Change that cannot be believed

So let me get this straight. The Democratic Party-controlled House, Senate and White House are going to pass and sign “historic health care reform.” Only it is now a done deal that it won’t cover everyone, won’t include a public option, won’t take away the anti-trust exemption for the insurance industry, will include a mandate that will force people who currently don’t have health insurance to buy it whether they can afford it or not, may include a tax on insurance benefits workers currently get from their employers, may include or extend prohibitions on access to health care by *legal* immigrants, will absolutely exclude immigrants who are not legal, and may or may not break new ground in even further limiting a woman’s access to abortion. And we’re supposed to consider this a victory?

It’s not that it isn’t single payer or even public option. This is reform that extends the insurance company monopoly and transfers money from the pockets of working and poor people into the coffers of the insurance industry.

Filed under: Uncategorized

How should we confront Rell’s proposed budget cuts? A question for my friends in the non-profits

So Gov. Rell wants to cut $4.25 million from Operation Fuel, the program that provides fuel energy assistance to Connecticut’s working poor…it’s among a couple of dozen cuts that she has proposed for “budget reconciliation” that will seriously harm working people and the most vulnerable in Connecticut.

Which brings me to a question.  I’m in awe of you guys – my friends who work in the non-profits and public agencies – who “get” the legislative process and can decipher the tons of paperwork and the vatican council-type decision-making that ultimately determines the budget and who gets what.  But I have to ask: Why are these outrages not being turned into some large-scale highly embarassing public manifestation for Rell?

You represent, directly or indirectly, the interests of tens of thousands of people in Connecticut who are in danger.  Real danger.  The danger of not being able to heat their homes in the winter.  The danger of not being able to get desperately needed mental health treatment in a safe environment (or at all).  The danger of losing access to job training programs or legal aid assistance or even to sources of food aid so that families don’t go hungry.

I understand that there are appropriations hearings and lobbying efforts and special meetings with key legislators and number-crunching and bill writing to be done.  But this process, as vital as it is, will not engage the people who are in danger.  It will not help them to be heard as people and not just as budget line items or as “programs.”  It will not give them human faces that the politicians must confront.  It will not give them the faces of neighbors and friends and loved ones that will force those of us not directly affected by the budget to care and to act.

Why are we not organizing a visible, public, angry rebuttal to the suggestion that Connecticut should continue as a state where the answer to poverty is “You’re so good at doing without, certainly you can do with less.”

I can’t speak for the people in your community programs or who use your shelters or get food from your food pantries or who depend on the mental health or daycare or counseling services your agency provides.  I’m just one outraged individual.  But I have to ask: Why aren’t we organizing a tent city on the sidewalk in front of the governor’s mansion?  Why aren’t we organizing people to challenge and embarrass Rell every place that she shows her face in public?  Why aren’t we confronting politicians who refuse to raise taxes on the rich even to save the lives of the poor?  Why aren’t we organizing hunger strikes and picketlines and protests?  And why, oh why, do I keep hearing about how this program or that program is too critical to be cut but no unified voice saying WE refuse to allow ANY MORE programs to be cut?

Those of us on the outside of the process do not understand the complexity of grant-writing and budget-writing and program administration and everything that goes in to making these vital social services available on a day to day basis.  But I see and hear your anger and disgust over these cuts and your deep concern and fear for the people that you serve.  And you and I know that your fear is only a shadow of the fear felt by the people who need these services and don’t know what they will do if they don’t get them.

But I wonder if you know how invisible all of this is to the media, to so many of the politicians, to so many millions of people who don’t know what these services are or why they are so vital.  And I wonder why we are relying on meetings in committee rooms rather than bold public acts that will confront the complacency of those in power.

Filed under: Economic crisis

Must Read: The crisis & the prospects for resistance

An article by Fred Goldstein, author of the recent book Low Wage Capitalism, sums up both the key elements of the economic crisis and the first inklings of real resistance. With respect to the economic crisis, the point that Fred hammers home time and again is that claims of economic recovery from the global crisis are false on two fronts. First, there are strong indicators that we are only in the early stages of this crisis, and that it resembles the Great Depression of the 1930’s in more ways than just high unemployment. Second, even mainstream pro-corporate analysts agree that “recovery” for Wall Street and the banks does not mean more jobs – that any recovery will be a “jobless” one. In fact, the most optimistic predictors of recovery concede that there will be no increase in jobs for at least another year, while many economists say that we can expect continued double-digit unemployment until 2012 or 2013!

In discussing resistance to this crisis, Fred correctly points out that so far what we have seen is scattered, local, and often spontaneous. Many of us have a gut feeling that this crisis is long-term…that rising Dow Jones averages or 4th quarter corporate profits will not translate into more jobs or into relief for our communities, where vital social services are overwhelmened by demand. We are beginning to see the handwriting on the wall: that things won’t get better for working people until we organize and fight in our own interests. But that has not yet translated into any kind of national movement. Fred points to two exciting developments that give an inking of what is possible: the April 10, 2010 national march on Washington that will demand a Works Progress Administration-type national jobs program on a massive scale, and the rumblings in the West Coast labor movement about a call for a Solidarity III march on Washingtonto be initiated by the AFL-CIO and Change to Win labor federations.

If you are concerned about unemployment in your community, if you are one of the millions of people who have lost their jobs or are underemployed or working two or more jobs just to make ends meet, or if you are one of the tens of millions more who know that their own jobs are in jeopardy, I recommend Fred’s analysis to you. One thing is certain: corporate America has a plan to weather the crisis by putting it on our backs, so we need a strategy and a plan to fight back.

Filed under: Economic crisis, Must read

Important new blog: New Student Left Review

Here’s a new blog making an important contribution to building of a radical student movement in the U.S. New Student Left Review’s most recent post addresses “Lessons to learn from California Student Strikes and Occupations.” Definitely worth your time to read.

Filed under: Uncategorized

The Decline: The Geography of a Recession

Go here to see this in full screen.

 

more about “The Decline: The Geography of a Reces…“, posted with vodpod

 

Filed under: Economic crisis

Protest in Washington, D.C. to Demand the Right to a Job for All

 

 

Joblessness is as bad today as it was during the 1930s –It’s time to take the fight to D.C.

On April 8, 1935, Congress passed the legislation creating the largest public works program in history. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) created 8.5 million jobs during the depression of the 1930s.

Let’s mark the 75th anniversary of the creation of the WPA by telling the government that today’s jobless crisis is as bad today as it was back then and that we need the same kind of bold, sweeping jobs program that the people demanded in the 1930s – Now!

Martin Luther King Jr. dedicated the final months of his life to starting a movement for the right of all to a job or a guaranteed income – we need that movement now more than ever.

It’s time to say no: to a jobless recovery – to an economy based on permanent high unemployment and low wages – to trillions of $ for Wall St., and trillions of $ for war but nothing but joblessness, foreclosures, evictions, layoffs, low wages, union busting, hunger and homelessness for workers and the poor.

There are more than 20 million unemployed and underemployed people in the country today. We need a real WPA-type program that is big enough to insure that those who need work get work – work that is socially useful that pays union wages and benefits.

Call issued by
the Bail Out the People Movement

To endorse this call
go to http://www.bailoutpeople.org/apr1010endorse.shtml

To volunteer or organize transportation from your area
go to http://www.bailoutpeople.org/apr1010volorgcent.shtml

to donate
go to http://www.bailoutpeople.org/donate.shtml

Filed under: Economic crisis

From the Department of Insults: Wall Street employees get flu vaccine, you can just die.

In the last year, I have probably used some variation on the phrase “adding insult to injury” more than at any other time in my life.  I’m sure I’m not the only one.  The capitalist economic meltdown means joblessness, foreclosure, eviction, homelessness, poverty and misery to millions of workers here in the U.S., and poverty, starvation and death to millions around the world.  So there’s plenty of injury to go around.

But it seems there is no shortage of insults to dish out to the victims of the global collapse either.  Here in the U.S., the same banks that received billions in bail out money are foreclosing on mortgages and putting working people’s belongings out on the curb like it was trash.  Workers with decades of service are being laid so that their bosses – who created the crisis with their greed and arrogance – can continue to rake in huge bonuses and lucrative golden parachutes.  Politicians are fawning over the insurance companies and pharmaceutical giants, careful to ensure that any health care reform doesn’t hurt their profits, while lack of access to health care kills 45,000 Americans every year.

But some insults to working people seem so gratuitous that it is hard to imagine that they don’t have a special bureau somewhere that thinks this stuff up.  In that category is the news that the Center for Disease Control authorized the allocation of H1N1 flu vaccines to some of the largest firms on Wall Street even while millions of Americans who are in high risk categories, such as youth and the elderly, are unable to get the flu shot.  As the website of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington points out, several states have already expressed concern that those that need it most will not be able to get the vaccine, or that it will be available too late:

The head of Alabama’s Department of Public Health testified that 62% of the vaccines ordered by the state will not be available until after December 1, 2009

The director of Minnesota’s St. Paul Ramsey County Department of Public Health said he is expecting only 7,800 doses for more than 20,000 children

Los Angeles County’s three public hospitals ordered 110,000 vaccines, but have received only about 18,000 doses, and UCLA’s two hospitals received 1,000 doses for 10,000 staff and 35,000 patients

We already have heard, ad nauseam, that these companies are “too big to fail,” while the rest of us are too unimportant to bail out.  Now it seems that the Wall Street giants must be protected from the flu while children and seniors die from it.

Filed under: Economic crisis, They're Not Like Us

Necessity and virtue: Has the left abandoned the goal of national social change?

The passage of Proposition 1 and the setback for same sex marriage in Maine has provoked an important conclusion for many LGBT activists and allies: the movement is at a turning point where national action for LGBT equality is the order of the day.  The absurdity of watching states adopt and recognize same sex marriage, only to have these gains erased by popular referendum – as if fundamental civil rights for a minority could be voted away by the majority – is having a transformative effect on consciousness.  The dozens of struggles being waged at the local level around the country, and especially the fight over same sex marriage rights, has made the formerly impossible appear not only possible but necessary.

This change in consciousness within one important social movement also reflects a breakthrough in a broader sense as well, and it is no coincidence that it comes as Americans are also struggling  with the transformation of the national health care system.  In the 1980’s, the so-called Reagan Revolution opened an all-out attack on the rights of working and oppressed people and in general on the gains of the 60’s and 70’s.  As this reactionary trend gained momentum, social movements for change became more and more a rearguard action, defending earlier gains on a state by state and community by community basis.  Victories, too, tended to be local.

Despite changes in administrations from Republican to Democrat and back again, for more than three decades the progressive movements were in retreat both practically and psychologically.  National campaigns such as the anti-war movement seemed to have little or no impact even when they successfully mobilized hundreds of thousands of people.   For many of us, the United States looked more and more like a patchwork of regions and states.  While the LGBT movement might win same sex marriage in Massachusetts, Kansas politicians were busy trying to keep the teaching of evolution out of public schools.  New Haven, Connecticut might become a sanctuary city for undocumented immigrants but in Jena, Louisiana, a local district attorney was railroading African-American youth into lengthy jail sentences for a schoolyard fight.

In such a climate it is not too surprising that for many activists focusing energy making or defending local gains became not only a necessity but a virtue. . . and even a fetish.  We have seen community non-profits mobilize militantly to challenge poverty and racism to effect neighborhood change while deliberately stifling any discussion of the broader government policies that created the problem.  We have seen activists seemingly unable to grasp the concept of national solutions – single payer national health care, nationalization of the failing auto industry, a national moratorium on bankruptcies and home foreclosures – because of what is now a deeply bred fear of big government that rivals that of many conservatives.  And the despair many of us feel over the successful attacks on reproductive rights of women in some right-wing dominated states has astonishingly not galvanized into a consensus that abortion rights must be protected at the federal level.

The emergence of the discussions about national health care reform and also, increasingly, about federal recognition of LGBT rights are reviving a long-discarded idea that progressive social change should not be limited to the places where progressives can guarantee a majority.  And why should it?  Social movements rarely mobilize the majority of the population or wait for a national consensus to make their demands heard.  If there is a discussion and debate that is much-needed on the left in the U.S., it is this one: as the internet supposedly makes our world smaller, have we abandoned the idea of national social change?

Filed under: Community organizing, Fighting oppression

CIT Group bankruptcy, stock market decline show recession far from over, but who gets bailed out next time?

As politicians and the American people are enmeshed in the debate over health care reform or are pondering the next steps in the escalating U.S. war in Afghanistan, no one seemed to be paying much attention to developments in the economy.  Until last week, a rising stock market seemed to be enough indication that the recession was over or nearly over.

This may be the week that we face the music, however.  On Friday, a 250 point dip in the stock market raised questions about whether the U.S. economy is actually in a recovery.  Today, there is the announcement that CIT Group, which provides financing to thousands of small and medium-sized businesses (including 60% of the apparel industry) is filing for bankruptcy.

The Guardian (UK) this morning describes the CIT Group bankruptcy as “one of the biggest corporate failures in U.S. history.”  The article points out that not only will the reorganization in bankruptcy reduce the financing available to small and medium businesses, but also that U.S. taxpayers will lose the $2.3 billion that the company received under the TARP program.

The bankruptcy follows on predictions by a number of capitalist economists that either the recession will continue or that we are about to enter a second, possibly deeper recession.  Perhaps most significantly, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz said recently that not only is the economy still in decline, but that the only thing that prevented a more rapid decline was Obama’s federal stimulus package.

There are three things that working people should be considering in the wake of this news.  First, of course, is that whether the recession is over according to the experts, 2010 will be a year of steep unemployment and continuing pressure by business and politicians to cut public spending on social programs that are vital to our survival.  Second, most economists agree that the federal stimulus program may have been the only thing to either slow or stop the economic free-fall that took place from last Fall until earlier this year.  Third, a new period of economic decline will certainly bring new calls for bail outs and stimulus of some kind…with the only question being whether we allow anther round of government hand-outs to big business or fight for a popular program of direct aid to working people and our impoverished communities.

Filed under: Economic crisis

Horribly Injured Americans Against Obamacare | CommonDreams.orgV

more about "Horribly Injured Americans Against Ob…", posted with vodpod

Filed under: Uncategorized