTHING!

Letters: Health Care and the Workplace

2009-10-14T09:22:00.003-05:00

Originally published at SocialistAppeal.org this letter is an excellent and tragic personal example of the sort of squeeze that tens of millions of Americans find themselves in concerning both healthcare AND employment each and every year in this country. It is stories like this and the experience of growing up poor and watching my working class family struggle to get by that eventually lead me to socialist politics, and it is stories like this that will help galvanize this nation and fire the struggle for Single Payer HealthCARE; free-at source, everybody in - NOBODY left out Medicare for ALL, in short: FREE, QUALITY HEALTHCARE FOR ALL AS A FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHT!

Paul J.P.

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Written by SB
Friday, 09 October 2009

Support Socialist Appeal - Subscribe or make a Donation!

Dear Socialist Appeal,
I badly injured my lower back doing some heavy lifting at work. I don’t mind doing the heavy lifting, its part of the job. The horrible part is that no matter how sick or injured I get I will never be able to take a day off. My boss likes to keep our restaurant ludicrously understaffed, there’s 5 people covering 28 shifts. If I were to call in and say “I can barely stand up” my answer will be “find someone to cover the shift or come in”.
I am at work, able to stand thanks to a dose of vicodin I scored from an individual that was definitely not a doctor, not a drug dealer either, just someone trying to help out a person in need. I can’t see a real doctor because on top of the visit and the prescription costs, I would also be losing pay. The person who gave me the vicodin reminded me “If you get caught with this, you didn’t get it from me.” In the eyes of the law, I’m now a criminal, great.
Yet another problem is the zero sick days and the zero vacation days I am allotted each year. As someone who prepares food, its probably not beneficial to have me coming in every time I have the flu or a cold. The owner, the kind bourgeois scum that he is, offers us health insurance that costs over 30% of my wage (I make minimum wage)!
The choice is clear, I can eat or not be sick. The problem of the boss’ mentality is that the he honestly believes he is being fair. The guy makes over a million in profit each year from the sweat of his workers. He has a sign in his office that reads “Employee Incentive Program: Work Harder Or Get Fired”. The boss also reminds the waitstaff of the stack of applications he has sitting in his office, you are replaceable! Never Forget!
Who wants to live in a world where everyone except yourself is sick and poor? The owning class, that’s who. Lowering costs means also lowering the life expectancy of the majority of the population.
When will all these idiots quit blathering about how capitalism is the best system? When will we the people realize the “medicine” they have us swallow IS the disease?
I wanted to thank you for speaking truth through the madness. Capitalism can’t go on if the world wants to heal. Like Wilhelm Reich said:
“The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.”

Thanks,

SB, Detroit, MI

Film Discussion on Capitalism: A Love Story

2009-10-12T14:31:00.002-05:00

Film Discussion

Capitalism is the Problem... but what is the solution?

When: Thursday
October 29th 6-8pm

Where: Carpenter Library
3309 S Grand Blvd
St Louis, MO. 63118

Michael Moore’s new film exposes capitalism for what it is: a system based on the ruthless exploitation of the many by the few, who shamelessly loot people’s lifelong savings, the public treasury, and kick millions out of their homes. By the end of the film, capitalism stands roundly condemned, however, Mike is less clear as to what he is actually for. The Workers International League thinks it is important to state what is: capitalism is the problem, and socialism is the solution.
Join us for a discussion of the film and to get involved in the fight for a better world!

For more information, contact:
(314) 435-2493
or, email
stl@socialistappeal.org
www.socialistappeal

THE News of the Day: Obama awarded the Nobel "peace" Prize

2009-10-09T13:12:00.003-05:00

this is a sick, sick joke, my friends!

Today THE news is, apparently, that Prez Obama was awarded the Nobel "peace" Prize earlier this morning. They're saying he's been "humbled", whatever that is supposed to mean, and the liberal media is once again building up ObamaMania as it's darling. Perhaps this is political cover for Obama's failed bid for the Olympics, perhaps its just a coincidence... no matter what it is, above all, awarding Prez Obama the "peace" prize is a sick and twisted sort of irony, considering this is the man who ran on a vague platform of hope, change, "yes we can" and appeals to the American Working Class based on jobs, economic security, right to unionize and fundamental healthcare reform, as well as the end to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. While Obama clearly told us all during the election season what he was gonna do, the media and the Obama campaign were more than happy to play on the desire of the American working class, tired of 8 years (actually, far longer) of far-right wing politics, neo-liberal/neo-conservative attacks on living standards and human rights, and endless, endless war, in order to achieve the campaign's own ends: electing Obama.

Lets remember though, this isn't a case of "Obama has to clean up Bush's mess" or "he's only been in for 6months", because in that six months Obama has made few cosmetic changes - though those changes have been the primary focus of the liberal media, seeking to draw attention away from what Obama is really doing - Obama has actually accomplished A LOT in those six months. Obama has continued and dramatically expanded the corporate welfare program of bailouts and rescues for the very for-profit, corporate and capitalist interests and investors who caused the current crisis in the first place (and who are now benefitting from it). Obama is NOT pursuing fundamental HealthCARE reform - Single Payer as embodied in Cong. John Conyers' HR676 - instead Obama and congressional Democrats have preferred to push a plan which does next to nothing for patients seeking care but does a whole lot against them; cutting medicare by up to $500Billioin, legal mandates on individuals to purchase the same crappy "insurance" plans that are available now and locking them in with punitive tax fines for those who do not participate, a tax on existing benefits and MASSIVE subsidies to the for profit insurance companies and hospitals (think Mass"Care"). Obama has apparently forgotten his promise to pass EFCA, while Congr. Dems quietly gutted EFCA in committee this summer, "compromising" and removing card check from the bill. Obama has continued the Bush admin initiated War OF Terror on the Middle East and, in fact, most of the world, and has expanded the conflict; promising to keep a US military presence in Iraq for decades, increasing troop levels in Afghanistan and expanding the war into Pakistan and Somalia and possibly the Sudan. Obama's policies are monstrous, and the champion of those policies, in this author's view, is himself a monster...

...but the history of the Nobel Prize is FULL of monsters, absolute MONSTERs being awarded the prizes for "peace" or, perhaps more ironic, for "science. This is yet another in a long line of "peace" prize awards to the servants of western imperialism and capitalism more generally.

I mean for this to mock all the celebration going on over this in the mainstream media today: see, apparently there isn't a war going on; our troops -mainly poor kids recruited out of school - aren't still occupying two or three or actually dozens of other countries, we aren't killing other poor people around the world for our empire and for capitalist profits, the US' hodgepodge of for-profit health insurers and HMOs and for-profit hospitals and their corporate "death-panels" (the ones we already have) aren't murdering 24,000 Americans a year in the US because we don't guarantee healthcare - FREE, quality healthCARE - as a HUMAN RIGHT to ALL in this country, there aren't millions of working class people who want to join a union but can't because the backstabbing Dems quietly gutted EFCA in committee this summer, no one is unemployed in America, no one is losing their home or living on the streets or out of a car or in a tent somewhere, no one is going hungry, we don't have millions of youth in this nation who WANT a quality education but are working 2-3 jobs at Burger King and Wal-Mart and Whole Foods making poverty wages and being exploited to levels perhaps even surpassing outright slavery...

...no, the only REAL news, apparently, is that Prez Obama was awarded the Nobel "peace" Prize today, and we ALL - as good patriotic Americans - ought to feel real good about that... or so we are told... I seem to remember that on the date July 4, 1776 King George the III wrote in his diary "nothing happened today". It seems to me that the media, today, may as well have run that as their big feature distraction for the day... really, it tells the same story...

Paul J P

10-9-09

AFL-CIO Convention Endorses Single-Payer: Now Mobilize the Rank & File

2009-10-06T08:57:00.002-05:00

this EXCELLENT report on the AFL-CIO's endorsement of HR676 for Single Payer HealthCARE reform was written by Comrade Dave May for SocialistAppeal.org

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AFL-CIO Convention Endorses Single-Payer: Now Mobilize the Rank & File

Written by David May

Monday, 05 October 2009

On September 15th, the AFL-CIO union federation’s national convention unanimously voted in favor of endorsing the demand for single-payer, universal health care. The AFL-CIO is the largest union federation in the US, and despite the 2005 split of several large unions from the body, the AFL-CIO still represents more than 10 million workers in 56 national unions.

The vote represents a tremendous step forward in the fight to guarantee free, quality health care for all US workers, whether they are organized into unions or un-organized. This is a class question, and ultimately single-payer will only be won by mass movements on the economic and political planes by the working class. Now is the time to begin translating words into action, for the unions to begin mobilizing a mass, nation-wide movement demanding single-payer health care. Now is the time for the unions to break with the Democratic Party, which has taken single-payer “off the table” and instead is proposing what is in effect a massive subsidy of the HMOs at the public’s expense.

The crisis over health care has simmered in US society for decades, but under the weight of the “Great Recession,” the need for a socialized, national health care system is more important than ever. Nearly 50 million Americans either lack health coverage altogether or have fragile access to it, while the millions more who do have health insurance are subjected to rising premiums, co-pays and deductibles and are often denied care when the HMOs refuse to pay.

Many working people who have health insurance today can lose it tomorrow if they are laid off. The unions have been facing the issue of health care directly in almost every contract negotiation over the past decade as the bosses have been trying to unload as much of the cost as possible onto workers.

The right to free, universal, quality health care from the cradle to the grave is a fundamental right, but this right cannot be guaranteed within the limits of capitalism. The fight for single-payer health care can only be won with the class struggle, similar to how the right to an 8 hour day, universal suffrage and the right to form trade unions were won in the past.

The AFL-CIO’s official position on single-payer also poses the question of their support of the Democratic Party, which despite speeches to union members pledging to defend Obama’s “public option,” are pursuing a very different policy in practice. In the halls of Congress and in the mass media, they have scrapped not just single-payer but even a weak “public option” in an attempt to reach a compromise with the Republican minority, the HMOs and Big Pharma.

While the Democrats present themselves as “friends of labor,” the fact is that the party has other friends with much deeper pockets. These friends inhabit the corporate boardrooms -- the same corporations that rake in billions from the current, for-profit health system. Even though the party currently has a majority in both houses of Congress and a Democrat in the White House, they refused to fight for the Employee Free Choice Act, a key legislative demand of the unions.

How can our unions really fight for single-payer health care while supporting a party that represents the interests of the for-profit health system a thousand times more than it fights for working people? The answer is that we can’t. Either the AFL-CIO uses its demand for single-payer as a flimsy and easily-ignored “pressure tactic” on the Democrats, as it has done in the past, or it takes the logical and necessary step of breaking with the Democrats and building a party of its own that could make single-payer a reality.

The health care plan being pushed by Obama and the Democrats in Congress is really a counter-reform dressed-up to appear as a step toward single-payer. It is not. It centers around incentives for the big HMOs, such as mandated coverage. As we’ve explained in Socialist Appeal before, mandated coverage will require those currently un-insured to buy insurance from the big HMOs, with those unable to pay being given partial subsidies by the government. What this amounts to is giving multi-billion dollar corporations such as BlueCross/BlueShield millions of new customers and billions more in profits and tax dollars.

This is not a real “reform” in the interests of working people. In reality, it is yet another massive hand out to corporate America, this time to the owners of the HMOs. Instead of improving things for the vast majority of Americans, the Democrats’ plan, which is likely to be approved in some form by Congress, will make the situation ten times worse. This means that instead of “going away,” the need for single-payer will be magnified in the months and years to come.

Some would argue that by breaking with the Democrats, the unions would only be helping the Republican Party by splitting the “progressive” vote. But the problem is that in a two-party system, where both major parties defend the interests of capitalism, eventually the “greater of two evils” wins after working class voters tire of the inability of the “lesser evil” to deliver really meaningful or fundamental alternatives to the status quo. This was the experience during the Clinton administration, which on the whole passed many more counter reforms such as NAFTA and “Welfare to Work” than it did secondary reforms such as the Family Medical Leave Act.

Although illusions in Obama himself remain high, millions are already becoming disillusioned with the Democratic Party and society is becoming more sharply divided between left and right. The “Great Recession” has shaken up the consciousness of millions of working people, who are increasingly questioning the values of capitalism and looking for an alternative to the current state of affairs.

In those countries where the working class was able to win single-payer in the past, this was possible because the workers had class-independant parties based on the unions. By mobilizing the class in the streets and in the workplaces as well as on the electoral front, they were able to win the right to free, universal access to health care. It is time that the US working class and our unions take the same road as our class has done abroad.

Whole Foods’ Free Market Health Care “Alternative” Makes Us Sick!

2009-10-01T09:40:00.001-05:00

Written by Paul J. Poposky

Sunday, 27 September 2009

originally published at SocialistAppeal.org

The problem with a “free-market” solution to health care is that it kills 60 Americans every day.

In an August 12 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare,” John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Markets, joined former 2008 Republican presidential candidate and congressman from Texas Ron Paul in calling for a “free market” solution to health care reform based on “personal responsibility,” “choice,” and “freedom.” In his editorial, Mackey calls for the de-regulation of the insurance industry and argues against supporters of health care for all as a human right. He writes:

“Many promoters of health care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care -- to equal access to doctors, medicines and hospitals... [H]ealth care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter, it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges...[T]his ‘right’ has never existed in America.”

Some may find it odd that a man who made his fortune promoting healthy living, locally-grown produce, “fair” trade and marketing an eco-friendly image should come out for a far-right wing approach to health care. However, a brief examination of his company’s history makes the picture a lot more clear.

Whole Foods is a trendy grocer with a known history of union busting, lobbying against the Employee Free Choice Act, freezing wages and bullying employees into high-deductible health savings accounts which place the bulk of the cost of health care on the workers themselves. Whole Foods caters to upper-income clientele and offers a selection of high-end organic meat and produce well outside the budget of most American workers, including the company’s own employees. Perhaps this is why John Mackey doesn’t seem to “get it.”

The comments from Whole Foods’ libertarian CEO have set off a chain reaction of protests outside of Whole Foods locations, online petitions and blogosphere replies, nationwide boycotts and even a tea-party-led counter “buycott,” throwing fuel on the fire that is the health care debate.

In a time of economic crisis, where we see an ever-increasing number of workers losing employer-provided benefits due to layoffs or are putting off seeking medical care for the same reasons, it should come as no surprise that Facebook’s “Boycott Whole Foods” group page gained over 33,000 members little more than a month after Mackey’s article first appeared.

This year has already been a roller coaster ride for Americans concerned with the ongoing debate over health care reform. Since early 2009, supporters of fundamental changes to the American health care system have witnessed single-payer reform taken “off the table” by congressional Democrats whose insurance industry-friendly, Obama-backed proposals have failed to inspire confidence or widespread support from the masses of workers and young people who mobilized to elect Obama last fall. Many have been appalled by the repeated reports in the corporate media of far-right groups disrupting town hall meetings and intimidating health care reform supporters -- in some cases resorting to violence. Obama and his allies are retreating fast from their proposed “public option,” which appears less and less likely to make the final cut in any legislation to reach the president’s desk.

Facing a continuing economic crisis and the prospect of a jobless “recovery,” US workers just can’t afford to gamble with more of the same free market “solutions” to the problems we face. In recent years, many of these problems have been transformed from being a question of living standards to a question of survival. Before the recession even began, over 37 million people in the US were living hungry and nearly 18,000 died each year because they did not have access to health care.

The total annual deaths attributed to the current health care system increases to over 80,000 when you count those who have purchased insurance but are either denied coverage or avoid necessary treatment due to financial hardship and high co-pays. This amounts to something like 60 people dying in the US every day because they could not afford health coverage. Add to those figures the mass of Americans who lost their jobs and homes in the past two years and Mr. Mackey’s market exchanges don’t look so “mutually beneficial” anymore.

Mackey’s Wall Street Journal op-ed attempts to make a case for the de-regulation of the health insurance industry, including an end to mandates on what insurance companies are required to cover. He seems to hold the view that if insurance companies were allowed to sell any product they wanted to without restriction, and health insurance customers had more “choice,” then somehow, through the “magic” of the free market, we’d all be just hunky-dory.

Let’s give Mr. Mackey the benefit of the doubt and assume he has probably never had the experience of being denied coverage on a necessary or life-saving treatment because of pre-existing conditions or due to inability to pay out-of-pocket fees. Let’s also assume he’s never been dropped by an insurer because his poor health made him an unprofitable client. Any one of the millions of Americans who has a personal or family experience dealing with this monstrous, abusive and downright murderous for-profit health care system and the corporate “death panels” used by profit-driven insurers to drop sick patients could tell you that more de-regulation is the last thing we need!

The Obama Administration has lately been choosing words like “choice,” “competition” and “shared responsibility” to market its proposals for health insurance reform to the American public. This sounds more like the free market status quo than real “change.” More and more Americans are beginning to smell a rat in the sweetheart deals between Obama and the Democrats and the big insurance, hospital and pharmaceutical companies, such as legal mandates forcing individuals to purchase insurance from private insurers or face fines.

It is now an evident fact that Obama’s proposals will not truly guarantee universal coverage and quality health care for all. No wonder more people are beginning to look to single-payer as the only reform that can guarantee quality affordable health care to all.

Since the vast majority of the Democratic Party has never gotten on board to support single-payer, as represented in Congressman John Conyers’ HR676 or Senator Bernie Sanders’ SB703, single-payer activists and supporters from organized labor, the health care profession, concerned citizens and outraged patients have begun to organize rallies for genuine health care reform in towns and major cities including Seattle, Portland, Salt Lake City, Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago, Louisville, Detroit and D.C. At Labor Day parades across the country, activists from groups like Labor for Single-Payer and Health Care NOW! distributed literature and petitions. The “Mad As Hell Doctors” launched a nationwide tour to spread the word about why we need single-payer, universal health care. Richard Trumka, recently elected as the new president of the AFL-CIO at the labor federation’s September convention, has come out solidly in support of single-payer. In fact, the AFL-CIO as a whole has unanimously now endorsed single-payer. It is time to put these words into action!

While these are promising signs that supporters of real health care reform are organizing and mobilizing, it is of great importance that we continue to raise the demand in our unions that Labor break with the Democrats and establish a mass party of Labor to fight for key demands like full-employment at a living wage, affordable quality housing, education, and the Employee Free Choice Act, as well as single-payer. These are basic demands the Democrats have proven time and time again they simply will not -- and cannot -- fight for. Labor must take the lead in these struggles by mobilizing the rank and file and building a party of its own to fight for the interests of the working class majority in this country.

The Democrats’ plan to subsidize private insurers and mandate purchase of insurance benefits is not a step toward a single-payer system for universal coverage. The far-right’s schemes to cut taxes for the rich, privatize Medicare, de-regulate the insurance industry and make access to health care a “personal responsibility” is also clearly a step backward.

John Mackey opened his editorial with a quote from the former-Conservative British Prime Minister, Maggie Thatcher. “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” Of course, Mackey included this infamous quote because he, being quite financially secure himself after years of exploiting the labor of others, believes he is entitled not only to his ill-gotten gains but also to lecture the rest of us on why we shouldn’t have universal access to quality health care. That is, unless we can afford to shop at Mr. Mackey’s fancy grocery store!

The free market got us into this mess and no free market “solutions” can possibly get us out of it. The for-profit nature of our current health care system is what is really making people sick, not the majority of Americans Mr. Mackey implies are “irresponsible.” Proposals like Whole Foods’ free market alternative to health care reform will just make this nation even sicker! We need a working class solution to a problem that most adversely affects workers!

HUGE NEWS! AFL-CIO Endorses Single Payer HR676 UNANIMOUSLY!!!

2009-09-16T18:20:00.002-05:00

OMG I jumped in my seat and very nearly wept at seeing this news report... THIS IS HUGE! AFL-CIO Endorses Single Payer H.R.676 UNANIMOUSLY!!! I'll write more on this tomarrow, until then read more at this link:

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/september/aflcio_endorses_sin.php

Town Hall Mayhem Heats up Healthcare Reform Debate

2009-08-14T09:28:00.010-05:00

Written by Paul Joseph Poposky

Right-wing, anti-health care reform protesters disrupted yet another town hall forum on Thursday, August 6th at a middle school in Mehlville, MO a suburb of St. Louis; this time resorting to violence. The forum, scheduled by Congressman Russ Carnahan (D, MO), was originally meant to discuss senior citizens' health care issues but turned violent when a right-wing mob assaulted SEIU local 2000 employee and former Green Party candidate for St. Louis mayor Rev. Elston K. McCowan and several colleagues as they left the meeting.

McCowan was treated for a broken and dislocated shoulder and several people involved in the scuffle were arrested. The next day SEIU issued a statement:

a Reverend and SEIU member (McCowan) was assaulted at a town hall dedicated to discussing our national healthcare crisis… a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter, and others who attended in hopes of a peaceful dialogue about our nation's healthcare crisis, endured the latest attempt by right-wing fringe groups to hijack the democratic process--through violence if necessary… SEIU and hardworking women and men all over this country are standing up to their bullying tactics. We deserve a national conversation about how we will fix our failing healthcare system and help make this an economy that works for everyone."

On Saturday, August 8^th nearly 200 anti-reform protesters, many of them involved in local “tea parties” gathered outside SEIU’s St. Louis offices and demanded an apology for the violence which had been instigated by the right-wingers themselves. SEIU issued no additional comments and the protesters dispersed without further incident.

But this is only one incident in what is becoming a pattern of disruptions in recent weeks. In the past month the media has made disturbing reports of assaults, near-riots, lynchings in effigy and even death threats by right-wing activists directed at Democratic Congressmen and healthcare reform supporters. One right-winger even went so far as to bring a handgun to a town hall in Arizona. On August 11 a protester named William Kostric showed up outside President Obama's Town Hall meeting in New Hampshire wearing a logo t-shirt which read "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants", a quote by Thomas Jefferson favored by infamous Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh. To the shock of many, including law enforcement, Kostric also chose to attend the protest carrying a loaded handgun, which is legal in NH. Police kept Kostric under close surveillance as he handed out right wing literature to the crowd. Kostric has told the media that he was only expressing his "freedom of speech" downplaying the seriousness of carrying a gun to a meeting with the president and dismissing the obvious allegation that his true intent was to threaten or intimidate supporters of healthcare reform.

Not to be outdone, liberal talking-heads have fired back and pointed out the Republican Party campaign staffers, conservative think-tank activists and insurance industry/PhRMA lobbyists in photos from town halls that have been disrupted all across the country, dispelling the myth that these are "grassroots" protests. On the Aug 6 Rachel Maddow Show Rep. Brian Baird (D, WA) said of the sometimes-violent town hall disruptions:

...the first violence that's happening is violence in the democratic process. If people set out to disrupt town hall meetings, to intimidate people who sincerely want to discuss important issue, the first victim is the democracy itself.

That same evening, Maddow interviewed Tim Phillips, president of the conservative lobby group Americans for Prosperity and its front groups Patients United Now and Patients First, which have been bussing conservative organizers around the country to disrupt any debate over health care reform on behalf of the for-profit health industry. At one point in the interview Mr. Phillips became defensive as Maddow brought up Phillips' political and organizing history. Maddow defended her "gotcha" strategy, saying:

I think the American people also want to know who the players are in this fight and who's organizing what are being maintained as spontaneous efforts happening organically by Americans who are angry and aren't being coordinated by industry and by lobbyists and by political campaign groups associated with the Republican Party... you have such an important role in coordinating these events and I think the American people are curious. So I hope you don't feel like I've been unfair.

Maddow has a point, though she may be a bit closer to the truth for comfort. In all fairness, supporters of President Obama’s proposed health insurance reforms need to take a look a bit closer to home before pinning the blame for the resistance to health insurance reform on radical right-wing fringe groups and the Republican Party.

Who took the cookie from the cookie jar?

It should strike one as odd that Congressman Baird expressed his concern for "the democratic process" being hurt by right-wing mobs disrupting town hall forums when a member of his own party, Senator Max Baucus (D, MO), took the initiative and blocked advocates of Single Payer Health Care Reform from participating in the first round of closed door congressional hearings on healthcare legislative proposals earlier this year. Why would Mr. Baucus hold a meeting of "all interested parties", inviting representatives of HMO's, PhRMA, for-profit hospitals and big insurance companies, but excluding representatives of the "everybody in, nobody left out" reform that is consistently preferred by up to 60% of Americans in polls?

Sen. Baucus is the chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee and Obama's point man for delivering legislative proposals that appeal to the corporate interests who bankrolled the Democrats in their electoral comeback in '06 and '08. Baucus has dozens of former campaign staffers and close friends working on K-Street in D.C., lobbying on behalf of the big insurance companies and PhRMA. He was also the #1 recipient of campaign financing from the healthcare industry during the 2008 congressional elections, raising $1.1 million. President Obama, no lightweight himself, received more financing from these interests than any other candidate in history, raking in a cool $19 million. No wonder Obama has retreated from his 2003 declaration:

I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That's what I’d like to see.

Obama now insists that what we need is not free-at source healthcare as a human right, but to build on all of the "legacy systems in place" and "create a uniquely American solution to this problem that controls costs but preserves the innovation that is introduced in part with a free-market system". Judging from recent events, the Democrats obviously aren't the only recipients of big contributions from the medical industrial complex. While Dems received nearly $90 million total, the Republican Party cashed around $76 million in checks from an industry determined to play both sides of the aisle, and ALL against the average American. So how much health insurance "reform" does $165 million buy?

ObamaCare: This is Going to Hurt!

There is good reason for recent NPR polls which show only 47% of Americans now support Obama's proposal for healthcare reform. While media outlets like CBS, The New York Times and Yahoo! have consistently shown for years that 2/3 of Americans want a publicly run, single-payer national health service (like the proposals in H.R. 676 or S.B. 703), the Obama Administration and Democrat-controlled congress have insisted on proposals that maintain the role of private insurance companies (which are the problem to begin with!).

But the news only gets worse! Each of the current "ObamaCare" proposals in the House and Senate are built around "personal mandates" which will legally require adults to purchase insurance or pay stiff fines on their taxes each year; a page taken directly from Newt Gingrich's Contract ON America and the MassCare program which has left over 600,000 un-insured in Massachusetts, despite two decades of promised "universal coverage"... which never came!

The much-lauded "public option" which was supposed to magically reduce costs of care by "competing" with private insurers, "keeping them honest", was originally said to be open to anyone who wanted it. The program, which was to accommodate a lean 130 million, has already been trimmed down to a puny 10 million potential enrollees. Anyway, the public option is not likely to survive in any form at all when congress returns from its August recess, due to the massive pressure being applied by the Republican "Recess Roastings" of Democratic lawmakers who support the "option" and the reluctance of either party to bite the hand that feeds.

While Obama has said that early proposals to tax existing health benefits will not be part of his reform, Washington insiders say the option is still on the table. This will hit union and state workers especially hard, as their negotiated contracts generally include superior health plans to those available to most working people. Giving the man the benefit of the doubt might not be such a good idea, either; in an early concession to the Pharmaceutical industry, Democrats dropped proposals to empower the federal government to negotiate lower drug prices nationwide and import cheaper generics from Canada, breaking one of President Obama's key campaign promises.

After the 2007 début of Sicko, Michael Moore's disturbing documentary of the American healthcare nightmare, the traditionally conservative American Medical Association conducted a poll which showed 59% of doctors, nurses and healthcare service providers favor a national health program over the current system or the Obama proposed mandate-based system. It comes as no surprise that Obama & Co. are having trouble getting the American people excited about a plan that includes $500 billion in cuts to Medicare/Medicade.

Numbers from the Congressional Budget Office indicate ObamaCare will cost taxpayers TWICE what a single payer system would, due to the large subsidies needed by ObamaCare to guarantee the profits of insurance companies, CEO salaries, dividends and redundant bureaucracies, ALL of which would be eliminated entirely by single payer. A single payer system, like the ones already in place in Canada, France, Spain and the UK would create new jobs and save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. The worst news is that NONE of Obama's "reform" - if passed - will even take effect until 2013; far too late for the 20,000 Americans who die each year due to lack of healthcare coverage, and add to that an estimated 80,000 more who are killed every year by the current system of economically rationed care due to the insufficient services received by those who are under-insured or avoid treatment due to economic hardship. The question we all need to be asking is not "how much will this cost me?" rather "how much money are 100,000 American lives a-year worth, and why?"

Obama keeps telling America that if we don't hurry up and pass his version of healthcare reform that we're letting the status quo win. The fact is ObamaCare won't challenge the status quo; ObamaCare will strengthen the status quo! After all, ObamaCare's biggest supporters are Harry and Louise...

What Way Forward?

On August 6th liberal commentator Chris Mathews, host of MSNBC's Hardball, interviewed Gerald Shea, the health policy analyst for the AFL-CIO. At the end of the segment Mathews delivered one of the hard-hitting questions he's known for. The following conversation occurred:

Mathews: Ok Gerald, I'm going to be tough with you for one minute. Are you guys going to back this health care plan or are you going to bitch and moan and say it's not enough?

Shea: We are going to back it.

Mathews: You're going to back it.

Shea: Yes.

It is absolutely essential that union workers who are concerned about the rising cost of care - or the very real and terrifying possibility of losing a job and benefits in the current crisis - organize and bring pressure to bear on labor leadership to oppose ObamaCare and fight instead for a single payer national health program. On August 3rd the San Francisco took a step in the right direction, passing a resolution to propose support for single payer legislation at the AFL-CIO National Conference in September. The resolution states:

The Labor Movement has a special responsibility to aggressively address the social injustice of a broken health care system. Health care should be a right, not a privilege.

Obama and the Democrats courted organized labor and promised to support the Employee Free Choice Act in exchange for votes and campaign massive campaign contributions. Now that they are firmly entrenched in office and have achieved the so-called "super majority" we were all told would usher in a new era of progressive politics and prosperity, Democrat politicians have shown their true faces and betrayed the hopes of millions of workers. EFCA was gutted last month when congressional Democrats "compromised", removing provisions for card check.

When asked what it would take for single payer legislation to pass under the present political climate, Congressman John Conyers, Jr. (D, MI) answered grimly "nuclear weaponry". When asked the same question, Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program, a group which opposes ObamaCare and supports H.R. 676 (a reform proposal for a single payer national health service), gave a more optimistic answer “We must build a civil rights movement like those that have come before".

Only labor has the resources, the membership base and organizational potential to wage the struggle for free, quality healthcare as a human right! The Democrats will not turn on their corporate handlers or move any further leftward than their financiers allow. The solution is for the labor movement to break with the Democratic Party and run a campaign of its own for a single payer, national health service that eliminates the profit motive from healthcare, covers everyone and leaves no one behind. Imagine if all the resources the unions pour into the Democratic Party every year were instead used to fund Labor candidates running on a fighting program, appealing to a broad layer of the working class, as well as the youth and all of the oppressed and exploited. Running its own candidates, an independent Labor Party based on the unions could win the sort of changes American workers can really believe in!

WIL Statement in Response to Violence Incited by Right-Wingers Against SEIU Members

2009-08-12T19:47:00.004-05:00

originally posted at SocialistAppeal.org

Written by Socialist Appeal
Wednesday, 12 August 2009

On Thursday, August 6th, following a town hall meeting staged by Representative Russ Carnahan (D-MO) in St. Louis, MO to tout President Obama's health reform plan, violence was instigated by right-wing "protesters" against members of the Service Employees International Union. The SEIU members, three organizers and a shop steward, had turned out to demand health care for all. Among the SEIU members was recent St. Louis Mayoral candidate Rev. Elston McCowan, who ran an independent campaign on the Green Party ticket, fighting for single-payer health care and concrete measures to create jobs and defend public education. McCowan was assaulted by "tea party" protesters and his shoulder was dislocated. He was also arrested along with other SEIU members, for the "crime" of defending themselves against the right-wingers. The town hall meeting itself was disrupted inside by right-wing hecklers, who created a charged atmosphere.

This incident has been seized upon by right-wing media outlets such as Fox News and the O'Reilly Factor, who are falsely laying blame on "SEIU thugs" (according to the O'Reilly Factor) for the violence. In the days following Thursday's town hall meeting, the "tea party" organizations staged a protest outside the union's offices. To add insult to injury, Rep. Carnahan appeared on television this past weekend to condemn the right-wingers and the SEIU! Another town hall meeting on health care reform scheduled for Saturday, August 8th was canceled due to fears of disruption and violence.

These "tea party" groups, funded by the Republican Party and the big health insurance corporations, are shills for big business. Made up mostly of middle class and wealthy people, these "grass roots organizations" are being whipped into a frenzy of fear fed by misinformation and have been let loose in order to disrupt public discussions on health care in St. Louis, MO, Tampa, FL, and Orlando, FL so far, even meetings organized by the big-business backed Democratic Party to discuss Obama's health plan.

Let's be clear: Obama's plan in no way represents a single-payer, socialized health care system. Obama's plan in fact will continue to make room for the multi-billion dollar HMO and pharmaceutical companies, who are literally sucking the life blood of working people in the name of big profits for the wealthy. The Democratic plan is more of the same. Republican news outlets and commentators are attempting to confuse the public by making Obama's plan synonymous with a single payer health system. This kind of misinformation is feeding the "tea party" mobs.
These people are encouraged to use goon tactics to shut down, disrupt and even force the cancellation of meetings and to intimidate and attack union members and who attend these public meetings to discuss the all-important issue of health care. Enough is enough - the Labor Movement needs to mobilize its forces to defend democratic rights and place genuine reform - single-payer health care - on the agenda!

The SEIU union has now committed itself to standing up to the "tea party" groups. The union released a statement, saying:

"Let's be clear: These groups, backed by insurance companies and corporate front groups, want nothing more than to preserve the status quo system of rationing, where HMOs choose doctors, and insurance companies deny us the care we need. Their dearest hope is that by resorting to outrageous charges of Nazism and euthanasia, they can make the American public too afraid to support real reform.

"But SEIU and hardworking women and men all over this country are standing up to their bullying tactics. We deserve a national conversation about how we will fix our failing healthcare system and help make this an economy that works for everyone."

This call to stand up to goon tactics and for a genuine national discussion on health care reform should be supported by the whole Labor Movement and all working people, students and activists. If the unions were to mobilize the membership and working people generally to attend such public discussions, and to organize stewards and members to protect such meetings from violence and disruption, this would be a big step forward and ensure a place for working people to participate. The unions should also reach out to the millions of unemployed workers, who are without health care of any kind, and get them to join this fight. The right to democratic expression must be defended and maintained absolutely. Beyond that, if the unions were to mobilize nationally to demand single-payer health care reform, in every town and city and in every state across the nation, it would show the real balance of forces. Without the working class' kind permission, not a wheel turns nor a lightbulb shines. Such mobilizations would show the "tea party" protests for what they are: an insignificant whimper of a marginal section of the population.

The Workers International League extends its support and solidarity to the SEIU membership and to the Rev. Elston McCowan, who have been made the targets of the right-wingers. We also believe that the only fundamental health care reform is one that takes the giant HMOs and pharmaceutical companies out of the equation: a single-payer, socialized national health care system which would guarantee full access for all to the latest treatment, research and discoveries. Abolish the HMOs and nationalize the pharmaceutical giants that squeeze their profits from the health of working people! A lead towards mobilizing to fight for single-payer health care has already been given by many unions across the U.S., organized through the Labor Campaign for Single-Payer Health Care conference. We believe that if this demand were to be taken up by and fought for by the whole of the Labor Movement, it would be the best route towards real, fundamental reform of the country's health care system and in the best interests of the vast majority of the population - working people.

Labor Mobilize to Defend Democratic Rights and Demand Single-Payer Health Care!

Fenton, MO UAW Workers Rally for Jobs, Against Outsoucing & Factory Closures

2009-08-12T12:08:00.005-05:00

first, read this report from St. Louis local TV station KTVI:

FENTON, MO (KTVI - FOX2now.com) - More than 1,000 union members, mostly Chrysler workers, gathered outside the two Fenton plants Friday in a last ditch effort to save their jobs. The goal was to get the attention of the public and politicians in an effort to put political pressure on Chrysler to reconsider closing the Dodge Ram and Dodge Mini Van plants. UAW Vice President Ben Harman admits saving the plants is a long shot."You can call it a Hail Mary, you can call it a last stand," he says. "But what we're really trying to do is public awareness. Let's face it, from what we're hearing our plant's done."Their argument is straightforward. Chrysler is closing eight of its U.S. plants, including the two in Fenton. Meanwhile plants in Mexico and Canada remain in operation. All this comes as the U.S. taxpayer is spending billions to bail out Chrysler. Chrysler worker Correan Benson says she's mad and she's disappointed, "These politicians are selling us out, Republicans and Democrats! I'm sick of both of 'em!"

I was at this rally and was proud to hear young auto workers from across the region tellin’ it how it is. Its an injustice to all those workers and the entire American Working Class that those tax payer dollars went to GM and Chrysler and this is how they repay us. Also, this is what the Democrats do every time they want to take back the white house, congress, whatever… they hold hands with labor, smiling all the way then put a knife in our back once they’re in office. At least the Republicans tell it straight up, they’re against labor and for big business, for the millionairs and billionares and thats pretty much it.

Im glad I lived to see the day when some of the American WORKING CLASS is starting to see the big picture; the Democrats don’t represent our interests, they’re just as much in the pockets of the corporations and the rich as the Republicans. I say its high time labor split with the Democratic Party once and for all and found a Labor Party of its own like they’ve got in just about every other democracy int he world.

Also, we need to take back our unions from the crooked bureaucrats and businessmen who’ve gotten too close for comfort to the bosses, politicians and corporate CEO’s. We need new, younger leadership that’ll fight to keep our jobs here and stop blaming Mexican workers, who only get those jobs because the corporations get to run’em like slaves down there. It’s the corporations that sent those jobs over there, and the Democrat and Republican politicians who let’em do it are equally at fault.

Those of us in organized Labor need to recognize we’re in a class war and what class we are, and struggle accordingly ’cause these crooked politicians and businessmen and labor bureaucrats don’t care about us one bit. This demand will inevitably make me the target of the sort of right wing panic that President Obama and the Democratic Party are taking the brunt of now, accusations and name calling - specifically, the label "Socialist" is being thrown around in excess. Well, if any right-wingers out there are reading this and want to hurl that label at me that is fine, because - when aimed at me - the label is accurate. Indeed, I AM A SOCIALIST, so really I'm ok with the label. The label, the word does not mean to me what some have tried to make it mean before and still today.

However, Obama is NO socialist. in fact, if you ask a real self-described socialist they’ll often tell you that they campaign against obama and the democrats because Obama is a CAPITALIST. look at what FDR did, he bailed out capitalism when it was falling apart, he saved capitalism when it was cutting its own throat in the Great Depression. Obama is doing the same today as FDR did then, and many of the big-money CEO’s and corporations that supported Bush and railed against “wellfare” only a few years ago during a financial boom (and also fought hard to bust up unions or keep their workers from unionizing) are now big campaign contributors to Obama and the Dems. It never ceases to amaze me how when things get bad these fat-cats come a’callin’ to the very “big government” they used to oppose, begging for bailouts. all sounds like corporate wellfare to me, and thats normal in Capitalism, if you bother to look at history. socialism is something different entirely and Obama and the Dems don’t even come close to meeting the definition, they’re capitalists through and through because its the millionares and billionares and big corporations they’re bailing out, not the little guy. If Obama was calling for Working Class bailouts, the transfer of private industry to public ownership, or the nationalization and rational, democratic planning of the economy to meet everyone’s needs instead of profit, then maybe you might be able to accurately call him a “socialist”.

I say forget bailing out these companies, nationalize the whole auto, steel, transporation and healthcare industries and place’em under public ownership, let the unions run the plants so they don’t go anywhere, otherwise, if we keep on lettin’ those corporate fat-cats and their Democrat and Republican patsies in JeffCity and D.C. run things we’re just gonna get more of the same…

Comrade Jim Hays penned a good report and analysis of this rally and present conditions that can be found at:

http://www.socialorgan.org/indx.php?option=com_contnt&task=view&id=37&Itmi=1

Report by Paul J Poposky

Single-Payer vs. ObamaCare: Real Health Care Reform or the Status Quo?

2009-08-07T14:47:00.004-05:00

Written by Paul Poposky
Thursday, 06 August 2009
originally posted at SocialistAppeal.org

On Wednesday, July 15th the United States Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee voted 13-10 to approve the Affordable Health Choices Act (AHCA), legislation which, according to the HELP Committee's own press release "will reduce health costs, protect individuals’ choice in doctors and plans, and assure quality and affordable heath care for Americans... no American can be denied health coverage because of a preexisting medical condition, or have that coverage fail to help them when they need it most. No American will ever again be subject to annual or lifetime limits on their coverage, or see it terminated arbitrarily to avoid paying claims." Sounds like great news, right? Sadly this is yet another occasion which demands we take a very close look at the fine print.

Most Americans today are aware of the 47 million uninsured US citizens and many have heard about the estimated 50 million Americans who are under-insured, lacking comprehensive coverage and paying far too much in out-of-pocket expenses. While many honestly do feel that their insurance coverage is sufficient and will protect them or their family members in case of illness, our present economic crisis has been teaching more and more people a hard lesson about the inefficiencies, injustices and waste of our present, multi-payer, for profit system. It goes without saying that our current health care system is broken, and it has become difficult to watch the evening news, listen to your favorite radio station, or read the morning paper without stumbling upon the ongoing debate over health care reform.

During the long campaign for President in 2007-08 candidates from both sides of the aisle had a lot to say about health care reform. Republican candidates delivered the usual spiel about deregulation to “keep costs down” (as if...), and incentives for insurers who cover more Americans, as well as the expected lecture about personal responsibility; etc. Democrats, with the exception of then-candidate Dennis Kucinich, made vague allusions to “cutting costs,” “universal coverage” and “making health care affordable for all.” Nearly all of the top Democrats running this year supported proposals for health care reform that keep the private insurance companies in the mix, legal mandates for citizens to purchase insurance, continued rationing of care based on ability to pay, and mandates for small businesses to offer enrollment in group plans. Is this “change you can believe in” or is it all just more of the same?

Meanwhile, support has continued to grow among doctors, nurses, organized labor and the general public for a single-payer national health program, which would eliminate private health insurance companies and establish a system that provides all US citizens free at-source coverage for all medically necessary care, paid for through a common fund. Over the years some key Democrats have appeared to support such a system. Even Barack Obama once paid lip service to single-payer. In his 2006 book The Audacity of Hope, Obama describes single-payer as the hope of the left, noting that those on the right continue to support reforms that maintain the role of private insurers and the market. Of course, that was then and today the legislation being pushed by the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats couldn't be further from single-payer. In the past few weeks the nation has witnessed a media blitz for Obama's brand of health care reform, and the single-payer option has been pushed aside, declared "off the table". So who was it that decided single-payer was not an option, and what exactly is "ObamaCare"?

What is ObamaCare?

The ObamaCare crowd, from congressional supporters to liberal activists and, perhaps surprisingly, the pharmaceutical, biotech and for-profit health insurance industries all are touting the Affordable Health Choices Act as the way forward toward universal coverage, much like the Clinton Administration's failed health reform (dubbed "HillaryCare" by its opponents) was pushed by the political establishment of the 1990's as the only alternative to the status quo. The biggest difference between ObamaCare and HillaryCare has nothing to do with coverage or funding, rather, this time big insurance and pharma are supporting health reform; and they're doing it with their checkbooks. Even "Harry and Louise" appear to have switched sides... sort of (more on that later).
Also, like the HillaryCare proposal back in 1993, ObamaCare is loaded with language meant to sound progressive but chock-full of nasty sprites hidden between the lines. The Reform proposal is full of provisions that might as well have been written directly by the for-profit insurance companies, like the personal or individual mandate. Referred to several times in the draft released by the HELP committee as "shared responsibility", this blame-the-victim law, a concept previously championed by such "progressive" reformers as Richard Nixon, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney will require all US citizens not already covered by Medicare, CHIP, the VA or other government programs to either purchase benefits from a private or group insurance provider, or face stiff tax penalties at the end of the year. A third possibility would be to enroll in Obama's much-talked about "public option".

The so-called "public" plan, now referred to as The Community Health Insurance Plan, is perhaps the most disappointing part of the ObamaCare reform. A traditionally conservative and historic opponent of health care reform, the American Medical Association recently agreed "to consider" some version of the public plan, so long as physician participation was not mandated. The plan currently being proposed would only provide benefits to cover the minimum essential procedures, premiums would be high (required to cover the full cost of the plan), and enrollees would still be at the mercy of chaotic forces of the market and skyrocketing costs for services. Actually, the point of the public option - according to its own supporters - is to "compete directly with the private insurers to keep costs down" and "keep the private insurance industry honest". With a market set up to provide the least amount of the lowest quality service possible for the most money, how will the public option accomplish this fantastic and, dare I say, counterintuitive feat? Your guess is as good as mine.

At least the Obama reform will protect us from being denied coverage due to previous medical history, right? After all, Obama says so! Well, not so fast... while the early draft passed in the HELP committee protects Americans from being turned down or having their benefits cancelled due to illness, preexisting conditions or disabilities, it does allow insurers to charge varying rates based on age, geographic location, tobacco use, and family composition and does not protect anyone from having their coverage cancelled due to non-payment. Countless Americans have lost jobs, homes and entire life savings since the beginning of the current economic crisis, and many have lost their health benefits as well. How much insurance could you afford to pay for if you suddenly joined the ranks of the unemployed? The AHCA promises sliding-scale subsidies to purchase benefits for families making up to 400% of the poverty line, approximately $88,000 for a family of four, potentially equaling up to 19% of family income! This may be affordable to President Obama or to the average Congressman's family, but how realistic is this for the rest of us? At least there's always Medicaid, Medicare or CHIP, right? WRONG! The Obama White House is planning upwards of $600 billion in cuts for Medicaid financing, and this on top of decades of under funding and unpaid IOU's. It seems working and poor Americans will be "sharing" a bit more of the responsibility than some others.

Tying this mess together is a new program called the Affordable Health Benefit Gateway. Supporters claim it will help Americans find a plan that serves them best and get the coverage they need. In reality this program, combined with the regressive tax penalty for anyone who goes without basic coverage for over 90 days, will make it extremely difficult for many to cancel or change policies. The bad news doesn't stop there. Congressional aides and key Washington insiders report that, despite his repeated public assurances to the contrary, President Obama is considering a tax on health benefits to help fund start up costs and the massive subsidies for citizens to purchase private insurance. This is the same tax proposed by Senator John McCain during his failed bid for president last year. A tax on benefits will hit organized labor especially hard as union workers are far more likely than non-union employees to have employer-provided benefits through negotiated contracts, and generally enjoy higher quality benefits than workers who have to purchase coverage on their own.

President Obama has consistently delivered this same message in the media for months now, concerning health reform: "inaction on health care reform only supports the status-quo" and "[u]nless we act, and act now, none of this will change." Of course, by "inaction on health care reform" the President specifically means inaction on his reform. The only thing that we can be certain of is that any reform that keeps the for-profit insurance companies in the equation or hands them billions of dollars in taxpayer funds each year for subsidies that fail to guarantee universal coverage or equal access to quality care, a tax on benefits, a weak and restrictive public option that is doomed to failure, and an individual mandate - straight out of Newt Gingrich's Contract on America, in short, The ObamaCare reform, will strengthen the status quo. The doctors, nurses and health care providers, the uninsured, under-insured, and all those at risk don't need another dose of the medicine that made us ill to begin with. But that pill is exactly what Obama and the Democratic Party are pushing.

The Definition of Insanity

The proposals laid out in Obama's AHCA are nothing new. In a comment destined to be mocked relentlessly by John Stewart on The Daily Show, Republican Party Chairman Michael Steel called the Democrats' reform "socialism." Perhaps before slinging the dreaded S-word so carelessly, Mr. Steel should have learned a little more about the history of health care reform, and particularly, the history of his own party. Had he done so, the Republican Party Chairman might have chosen his words a bit more carefully.

The cornerstone of ObamaCare is the individual mandate. Back in 1971 President Richard Nixon, fearing the advance of a single-payer movement, proposed reform that mandated employers offer benefits to their employees and created subsidies for the poor to purchase insurance or sign up for Medicare-like public insurance with a sliding scale of premiums. The legislation failed, but the idea was picked up numerous times over the years by politicians on both sides of the aisle who sought to avoid single-payer reform.

Massachusetts became the first state to pass a version of "mandated care" in 1988. Expanding on Nixon's idea, MA lawmakers added a personal mandate for students and the self-employed. In 1989 Oregon launched a reform that combined employer mandates with expanded Medicaid and rationing expensive treatments. Oregon's effort failed to reduce its uninsured. Between 1992-93, four more states, Vermont, Minnesota, Tennessee and Washington, all tried various mandated care schemes. Howard Dean, then-Vermont Governor, called for universal coverage by 1995, but the state's uninsured rates have only gone up. Minnesota's uninsured were supposed to magically vanish too, but by 1997 had increased by 88,000 and continue to rise. Tennessee's reform increased rates from 14% to over 16% uninsured before its second year in effect, and the program has been a catastrophe for the state's poor and disabled. Washington state, whose health care reform most closely resembles the ObamaCare plan, experienced a horrific increase, 35% in only six years, with nearly a million state residents living without health coverage.

The Clinton Administration included personal mandates in its failed health care proposal in 1993. Only a year later Newt Gingrich's Personal Responsibility Movement adopted the idea of the personal mandate as part of Gingrich's vicious attack on so-called "free riders", participants in public programs and recipients of federal aid. Gingrich supported the personal mandate as part of a punitive strategy to shift financial burdens onto the very disadvantaged communities and needy populations that public programs are meant to serve.

In 2003 Maine passed the Dirigio Health Care Reform Act, which established a system similar to Massachusetts' Mass-Care. The Maine reform introduced new programs meant to extend Medicare eligibility, as well as a state-subsidized insurance policy called Dirigio. The program, like so many before, was meant to achieve universal coverage, but failed miserably. Since its introduction, Maine's reform has only covered 11% of the 136,000 uninsured in Maine. Of those who are now covered, twice as many enrolled in the Medicaid programs than purchased Dirigio's state subsidized insurance, proving that low income families in Maine prefer a fully-paid public plan over sliding-scale premiums and incomplete coverage. All projections for financing through savings offsets, an approach to funding universal coverage favored by the supporters and architects of the ObamaCare plan, have fallen short in Maine. Savings-offset payment, in theory, uses savings to health care providers from decreased frequency of uncompensated care (emergency room visits by the uninsured) and cost-saving initiatives (rationed care, electronic records), to finance further subsidies intended to help citizens purchase private insurance plans. As Maine clearly shows, it doesn't work.

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney initiated further reform of Mass-Care in 2006 , passing legislation that increased the punitive fines on individuals who cannot afford to purchase private insurance or do not qualify for subsidized care to nearly $2,000 in 2008. Despite increased fines and Romneys proclamation that uninsured rates in Massachusetts would be "wiped out", fewer than 2,000 of the state's 651,000 uninsured purchased new policies. According to Jane Slaughter of LaborNotes the state is preparing to place limits on coverage and cuts services like dental in 2008-09. Surveys conducted in Massachusetts show that support for a statewide single-payer reform is growing, as premium rates under Mass-Care have soared, increasing over 10% each year. In polls conducted statewide, most state residents said that the revised Mass-Care did more harm than good. Today in Massachusetts 1 in 7 residents cannot afford the health care they need. For-profit hospitals and insurers lobbied hard to get the new reform passed in 2006, and enjoyed a hefty rate increase and record profits for their effort. Meanwhile, public hospitals and community clinics which serve Massachusetts hundreds of thousands of uninsured are being forced to close down and consolidate due to massive cuts in state funding.

The state programs described above clearly show that the only thing that personal mandates ensure is windfall profits for the health care industry. Any reform that strengthens the for-profit insurers will only make the problem worse, and any reform that keeps a place for the private insurers is doomed to failure. The Obama Administration has crafted a reform proposal modeled after similar state reforms that have time and again failed to achieve universal coverage, failed to control or reduce costs, and failed to guarantee equal access for all Americans to the quality health care they need. Albert Einstein once said "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Do the Congressional Democrats and the Obama White House really expect anything new from a reform proven for two decades-in multiple states to do more harm than good? Or, perhaps, is there another agenda at work here?

Reform for Who?

In a July 20th report NPR Senior News Analyst Cokie Roberts said that President Obama may need to make many "small deals with the many stakeholders involved" in the Obama health reform, including the AMA, big pharma, for-profit insurers and hospitals, as well as Congressional Republicans and Democrats in order to get any reform passed this year. The truth is that Obama and his supporters in Congress already have, many times over. First, committees debating health care reform declared from the beginning that single-payer, the only reform that would truly guarantee free and equal access to quality health care services as a human right, was "off the table". Second, provisions promised by the Obama presidential campaign, which would have allowed cheaper generic drugs to be imported from Canada and empowered the federal government to negotiate Medicare drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies, were quietly dropped before the Affordable Health Choices Act was announced to the media. Also, a Senate Committee voted to give brand-name drugs a minimum 12 year market exclusivity deal, essentially locking out cheaper generics. Third, the AHCA is a bi-partisan bill and "includes more than 160 Republican amendments" according to its own press release.

These early concessions to big PhRMA and the AMA and all the broken campaign promises should have been expected from the candidate who once spoke in support of a National Health Service, but has since turned his back on single-payer supporters. In a 2003 speech at the AFL-CIO Civil, Human and Women's Rights Conference, then state senator Obama said:

I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That's what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we've got to take back the White House, we've got to take back the Senate, and we've got to take back the House.

However, since then Mr. Obama has gone to great lengths to distance himself from his early statements supporting single-payer. Back in May of '09 The New Yorker reported that Obama said:

If you're starting from scratch, then a single-payer system'-a government-managed system like Canada's, which disconnects health insurance from employment-'would probably make sense. But we've got all these legacy systems in place, and managing the transition, as well as adjusting the culture to a different system, would be difficult to pull off. So we may need a system that's not so disruptive that people feel like suddenly what they've known for most of their lives is thrown by the wayside.

On July 1, 2009, in Annandale, VA, the President had this to say about health care reform:

For us to transition completely from an employer-based system of private insurance to a single-payer system could be hugely disruptive, and my attitude has been that we should be able to find a way to create a uniquely American solution to this problem that controls costs but preserves the innovation that is introduced in part with a free-market system,

President Obama keeps saying that "it's important for our efforts to build on our traditions here in the United States", that the American people want choices and want to keep their existing coverage. It seems that the President is confusing "wanting to keep existing coverage" with not wanting to lose existing benefits; the two are not always the same. Is the president mistaken? Does he perhaps believe that Americans don't want "too much" change, or is all this backpedaling to be taken as a quiet admission that ObamaCare won't change much at all? What cruel irony, and this from the man who, as candidate for president, ran on slogans like "yes we can," "hope," and "change you can believe in".

Another Obama campaign promise was that, if elected, his administration would guarantee unprecedented "transparency" and public access. While the Administration thus far has hardly been “transparent,” the facts concerning Obama and his fellow Democrat's financing in the 2008 elections are a matter of public record. Official statistics on election campaign contributions, available through the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics on opensecrets.org, show that Barack Obama received more money from health care professionals, the for-profit health insurance and big pharma industries combined than any other candidate for the presidency in 2008 or any candidate in all prior presidential races, for that matter. A report by the Montana Standard presents even more damning evidence of the extent to which the Obama administration and its supporters in Congress, including Montana's own Senator Max Baucus, have been bought off by the for-profit insurance industry. The Standard reports:

In the past six years, nearly one-fourth of every dime raised by Baucus and his political-action committee has come from groups and individuals associated with drug companies, insurers, hospitals, medical-supply firms, health-service companies and other health professionals.

Senator Baucus is the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, the go-to guy tasked by the Obama administration with facilitating a health care reform proposal that is palatable to the industry that financed the Democratic Party in 2008 with nearly $90 million in total contributions, while also lining the coffers of the Republican Party's campaign war chest that same year to the tune of $76 million. Nearly half of Senator Baucus' campaign contributions in 2008 came from special interest PACs from outside Montana, only 13% of funds raised came from donors inside the Senator's home state.

Over two-dozen of Baucus' former campaign staffers now work as lobbyists on K-Street, and many of his closest former employees today represent some of the biggest for-profit insurers and drug makers, including America's Health Insurance Plans, Inc, Merck & Co., and The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). PhRMA's current CEO is former congressman Billy Tauzin, whose recent endeavors include using PhRMA's massive budget to lobby Canadian lawmakers for legislation that would undermine Canada's single-payer system and eliminate the heavily subsidized prescription drug prices enjoyed by that nation's citizens. Recently, PhRMA teamed up with the liberal group Families USA to do its part to make sure we all know that "the only way,” the "American way," is the Obama way. A new round of television advertisements featuring "Harry and Louise" began airing the week of the Affordable Health Choices Act's press release. As you may recall, "Harry and Louise" are the fictitious TV couple who helped defeat HillaryCare in 1993; the couple apparently have seen the light and now support health care reform, specifically, they support ObamaCare.

It comes as no surprise that Baucus received more money from these interests than any other candidate for congress in 2008 (in fact, only presidential candidates Obama, Clinton and McCain received more $$$ from the industry), nor should supporters of a single-payer, national health program be surprised by the lengths to which Senator Baucus, the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats have been willing to go to exclude and marginalize single-payer proposals and craft legislation favoring the medical-industrial complex.

Single-Payer "Off the Table"

To get a clear picture of just how one-sided the official "debate" has been, one need only ask a doctor. Specifically, ask Dr. David Scheiner of Chicago. Why ask Dr. Scheiner? Because he was President Obama's doctor for over 22 years, and Dr. Scheiner supports single-payer. Ask Dr. Scheiner about the President's proposal for health care reform, and he'll tell you exactly what he thinks of it: "It won't work". When producers at ABC news invited the President's former physician to a June 24th White House forum on health care, where President Obama was set to answer questions on the topic from a live audience, Dr. Scheiner was thrilled! "I was going to ask a question directly of the President." Scheiner explained, "I was his doctor for 23 years, and I was going to surprise him." After canceling dozens of appointments with patients and only two days before the forum in D.C., Doc Scheiner received a call from a producer at ABC informing him that his invitation was cancelled. Of the program, in which there was not one single mention of single-payer, Scheiner says “I was pissed! The program was terrible. It was an infomercial for the medical-industrial complex. The questions were softballs..."

Earlier this year Senator Baucus initiated a series of preliminary meetings between interested parties to discuss health care reform proposals before the Senate Finance Committee. Representatives of insurance companies, HMOs, for-profit hospitals and pharmaceutical companies were present, but advocates of single-payer were not invited, and not welcome. In the month of May, 13 arrests were made when single-payer supporters, including doctors, nurses, activists and concerned citizens stood up during two of the Finance Committee's meetings and demanded to be heard. The activists called the hearing a "pay to play" event protested their exclusion from the debates, as well as Senator Baucus' statement that single-payer was "not an option on the table." Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program was one of the 13 activists arrested at the Senate Finance Committee. In an interview with Amy Goodman on DemocracyNOW! Dr. Flowers described the dilemma for single-payer supporters in the health reform debate:

for so many years, doctors and nurses have been trying to deliver quality health care in this country, and it’s become increasingly difficult. We have tried to have our voice heard. We really requested to Senator Baucus that he include a single-payer advocate at these roundtable discussions, and we were told very clearly that there would be no invitation coming. And so, we felt that... we couldn’t be silent any longer. We needed to stand up on behalf of our patients, on behalf of our colleagues, and speak out.

Russell Mokhiber, founder of SinglePayerAction.org and another of the "Baucus 13" was also interviewed by Amy Goodman. He explained further:

...the majority of Americans, majority of doctors support single-payer. Get rid of the private health insurance industry. Save $400 billion in administrative costs and profits, use that money to insure everyone. You have a card, an Americare card, when you’re born, and you can go to any doctor, any hospital in the country. So this is what the American people want. Insiders say this is what we’re going to get, sooner or later. Why not just have it now? ...the problem was that you have this lockdown on Capitol Hill, where the corporations, the health insurance industry, is in control. Senator Baucus has had twenty-eight witnesses over the span of these two hearings, not one of which was a single-payer advocate... the faxing, the phone calling, all of that’s not working anymore. We have to use a battering ram to break what’s going on, break down what’s going on in Congress.

In tv interviews and on pro-single-payer websites, single-payer activists criticized Baucus' and the lobbying group, America's Health Insurance Plans's, use of the term "a uniquely American solution" to describe ObamaCare reform, pointing out that America already has a "uniquely American solution" that works like single-payer, it’s called Medicare. The Democrats currently enjoy a 60-vote super-majority in the Senate. Last year, voters were told again and again by Democratic candidates and liberal commentators that a 60-vote majority was all that was needed to pass legislation that has been blocked or ignored for decades. Why dabble now in what Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, calls "the futility of piecemeal tinkering" when the possibility exists for a fundamental overhaul of the system which 2/3rds of the American public and a majority of doctors, nurses and health care professionals all want? ObamaCare is doomed to fail the American people, though the possibility exists now that it may not even get the chance to fail.

Is ObamaCare Already Dead?

Though the Obama Administration has sought to fast-track its proposed legislation through the Senate before congress' August recess, those plans are already being derailed by infighting between Obama's supporters and conservative "blue dog" Congressional Democrats, stiff opposition from Republicans and wavering support from the public, and the for-profit interests pulling at every thread - hoping to come out on top, no matter what. ABC News opinion polls show that public support for Obama's health care reform proposals has fallen to only 49%, and Associated Press-GfK polls indicate that public disapproval is now up to 43%. Considering that independent polls conducted by Yahoo!, CBS and The New York Times consistently show that 60% or more of Americans support a single-payer national health program and polls of doctors and nurses show similar numbers, it is hard to believe that all of the 43% who disapprove of Obama's handling of health care reform are Republican opposition. Even the traditionally-conservative American Medical Association, which is currently giving tentative support to the Obama reform and has fought single-payer in the past, is beginning to slide. An AMA poll from 2007 showed that 59% of physicians favor a national health program - and this, from the AMA! And the bad news does not stop there for ObamaCare.

On July 16th, 2009 Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf reported to the Senate Budget Committee on CBO projections for funding and cost controls in the current proposed health care reforms. Senator Judd Gregg's summary of the report reads as follows:

present plans as they’ve been produced have no significant cost spending events in them relative to reimbursement and relative to the way that they structure health care, that most American’s premiums aren’t going to go down and they will continue to go up, and that the debt of this country is unsustainable on our present course, and there isn’t a whole lot in this health care debate to date relative to the bills that have been produced that is going to do anything but continue to aggravate that and actually expand that problem.

The CBO has now reported the projected cost to taxpayers for the Obama health care proposal at over $1 trillion (TRILLION!) over the next ten years, with independent studies placing the cost as high as $1.5 trillion, and that's for a system that is only projected to decrease the number of uninsured nationwide by approximately 16 million by the year 2015. These numbers are based on the proposals of the Senate HELP committee's Affordable Health Choices Act, and contrast sharply against a 2005 study by The National Coalition on Health Care, a group that supports single-payer national health care, which shows that a single-payer system would actually reduce costs by over $1.1 trillion over the next decade, as reported by Kenneth E. Thorpe, Ph.D. Another study, conducted by the Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy, indicates that:

Establishing a national single-payer style health care reform system would provide a major stimulus for the U.S. economy by creating 2.6 million new jobs, and infusing $317 billion in new business and public revenues, with another $100 billion in wages into the U.S. economy

According to the ISHP study, the number of jobs created by a single-payer national system is nearly equal to the total number of jobs lost in 2008 and the price tag each year for single-payer is roughly $63 billion beyond the current $2.1 trillion in direct spending, which could easily be offset by the billions of dollars saved each year by eliminating the redundant bureaucracies, profits, wasteful overheads and executive salaries of the for-profit insurance industry. As Mr. Mokhiber of SinglePayerAction said, "...this is what the American people want ...this is what we're going to get, sooner or later".

With higher-than expected costs and a less-than enthusiastic reaction from the general public - and Congress - the future appears uncertain for Obama's proposed reforms. Liberal commentators on CNN, MSNBC and NPR had speculated that Obama might use his executive authority to call a special session of Congress, which would prevent congressmen from leaving D.C. until a health care bill were voted on and signed into law. On July 23rd, while speaking to an audience in Shaker Heights, Ohio, President Obama backed away from his ambitious August deadline for a reform bill, saying that if a bill weren't ready by August "that’s OK, I just want people to keep working. I want it done by the end of the year".

What Way Forward for Single-Payer?

Deann McEwen, a registered nurse and yet another of the single-payer activists arrested at Senator Baucus' Committee meetings, quoted Florence Nightingale before the committee; "Were there none that ever hoped for better, there would never be any better". Congressman John Conyers, sponsor of single-payer proposal H.R. 676, was asked earlier this year what it would take to get single-payer legislation passed in the current political arena. Mr. Conyers answer: "nuclear weaponry." While some supporters of single-payer may resign themselves to critical support of the ObamaCare proposals as "better than nothing" or "a step toward single-payer" others, who understand the urgency of the matter, are preparing for a fight and beginning to take more direct action. Russel Mokhiber of SinglePayerAction says "the only way that this is going to happen now is people to—people all over the country to directly confront their members of Congress", but Dr. Flowers may have got a little closer to the answer when she said “We must build a civil rights movement like those that have come before”.

Dedicated activists, doctors, nurses, workers - union and non-union alike are showing the way with demonstrations numbering in the thousands, beginning to pop up from coast to coast in Seattle, WA, New York, even in Washington D.C. Without question, the American public supports a single-payer national health service and free, quality health care for all. Voters chose to pass single-payer legislation in California on two occasions to date, though the measures were vetoed by "the governator" Arnold Schwarzeneggar. H.R. 676 had 93 co-sponsors in the House last year, though several co-sponsors, like CA Democrat Henry Waxman, had their names removed from the resolution after the Affordable Health Choices Act cleared the HELP committee. H.R. 676 has been endorsed by over 128 Central Labor Councils, 39 state AFL-CIO's and a total of 552 union organizations in 49 states. Earlier this year, Independent Vermont Senator, Bernie Sanders, introduced SB 703, a single-payer bill in the US Senate. With out of pocket costs for health care skyrocketing in the US and no end in sight for many Americans - at risk of losing their homes, jobs, benefits, or all or the above - there is no time like the present to organize, mobilize, and continue the fight for a health system that truly covers everyone, provides all necessary care free-of charge, and guarantees everyone the right to live a healthy life, no exceptions! Only by uniting workers, students, activists, health care workers and organized labor, refusing to compromise on single-payer, and breaking with the Democratic Party and all its limitations will we build a mass movement that can bring the kind of social, economic and political pressure to bear that will be needed to win health care as a human right!

Backstabbing Democrats and BS "HealthCare" reform... What's the deal, yo'yo?

2009-08-01T15:02:00.004-05:00

Friday, July 31st

I've got a formal article on the Democrat's healthcare reform proposals vs. a single payer system on the way soon, just as soon as my editors get back to me on the draft I submitted... until then, this rant will have to do...

yesterday was the 44th anniversary of medicare, a single payer-like program that has bettered and saved the lives of millions of Americans, and the Obama-ites are marking this anniversary by attempting $400-600Billion in cuts and a half-assed "healthcare" reform that was practically written by the for-profit insurers who make American healthcare so god-aweful to begin with...

sometimes somethin' ain't better than nothin'... the ObamaCare reform won't guarantee coverage, won't provide for free quality healthcare as a HUMAN RIGHT, and will actually make matters far worse for the poor and all those at risk in our current recession...

just ask Massachusetts how "great" ObamaCare is, 'cause they've already got it and have had it since the early '90's and Mass still has over 600,000 uninsured and some of the highest costs out of pocket for those who do have insurance in the country. Why? because the ObamaCare/MassCare model is set up to protect the private insurance companies by actually mandating by LAW that everyone has to buy into a private or group insurance plan. those who do not or cannot afford to participate in plans like ObamaCare or MassCare are punished with tax penalties up to $2000 dollars annually.

Making a law that punishes poor people with tax penalties for the crime of being too poor to afford crappy, expensive private insurance policies that don't cover shit when it comes down to crunch time doesn't solve a thing. its like saying "we don't have uninsured anymore, because we made it illegal to be uninsured..." or "those people are uninsured because they chose to be uninsured"... its all blame the victim bullshit and its designed by the insurance companies and their Democrat and Republican patsies (the current proposed reform that came out the HELP committee in the Senate has over 160 Republican ammendments in it) to ensure that the for profit healthcare industry remains the fundamental standard in the american healthcare system. ObamaCare actually guarantees windfall profits for insurance companies and it does it with taxpayer dollars in the form of subsidies to the insurance companies.

ObamaCare is just plain bullshit, and its bullshit from the mouth of a bullshitter whose electoral campaign was financed primarily by the banks, the auto industry and the medical insurance companies. Is it any surprise that when this bullshitter got into office - actually, before he got in - he turned on the American people? Those who got out in the streets and celebrated on election day last Nov were counting on Obama to bail out the working class, reverse the Bush admin Big Brother programs and create a national health service that would save working class Americans AND small and big business alike by taking the pressure off the individual and making the govn't responsible for providing guaranteed access to quality medical care for all. Instead we're getting something far worse than the status quo, we're seeing Obama and congressional Dems REINFORCING the status quo. American, lets face it, we got screwed! We should remember that the next time around... 2010 mid-terms, anyone?

what we need is single payer, an everybody in, nobody left out system that guarantees all medically necessary care - no exceptions, be provided free of charge by a single, govn't run tax-funded national healthcare system. for years now polls have consistently shown that over 60% of Americans support this kind of system, and the numbers are even higher among doctors and healthcare service providers like nurses and therapists. so with all the electoral promises to fix American healthcare, why aren't the Dems giving the American people what they want? because we aren't the Dem's constituency, they are beholden to the big health insurance corporations and the drug companies and private hospitals who bankrolled their 2006 & 2008 electoral rebounds, while simultaneously providing nearly matching funds for the Republicans as well. Looks like someone is playing both sides of the aisle, just in case...

I've seen the Canadian system and its not so bad, and besides, what we need is something even better than that. The reason the Canadian and English systems have problems is that they've created a dual system that allows for some private insurance, and the private companies are driving up the cost. that and the corporations and right-wing politicians have been attacking the single payer systems to the north and overseas for decades, underfunding them and lobbying for concessions to make their systems more like the nightmare we have in the US.

the American working class and anyone in this country who's tired of BS and lots of talk when the Dem's want to get elected, but doublecross and backstabbing once they're in, need to break with the Democratic Party and the two-party bullshit system once and for all and get a mass-party of Labor started here to fight for working class people and our interests. only a Labor Party with a fighting program for of and by the working class people and based in the unions can fight for, win and defend the sort of reforms that working people need here in the US. The Dems won't do it, the Republicans are just as monstrous as the backstabbing Democrats. We need our own party, not a 3rd party, a FIRST PARTY. Organized, mobilized and United around a revolutionary program for fundamental change and fullscale societal/economic upheaval and the working class - the VAST MAJORITY - to power, nothing can defeat the working class! NOTHING!

Paul J P

St. Louis Remembers the General Strike of 1877

2009-07-30T18:36:00.006-05:00

A report by Paul Joseph Poposky

Saturday July 25, 2009
St. Louis, MO

A diverse audience of labor leaders, educators, students, community activists, and workers - both union and non-union - gathered to participate in the 3rd annual Commemoration of the General Strike of 1877 at the Community Arts and Media Project Center on Cherokee St. Attendees enjoyed a pot luck lunch and open discussion of the historic first general strike in US history.

The St. Louis General Strike, also known as the St. Louis Commune or "reign of the rabble", shut down the city on both sides of the river in the summer of 1877. The action in St. Louis came as part of a nationwide strike by railway workers against a 10% pay cut, anti-union bosses busting organizing efforts, and a long period of cuts and take-backs by bosses in the wake of the Great Panic of 1873.

Speakers at Saturday's event described how strikers across the country were brutally suppressed by the authorities, with the police, state militias and US army being called in to end the demonstrations and send the strikers back to work by any means. Tensions reached a boiling point on July 25, 1877 when a massive demonstration closed all business in the city of St. Louis and the general strike was declared. An executive committee was elected to coordinate the strike and supply networks to distribute food, regulate transportation and protect strikers and railroad company property.

Don Fitz of the Gateway Greens spoke of the horrific working conditions and anti-worker attacks which lead to the nationwide railworkers strike and initiated one of the most intense periods of militant labor struggle in US history. Mr Fitz also explained how some of the strike demands foreshadowed labor's struggle for the 8-hour day and the ban on child labor.

Retired teacher and State Executive Board member Jim Hamilton, AFT local 420, read from "The Reign of the Rabble", a history of the general strike written by St. Louis’s own David T. Burbank of IBEW local 1, and highlighted the role played by women, minorities and immigrant workers, who fought shoulder to shoulder on the front lines of the struggle, and drew parallels between the initiative of workers in 1877 and the struggles of labor today against cuts and take-backs. Hamilton pointed to the UAW rally at Chrysler's St. Louis Assembly plant in Fenton, MO only 24 hours before, where thousands of workers, retirees and their families from across the region came together to demand that Chrysler use the $12 Billion in federal aid it received from taxpayers earlier this year to re-open the recently closed plant and others like it across the US.

Tim Kaminski, who worked in the South plant in Fenton for decades and served as on the Executive Board of UAW local 110 before retiring, spoke further on the importance of solidarity between white, black and immigrant workers in 1877, as well as the role played by early labor organizations like the Knights of Labor and the American United Workingmen's Party and compared this to the massive demonstrations of immigrant workers on May Day, 2006 saying: "these are the sort of things that will bring about real change!" Kaminski read from labor historian Philip Sheldon Foner’s “The Great Labor Uprising of 1877” and detailed how the Ku Klux Klan was used by the bosses and authorities in St. Louis to help break the general strike, terrorizing strikers and their families, and he pointed out the similarity between the costumes worn by the Klan and the Veiled Prophet in St. Louis' annual V.P. ball. The V.P. Parade, now known as Fair St. Louis, was originally commenced by St. Louis' business and political elite to celebrate the crushing of the general strike.

Andrew Kluethe of the greater-St. Louis area Autonomy Alliance called for working class solidarity and described the brutality of the strike's "bloodless" end. On July 28, 1877 over 8,000 US troops, police and armed thugs entered St. Louis, placing the city under martial law and killing at least 18 strikers, imprisoning 70 more. The railroad companies fired hundreds, and by early August most of the strikers nationwide had been forced back to work. Kluethe said “Though retaliation and union-busting continued for decades, valuable lessons were learned and the tone was set for continuing workers' struggles for dignity and against exploitation well into the 20th and 21st centuries.”

David May, a local factory worker and member of the Workers International League, reminded the audience that 2009 is also the 75th anniversary of the strike wave of 1934, which opened the door to further struggles led by the CIO to organize workers in mass industry and also to create the modern labor movement. Mr. May also spoke about the factory occupations in the year 1937 by workers at Emerson Electric and GM in St. Louis, and drew together the similarities between 1877 and the 1930s - first and foremost that in these periods the unions were able to wage militant strikes against the bosses by adopting class struggle methods, abandoning "labor-management partnership" idea that what is good for the company is necessarily good for the workers, as well as the role played by Socialists in both periods, saying: “the key lessons of 1877 and the 1930s for the labor movement today is the need for class struggle policies to carry the movement forward and a perspective that looks beyond the limits imposed by capitalism… without our unions and the struggle for meaningful reforms today, the struggle for a better tomorrow would be impossible.”

Attendees at the event participated extensively in hours of dialogue on the lessons to be learned from the St. Louis General Strike and Great Strike of 1877 and their implications for the modern labor movement. The event concluded with a decision to organize a planning committee to continue the tradition of commemorating the legacy of the brave workers who fought against oppression and exploitation, whose historic struggle shut down one of the nation's largest cities and captured the world's attention in the summer of 1877, all in the cause of labor.

Commemoration of the General Strike of 1877 in St. Louis

2009-07-15T18:24:00.003-05:00

Commemoration of the General Strike of 1877

Date: Saturday, July 25, 2009
Time: 12:00pm - 5:00pm
Location: Community Arts and Media Project
Street: 3022A Cherokee St.
City/Town: Saint Louis, MO
contact: 314-723-0432 or 618-691-8668
email: PaulJosephPoposky@hotmail.com or autonomyalliance@gmail.com

We are gathering to remember the General Strike of 1877, which was probably the closest the United States has ever come to a workers' revolution. The General Strike reached St. Louis in late July 1877, and so we commemorate it with a potluck.

Workers' history is usually marginalized in the pages of history books, and we seek to not only keep it alive, but bring it into the spotlight. There will be a few speakers (more information to come on that), a lot of great people, and great food. We hope to bring inspiration for a new general strike and exchange lessons from history we can learn to build it.

If you would like to be involved in organizing this potluck to commemorate workers' history, please post here on the page, message an Administrator for this event, email Paul Poposky (pauljosephpoposky@hotmail.com), or email Autonomy Alliance (autonomyalliance@gmail.com).
The following organizations are co-sponsoring this event:
Workers International League
Autonomy Alliance
Gateway Green Alliance
4th International/The Organizer

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=91946990889&ref=mf&__a=1

Paul Joseph Poposky
WIL-IMT
314-723-0432

NUHW Workers Fight for Union Democracy

2009-06-25T18:15:00.002-05:00

Health Care Workers Fight for Union Democracy

By Paul Joseph Poposky

On Wednesday, May 27^th, a small but diverse group of labor and community organizers, concerned citizens, union workers and retirees gathered at the Center for Theology and Social Analysis in St. Louis, MO to meet Laura Kurre, one of the organizers of the new National United Healthcare Workers union (NUHW) in California. Ms. Kurre spoke at length about the recent dispute between the NUHW and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), born of the contested trusteeship imposed by SEIU on their third largest affiliate, United Healthcare Workers-West (UHW).

The United Healthcare Workers-West was a powerful union, 150,000 strong, which had won some of the best contracts and management concessions in the country by using a democratic “organizing model,” empowering elected, recallable shop stewards and rank & file committees to ensure that the union was participatory and accountable to the membership. The members of UHW-W had the final say in all proposals of the bargaining committees, which were also elected by the membership. Many of the victories of the UHW had been won through mass actions; rallies, strikes, sit-ins and solidarity with other local workers. The controversy began when UHW refused to follow SEIU President Andy Stern's plan to split off 65,000 home care and nursing home workers into separate, statewide mega-locals controlled by Stern-appointees, without first holding a vote of the rank and file members who would be affected by the split. SEIU leaders retaliated by taking over the UHW-West treasury, locking members and officials out of union offices, removing union representatives, officers and shop stewards, and replacing them with appointed officials.

In the course of the trusteeship, UHW-W members were angered by SEIU's plan to allow hospitals to subcontract out thousands of UHW-West workers' jobs without any input from elected UHW bargaining units – who had been locked out – or a democratic vote by the membership. Many of the workers were shocked by a contract proposal, introduced by SEIU, to include a “management rights” clause in the new contract. On January 28th, angry UHW-W members who had seen enough announced the formation of a new, independent union, the NUHW. To say that the members of the for-all-intents-and-purposes “zombified” UHW rallied around the banner of NUHW is an understatement. Only a few short weeks after the new union was announced, nearly 100,000 UHW members had filed representation petitions to join the NUHW. With only volunteers and no dues-base to speak of, the NUHW has organized demonstrations of hundreds of health care workers across California, demanding the right to union democracy, to chose who will represent them and how they will be represented.

While SEIU has tied up the dispute in the National Labor Relations Board and in the courts with frivolous lawsuits, one cannot help but admire the courage and example set by California's NUHW health care workers, who are fighting for basic trade union democracy and rank and file control against tremendous odds and an opponent that seems intent on winning its battles in court, rather than in the hearts and minds of the workers themselves. Laura Kurre's report on the conflict between NUHW and SEIU highlighted the need for unions to serve their members and be under the control of the rank and file, not unaccountable bureaucracies which all too often become more than a bit too cozy with management.

Ms. Kurre finished up her presentation by opening up a conversation and Q&A with attendees, and the discussion quickly focused on the failures of Corporate Unionism (Labor/Management partnerships, “Jointness,” “team concept,” etc.) and of concession bargaining, and the need for rank and file, democratic control and mass action, the strike, etc. Generally, those participating in the conversation were very positive and receptive when one attendee raised the idea that what workers need most are strong, democratic and accountable unions with leaders willing to lead and organize mass actions and solidarity around a fighting program. And why not? After all we, the workers, are the union!

Unfortunately, due to the strong-arm tactics and trusteeship, the NUHW were unable to stay in the SEIU and fight to change the entire union at this time. However, they should work to link up with the broader labor movement, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win, in order to fight against isolation of their union and to extend their struggle throughout the labor movement. Laura Kurre's visit to St. Louis brought us a much appreciated reminder of the real power of the working class; and a hint of what our unions – the traditional mass organizations of the working class – can and will achieve once we are united and rallied to action around a fighting program of class independence.

Still No Solution from Obama on Healthcare, Considering Taxing Health Benefits...

2009-06-03T02:27:00.007-05:00

first off, read this:

Source: Associated PressWASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is leaving the door open to taxing health care benefits, something he campaigned hard against while running for president. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., raised the issue with Obama during a private meeting Tuesday with the president and other Democratic senators and later reported the president's response: "It's on the table. It's an option."The federal government would reap about $250 billion a year if it treated health care benefits given to employees like wages and taxed them.Baucus and others are eyeing that money as they search for ways to pay for a costly health care overhaul that would extend coverage to 50 million Americans who are now uninsured. That could cost some $1.5 trillion over 10 years.The president adamantly opposed health benefit taxes during the campaign, arguing they would undermine job-based coverage. But he's now indicating openness to that suggestion from Congress, even if he criticized Republican presidential rival John McCain for proposing a sweeping version of the same basic idea.
Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090602/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_health_overhaul

This is absolutely outrageous! Obama's "solution" to healthcare reform thusfar looks to me something like this: a regressive, indirect tax on working people who already have benefits to pay for subsidies to be paid to the private insurance industry, which we'll all be legally mandated to buy into (Massachusets, Vermont plans) like we are mandated to buy car insurance, and tax penalties at the end of the year is you fail to buy in but aren't poor enough, according to the government, to qualify for a "public option" like medicade, medicare or s-chip...

Public healthcare, or "single payer" (check out HR676@ http://www.hr676.org/) , cannot work side by side with private, for profit insurance companies. A weak "public option" co-existing with subsidized and mandated private coverage will, in fact, likely only turn much of the public against socialized medicine and public care plans that will really cover everyone (for free!) like single payer, as represented in HR676. I'm beginning to think that perhaps turning the public against public care is just what certain elements of the Democratic Party, who are beholden to their insurance company and healthcare industry campaign contributors and lobbyists, perhaps really wanted in the first place; and that includes Obama. I don't think that this line of thought is "conspiranoia", I mean, we must not forget that these career politicians' loyalties lie with those who helped them get elected, and in so many cases that is the for-profit healthcare, insurance and drug industries.

Sorry, but I seem to have forgotten, who exactly was it that decided single payer is "off the table", anyway?

Paul J P

Foreclosures increasing as more jobs are lost

2009-05-25T14:36:00.006-05:00

Now, if I'm not mistaken, hasn't the media been telling us for months now about how the housing market has been showing little gains here and there and seemingly everywhere? Sounds like more media coverage for the president and pathetic attempts to justify capitalism in a time when its contradictions are becoming more and more apparent to so many working people. read on here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30929173

Now, again I might be mistaken here so please do correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the housing market "turning around" mean a return to skyrocketing prices for homes and rental properties? With credit all but out of reach right now for the average working class family, and also the recent admission that even when the economy does rebound that we're going to continue to lose a lot of jobs for a long time and even the Obama-ites admitting that many of the jobs we're losing are never ever coming back, how exactly are working class families supposed to find a home?

I've read a great deal about the crooked practices of the financial markets and home-lenders in particular, how it actually became easier for many to finance a larger, more expensive home than to finance a smaller, more affordable home. I've read in the mainstream, corporate press as well as on lefty blogs about how the lenders actually tried to get people into more expensive loans that carried more high risk (and ultimately unsustainable for the borrower) because those loans carried greater profit potential for the lenders, who could repackage and sell off the subprime mortgages if they were at risk of defaulting. Typical of capitalism; capitalists create a problem in their endless pursuit of fast profits, then dump the problem onto someone else and run begging to the govn't for help when the whole thing collapses...

this is part of why I became a socialist, because the market, capitalism, will always act like this. right now the neo-keynesians and obama-ites are throwing an aweful lot of money at the problem (actually, handing money to the very capitalists who caused the problem) but there is no bandaid for this gaping wound on humanity and no market solutions to problems created by the market. I read a month or so back about cities where the local govn't and the banks are destroying perfectly good, brand new homes that are sitting vacant and cannot be sold in the present economic environment. they're trying to artificially stimulate prices by destroying the overhead. Well I'm absolutely disgusted by this: how many people, skilled workers out of a job and unable to find anything better than walmart, how many of them are at risk of losing their homes, winding up in shelters, living out of cars or in one of the "obamavilles" or tent cities we're seeing spread across the country? capitalism has no solutions for working people and the myth of America the "middle class nation", the "land of opportunity" and "freedom" and "equality" is becoming more and more apparent as just that; a myth.

We learn best through experience: "Life Teaches"... well there's plenty of learning and experience going on, and the more and more Obama Inc. keeps on doing its job, pushing for market solutions to problems caused by the market system in the first place, more and more workers are going to keep on learning, some of us the hard way, that this is no way forward. The market (or "god" to the capitalists) cannot save us from itself. only the conscious self organization and mobilization of the working class to action and to power can save us from this up/down, boom/slump hell-ride we call capitalism. I wonder how many hard working people lost their homes, jobs, or both today...

Paul P

We Need FIGHTING UNIONS, and we need them NOW!

2009-05-20T14:43:00.005-05:00

Why we need Fighting Unions, NOW!

by Paul J Poposky

In The Transitional Program, written by socialist revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, the first few sentences explain that the world political situation as a whole is mainly characterized by the crisis of leadership of the working class. Trotsky then goes into some detail explaining how the cowardly and opportunistic character of the many historic leaders of the labor movement has lead to one defeat or incomplete victory after another. The sit down strikes and factory occupations of the 1930's and the decades that followed may have won important concessions from business all around the developed world; yet even on the verge of these victories the leadership of the labor federations (the CIO in the United States) and the workers' parties and organizations (the social democrats, anarchists, and labor party leads) did everything possible to put the breaks on the workers' movement and dampen revolutionary pressure from below. These corrupt leaders and officials, elected and entrusted by the workers to represent and to LEAD us, have instead betrayed us in some of our greatest historic moments of struggle and potential triumph. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the betrayal of the French workers in 1968.

However, workers need not look only to historic events for examples of the inaction - or outright betrayal! - of the labor movement leadership. Our present worldwide "Great Recession" is demonstrating to many the flawed, ill "logic" of our current leaders' strategy of "jointness" and "corporate unionism" (labor-management "partnerships"), concessions in the name of profitability, "shared sacrifice" and even "class harmony". For example, the leaders of the UAW have wasted decades opposing calls from the rank and file for militant action and encouraging the members to accept one concession after another in the name of "maintaining corporate profitability". The reasoning goes something like "what's good for the company is good for the workers" or "if we don't give the bosses what they want, they'll go someplace else and take our jobs with them or go out of business".

Another example, perhaps far-more disturbing, may be found in the 2005 Change to Win split with the AFL-CIO. Andy Stern, president of SEIU and a leader in the Chang to Win federation, lead the split criticizing the AFL-CIO's supposed "outdated" and "doomed" philosophy that the bosses & owners are not on the same team as the workers; they are, in fact, inherent adversaries with fundamentally different interests. But don't tell that to Stern, who calls for a new "win-win" strategy aimed at fostering "cooperation" between bosses and unions and, according to SEIU Members Active for Reform Today opposition-organizer Zev Kvitky, will "transform the trade unions into a series of customer service centers for hearing grievances, thus dis-empowering the rank and file and using methods that are antithetical to the labor movement..." (Unity and Independence, Feb 2009).

The strategy of labor-management partnership and concessions in the name of profitability have done nothing to improve the lives of workers or advance our movement. Labor leaders who cling to the notion of concession bargaining are bankrupting the unions and the workers they represent, and serve only to soften the blows corporate management have been raining down on organized labor for decades. Also, it must be pointed out that each concession sets a dangerous precedent and opens the door for the boss to demand the next concession and the next one after that, on and on and on... This is actually the very strategy that the bosses often use in making their demands for concessions from workers. How long before all the inches we surrender to the bosses add up to a mile? One cannot help but be left asking the question: why is it that the boss is making the demands here and we, the workers, are the ones conceeding? Isn't the union supposed to work the other way around? Aren't we then literally giving away the very gains our parents and grandparents generation struggled for? Aren't we giving away our childrens' futures? If "helping the company" through concessions is such a good idea why shouldn't we all "choose" to work for minimum wage and without benefits, breaks or any safety standards at all; wouldn't that help the company out even more, make our jobs even more secure?

The current labor leadership is not playing an independent role in the struggle of labor against capitalist exploitation. What we need is rank and file pressure on our leaders to take militant action to confront the bosses and their political support in the bosses' parties. If leadership is telling us that they are not willing to lead or to organize the actions that can lead us to victory then the rank and file can push our movement forward through militant action and independent organizing; if necessary, independent of the labor leaders themselves. The workers at Republic Windows and Doors, Visteon, Aradco and the FRETECO (Venezuelan occupied factories) have shown the way for workers around the world, occupying their workplaces and absolutely stopping production or liquidation of assets. Just think of what workers could accomplish if we were to shut down our local and national capitals, like the Teamsters historically did in Washington, D.C., while simultaneously stopping production and work across the board through sit-ins and solidarity strikes...

If governments have enough capital to bail out the banks and insure the corporate profits of key industries, supposedly to "protect jobs", then there is more than enough funding to keep factories and workplaces open and keep workers paid and working. But the capitalists will never voluntarily make this choice, preferring instead to use tax dollars to keep on financing their own parties and lavish lifestyles and insure their own personal profits. Laws and reform are only the legal reflection of the movement and struggle of classes which shape the relations of society. Only the workers themselves, struggling together against their exploiters as a class, can win immediate reforms as well as the more fundamental changes that really matter.

The rank and file can take initiative by demanding NO MORE concessions, NO to labor-management partnership and NO political support for the bosses' political parties. Instead we need our mass organizations to focus on demands that move us forward, like a complete break between labor and the Democratic Party and the formation of an independent mass Party of Labor. Such a party can fight, without reservation, for demands such as the Employee Free Choice Act and the repeal of all anti-labor laws, the complete nationalization of industry as part of a rationally planned economy to meet human need - NOT profits! - under the democratic control of the workers, guaranteed housing, free cradle to grave education and union hiring and training halls in every community, full employment at a living wage for all and a single-payer, socialized national healthcare system (the only truly universal healthcare!), protection of the environment and the outlawing of all forms of discrimination.

The stakes for workers in the United States and around the world today are, without a doubt, as high as they've been in over a generation. With over 5.1 million jobs lost to the recession in the US since 2007 and hundreds of thousands more disappearing each month, and many never coming back, countless millions of workers in the US and worldwide are losing their homes, benefits and possibility of retirement, and many their very lives. As another great organizer and leader of the movement once said, "life teaches". While times are tough for us all, many workers, through their own experience, are beginning to come to the same conclusions that this is a time when it is crucial that we hold our heads high, our fists clenched, and fight alongside each other for our mutual interests. We, the workers of the world, need leaders who are willing to lead on a fighting program, leaders who will not bow down or sell-out to the enemies of labor and the captains of industry & exploitation. United on a fighting platform with leadership equal to the task, we can win!

Single Payer Advocates FINALLY in the News

2009-05-13T17:01:00.006-05:00

There has been some actual coverage of the movement for single-payer health care reform in the mainstream, left and labor media this past week. Labor Notes.org has a pretty good article online, Socialist Worker has a commentary and even the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC mentioned the single-payer healthcare advocates who were arrested at the Senate Finance Committee meeting earlier in the week.

http://labornotes.org/node/2239

http://socialistworker.org/2009/05/08/the-single-payer-challenge

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/30632169#30691278

I think the argument should not be for "single payer to have a seat at the table" in order to "round out the debate" and create some sort of "compromise" between the advocates for single-payer and the private insurance or limited - public/private partnership interests. Instead, I think that those of us who support single payer need to be demanding a seat at the table and then making a firm, unshakable demand for single payer and Single Payer ONLY. A limited "universal" public healthcare system cannot possibly compete side by side with the private insurance companies because those companies' very nature (their purpose is creating profits for shareholders, NOT caring for people) will drive up costs generally over time and force any public system to cut services, cover fewer patients and and increase costs for patients in order to try and "compete" (see Canada or Britain's NHS, for example). Of course, this will only invite countless future accusations of inefficiency and "rationing" (as if healthcare isn't rationed already - to The RICH!) by the far-right and the liberal supporters of private insurance and drug companies, for profit healthcare providers, and their interests. We cannot "inch" our way toward a single payer system by conceding and compromising at the table with the for-profit industry and its champions in the Democratic Party on reforms that amount to little more than mandating individuals buy into limited private insurance policies like drivers are mandated to buy auto insurance.

My point is, you don't win a fight, or a debate, by tying your strong arm behind your back and hoping your opponents will go easy on you, or by compromising your fundamental demands and starting positions from the very beginning. I believe that we, in the single payer healthcare movement, need to stick to our aces and firmly stand beside the demand for the passing of HR 676 as a starting point for any meaningful reform. The Obama administration's plan for "universal" and "affordable" healthcare will not be nearly as universal or affordable as we are being told, and cannot possibly stay "affordable" for very long if it has to compete with the for-profit insurance companies. Recognizing this as fact, we need to demand comprehensive, free-at-source care for all as a human right! We need to support and demand passage of HR 676 as our starting point in any talks or debate as our minimum demand on which we will not compromise. No compromises with the for-profit health insurance industry! Comprehensive, universal, single-payer healthcare for all, TODAY!

Paul P

Labor Gets Organized for Single Payer Healthcare

2009-05-06T10:49:00.004-05:00

this blog originally posted at socialistappeal.org

Labor Gets Organized for Single Payer

Written by Paul J. Poposky
Tuesday, 03 March 2009
On January 10th and 11th, over 150 union leaders and representatives from 31 states met in St. Louis, Missouri to discuss and share strategies at the Labor Campaign for Single-Payer Healthcare conference. The conference succeeded in drafting a mission statement with a clearly defined goal to "increase and help coordinate labor support for universal, comprehensive, single-payer healthcare as embodied in H.R.676." House Resolution 676, also known as the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, was initially proposed by Congressman John Conyers, Jr. (D, MI). To date it has received 92 co-sponsors in Congress and has been endorsed by hundreds of local unions and central labor councils as well as 39 state AFL-CIO federations. In short, it has more support than any other health care reform proposal in Congress. According to Unions for Single Payer Health Care's online summary of H.R.676, the bill would establish the United States National Health Insurance Program to: "Provide all individuals residing in the United States and in U.S. territories with free health care that includes all medically necessary care, such as primary care and prevention, prescription drugs, emergency care, and mental health services." What is Single-Payer? Single-payer would replace the chaotic, wasteful and inefficient bureaucracy and market mechanisms of private for-profit health insurance companies with a single national program that covers everyone, a "single payer." Resources to pay for this would come from a publicly administered fund seeded by existing government revenue sources allocated to healthcare, increased personal income taxes for the top 5 percent of income earners, and a small tax on stock and bond transactions, all of which would be more than offset by the tremendous savings for each individual and the entire American population on health services. Such a program would eliminate all out-of-pocket costs and in fact create jobs in healthcare and related industries to meet the demands of a system that covers every U.S. citizen. Workers formerly employed by the private system would be given priority in hiring, re-training, and job placement. Private insurers would be prohibited from selling coverage that duplicates services provided by the national program. Eliminating for-profit insurance companies will prevent the massive price increases we see today. What's Wrong with the American Healthcare System? For millions of Americans, from workers (many of whom are under-insured), the elderly, single parents and the unemployed, this campaign couldn't have come a moment too soon. Reports at the St. Louis conference highlighted the worsening healthcare nightmare faced by millions of Americans who are under-insured or do not use what coverage they may have due to high premiums, co-pays, deductibles, and other out-of-pocket costs, or due to pre-existing conditions that insurers routinely refuse to cover. The Centers for Disease Control reports that racial disparities in available rates and access to medical care offered by the for-profit system are rampant, and women are routinely charged more than men by insurance companies. In addition to decreased quality of care and rapidly increasing costs, which have risen three to four times faster than wages in the last decade, and which are projected to reach 44 percent of the average family's gross wages by 2018, now fewer than 50 percent of employers offer health insurance benefits to workers. And we have yet to mention the uninsured. The last U.S. Census report on Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States found that over 45 million Americans have gone without insurance for 12 months or longer. Professor Nancy Welch of the University of Vermont reported in 2007 that when considering "the number of people who lost insurance for part of the year," say for 6 to 10 months after changing jobs or being laid off, "the picture dramatically worsens: 82 million - one in three non-elderly Americans - with two-thirds losing coverage for six months or more." It goes without saying that in the present crisis of capitalism, amidst all the job losses and the pressure on American workers to give more and more concessions in the name of "sacrifice," "competitiveness" and "job security," that these numbers will increase - and there is no end in sight. No real solution can be found in the "illogic" of the capitalist system. In light of all these deeply disturbing figures it should come as no great surprise that the United States ranks 22nd in infant mortality and 46th in life expectancy (behind Taiwan and Croatia), and that it also limps in at 37th place in health system performance (after Costa Rica). This, according to the CIA World Factbook and the World Health Organization, respectively. In Monthly Review #55 (Sept. 2003), Vincent Navarro cited research conducted at the Harvard Medical School which found that the United States' current system of "rationed care" is responsible for 100,000 American deaths each year, far more than the 18,000 deaths claimed in Michael Moore's 2007 documentary film Sicko. Moore's figure did not include those deaths resulting from the poor care received at for-profit hospitals, dialysis centers, clinics and nursing/care homes by those who fall into the category of "under-insured" or those who have a history of severe illness that thereby legally(!) allows insurance companies to refuse coverage or payment. Why Single-Payer? In a single payer system everyone will be covered regardless of income level or employment status, and healthcare will be recognized as a human right, not a privilege. With every doctor covered under the same system and patients no longer limited to "in-network" providers, our choices as to which doctor or hospital we wish to visit would be expanded, not reduced. Physicians for a National Health Program has pointed out that the traditional doctor-patient relationship would be restored by single payer as the system eliminates oversight by managed care reviewers. Costs to the system would be controlled and even reduced due to bulk purchasing of medicine and equipment and cutting out the profit motive by eliminating stockholders' dividends and CEO salaries, advertising, excess bureaucracy and paperwork and all the waste that eats up one-third of every dollar we spend on healthcare in the for-profit system. Socialized single payer care will free nurses, doctors, therapists and other staff to devote more time and energy to providing quality care and, as stated by the Physicians' Working Group for Single-Payer National Health Insurance, base their clinical decisions on compassion, science and human need rather than the patient's insurance or economic status. It is no wonder that so many doctors, nurses and even medical schools support single payer over the current anarchy of market-driven, for-profit, private-pay insurance. A 2008 survey published in Annals of Internal Medicine showed that physicians polled support universal health care and a national single-payer insurance plan by nearly 2 to 1. Single-payer draws support from Physicians for a National Health Program, the California Nurses Association, and The American Medical Student Association. The American College of Physicians is the second largest group of physicians in the U.S. and has called on lawmakers to consider a single-payer system to achieve universal coverage of every United States citizen. Single-payer is significantly more cost effective than private-pay because it eliminates the redundant bureaucracies of the multitude of private insurance companies. This is relevant because the World Health Organization found in a 2000 study that publicly funded systems in industrial nations around the world spend less on healthcare per capita, and as a percentage of their GDP, yet demonstrate time and again that their populations are both healthier and happier than in nations which utilize private-pay private care. Not only that, but the OECD Health Division found the present inhumane and ineffective American healthcare system to be the most expensive in the world! Also, according to the Institute of Medicine, the United States is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not provide its citizens universal health care. Our current system is the most expensive and least effective. Even from a capitalist perspective, this puts the U.S. at a distinct economic disadvantage in a globalized capitalist economy, and is one argument for single-payer advanced by many who might otherwise not support such programs. However, it is clear that the HMOs, private hospitals and pharmaceutical companies will fight universal coverage with everything they've got. After all, their colossal private profits are at stake. Beware of mandated coverage... Another discussion held at the St. Louis conference was focused on the dangers of so-called "universal" health reforms that mandate those who "can afford it" to buy into a private-pay health plan while those who cannot have their fees to the insurers subsidized by the state or covered by Medicare and other such programs. Panelists and participants pointed out the failures of such plans already in place in several states. Mandated plans, such as those supported by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama, preserve the role of the private insurance companies, allowing them to continue price gouging and refusing to cover costly treatments or even dropping severely ill patients when they become "un-profitable." Mandated plans create a windfall for insurance companies, as they are allowed to cherry pick the healthiest patients and leave the rest to flood and bankrupt the public systems. In short, any mandated coverage that maintains the role of the private insurance industry is no way forward at all for those already suffering at the hands of the current profit-before-people system. "If there is no struggle, there is no progress..." For several decades now, and especially under present conditions, employers have sought to shift as much of the cost of healthcare onto the backs of the workers as they can get away with. The present crisis is no exception, and the constant talk of "sacrifice" and concessions, all the pushing and squeezing suffered by the working class is not going to just go away. But if the rank-and-file of the labor unions keeps up the pressure on the labor leaders to mobilize the tremendous power of the workers we can win this fight and say "No!" to the bosses' demands for concessions. Our unions must lead the way and we must ensure, through constant and determined action, that our leaders do not back down to Democratic policy-makers who tell us that single-payer is "just a pipe dream," and who want even more concessions. The working class has already given too much! We must not limit ourselves and our resources to a defensive fight to stop concessions, but in fact go on the offensive to win National Socialized Single-Payer Health Care to make a real difference in the lives of each and every person living and/or working in America today. Frederick Douglass once said that "power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." The campaign for a socialized single-payer national healthcare system is going to be a long and bitter fight, but it is a fight we can win, as it has been won in other countries before. The St. Louis conference shows that this issue has energized a sizable section of the working class and has the potential to mobilize broad layers of the class to action. If universal health care is to become a reality, the labor leaders must mobilize this tremendous power to fight against the colossal resistance of the private health care system. The WIL fights for a socialist health care system, in which all people are covered for free at the point of service. This means the hospitals, clinics, HMOs, medical machine industry, medical schools, drug companies and the insurance companies would be nationalized under democratic workers' control. Any employees from these companies who did not find employment in the national health system would be re-trained at government expense and receive their full wages while being re-trained. Then, they could be placed in jobs that are needed by society. In addition, doctors and nurses would be educated for free and would not have a crushing debt upon graduation. House Bill 676 would be an important step in this direction and this is why we support it. In other countries, universal health care was won only on the basis of mass struggles by the workers and the existence of mass working class political parties. This is why we are for a mass party of labor based on the unions, which must break with the Democrats. Such a party would defend the interests of the workers and the youth with a fighting program and socialist policies, against the attacks of big business and the parties of the ruling class. Mobilized and united we can win. Our health is not a commodity to be traded and sold on Wall Street!

Welcome to Obamaville: Homelessness and the Crisis of Capitalism

2009-05-06T10:11:00.001-05:00

this blog originally posted at SocialistAppeal.org

Welcome to Obamaville: Homelessness and the Crisis of Capitalism

Written by Paul Poposky
Thursday, 30 April 2009

In an uncharacteristic break from the focus on “Obamamania,” the mainstream media recently cast a cautious spotlight on the plight of America's “newly homeless” and a phenomenon that should send a chill through anyone even remotely familiar with the history of the Great Depression: the return of the shanty town. According to conservative estimates, there are currently, over 12.5 million workers are looking for jobs in the U.S. As more and more workers fall victim to the current crisis of capitalism, losing their jobs and homes, overnight-shelters in major cities and small towns alike are crowded to capacity. Many workers and their families are left with no alternative other than to live out of cars or pitch a tent in one of the many new “tent cities” popping up across the United States.

Tent cities and homeless encampments have been reported all over the country in cities large and small such as Olympia, WA, St. Petersburg, FL, and Seattle, WA, where the residents of one shanty town named their camp Nickelsville, a jab at Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels. The city of Santa Barbara, CA has converted a car parking lot into a space for homeless persons to sleep in their cars. While there are many such encampments growing rapidly across the country, one in particular captured international attention.

The media first examined the plight of the newly-homeless on the February 25, 2009 Oprah Winfrey special “New Faces of the Homeless,” which featured the now-infamous encampment along the banks of the American River in Sacramento, California. The tent city in California’s state capital is eerily positioned close to land that nearly a century ago saw a Depression-era “Hooverville” inhabited by Tennesseans fleeing starvation and desperately searching for work. At its peak, the contemporary shanty town housed nearly 200 persons in tents and improvised temporary shelters on land owned by the local Municipal Utility District. Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson (D) was interviewed a short time later on the March 9th broadcast of Larry King Live, during which he called for “tough love” and “zero tolerance” to “deal with people who’ve lost their homes.” Mayor Johnson followed up his “blame the victim” tirade with the announcement of a $1 million-plus joint effort with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to evict and relocate the entire population to temporary homeless shelters around the city and to an indoor modular structure at the city’s CalExpo Fairground, a shelter which is actually set to close its doors in June of this year.

While many of the tent city’s homeless residents had left the encampment by the mid-April eviction deadline, some, including homeless advocate Sister Libby Frenandez of Loaves and Fishes, stayed behind in an act of civil disobedience; protesting the shell game strategy of Mayor Johnson and the governor. Greg Bunker, a local advocate for the homeless, pointed out, “They're out of sight and in smaller groups now, which seems to be the unstated policy of our local government.” He further explained that many of the tent city’s former residents had dispersed into nearby woods or other camp sites along the river, rather than going to shelters. Cynthia Hubert of the Sacramento Bee reports: “Threatened with citations for camping on that land, many of the tent city's residents this week moved onto private property a short walk east. But that encampment, too, was being dismantled Thursday with the help of county and city law enforcement officers.” Mayor Johnson has now stated publicly that he believes a permanent, city sanctioned and controlled tent city might be “one of many strategic approaches that we can do, here as a city.”

The Sacramento County Department of Human Assistance found that the 2008 homeless population had reached nearly 2,700. That’s 2,700 out of a total population of approximately 500,000, with nearly 1,200 of those without a home living in their cars or on the street! Fresno, CA has reported figures very similar to those in Sacramento. Inhabitants of another large tent city in Nashville, TN are scheduled to be evicted on June 1st, underscoring the common theme of the ruling-class parties and politicians in their approach to homelessness and “dealing with” the homeless: Blame the Victim. It is as if the heart-wrenching testimony of hundreds of homeless individuals and families, many of them skilled workers and professionals, interviewed and aired in the media in recent months means nothing to the big-wigs in D.C. and our state capitals, nothing at all when weighed against the profit motives of the corporate, capitalist interests the Democrats and Republicans are beholden to.

Neither Mayor Johnson’s million dollar plan to relocate the homeless to temporary shelters nor Obama’s multi-billion dollar mortgage restructuring plan will do any more than the “zero tolerance” policies toward squatting to address the fundamental causes of homelessness: job loss, low wages, lack of affordable-quality housing, and lack of access to health services and preventative medicine, all of which are only symptoms of a greater problem, which is the exploitative nature of the capitalist system.

Sacramento, CA has been hit especially hard by the crisis of the real estate market and countless homes and apartments, certainly many times more than are needed, are sitting empty and idle when they could easily be used to house the homeless. This would be a truly “compassionate” alternative for those already on the streets. But what about addressing the causes of homelessness? Again, the “solutions” of the Big Business politicians come up short.

It should come as no surprise that none of the politicians or public officials involved thus far have suggested policies that might, at the very least, help keep people in their homes. For example, an immediate moratorium on foreclosures and evictions, rent/rate hikes, and utility shut-offs. None of the talking heads and media mouthpieces for the ruling class parties are calling for full employment at a living wage, socialized healthcare, free, quality cradle-to-grave education in fully-funded public schools and universities, more union hiring and training halls, dramatically expanded public transportation or nationalization of the nation’s top industries and employers, including the banks, under democratic workers' control as part of an economy rationally planned to meet human needs, not profit motives. All that the ruling class parties and their standard bearers seem to be able to conjure up are more of the same profit-motivated strategies that have always failed working people and cannot address the causes of the problems we face because they are a part of the problem.

Homelessness has been a part of the capitalist system from the very beginning, but has been on the rise in the United States especially since the 1980s, thanks in no small part to the gutting of social funding enacted under former president Ronald Reagan and continued by each subsequent administration – Democrats and Republicans alike. The economic crisis we see today has made things even worse, and advocacy groups like the National Alliance to End Homelessness and the National Coalition for the Homeless warn that “an additional 1.5 million people could be left homeless this year, a third of them children,” because of home foreclosures and the crisis. And this warning comes on the heels of the Obama administration’s admission that job losses will continue, even if the financial markets were to “turn around” later this year, and that many of the jobs lost are simply never coming back. How many auto workers and their families, facing up to nine-weeks of potential production shutdowns this summer and the threat of forced “renegotiation” of contracts, will find themselves at risk of homelessness, possibly for the first time in their lives? How many teachers and school staff, facing massive budget cuts and the ongoing assault on public education, might find themselves one step away from living out of a car or a tent?

As Obamavilles appear in communities from coast to coast, full of skilled workers desperately struggling for survival, it becomes apparent that the capitalist political parties: the Democrats, Republicans, and the far right-wing elements that dominated the recent “tea-party” events, offer no solution out of the crisis for the working class. They offer us no way forward because they simply can’t offer any way forward; their interests are directly opposed to those of the workers, as many are learning under present conditions. Already, working people are beginning to look for an alternative, not only to the ruling class parties and their profit driven politics, but to the capitalist system of exploitation in general.

The Workers International League believes that only a mass Party of Labor can offer any real solutions, defend and fight for workers’ interests. We need our own party to win power and create a truly democratic society for, of, and by the vast majority: the working class. For an economy rationally and democratically planned to meet human needs, to eliminate unemployment, poverty, and homelessness! If you too believe that a better world is not only possible, but necessary to put an end to the capitalist cycle of suffering and exploitation, contact the WIL today and join the fight for a better world!