Turning Points

Tomorrow is the tenth anniversary of 9/11. I’m so looking forward to all of the chest-thumping and cheers of patriotic fervor. Not.

For those few out there who refuse to participate in the enabling of the political class in this country to commit further war crimes and gut the body politic like the carcass of a deer, read more truth from Tom Englehardt. This excerpt is taken from his essay, which appeared on TomDispatch, entitled Let’s Cancel 9/11: Bury the War State’s Blank Check at Sea:

“Let’s bag it.

“I’m talking about the tenth anniversary ceremonies for 9/11, and everything that goes with them: the solemn reading of the names of the dead, the tolling of bells, the honoring of first responders, the gathering of presidents, the dedication of the new memorial, the moments of silence. The works.

“Let’s just can it all. Shut down Ground Zero. Lock out the tourists. Close “Reflecting Absence,” the memorial built in the “footprints” of the former towers with its grove of trees, giant pools, and multiple waterfalls before it can be unveiled this Sunday. Discontinue work on the underground National September 11 Museum due to open in 2012. Tear down the Freedom Tower (redubbed 1 World Trade Center after our “freedom” wars went awry), 102 stories of “the most expensive skyscraper ever constructed in the United States.” (Estimated price tag: $3.3 billion.) Eliminate that still-being-constructed, hubris-filled 1,776 feet of building, planned in the heyday of George W. Bush and soaring into the Manhattan sky like a nyaah-nyaah invitation to future terrorists. Dismantle the other three office towers being built there as part of an $11 billion government-sponsored construction program. Let’s get rid of it all. If we had wanted a memorial to 9/11, it would have been more appropriate to leave one of the giant shards of broken tower there untouched.”

Read the entire essay at TomDispatch.

I’ve altered the title of the article that I’m linking to, because I think those who support the strikers at Verizon (I do!) should know about these facts and study them. One of them is this: in 1937, when the economy crashed again (like it will now, now that Obama and the Republicans are cutting government spending), there were 4,740 strikes. In 2010? Ten. Time to study history, people.

Read the entire list at the Workers Action website. The title of the article is Ten Lessons for Today’s Unions from Labor’s Militant History.

I never heard of Iris Dement before, but this song really speaks to our present predicament. The first 30 seconds or so of the video is shaky, but after that it’s O.K. In 1997, Forida State senator John Grant, after hearing the song played on public radio station WMNF in Tampa, got a $104,000 grant pulled. In two days, the stations’ loyal fans raised $122,000. If you’d like to listen to WMNF, click on this link.
I’ve read that this song is WMNF’s anthem, so to speak. It was written in 1996, but the message is as relevant as ever. Even more so, now that the selfishness of the Republican Party is on full display.

For more on Iris Dement, visit her website.

Since the bankruptcy of Lehman Bros. in October of 2008, we’ve been subjected to one shock after another and most of us have tuned out and focused on survival in a grim jobs market. That is understandable behavior, even if it is a bit unproductive, because, as the election season ramps up, Americans are at a loss to understand what is going on and cannot make a wise decision about whom to vote for.

It is becoming more and more clear to me that there is a theme running through all of these events. I found an article on Michael Hudson’s website that ties many phenomena together, in a readable manner. The article is long and there is a discussion of economics, but it is still readable for the economically challenged, which includes most of us. The explanation for why Obama is spineless is in this article, as is the explanation for the gutting of Social Security and Medicare.

I’m posting a few snippets from the article to lure you to the website to read the entire essay:

“The Obama administration raised the financial sector’s bailout to $13 trillion. This has vastly increased the government debt. And now, Mr. Obama wants to bring it back down by cutting back Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other social spending – to transfer wealth and income to the top of the economic pyramid. At the start of his administration he appointed a Deficit Reduction Commission led by advocates of cutting back Social Security and Medicare: Republican Senator Alan Simpson (McCain’s economic advisor!) and Clinton chief of staff Erskine Bowles, representing the right-wing Democratic Leadership Committee cite above. The aim of this commission was to give Mr. Obama an “experts’ report” supporting the diametric opposite of the liberal constituency that voted for him.”

“Ms. Bair said that that when she opposed giveaways to banks, Obama’s officials would say that there would be a meltdown if they didn’t save Citibank, AIG and other financial institutions that had acted recklessly. She pointed out that the FDIC had successfully wound down Washington Mutual and other insolvent institutions. This was the FDIC’s business, after all. Even Citibank had enough assets to cover insured depositors. The problem was its gambles on derivatives and junk mortgages. The government could have taken it over and made normal insured depositors whole. But there weren’t enough assets in Citibank and AIG to pay the gamblers and the big players. She complained that in every case she was told the big gambling institutions – basically, the nation’s wealthiest one percent – couldn’t lose a penny.”

I hope these teasers intrigue you enough to go to Michael Hudson’s website and read this essay.

From Politico:

A Standard & Poor’s director said for the first time Thursday that one reason the United States lost its triple-A credit rating was that several lawmakers expressed skepticism about the serious consequences of a credit default — a position put forth by some Republicans.

Without specifically mentioning Republicans, S&P senior director Joydeep Mukherji said the stability and effectiveness of American political institutions were undermined by the fact that “people in the political arena were even talking about a potential default,” Mukherji said.

“That a country even has such voices, albeit a minority, is something notable,” he added. “This kind of rhetoric is not common amongst AAA sovereigns.”

I hope everyone remembers this, come next November.

It should be quite clear to anyone who reads this blog that I don’t like Obama, for reasons that I’ve posted about for more than a year. The lines are being drawn for the elections in 2012 and there are an awful lot of people out there who still cling to the idea that Obama really has the best interests of the American people at heart – that he is just being outfoxed by those mean, mean Republicans. I don’t buy that at all – I think he is a Republican at heart. Or a DINO, if you prefer.

Eugene Debs (1855-1926) was a Socialist who ran for President in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920. In 1893, he organized one of the first industrial unions in the United States, the American Railway Union. If you are interested in learning more about Debs, the Wikipedia article is as good a place to start as any.

I’m quoting from some of his speeches here to show that nothing has changed in 100 years. With Obama’s latest capitulation, we are rapidly heading back to the days before Debs became politically active in the 1880s. I like the last of the Debs’ quotes the most and it is the reason that I will not vote for Obama in 2012.

“The Republican and Democratic parties are alike capitalist parties — differing only in being committed to different sets of capitalist interests — they have the same principles under varying colors, are equally corrupt and are one in their subservience to capital and their hostility to labor.”

“The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles.”

“It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don’t want and get it.”

If you substitute “corporate/corporatist” for “capital/capitalist” and “worker” for “labor”, how is what he said then not the truth today?

The water in the pot has been simmering for some time now, but it is starting to boil. I am finding more and more evidence that people are waking up and are starting to connect the dots. In an effort to spread the word (or stir the pot, take your pick!), I’m re-posting this article, which appeared on Bruce Levine’s blog on July 20, 2011.

What I liked most about the article is how Mr. Levine characterized Americans as suffering from “battered people’s syndrome” and “corporatocracy abuse”. He goes on to write that, “as a clinical psychologist who has worked with abused people for more than 25 years, it does not surprise me to see that when we as individuals or a society eat crap for too long, we become psychologically too weak to take action.”

This is an interesting and important article. It is a long but an easy read and it just might lead you to start looking further. The last sentence of the article is chilling, though: “And when people feel they have nothing left to lose and let go of their fear, watch out.” We only have to look at what is happening in London to see the truth of those words. Let’s hope that it doesn’t come to that.

Mr. Levine has a number of very interesting articles posted on his blog – I highly recommend browsing his site.

How Americans Can “Get Up, Stand Up” Against Corporatocracy Rule

By Bruce Levine on July 20, 2011

Many Americans recognize that the United States is neither a genuine democracy nor a real republic in which elected officials actually represent the people. Instead, the United States is a corporatocracy in which Americans are ruled by a partnership of giant corporations, the extremely wealthy elite, and corporate-collaborator government officials. There are at least three major pieces to the puzzle of transforming corporatocracy tyranny into something closer to democracy. First, it is necessary but not sufficient that Americans be informed about the truths of corporatocracy rule. The good news is that despite the corporate media’s failure to reveal many important truths, polls show that the majority of Americans—either through the independent media or their own common sense—know enough about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, Wall Street bailouts, and health insurance rip-offs to oppose corporatocracy policies here.

Second, in addition to awareness of economic and social injustices, it is also necessary to have knowledge of strategies and tactics that oppressed people have historically used to overcome tyranny. Third, a routinely overlooked piece of the puzzle is overcoming the problem of demoralization. There are a great many Americans who have been so worn down by decades of personal and political defeats, financial struggles, social isolation, and daily interaction with impersonal and inhuman institutions that they no longer have the energy for political actions. Continue reading →

For those who would like a Marxist perspective on the so-called “debt crisis”, read the work of Richard D. Wolff. His website has lots and lots of thought-provoking articles, unlike the kind that you read in the main stream media, which largely repeat what Tea Party zealots hear on their favorite right-wing talk radio stations. Regardless of what you might think, the main stream media in this country is right-wing, not left. There is no viable left in this country. It has been drowned out by libertarians, liberals, and the right wing. This article appeared on the Truthout website.

A Double Looting of the State and the Working Class

By Richard D. Wolff

Saturday, August 06, 2011

The political posturing around the debt ceiling “crisis” was mostly a distraction from the hard issues. The hardest of those — underlying US economic decline — keeps resurfacing to display costs, pains, and injustices that threaten to dissolve society. Its causes — two long-term trends over the last 30 years — help also to explain the political failures that now compound the social costs of economic decline.

The first trend is the attack on jobs, wages, and benefits, and the second is the attack on the federal government’s budget. The first trend enables the second. A capitalist economy suffering high unemployment with all its costly consequences shapes a bizarre, disconnected politics. The two major parties ignore unemployment and the system that keeps reproducing it. They argue instead over how much to cut social programs for the people while they agree that such cutting is the major way to fix the government’s broken budget.

The first trend amounts to looting the US working class (the media softens that to “disappearing middle class”). Since the 1970s, real wages have been flat to declining, while productivity per worker has risen steadily. What employers give workers (wages) has remained the same while what workers produce for their employers (profits) rose. Workers and their families responded by working ever more hours and borrowing ever more money to get or keep the “American dream.” By 2007, they were physically exhausted, families emotionally stressed and deeply anxious about the debts that their flat real wages could no longer sustain. When the system crashed, zooming unemployment, further wage and benefit reductions and home foreclosures made everything still worse for most Americans. Continue reading →

I went to work this morning, unaware that the Communications Workers of America (CWA) had struck Verizon. I should know – I work for AT&T, whose workers are also represented by the CWA. But I didn’t and that says volumes about the local that represents my work group. But that is another story for another time.

I got home, logged on to the computer, and read the news. I have to say that this action is long, long overdue. The CWA had the opportunity to strike against AT&T in 2009, but it didn’t. I thought the CWA had lost its nerve, but I guess the Verizon workers boxed the “leadership” of the CWA, which has sold the workers in the telecommunications industry down the river for 30 years or more, into a corner. Bully for the workers and I wish them every bit of luck. They are going to need it, because between workers crossing the picket lines and the “conservatives” dissing the workers for daring to stand up against management, this is going to be a tough slog.

I’m going to address you “conservatives” right here and right now. I put the word conservatives in quotation marks because you aren’t really conservative – you are greedy, selfish, and ignorant. But that’s another post for another day. You say that the Verizon workers make an average of $65,000 a year and that they somehow shouldn’t be striking because they make so much money. That they are greedy. That they should pay for their medical benefits, because everyone else does. That they are lazy and that there are thousands of unemployed workers out there who would willingly do their jobs for half the wages. Not likely. The workers who are striking are skilled technicians who have worked years to perfect their trade. The management claims that they have highly trained replacements are false – most of their replacements are managers who have never done the job before and have no idea how to do the work.

Now, here’s the thing that you “conservatives” can’t seem to understand: there is a connection between the decline of this once-great country and union membership. Unions are the only force that exists that can counter Wall Street and the corporations that run this country. Surely you don’t think politicians, in the pockets of the corporations and Wall Street, are going to fix what is wrong with this country, do you? Do you really think that the circus we just watched about the debt ceiling did anything to help us? You can’t decry the bailout, Obamacare, Medicare, and Social Security and then slam unions. Instead, you should be applauding these brave workers, because someone has to stand up to the financiers and capitalists who are ruining this country. If you applaud our soldiers for defending “our freedoms”, how is it that you can’t bring yourself to defend unions for standing up for working people’s rights?? If the workers at Verizon are defeated, it just means that management will speed up the treadmill more and you are next. How much do you make now? $15 an hour? How about taking a 30 % cut in wages because management and the stockholders are not making enough? What are you going to do about it? Nothing. That’s what. Because you don’t have the balls to organize and demand better working conditions and better wages. The only thing you can do is slam unions and suck up to the bosses.

Trust me. The working conditions that the Verizon workers experience every day are not that different from the conditions that I see at AT&T every day. There are very few craft workers at AT&T who are happy campers – not with the wages, but about the endless pressure to “make the numbers”. And that also applies to the first level of management – a huge number of very unhappy campers. Today, I learned of a manager with 38 years experience who is retiring at the end of the year because he can’t stand the bullshit any longer. On average, his group misses 150 service orders every day. Every day. And you wonder why you can’t get your phone fixed? That’s why.

Go out on the street and ask Verizon and AT&T customers if they are happy with their service. Go ahead. Ask. You won’t find many happy customers. Then ask yourself why. Could it be because the craft people who work for the companies cannot provide good service because they are being disciplined for not making their numbers?

So. For all you union-bashers: wake up. Unions created the middle class in this country because they were the only organized force that existed to push back against the capitalists and their incessant demands for more, more, more, and more. The decline of the middle class parallels the decline of the union membership in this country. If you want to live in poverty, have your kids go to crappy schools, be the victims of crime, and work in unsafe conditions, go ahead and diss the union workers who created the middle class. Go ahead and shoot yourself in the foot, once again.

You ignorant fools make me sick.

A great big salute to the brave workers at Verizon!

Update – 8/11/2011: an anonymous member of CWA Local 1106 writes about the reasons for the strike.

“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their governments and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves…[and] the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.”

The essay in which this quote appears was published by Seven Stories Press.