People Before Profit blog

2010 Election Fight: Labor Movement Leads

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:57:00 +0000

Remarks by AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka, United Mine Workers of America 54th Constitutional Convention, Las Vegas, NV
July 26, 2010

Brothers and sisters, I am proud to work for 11.5 million union workers across America, and I think about them every single day. But the United Mine Workers of America will always be my union. It will always be my home. My brothers and sisters. My family.

I may now be president of the AFL-CIO, but I have always been – and will forever be – UMWA. I learned unionism, and I learned life in the United Mine Workers. I learned alongside this man [Cecil Roberts]. And I learned from him. And with him.

He's one of the reasons I'm so proud to be a member of this union. His commitment runs deep. His vision is great. His passion for justice burns bright. He doesn't talk about change, he makes change.

And Cecil, there isn't a coal mining family that isn't living a better life because of you. You are the embodiment of what the UMWA is all about. You're my friend. You're my brother. And I'm damn proud that you're my president.

Thank you, Cecil Roberts.

Brothers and sisters, something has gone very wrong in America. Look at this city around us, where the housing crisis has hit so hard—75 percent of Las Vegas homeowners are underwater now, owing more than their home is worth. People are losing their homes—their security, their wealth. More and more are choosing the midnight bankruptcy. Just leaving. Walking away from their homes – how hard is that? But they're homes they can't pay off.

Look around at the towns you're from. At joblessness. Jobs exported. No retirement security. Public schools that are crumbling. Teachers and police and firefighters being laid off. And the future we tried to build for our kids—where is it?

The economic course our nation started 30 years ago—the drive for a low-wage, high-consumption society that imports more and more of what it consumes—it's hit the wall. We cannot afford to stay this course—letting the financial markets run amok, outsourcing everything that's not nailed to the floor, knocking down workers at every opportunity.

If something doesn't change, and soon, America's future will be one of high unemployment for years to come, stagnant or falling wages and total corporate rule.

But what's been happening on Capitol Hill, where we sent people to make changes? Senate Republicans are playing a cynical and unprecedented political game by stalling and obstructing every single chance to fix this economic mess. It is an unqualified shame that they would even block the simple extension of unemployment benefits for the most hard-pressed people who have been without jobs for half a year or more. At some point, there won't be any jobs left that'll pay us enough to buy the junk that's getting shipped here from around the world.

Brothers and sisters, we and our parents and grandparents haven't worked our entire lives to build the economic travesty we see around us today. Mineworkers didn't sweat and die for this. We didn't dig coal to see the jobs our coal created shipped to China. We didn't walk the line for retirement security to see it snatched away from us now. And I can tell you this, brothers and sisters: Mineworkers have never and will never sit by and watch our future, the future of our children and grandchildren and the future of our country – stolen. We won't do it.

In 1890, mineworkers from all different walks of life came together in Columbus, Ohio to form the UMWA. Many of them had been victimized, but when they left there together, they were no longer victims. They had a voice.

A lot of people don't know this, but that first convention elected two black men to our board of directors. The UMWA was never a Jim Crow union. We didn't discriminate based on race, color, creed or national origin. We had a journal that was printed in 12 languages.

Those miners might sound foreign to Americans today, but they stood together not as immigrants or native born, not white or black, but as workers who shared a common fate.

And it was when they stood together that they began to build a better life.

Working in a coal mine was not a good job. Bosses cheated them on paychecks. Charged them for the tools they used. Made them do the dead work for free. Those weren't good jobs until we made them into good jobs.

When miners—who worked in holes in the ground—when those miners stood up and spoke for themselves, they spoke for all of America.

When they built a better life for themselves, they built a better life for everyone in America.

When they sent their children to college, America got a better education.

Union workers didn't just build the bridges and the highrises and the hardware stores. We built good jobs.

Well, now there are a bunch of people and corporations and front groups that want to take it all back. They want us all – all American workers, back in a hole with no voice.

Are we going to let them do it? Are we going to have an economy and a country that serves only the wealthiest? Or one in which the wonders of our bounty are shared by all?

We need to choose: Are we going to live in an America without a middle class? Or are we going to rebuild shared prosperity?

Here's the good news. We already did it once. We can do it again.

And do you know how we did it? We did it together.

Are you ready? Will you stand with me? Will you stand together?

Will you give this nation another golden age? I know you will.

When you're working in a mine, you learn about real solidarity - real courage. You watch out for one another. You learn about life in there. You learn that what you do affects everyone else.

I can remember a fire in Nemacolin. Five men were trapped. Our whole community rallied around those families, and men risked their lives to get the miners out of there. That's real family values.

There's a place near Nemacolin, and every time I pass it I remember what happened underground, beneath it. That's where Tommy Samek's dad got killed in a roof fall. Tommy's a friend of mine. I grew up with him. I think about his father every time I pass the spot. Walter was his name. Walter's farm abutted my grandfather's.

Walter was a horse of a man. He'd work the hard shift in the mine and then go out and work a full day on the farm. Those were hard-working men. It's tough to put into words the connections families can have in those circumstances. I'll just tell you I'll never forget my Uncle Steve—we called him Uncle BoBo—driving Walter's truck home that day after Walter died in that mine

You know, years ago, it used to be that you'd get fired for killing a mule, but if a man died in a coal mine they'd leave him there until the end of the shift.

A man's life was worth nothing. They thought a miner should have a strong back and no mind. We've still got mine bosses like that, throwbacks to the 1890s.

Don Blankenship. Hell, Don Blankenships are everywhere these days. They run the banks that trashed our economy. They run the deep sea oil rigs and the refineries that kill Steelworkers. They've got lobbyist offices on K Street where they plot how to buy influence.

You know, Washington D.C. is a beautiful city. For too long, though, there were just too many mean people in it.

They ran this great country for eight long years. About ran us into the ground. That kind of people never gives up anything. You want it, you better be ready to take it.

During the Civil Rights movement, people in Memphis wore signs that said, "I am a man." That's right. And we're men and women, too. We deserve better than orphans left behind by an unquenchable thirst for profit.

And the only way we're going to make this country great again is by standing up, standing together and taking it back.

I'm working on a strategy right now to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. We need it to end the corporate intimidation so every worker who wants to stand with us can do it as a proud member of a union, with a voice. But one law isn't going to make this country again. It can only clear the way.

Brothers and sisters, we have a fight to fight.

It's only 99 days until the first Tuesday in November. I don't want to hear that one of you sat this one out. If you're feeling complacent. Ambivalent. Shake it off, and get yourself together.

We're fighting for the people who raised us who are now retired and who need us to protect their dignity and their way of life.

We have a fight for the next generation of workers and the generation after them.

When you go back home, talk to your co-workers about the election. Talk to union members at their front doors. Sign up with your local or CLC and walk your communities. Give it all you've got.

The choices are clear. It's between those who stand with working families and those who stand with the Big Banks, the Blankenships.

It's a choice between Speaker Pelosi and Speaker Boehner.

It's a choice between making things right here in America and exporting quality products or exporting more jobs.

The corporate CEOs think they smell a comeback. Don't give it to them. They want to distract us by crying about the deficit. If we don't spend on jobs now, when is the right time? Later? When our Recession is a Depression?

They want to divide brother from brother, immigrants from the native born. Don't let them.

All they want to do is export more jobs, beat workers down and put this 30-year-long race-to-the-bottom into a higher gear.

We'll fight till the polls close on Nov. 2. And the day after the election, we'll pick up the fight again.

I know some of you are frustrated. We haven't achieved everything we wanted. Well, I'm frustrated too – but nobody ever said it would be easy. Nothing will be handed to us.

It's our job to fight, and it's our fight to win.

We're in this together – God help us – and together we're going to win because I know you know how.

We're going to rebuild America the same way we built this union. The same way this union built good jobs.

Together. Strong. United. Committed. With the power of solidarity. With people power. Union power.

Thank you, brothers and sisters, and God bless the U.M.W.A.

Photo: Coal miners protest Massey Energy's safety violations that caused the deaths of 25 miners April 5. (Photo by AFL-CIO, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0)

Global Warming and Wild Flowers

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:55:00 +0000

EarthTalk®
From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: I've noticed that wildflower blooms in the mountains have been coming earlier and earlier in recent years. Is this a sign of global warming? And what does this mean for the long term survival of these hardy yet rare plants? -- Ashley J., via e-mail

As always, it’s hard to pin specific year-to-year weather-variations and related phenomena—including altered blooming schedules for wildflowers—on global warming. But longer term analysis of seasonal flowering patterns and other natural events do indicate that global warming may be playing a role in how early wildflowers begin popping up in the high country.

University of Maryland ecologist David Inouye has been studying wildflowers in the Rocky Mountains near Crested Butte, Colorado for four decades, and has noticed that blooms have indeed begun earlier over the last decade. Aspen sunflowers, among other charismatic high country wildflowers, used to first bloom in mid-May, but are now are doing so in mid-April, a full month earlier. Inouye thinks that smaller snow packs in the mountains are melting earlier due to global warming, in turn triggering early blooms.

Smaller snow packs not only mean fewer flowers (since they have less water to use in photosynthesis); they can also stress wildflower populations not accustomed to exposure to late-spring frost. According to Inouye’s research, between 1992 and 1998 such frosts killed about a third of the Aspen sunflower buds in some 30 different study plots; but more recently, from 1999 through 2006, the typical mortality rate doubled, with three-quarters of all buds killed by frost in an average year thanks to earlier blooming.

Inouye’s worrisome conclusions are backed up by experiments conducted by fellow researcher John Harte, who over a 15 year period used overhead heaters in nearby wildflower study plots to accelerate snow melt. The results were the same: Wildflowers bloomed early and not as vigorously.

Several studies in Europe have shown that some species of wildflowers there may be able to migrate north and to higher elevations as the climate warms, but Inouye fears his beloved Aspen sunflowers and many other American wildflowers may be lost forever as they are not able to migrate as quickly as needed in order to survive widespread surface temperature increases and escape extinction.

Harte is also gloomy about the prospects for Colorado’s mountain wildflowers. He predicts that the wildflower fields he and Inouye have been studying will give way to sagebrush desert within the next 50 years, whether or not the governments of the world can get a grip on greenhouse gas emissions.

As a hedge against such dire predictions, the nonprofit Center for Plant Conservation is spearheading seed collection efforts on thousands of rare wildflower species across the U.S. for inclusion in the Colorado-based National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation, a repository for both common and rare “prized” American plant seeds. The “banked” seeds, useful if not solely for preserving the genetic makeup of species that may go extinct in the wild, can also be used for future restoration projects on otherwise compromised landscapes.

CONTACTS: David W. Inouye, http://chemlife.umd.edu/facultyresearch/facultydirectory/davidwinouye; Center for Plant Conservation, www.centerforplantconservation.org; National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation, www.ars.usda.gov/main/site_main.htm?modecode=54-02-05-00.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, c/o E – The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. E is a nonprofit publication. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe; Request a Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

Photo by beautifulcataya, courtesy Flickr

GOP Hypocrisy on Immigration

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:53:00 +0000

Original source: America's Voice Online

GOP Hypocrisy on Immigration: Talking Tough While Stonewalling Attempts to Fix the Problem

While Tom Tancredo Wing of GOP Vows to Impeach Obama Over Immigration, Gov. Christie Shows Another Way Forward

Washington, DC - As anti-immigrant ringleaders whip themselves into a frenzy over illegal immigration, and continue a strategy that is both bad for the Republican Party and bad for the country, some reasonable Republicans suggest another way.

According to Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America's Voice, "On immigration issues, the Tancredo wing of the Republican Party is driving the party's agenda on immigration these days. Not only does this imperil the GOP's long-term viability in many states due to simple demographics, but it also represents the triumph of nativism – unpersuaded by facts and reality - over pragmatism, reason, and problem-solving. The Republican Party has a choice - would it rather rail against illegal immigration while stonewalling action on actual solutions, or roll up its sleeves to – gasp – work with Democrats to address the problem with comprehensive reform?"

The latest anti-immigrant meme states that President Obama should be impeached due to his "failure" to enforce immigration laws. Never mind the actual facts on immigration enforcement – as a Washington Post piece highlighted today, the Obama Administration "expects to deport about 400,000 people this fiscal year, nearly 10 percent above the Bush administration's 2008 total and 25 percent more than were deported in 2007," and the "pace of company audits has roughly quadrupled since President George W. Bush's final year in office." Yet, in an op-ed in the Washington Times last week, Tom Tancredo, who is about to announce his candidacy for Governor of Colorado, stated that President Obama constitutes "a more serious threat to America than al Qaeda" and called for Obama's impeachment, asserting that his actions on immigration amount to a failure of his oath of office, "which includes the duty to defend the United States against foreign invasion." Similarly, commenting on Obama’s immigration record, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) said on Lou Dobbs's radio show: "Whatever law they're not enforcing, I think it comes awfully close to a violation of their oath of office."

Despite the Party's drift toward extremism on immigration, some Republicans such as Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) are fighting an uphill battle to promote bipartisan problem-solving. On ABC's This Week, Gov. Christie called for comprehensive immigration reform and a federal solution to the broken system, saying, "The president and the Congress have to step up to the plate, they have to secure our borders, and they have to put forward a commonsense path to citizenship for people... States are going to struggle all over the country with this problem [until President Obama and Congress craft an immigration reform measure], and so is federal law enforcement, who doesn't have the resources to do it effectively." Similarly, Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) summarized the politics of immigration nicely when he said, "Republicans see a short-term benefit because of the popularity of the Arizona law. But then, a lot of Republicans realize, long term, this is not a winner for the party to take a position that is so distant from the largest-growing demographic. Some are willing to sacrifice the short term for the long term."

Photo by Fibonacci Blue, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0

Restore the Estate Tax

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:52:00 +0000

Both capitalists and workers might agree on one thing: it's time to restore the estate tax.

This was the message sent last week by United for a Fair Economy's Responsible Wealth Project. The Bush 2003 tax cuts temporarily suspended the estate tax for 2010, a move that benefits only the wealthiest fraction of American families and adds tens of billions of dollars to the federal deficit.

In a media teleconference on behalf of United for a Fair Economy, labor leader Richard Trumka made the issue clear.

"The estate tax is a progressive tax, and it is the only wealth tax we have," he said.

Trumka, who is the president of the AFL-CIO, noted that if the estate tax bills currently pending in Congress were to pass only a fraction of one percent of estates would be required to pay any taxes.

Small farmers and businesses owners simply aren't valuable to be taxed under the provisions of the estate tax.

The revenue from the estate tax should be used to fund public investment in infrastructure, saving teachers' jobs and providing aid to states with budget shortfalls, Trumka explained.

He noted that the federal deficit remains a long-term issue and should be handled as a structural issue in the future.

"Our economy remains on the edge of a double-dip recession, and we urgently need to create millions of jobs and invest in our future, not give more tax breaks to the wealthy," Trumka said.

"Anyone who pretends to care about cutting deficits while opposing the restoration of the estate tax is clearly residing on a different planet."

Trumka further noted the hypocrisy of Republicans who want to provide more tax cuts for the very rich while blocking aid to the unemployed or for job creation under the guise of reducing the deficit.

Joining Trumka was former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.

"Our country is on an unsustainable fiscal path. A progressive estate tax can provide needed revenue with no adverse supply-side economic effect, and that revenue can then fund deficit reduction, additional public investment, or added assistance to those affected by the economic crisis," Rubin said.

Rubin also suggested that a retroactive restoration of the tax for 2010 would not be unfair.

Abigail Disney, the grandniece of the legendary Walt Disney, explained that inherited wealth without adding any new contribution to society would make the children of the very wealthy "parasites on the good work of others."

She explained that American society as a whole benefits from the public services paid for by taxes.

"After all, without reliable and safe roads there'd have been no Disneyland; without high functioning legal systems and a well regulated business environment there would have been no copyright protection for Mickey Mouse."

"I don't intend to compound my already good fortune," Disney said, "by enjoying security, health, and good social order without contributing to the cost of those things by paying my fair share of taxes."

Hedge fund manager Julian Robertson said the tax is needed to help reduce the deficit. "America desperately needs to bring its budget more in line. Any move in that direction is favorable," he explained.

"The fairest way to do to that is to increase taxes for the very least deserving of wealth, inheritors."

Lee Farris, UFE's Estate Tax Policy Coordinator, added, "Hardworking families who live paycheck to paycheck pay their fair share of taxes, and so should the heirs of millionaires. If Congress chooses to shrink the estate tax, the middle class will face higher taxes or cuts in vital services like unemployment benefits or education. We don't need to weaken the estate tax - we need to strengthen it."

Right now, two bills are pending in Congress that will restore the estate tax and will likely be considered before the end of the year.

Sens. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., have authored a measure to create a $3.5 million exemption per spouse, a tax rate of 45-55 percent on most estates, and a 65 percent rate on amounts over $1 billion.

A similar measure in the House would create a smaller exemption but without the highest bracket created by the Senate bill. The White House says it favors some combination of the two.

"This Law is Very Unjust"

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:44:00 +0000

Original source: New America Media

Teresa Mina was a San Francisco janitor, member of Service Employees Union Local 87, when she was fired because the company said she didn't have legal immigration documents. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told her employer to fire 463 workers because they lack legal immigration status. She told her story to David Bacon the day before she returned to Mexico.

I come from Tierra Blanca, a very poor town in Veracruz. After my children's father abandoned us, I decided to come to the U.S. There's just no money to survive. We couldn't continue to live that way.
We all felt horrible when I decided to leave. My three kids, my mom, and two sisters are still living at home in Veracruz. The only one supporting them now is me.

My kids' suffering isn't so much about money. I've been able to send enough to pay the bills. What they lack is love. They don't have a father; they just have me. My mother cares for them, but it's not the same. They always ask me to come back. They say maybe we'll be poor, but we'll be together.

I haven't been able to go back to see them for six years, because I don't have any papers to come back to the U.S. afterwards. To cross now is very hard and expensive.

My first two years in San Francisco I cleaned houses. The work was hard, and I was lonely. It's different here. Because I'm Latina and I don't know English, if I go into a store, they watch me from head to foot, like I'm a robber.

After two years, I got a job as a janitor, making $17.85 per hour. Cleaning houses only paid $10. But then I was molested sexually. Another worker exposed himself to me and my friend. When we went to the company and filed a complaint, they took me off the job and kept me out of work a month. They didn't pay me all that time.

That's when my problems started, because I called the union and asked them to help me. After that, the company called me a problematic person, because I wouldn't be quiet and I fought for my rights. Sometimes they wouldn't give me any work.

When you work as a janitor you're mostly alone. You pick up trash, clean up the kitchen and vacuum. These are simple things, and they tire you out, but basically it's a good job. Lots of times we don't take any breaks, though. To finish everything, sometimes we don't even stop for lunch.

No one ever said anything to me about immigration for four years. But then the company gave a letter to my coworkers, saying they wouldn't be able to continue working because they had no papers. About 40 people got them at first. Eventually I got a letter too.

The person from human relations said immigration had demanded the papers for all the people working at the company. She said 300 people didn't have good papers. People whose papers were bad had a month to give the company other documents. If the immigration authorities said these were no good too, we'd be fired. She said the immigration might come looking for us where we lived.

We had a meeting at the union about the letters. Some people in that meeting had papers, and came to support those of us who didn't. They said when they first came here they had to cross the border like we did, in order to find work.

They complained that so many of us were being fired that the workload increased for people who were left. The union got weaker too. We're all paying $49 a month in union dues, and that adds up to alot. We're paying that money so that the union will defend us if we get fired like this. In that meeting we said we wanted equal rights. No one should be fired unless the immigration arrests us. We don't want the comapny to enforce immigration law. The comapny isn't the law.

The company gave me no work in December and January. I was desperate. I had no money. I had to move in with someone else, because I couldn't pay rent. I couldn't send money home to my children.

I was so stressed I fell and broke my arm, and was out on disability. Then I went back to work, and when I went to get my check, the woman in the office wouldn't pay me until I showed them new immigration papers. She gave me three days to bring then, and said if I didn't I'd be fired. I asked her, "so you're the immigration?"

I felt really bad. I spent so many years killing myself in that job, and I needed to keep it so I could send money home. But I couldn't keep fighting. I didn't want my problems to get even bigger - I could tell things would only get worse.

I went back after three days, and told the company I didn't have any good papers. I asked for my pay for the hours I'd worked, and my vacation. I told them I had a flight back to Mexico and needed my check. They only paid me 60 hours, though they owed me 82. They knew I was leaving and couldn't fight them over it. The union did get me something. If I come back with papers within two years, I'll get my job back.

This law is very unjust. We're doing jobs that are heavy and dirty. We work day and night to help our children have a better life, or just to eat. My work is the only support for my family. Now my children won't have what they need.

Many people are frightened now. They don't want to complain or fight about anything because they're afraid they might get fired. They think if we keep fighting, the immigration will pick us up. They have families here. What will happen to their children? Nobody knows. They worry that what's happened to me might happen to them.

I can't afford to live here for months without working. I came to this country to work for my children. But if this is what happens because I've been fighting and struggling, I'd rather leave, and go home and live with my children. In the end, they need me more.

So I guess I'll go back to Tierra Blanca. I'll work in the fields or try selling food there. My family says the economic situation at home is very hard. I'm not bringing much money home. But I like to work, and I know I'll find a way.

Photo by takomabibelot, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0

How to Buy Organic and Save a Buck

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:41:00 +0000

EarthTalk®
From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: What are the most important foods to buy organic? -- Rachel Klepping, Bronxville, NY

Given the usual higher prices of organic versus conventionally-grown foods, it can be a challenge to get the biggest bang for our buck while eating healthy and avoiding the ingestion of synthetic chemicals along with our nutrients. One approach, say some experts, is to only buy organic when the actual edible parts of a non-organically grown food might come into direct contact with toxic fertilizers and pesticides.

The nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG) reports that consumers can reduce their chemical exposure by some 80 percent by either avoiding the most contaminated conventionally grown fruits and vegetables altogether, or by eating only the organic varieties. To help us sort through what and what not to buy, the group offers a handy Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides, which fits on a small piece of paper that you can keep in your pocket and have handy on grocery trips. You can print it out for free from EWG’s FoodNews.org website, or you can download it as a free App for your iPhone.

To make it easy to use, EWG has distilled its analysis into two lists. The first, “Dirty Dozen: Buy These Organic,” lists foods that when grown conventionally contain the largest amounts of pesticide and fertilizer residues. These include peaches, strawberries, apples, blueberries, nectarines, bell peppers, spinach, cherries, kale/collard, greens, potatoes, and (imported) grapes. Consumers should definitely spend the extra money for organic versions of these foods.

On the other side of the coin, EWG’s “Clean 15” list includes foods that contain the least amount of chemical residues when grown conventionally. These include onions, avocados, sweet corn, pineapples, mangos, sweet peas, asparagus, kiwi, cabbage, eggplant, cantaloupe, watermelon, grapefruit, sweet potatoes and honeydew. It’s OK to eat conventionally grown varieties of these foods.

EWG analysts developed the “Clean 15” guide using data from some 89,000 tests for pesticide residues in produce conducted between 2000 and 2008 and collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). What’s the difference, you may ask? EWG found that by eating five conventionally-grown fruits and vegetables a day from the Dirty Dozen list, a consumer on average ingests 10 different pesticides; those who stick to the Clean 15 list ingest less than two.

Other foods you and your family eat, such as meats, cereals, breads and dairy products, might also be exposing you to unwanted chemicals. According to EWG, the direct health benefits of organic meat, eggs and milk are less clear, but you should play it safe by sticking with all-natural, free-range, grass-fed meats that are not fed antibiotics or growth hormones, and by choosing only organic dairy products.

Thanks to increasing demand, more and more food purveyors are putting extra emphasis on organics. This will ultimately result in both lower prices and larger selections. Natural foods market aisles are already teeming with organic choices—and chances are your local supermarket or big box store has introduced organic versions of many popular items. Consequently, there has never been a better time to take stock of what you are feeding yourself and your family, and to make changes for better health.

CONTACT: EWG, www.foodnews.org; USDA/FDA, http://usda-fda.com/articles/organic.htm.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, c/o E – The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. E is a nonprofit publication. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe; Request a Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

Georgia: Fulton County Responds on Mental Health Changes

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:39:00 +0000

Original source: The Atlanta Progressive News

(APN) ATLANTA -- Fulton County has responded to a previous report by Atlanta Progressive News concerning several changes made in recent months by Fulton County which have resulted in fewer clinics serving low-income residents who have no insurance or Medicaid.

APN's original article was published on May 25, 2010. Fulton County sent a three page letter to APN responding to the article on May 27. APN reviewed the letter and prepared a series of additional questions which were submitted a few weeks ago. Fulton County sent APN a package by mail, containing various documents and a DVD, on July 09.

Originally, APN reported: "At least three local community health centers have stopped offering mental health services for working poor and homeless people and homeless people in Fulton County..."

Fulton County sought to clarify the status regarding the three clinics in question:

"South Central Mental Health Center (SCMHC) - relocated to the Neighborhood Union Health Center April 1, 2010. Clients will be able to receive enhanced services at Neighborhood Union," Dr. Patrice Harris, Director of Fulton County Health Services, wrote on May 27.

"West Fulton - currently services continue at West - we plan to build a new 'one stop shop' facility nearby and current clients will be able to receive integrated services at this new location," Harris wrote.

"South Fulton - currently services continue at South," Harris wrote.

So, to review, one clinic literally closed and those patients received a discharge letter referring them to the Neighbhorhood Union. However, the other two clinics, while still open, have apparently stopped accepting referrals for new patients who are indigent and without health insurance or Medicaid. Therefore, while these two clinics may be servicing their existing indigent patients, they have stopped accepting new ones.

APN visited West Fulton and South Fulton to ensure they were still open and did find them open and operating to the general public.

Fulton County also sought to ensure APN readers that there is no decrease in services because the Neighborhood Union is now said to be servicing former patients from SCMHC, as well as potential new patients who may have sought services at the closed center.

However, APN found in its original investigation that the Georgia Crisis Line, which makes appointments for people seeking mental health services, was not offering Neighborhood Union as an option for any new patients seeking services. Three different people called the Crisis Line seeking options for low-income people without insurance or Medicaid, and were referred to either Grady Hospital or Northside Hospital.

"In regards to the Georgia Crisis Line, please note that we are aware of the issue and are working to correct the situation," Harris wrote on July 09.

Fulton County also emphasized they posted a notice on Fulton County's website in advance of the changes, and had an interview on FGTV. They also stated they attended affected Neighborhood Planning Unit meetings.

Fulton County sent APN a copy of the website notice, although APN was not able to find a copy of the notice on Fulton County's website itself.

Fulton County also sent APN a copy of the FGTV interview on DVD. APN was not able to open the file on two different computers, however.

Fulton County also provided a copy of the discharge letter sent to SCMHC patients, and it matched the previous copy of a letter provided to an anonymous patient obtained by APN.

In addition, Fulton County also outlined the upcoming changes in the works as part of the County's so-called streamlining of services.

"Renovation of the North Annex facility that will be the next one stop shop to be brought on-line for Fulton County. It is anticipated that service delivery will begin in July of 2010," Harris wrote on May 27. The North Annex facility is also referred to as the Roswell Road facility.

"Construction of the Adamsville Regional Health Center in 2011. This center, when completed, will be the third full "Regional One Stop Shop" serving the citizens of Fulton County," Harris wrote. This appears to be the one whose opening will accompany the closure of West Fulton.

"These three facilities [North Annex, Adamsville, and Neighborhood Union] will offer the following services: Behavioral Health Services including SA [substance abuse], Primary Care Services, Public Health Services, WIC services, Workforce Development Services, Nutrition Services," Harris wrote.

Despite the closure of SMCHC, the planned closure of West Fulton, and the termination of new referrals at West Fulton and South Fulton for indigent patients, Fulton County insists it continues to be committed to providing mental health services to people of all income groups.

"Our policy message continues to be 'Fulton County will continue to ensure that clients' needs are met regardless of their ability to pay,'" Harris wrote.

Criminals By Any Other Name

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:37:00 +0000

That Kwiatkowski guy sure is looking like a glowing example police integrity compared to Carol Horne isn't he? The thought of uniformed police officers openly drinking alcohol, even in a bar smacks of a lack of respect for their standing as law enforcement officers, the department and the taxpayers of Buffalo as a whole. But that's not the end of the story. I was made known of the incident even before the WKBW Eye-Witness News (EWN) story a few Wednesdays ago.

According to them, during the late hours of of Friday (May 7th) or early Saturday morning, 4 or 5 police officers (depending on who you listen to) "allegedly attacked another man, an off-duty NFTA Police Officer who suffered minor injuries." EWN interviewed several witnesses at Pages Grille & Bar on Transit rd. That's is the basic story told at this point. What many don't know is that some of the officers involved the Page's fight were said to have been in a previous altercation at a PBA awards dinner at Salvatores Italian Gardens only moments beforehand. A 5/13 Buffalo News story says the NFTA officer was "allegedly sucker-punched when he tried to calm the city officers, who were behaving in a rowdy manner after stopping at Page's Grille & Bar on Transit Rd. in Lancaster after the annual Buffalo Police Benevolent Association Awards dinner on Friday night in Salvatores Italian Gardens on Transit authorities said Wednesday."

Among the police names revealed and are a matter of record now are Officer Joseph Wendel and Lt. Greg Kwiatkowski (his attorney now says he was in "plainclothes") to be honest with you none of this surprises me. I been hearing Greg Kwiatkowski stories during the past several years amidst the gross fact that a female officer he punched (11/1/06) was going through a Disciplinary Hearing, instead of him. It was a time of outright bias and ridiculousness for Buffalo, not that it's anything new here. There emerged an across-the-board closed-arm shutdown and demonetization of Horne and anyone suspected of supporting her. Kwiatkowski could frivolously sue her over statements made by her attorney in an article written by me in "Political Affairs Magazine" and win. Judges and city officials seemed to be in agreement to rule in favor of Kwiatkowski and/or against Horne. One of the two black talk radio shows known to interview principles regarding the Horne case was abruptly canceled by the station. Though it was the town's number one issue for months, the shock-jocks at WBEN AM930 wouldn't discuss it. The Horne Shutdown I called it.

An example of how thick the city-wide stigma against Horne is best illustrated in a story I broke on Kwiatkowski during the summer of '07 in the Buffalo Criterion, where an Italian (Donny C. Answeeney) was beaten by Kwiatkowski and several other officers (Kwiatkowski-always astute-was said to have mistaken him for a Puerto Rican). This story was reportedly discredited when it came time to promote him to Lieutenant. The attorney for the victim; Daniel Tronolone, wants to collect damages but doesn't want the incident or his case tied into the demonized Horne. Strange but true.

During the years since her release from the Buffalo Police Department Horne has been forced to cut her ties with some supporters, not the least of which was her attorney Anthony Pendergrass and his co-council Kenneth Nixon. Suddenly it wasn't about shinning before the camera while milking her, it became about winning. To my surprise she took on the former Judge Barbara Sims and the results so far haven't been bad. In fact Sims has far exceeded my expectations. Part of the reason for my concern over her involvement with Horne was my last attorney over my part in the case came from her office; James P. Davis. I considered both he and Sims to be from the "Amos & Andy" era, and not suited for what is essentially a long and grueling battle with "the white man." At this juncture Ms. Sims may be the one who tips the scales for Horne if her recent argument before Supreme Court Judge Tracey Bannister and DA Mike Risman formerly of the Corporation Council holds up.

It was Tuesday the 25th where she stated that a Hearing Officer can't make a ruling on criminal charges. This of course would throw out one of the biggest judicial fixes in the history of Buffalo, the Guilty ruling in 9 of 11 charges made by Hearing Officer Thomas Rinaldo, (for at least saving Neal David Mack from being choked) as well as the subsequent firing of Horne by former Police Chief Herman McCarthy Gipson back in 5/08. Reportedly Riseman's argument has been that there has been officers fired after they've been exonerated of criminal charges. From his standpoint, why not Horne? But those cases were tried in an actual court of law. Not staged in Police Headquarters and presented as an actual trial. This is just one of the numerous in-your-face methods the department and police union intercepted justice regarding the Horne case.

As for the BPD's de facto golden boy Kwiatkowski? Basking in truth-proof adulation on the white side of what was once the most racially divisive case in the city. Knowingly promoted when he should have been the one being put on trial. One blogger sums up the general feeling towards him from the right: "Greg Kwiatkowski is a hard-working no-nonsense cop." The same excuse not to try him (because he was already under federal investigation on unrelated cases) seemed to elude him when it came time to promote him. This highly visible attitude problem in badge and uniform still stands tall while others in the anti-Horne house of cards have fallen; Gipson (literally) and most recently former hard-bitten Corporation Council pitt bull Diana O'Gorman. Gipson, a black commish serving under a black Mayor was accused of being a crack smoker by Pendergrass, while this is commonly cited as the reason for Horne being fired, it bears mentioning that there is just such an accusation filed under sworn Affidavit from a Terrance L. Kelly that officially states he knows Gipson smokes crack. Kelly, at one time an Imam at the local Erie County correctional facility said he never met Horne or Mack until a chance encounter with Mack after he was locked up. After hearing Mack describe his fight with the police in front of his home and Horne's intervention, he went into detail about his knowledge of Gipson:

"14 During the course of my private conversation with Neal David Mack I voluntarily disclosed to Mr. Mack that in June of 2006 I had an experience at 88 Woltz Avenue in Buffalo with Buffalo Police Commissioner H. McCarthy Gipson and his sister... that involved the purchase of and use of crack cocaine and that, based on my experience, the allegation that was made during the Cariol J. Horne disciplinary hearing that Commissioner H. McCarthy Gipson was a 'crack head' was in fact true.

"15 Specifically I disclosed to Mr. Mack that in June of 2006, I had a drug problem and that at the time my drug of choice was crack cocaine. I disclosed that I purchased crack cocaine for Police Commissioner Gipson and his sister with monies provided by both Police Commissioner Gipson and his sister. I further disclosed in June of '06 I was present in the same house, located at 88 Woltz Avenue in Buffalo, a single family, single story "shotgun" type of house that sits back off the street, when Police Commissioner Gipson... and me actually smoked crack cocaine." This is just one of the numerous times Mr. Kelly discloses on that sworn statement to Kenneth Nixon that he witnessed Gipson using him to purchase crack and then returning to his sister's home where all three were said to have smoked. Kelly also adds he no longer uses. It's too bad this was filed in early 2009, might have made a difference if Kelly was found sooner, maybe.

Another angle that I've known, but haven't been able to prove is that Mack and Gipson are family by marriage. Actually I first got news of this back during the summer of '07 from several members in and out of town including of course Neal. From what I've gathered, some of the key older members didn't want to ruin things for Gipson, after all, his mother was married to Mack's cousin, they knew him since he was small. This is important in that Gipson has a brother doing a short stint for the killing of an older man. His influence rings loud, but not for Mack. What of the man Gipson promoted and the Mayor signed off on, Greg The Plague Kwiatkowski? Buffalo's most protected cop since his day's as a teflon PO. There are those who claim he is on a self-destructive course, others in the black community wait for "God" to take care of him. Kwiatkowski only looks like a Godzilla stomping through East Buffalo to many. In reality he is a mouse who hasn't been outed. How can mice discipline a mouse? Nor do I buy the notion that he is destroying himself, his job is to destroy us, he's doing a good job and he enjoys it greatly. Kwiatkowski is an embarrassment to the BPD only if the Buffalo Police Department had enough sense to understand their real job; to protect and serve.

The Transit cop they pounced on was no-doubt harboring aspirations one day of moving up to the big leagues; the mature adults of Buffalo Police Department. He imagined himself giving them the heads-up while at Pages that they were being watched and recorded by customers. In return for his loyalty he got served, savagely, but not by the waiter. This latest incident comes in the middle of yet more Kwiatkowski federal investigations; Answeeney and one having to do with his alleged assault on the son of a black female officer (certain white cops in Buffalo take no exception to assaulting children of fellow black officers) and another officer shooting him with his own BB gun. Can't fire an officer during the middle of an investigation on him now can we? Damn Right We Can..

No Happy Anniversary for Minimum Wage Workers July 24

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:33:00 +0000

Value of minimum wage lower than 1956; Faith, community, business coalition calls for raise

July 24 is the anniversary of last year's raise in the federal minimum wage and no new increases are scheduled. The minimum wage is so low today at $7.25 an hour, says the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign, that it's lower than the minimum wage of 1956, which was $8.02 adjusted for inflation. 1956 is 54 years ago.

The minimum wage sets the wage floor, affecting workers up the ladder. Today, four out of six occupations employing the largest number of workers nationwide -- including retail salespersons, cashiers and food preparation and serving workers -- have a median wage that is lower than the minimum wage of 1968, adjusted for inflation (half make less than the median, half make more). It would take $10 to match the buying power of the minimum wage at its peak in 1968.

"The minimum wage was enacted during the Great Depression to put a floor under workers' wages and increase buying power to boost business and economic recovery," said Let Justice Roll Director Holly Sklar, author of Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work for All of Us. "The fall in worker buying power is a big reason we're in the worst economic crisis since the Depression and a big reason we're having so much trouble getting out of it."

Sow True Seed is a family-owned company serving home gardeners and market growers, based in Asheville, NC. Sow True Seed President Carol Koury said, "Our company is committed to the expansion of vibrant, local, sustainable economies. It would be hypocrƒ®itical for us to pay less than a living wage to those in our company who make it possible to have a company at all. Sustainability includes the ability of working people to be paid enough to sustain a fair and viable lifestyle. We're proud to be part of the Just Economics North Carolina employer living wage program. Paying our employees a living wage comes back in myriad ways to nurture the company. Raising the national minimum wage to a living wage would nurture our economy and our country."

"Every day, our food banks and homeless shelters see more people with paychecks too low to cover even basic necessities," said Rev. Steve Copley, chair of the Let Justice Roll Board. "It's immoral to pay people poverty wages. It's also bad economics. Here in Arkansas and around the country, businesses aren't hiring because they don't have enough customers and workers aren't buying because they don't have the money. Living wages are good ethics and good economics."

"The minimum wage means a lot to me," said Jeremy Negron, a restaurant worker and father in Miami, Fla. "I depend on it every day, every hour - it all counts. The paycheck comes in and goes out. Every penny goes somewhere. With the minimum wage not going up this year, it means my paycheck buys even less than before. Now I have more tough choices to make that will affect my whole family. Restaurant workers do some of the hardest, most underappreciated jobs in our nation. It's time we were guaranteed fair compensation."

Negron is a member of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) United, which currently has chapters in Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Michigan, New Orleans, New York and Washington, DC. Jose Oliva, ROC United Policy Director, says "Restaurant servers and other tipped workers face a double challenge. The minimum wage is too low, and the minimum base pay for tipped workers is even lower. It's been frozen at $2.13 since 1991. We want Congress to pass the Working for Adequate Gains for Employment in Services "WAGES" Act (H.R. 2570). The bill would increase tipped workers' base pay to $3.75 immediately and later index the rate to 70 percent of the federal minimum wage."

Marilyn Winn of Atlanta, GA, said, "As a minimum wage worker, I can tell you that families suffer when parents earn just $7.25 an hour. With the cost of food, medicine and utilities constantly rising, minimum wage workers keep falling farther behind." Winn said, "From childhood, all I've ever known is the minimum wage. My mother worked two jobs while I was growing up. At 77 years old, she is still working. She has never rested and never earned enough."

"For the child care worker who watches your toddler and the waitress at your local diner, the minimum wage plays a big role in setting their pay scales," said Rev. Stephanie Coble Hankins, a faith-based organizer for the Georgia Minimum Wage Coalition, a longtime Let Justice Roll member. "As an ordained Presbyterian minister, I think of few causes that the faith community should be more interested in than ensuring that the working poor in our own neighborhoods earn enough money to support their families."

Let Justice Roll is calling for minimum wage increases to make up the ground lost in minimum wage buying power since 1968 and bring us closer to the "minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency and general well-being of workers" promised in the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act.

"Income has been redistributed from the bottom and middle to the top," said Holly Sklar. "The share of national income going to the richest 1 percent has more than doubled since 1968. We can't build a healthy economy with the greatest income inequality since 1928 and a minimum wage lower in value than 1956. We have to stop rewarding bankers for gambling and return to rewarding workers for rising productivity. A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it."

Critics oppose minimum wage increases in good times and bad, claiming they will increase unemployment. Extensive research, summarized in the Let Justice Roll report, "Raising the Minimum Wage in Hard Times," to be updated July 24 at www.letjusticeroll.org, shows that increasing minimum wage does not increase unemployment. This research includes a new study analyzing minimum wage and teen unemployment published in June by the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at UC Berkeley.

With more than 100 member organizations, the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign is the leading faith, community, labor, business coalition committed to raising the minimum wage to a living wage at the state and federal level.

Wind Power Without Wind?

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:30:00 +0000

EarthTalk®
From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: I heard that some wind farms use fossil fuels to power their generators when the wind won’t. Doesn’t that defeat their whole renewable energy purpose? Why not let the wind power it or not? Also, I've heard that the low-frequency sounds generated by these turbines can harm people and animals. Is this true? -- Ryan Lewis, Plainwell, MI

Indeed, one of the major drawbacks to wind power is the fact that, even in windy locations, the wind doesn’t always blow. So the ability of turbines to generate power is intermittent at best. Many turbines can generate power only about 30 percent of the time, thanks to the inconsistency of their feedstock.

In order to overcome this Achilles’ heel of intermittent production, some wind companies have developed back-up systems that can spin turbines even when the wind isn’t blowing, thus optimizing and keeping consistent the power output. For example, Colorado-based Hybrid Turbines Inc. is selling wind farms systems that marry a natural gas-based generator to a wind turbine. “Even if natural gas is used, the electricity produced…is twice as environmentally clean as burning coal,” reports the company. Better yet, if a user can power them with plant-derived biofuels, they can remain 100 percent renewable energy-based.

While some wind energy companies may want to invest in such technologies to wring the most production out of their big investments, utilities aren’t likely to suffer much from the intermittent output if they don’t. Even the utilities that are most bullish on wind power still generate most of their electricity from other more traditional sources at the present time. So, when wind energy output decreases, utilities simply draw more power from other sources—such as solar arrays, hydroelectric dams, nuclear reactors and coal-fired power plants—to maintain consistent electrical service. As such, reports the American Wind Energy Association, utilities act as “system operators” drawing power from where it’s available and dispatching it to where it is needed in tune with rising and falling power needs.

But just because generating wind power all day long isn’t imperative doesn’t mean that suppliers aren’t doing all they can to maximize output. To wit, turbine manufacturers are beginning to incorporate so-called Active Flow Control (AFC) technology, which delays the occurrence of partial or complete stalls when the wind dies down, and also enables start-up and power generation at lower wind speeds than conventional turbines. The non-profit Union of Concerned Scientists lauds AFC for these capabilities, which in turn can help system operators create a more reliable electric grid less dependent on fossil fuels.

As to whether or not noise from wind farms can harm people and wildlife, the jury is still out. New York-based pediatrician Nina Pierpont argues in her book, Wind Turbine Syndrome, that turbines may produce sounds that can affect the mood of people nearby or cause physiological problems like insomnia, vertigo, headaches and nausea. On the flip side, Renewable UK, a British wind energy trade group, says that the noise measured 1,000 feet away from a wind farm is less than that of normal road traffic. Here in the U.S., a Texas jury denied a 2006 noise pollution suit against FPL Energy after FPL showed that noise readings from its wind farm maxed out at 44 decibels, roughly the same generated by a 10 mile-per-hour wind.

CONTACTS: Hybrid Turbines, Inc., www.hybridturbines.com; American Wind Energy Association, www.awea.org; Union of Concerned Scientists, www.ucsusa.org; Nina Pierpont’s Wind Turbine Syndrome, www.windturbinesyndrome.com.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, c/o E – The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. E is a nonprofit publication. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe; Request a Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

Venezuela Should Follow Argentina's Example on Gay Rights

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:29:00 +0000

Original source: Venezuelanalysis.com

Argentina made history yesterday morning [July 15] after a vociferously debated proposal permitting same sex marriage passed the country’s Senate by a vote of 33-27.

The country now has the honor of claiming that it is Latin America’s first to end the institutionally discriminatory practice of prohibiting gay marriage. It is a measure that should be applauded by all those who are opposed to inequality and oppression based on sexual orientation.

Of course, the new law did not pass easily as opponents of the proposal were well organized and well funded. Leading the opposition were, predictably, the conservative elements of the Catholic Church whose influence in Argentina and Latin America continues to be enormous. But the fact that such a measure could pass in a country where 91% of the population considers itself to be catholic is an inspiration for Latin America and the rest of the world.

Venezuela should follow Argentina’s lead and likewise erase the legally bigoted conception of marriage as defined by a union that exists between a man and a woman only. In fact, it is ironic that while the government of Venezuela currently finds itself embroiled in a war of words with the Church’s hierarchy over its interference in the politics (see http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5488), the Chávez government has done remarkably little to substantially challenge this conservative establishment.

The Venezuelan government still provides funding to the Church, abortion is still illegal, and gay rights receive scant attention from lawmakers in the country’s National Assembly. As such, some observers might interpret the recent accusations and counter-accusations passing between the government and the Church to be more akin to political grandstanding during an election year rather than a true clash of progressive and conservative interests in society.

The topic of same sex marriage is a perfect issue for the government of Venezuela to raise and show that it is ready to take on the conservative elements of the Catholic Church and win, as Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and LGBT groups did in Argentina. Gay rights advocates and the growing LGBT movement in Venezuela should see the Argentine example as a tremendous opportunity to organize and push forward similar change in Venezuela.

With perhaps the most progressive constitution in the world, the Venezuelan people ratified in 1999 a document that enshrines the rights of historically disenfranchised peoples and provides opportunities for the citizenry as never before seen in the country’s history. But on the topic of gay rights, the constitution is silent, indicative of the historic malaise of cultural machismo that still affects the country – a condition fuelled by the homophobic dogmas of the Catholic Church. A proposal has been introduced in Venezuela’s National Assembly to affirm gender equality and legalize same-sex civil unions (see http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/4632) but progress on turning this proposal into law has been slow.

Chavez supporters currently occupy more than 90% of the seats in Venezuela’s legislative branch. National Assembly elections this September may reduce some of this control, but the Chavistas are still expected to maintain a strong majority. The time is right for the government to open a national debate on this topic and challenge the conservative and discriminatory anti-values that the Catholic Church and its hierarchy continue to inculcate in Venezuelan society. If Argentina can do it, why can’t Venezuela?

Wall Street Reform Passes Against Wall Street Lobbying Blockade

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:23:00 +0000

After a year of intense protest and struggles on one side, and bank lobbying on the other side, Congress passed Wall Street Reform, securing the second major piece of reform legislation on President Obama’s agenda.

The package includes new restrictions on the sale of “derivatives.” These are basically insurance products designed to hedge risk. If you are a farmer who just invested heavily in new seed, or farm equipment, you might want to buy a “derivative” that will pay off some of your losses if you run into bad weather. If you are a trucking company dependent on fuel, you might want to buy a “derivative” in case fuel prices unexpectedly rise. The new legislation provides that most derivatives must now be sold on exchanges where the documentation that shows what kind of real assets are behind the derivative can be inspected. A major cause of the financial crisis was too many undocumented, or worse, fraudulently documented derivatives.

A consumer products financial agency charged is created charged with protecting the public against fraudulent financial services. This is a big step forward, especially for the millions of homeowners who were sold very flaky mortgages, and credit cards.

The creation of a resolution authority for large non-bank financial institutions is a positive step that removes much of the regulatory confusion that complicated the initial steps by the Fed and Treasury to stem the crisis when the failure of Lehman Brothers and A.I.G was imminent, and necessitated the very unpopular, bank bailouts.

A big hole in the resolution authority is the fact that no pre-funding mechanism was put in place, and will await future legislation to answer. A tax on the biggest banks, a transaction tax on all financial services are among the proposals.

The audit of the Federal Reserve's special lending facilities, as well as the ongoing audits of its open market operations and discount window loans, is a big step towards increased Fed openness.

The big question is: will this reform really prevent future crises? The answer is: it will probably help, but key issues remain unaddressed. The “Volker rule” – Paul Volker’s proposal to break up big banks – did not make it into the bill, raising the risk of future capture of the regulators by the big banks. Placing ALL derivatives in public exchanges, separating investment from commercial banking operations, and guaranteeing independence of the new consumer financial products regulation from the Fed (still a quasi public institution of bankers) are all steps that would have removed clouds from the future.

But, considering the powerful forces lobbying Congress against ANY reform – the bill is an important victory for Obama, and for forces seeking to protect public institutions from being held hostage by banks and their risky adventures making money at democracy’s expense. The settlement of Goldman Sach’s criminal trickery in the derivative business, which netted them billions in fees, for a fine equalling four days of its profits sends an uneven message, to say the least.

The battle is not over. Workers have not lost. But they have not yet vanquished the dangers.

Photo by Adam Pleniazek, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0

Engels on the Subject Matter and Method of Political Economy and the Coming Revolution

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 10:22:00 +0000

What is the subject matter and method of political economy according to Engels? First, though, what is political economy? Today we tend to teach economics as a special discipline and political science as another separate subject. This is an attempt by the bourgeoisie to keep politics and economics independent of one another. Marx and Engels, as did most nineteenth century thinkers, thought they were closely interrelated.

Political economy for Engels was the study of the laws governing the PRODUCTION and EXCHANGE “of the material means of subsistence in human society." While production and exchange are human functions they are intimately related to each other and have a reciprocal causative relationship.

However, there are many different ways to carry out production and exchange and they vary from society to society and culture to culture. Thus: “Political economy is therefore essentially a HISTORICAL science.” By which Engels means its laws are not like those of physics – the same for all – but conditioned by historical circumstances.

Nevertheless there are some general statements that can made. For example, Engels thinks it doesn’t matter what society you are dealing with the modes of production and exchange will CONDITION the way the society distributes its social product.

He says large and small scale farming always have very different distribution patterns. This is because the former is associated with class struggle (masters and slaves, lords and serfs, capitalists and wage slaves) while the latter can exist without class struggle (i.e., without classes).

Modern large scale industry can be contrasted with medieval local handicraft production controlled by guilds. The latter lacks large capitalists and permanent wage slaves and the former is, along with the modern credit system and "free competition" (the exchange form of modern industry and credit) responsible for both these new classes.

Differences in distribution leads to CLASS DIFFERENCES and the development of the STATE which originally came about to defend small groups from external aggression and to protect the common interests (irrigation systems in the East according to Engels). As classes begin to develop the state takes on another function, that "of maintaining by force the conditions of existence and domination of the ruling class against the subject class."

New forms of distribution are not simply neutral developments of the interaction of the MODE OF PRODUCTION and the FORM OF EXCHANGE. In fact as new modes of production and exchange develop the old forms of distribution, the state, and the laws act as drags trying to maintain the older forms of distribution. The new mode production and exchange faces a long struggle before it can cast off the older forms of distribution.

Engels thought that capitalism, in his time about three hundred years old, was undergoing just such an antithesis in its forms of distribution which was leading to its downfall. He described the antithesis as follows: on the one hand CONCENTRATION OF CAPITAL at one pole of society (that of the bourgeoisie) and at the other pole CONCENTRATION OF THE PROPERTYLESS MASSES without much capital into cities and towns. He thought that as far a capitalism goes this double concentration "must of necessity bring about its downfall."

Well, Engels' timing was a bit off and the development of monopoly capitalism (modern imperialism), two world wars, premature revolutions in underdeveloped regions of the world, and the development of vast new markets in the third world have postponed the day of reckoning.

Capitalism is now over 450 years old and the CONCENTRATIONS Engels spoke of are even greater and more unstable. Capitalism has, in fact, run out of places to go and can no longer rely on the expansion of new markets to pull it out of the disruptions and market collapse caused by cyclical overproduction. The DOWNFALL expected by Engels is once again on the agenda and the current inability of the US, Europe, Japan, and much of the rest of the world to overcome the present world wide capitalist crisis means that the final conflict may be closer than any of us thinks.

As long as capitalist production is on the rise everyone, Engels says, welcomes it, even the victims of its way of distributing its products. Capitalism just seems to be the way economics works. The first hints that something is wrong with the system does NOT come from "the exploited masses themselves" – it comes from "within the ruling class itself." Engels gives as examples the great utopians Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen.

The appearance of these early objectors indicates that the system has reached the top of its curve and is just beginning to decline. The utopians became aware of the horrible conditions of living the system was forcing upon its wage slaves and were full of moral indignation. But, Engels says, "moral indignation, however justifiable, cannot serve economic science as an argument, but only as a symptom."

If capitalist horrors became more and more manifest in Engels' day just think what they are like today. Millions around the world are unemployed or living in poverty and even slavery (or should I say billions) – armed conflicts on every continent save Australia and Antarctica over resources and land, and the very oceans as well as the atmosphere, is in the process of being destroyed in the pursuit of capitalist profits.

The duty of economists is to explain how all of this is the consequence of the capitalist mode of production (although many economists prostitute themselves in the service of the system for the rewards of position and money at the cost of truth) and beyond that "to reveal, within the already dissolving economic form of motion, the elements of the future new organisation of production and exchange which will put an end to those abuses." Today only the communist, socialist, and workers parties are able to do this on a grand scale.

In his day, Engels pointed out that political economy had concentrated on the analysis of the capitalist system and had not yet described other modes of production from the past. In the century or so since his death this has been remedied by Marxist historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, linguists and others.

In the meantime capitalism has developed even greater productive capacities than Engels imagined – but these "colossal productive forces" the capitalists can no longer control – they can't control their exploitation of the earth without destroying it – Exxon Mobil, BP and other giant oil companies, they can't mine it with polluting its water and air, blowing off the tops of its mountains, creating huge rivers of toxic sludge, cutting down it rain forests and melting its glaciers and driving thousands of species toward extinction.

It only remains for us to show that all the vast powers of production the capitalists can no longer control "are only waiting to be taken possession of by a society organized for co-operative work on a planned basis to ensure to all members of society the means of existence and the free development of their capacities and indeed in constantly increasing measure." We should be yelling this from the roof tops: "We're mad as Hell and we're not going to take it anymore!" Put that in your tea bag and brew it. If the BP oil "spill" in the Gulf of Mexico doesn't convince you that the power of modern industry cannot be safely left in the control of for profit corporations, I'm afraid nothing will.

The science of political economy can be traced back to the beginnings of capitalism. Its most famous proponent was Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations) but it was also advanced by the great French thinkers of the Enlightenment. However, Engels points out, these thinkers thought they were dealing with universal laws of economics, just as physical scientists propose universal laws of nature.

"To them," Engels says, "the new science was not the expression of the conditions and requirements of their epoch, but the expression of eternal reason; the laws of production and exchange discovered by this science were not the laws of a historically determined form of those activities, but eternal laws of nature; they were deduced from the nature of man."

It was the work of Marx, and Engels, that really matured this science and saw that rather than eternal laws of nature economic laws of production and distribution were relative to economic systems – feudalism, capitalism, etc. This is one reason Engels, in his book Anti-Dühring, could hold Dühring in such disdain who could write, after Das Capital, that he would, in his own words, explain "the most general LAWS OF NATURE governing all economics...."

There are a few more ideas exposited by Herr Dühring that Engels wants to correct. First Dühring thinks that capitalists, for instance, use FORCE as a means to exploit working people. Engels says this is wrong. Engels maintains that EVERY socialist worker KNOWS that force does not cause exploitation it only PROTECTS it: "the relation between capital and wage –labour is the basis of" exploitation and this relation is an economic one not one based on force.

Engels says Dühring also confounds the difference between PRODUCTION and CIRCULATION (i.e., exchange) by lumping them together under and heading of production and then adds DISTRIBUTION as a second and INDEPENDENT department of the economy. Far from this being the case, Engels tells us, distribution is in fact DEPENDENT on the production and exchange relations of any given society. In fact, if we know these two relations for any given historical society we can "infer the mode of distribution" in it.

So, Engels' point is that, after a rough start in the seventeenth century and blooming forth in the Enlightenment, the science of political economy became fully scientific in the last half of the 19th century with the theories of Marx and the work of those economists who were influenced by him. Through their work working people the world over slowly became aware of their true role in production and distribution (the creation of surplus value) and how it is the exploitation of their labor power that is the basis of the capitalist system.

It is important to note that, for Marxists, it is not the idea that capitalism is somehow unjust and immoral (a la Dühring) that is the key point. Engels writes: "If for the impending overthrow of the present mode of distribution of the products of labour, with its crying contrasts of want and luxury, starvation and surfeit, we had no better guarantee than the consciousness that this mode of distribution is unjust, and that justice must eventually triumph, we should be in a pretty bad way, and we might have a long time to wait."

Engels appears to be a bit too optimistic. We are still waiting for the "impending overthrow" of capitalism. It has been overthrown in a few places but it has also been restored in large areas where it was previously overthrown. So, I think we are still waiting for a general overthrow – which is long overdue. We should be impatient, but not unduly so. We have been waiting a hundred years or so while many of our fellows have been waiting over two thousand years for the overthrow of this earthly order with even less likelihood of being gratified. But we still "might have a long time to wait."

Well, just why did Engels think we would have a short wait? The reason was that unlike previous centuries when the only forces opposed to the exploitation of the masses of people by the few were based on appeals to morality or ethics, the nineteenth century saw the creation of a MATERIAL FORCE, not an ideal or religious one, that could actually contest and overthrow the existing economic order based on exploitation.

Two great revolutions had recently created movements calling for the end of class exploitation and for the equality of the people – the English and French bourgeois revolutions. But these movements, Engels says "up to 1830 had left the working and suffering classes cold." But in Engels' day this call and this movement has in one generation "gained a strength that enables it to defy all the forces combined against it and to be confident of victory in the near future."

What made Engels so confident? There were two factors. First, modern industrial capitalism had created a working class ("called into being" a proletariat) that not only had the power to overthrow class privilege but the class system itself and further this is something it must do "on pain of sinking to the level of the Chinese coolie." Second, the bourgeoisie "has become incapable of any longer controlling the productive forces" created by modern industry. The bourgeoisie is "a class under whose leadership society is racing to ruin like a locomotive whose jammed safety-valve the driver is to weak to open."

History has a way of sometimes frustrating our expectations. To the working people of the generation following that of Engels, Lenin and the Russian Revolution represented the promise of the socialist victory. The bourgeois locomotive went off the rails and the resulting crash created two world wars and brought down the colonial empires of the Western Powers (at least de jure.)

However, unbeknownst to Engels, another engine was waiting in the roundhouse. This was the engine of US imperialism which reconstructed the failed bourgeois system after the Second World War and brought about the downfall of the Russian Revolution. For a generation the call for the abolition of the classes left the workers of the US and it allies once again cold.

Meanwhile, against all expectations, the "Chinese coolies" had liberated themselves and created their own working class and are now creating a modern society based on a mixed economy. However, Engels was not too far off the mark. The advanced workers (in terms of pay scales) of the West are seeing their incomes sinking to the level of the Chinese. This will continue unless they "warm up" to the idea of socialism.

What are the future chances of socialism? Engels two factors are still at work. Capitalism is ripe for overthrow. As far as factor one is concerned. The class consciousness of the workers directed towards this end does not seem to be as developed as in Engels day. This is due to the massive pro capitalist propaganda both in the educational system and the mass media. But this hold is weakening and working people around the world are slowly beginning to wake up from their long sleep and see capitalism for what it really is. A naked system of human exploitation that can and must be replaced.

As for the second factor. The bourgeoisie is out of control! The rain forests, the oceans and the atmosphere are being destroyed by their run away system. These words of Engels are absolutely true today: "both the productive forces created by the modern capitalist mode of production and the system of distribution of goods established buy it have come into crying contradiction with that mode of production itself, and in fact to such a degree that, if the whole of modern society is not to perish, a revolution in the mode of production and distribution must take place, a revolution that will put an end to all class distinctions."

Unfortunately, I cannot agree with Engels that these two factors give me confidence that the Revolution will soon arrive. But that our society will perish if it doesn't seems all too apparent.

Arne Duncan's $800 million fight

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:44:00 +0000

The total federal budget for 2010 came in at just a hair under $3.6 trillion. In some weird sort of perspective that means $800 million equals less than three hundredths of one percent (.00022 percent) of the total amount. So why is Education Secretary Arne Duncan fighting so hard to keep it?

According to media reports, the $800 million comes out of his "Race to the Top" and other education reform programs to help offset a $10 billion package to protect education jobs in the House supplemental appropriations bill, which includes $33 billion for the wars.

Leading House Democrats proposed the offset in response to public school teachers who oppose some of the provisions of the "Race to the Top" program.

While they appreciate the administration's commitment to educate, teachers say the "Race to the Top" reforms specifically emphasize testing and school privatization over a needed bigger commitment to professional development and financial support for ailing schools. Under the reform, teachers argue, schools are forced to teach to tests or face closure and mass firings of school personnel.

The offset proposal has the administration in something of a quandary. It supports the provision of resources to help keep education jobs, but it doesn't want to give up one of its key reform programs.

"The administration supports passage of the House supplemental appropriations bill which included $10 billion for education jobs," Secretary Arne Duncan emphatically told reporters Thursday, July 15 by teleconference. As recovery act funds that protected hundreds of thousands of public school jobs for the 2009 and 2010 comes to an end, more will be needed for this coming school year to help states avoid balancing their budgets by firing teachers, he predicted.

From California to North Carolina, Missouri to Washington state, school districts may be forced to lay off thousands of teachers before the new school year starts to make ends meet, Duncan pointed out. If forced to do so, the people hurt will be kids and their families.

White House Council of Economic Advisers Chair Christina Romer estimated that 100,000 to 300,000 teachers and school workers face layoffs if direct support isn't supplied to the states quickly. Under the recovery act, federal funds helped retain some 400,000 teachers and other education personnel, she said.

Congress needs to pass the supplemental to make this money available as quickly as possible, Duncan insisted. But the these funds shouldn't be offset by eliminating money for the administration's reform agenda. "We want to thank Congress for recognizing the critical importance of preserving education jobs and keeping the economic recovery going," he added, "and we want to fight a way to pay for this without compromising education reform."

"Jobs and reform have to continue to go hand in hand," he said.

White House Domestic Policy Council Director Melody Barnes added a warning. "We don't have to make a choice between reform and making sure that teachers are able to stay in the classroom," she said. While the President supports the money for education jobs, "we will recommend a veto if the final bill includes cuts to reform programs" like "Race to the Top."

White House advisers and officials have to decide if they are seriously willing to recommend vetoing a jobs bill even as the unemployment rate remains at such a high level in order to protect Arne Duncan's $800 million.

White House officials did not indicate whether or not they would recommend a veto if the supplemental fails to include the $10 billion for education jobs.

Slouching Toward Bethlehem?

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:30:00 +0000

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

...from W.B. Yeats --The Second Coming

Its hard not to fall prey to apocalyptic thinking as one comprehends the combination of the recent unemployment reports, the Gulf Oil catastrophe, the blog wars between economists debating whether the future will bring a “slow recovery” (synonym for “no recovery that working families will be able to see or feel”) or “a double dip recession” (synonym for a pit whose trough cannot yet be discerned). Add to this the deteriorating prospects, and permanent legacy, of two expensive and ill-advised wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; states and cities and counties defaulting on their pension, education, environmental, health, welfare and emergency services; unjustified and unsustainable inequality – the fundamental cause of the Great Recession – increasing, not decreasing. Millions are saying if this is a recovery, how much worse can hell be? Of course, starved of resources or leadership, or both, history – remember Katrina and New Orleans? – advises that there is no depth of savagery to which human society cannot sink if fundamental assumptions, or “states of mind,” about economic – and thus political – sustainability secede from reality. The distribution of wealth in accord with recent trends actually accentuates inequality, but the spread bears no relation to real productivity, real increases in the values produced by working people per hour, per day, per week, per year. And this has been true for most of the past three to four decades.

Now – the labor theory of value implies that economic values (in the sense of market value or average price) consists wholly of the amount and quality of some quantity of human labor. Dead labor in the form of a piece of manufactured capital equipment, or live hours being added each day. A brick of solid gold embedded in a mountain has value, but no economic value, until it is mined and made available as a commodity, which processes are all subjects of work. We add value to each others’ lives as we exchange, usually via money, new goods or services we create or help create with other requirements or preferences we do not, and cannot, produce for ourselves. The study of labor markets in industrialized countries over most of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries – a big slice of capitalist history – further shows that there has been a strong, long range, tendency for real average wages and salaries to track average national productivity gains. The data is a little noisy. What happens one year does not guarantee what happens the next. But the long term waves show a strong correlation between them. Yet since 1975 – with a couple of exceptions in the late 90’s – this trend has NOT been holding. Not surprisingly, economic and political instability in the United States is also, decidedly, increasing.

There are some objective forces to keep in mind, so we do not lose our heads and begin tilting at windmills. Boldness, but also sobriety, will be rewarded. For example: many states are now insolvent. If they cannot borrow, even from the federal government, they will have no alternative other than defaulting on obligations – pensions, health, etc. – plus cutting essential services. People will sue, go on strike, protest, and more – since state constitutions typically require it to pay all contract debts. But barring federal bailout, there will be little standing between the citizens and the collapse of a growing number of public institutions and services.

In addition, globalization has and will continue to greatly – but very unevenly – diversify the global distribution of wealth. Only strengthening of the enforcement powers of international democratic institutions, like the ILO can ultimately remedy the impact of openness to trade on hard-won, national protections for workers. Many American workers, and businesses, will have to aggressively retrain and re-educate and reinvest in very high-productivity work to maintain and advance their standard of living. No employee should expect that the ups and downs of the protectionist debates in Congress, which represent mostly noise, will give them much of a breather.

Perhaps even more ominous, for the long run, are emerging calculations on the national state of workers’ pensions, health coverage costs and reduced wages in the wake of the Great Recession that show a sustained 20 percent decline in both real wages and overall wealth for working people since the “bubble cap” year of 2007. Keep in mind that 2007 “capped” 35 years of either a worsening or flat labor market.

It is hard to find a pension plan – in either the private or public sector – other than TIAA-CREF, that is not grossly underfunded, if not in actual default. Despite the president’s campaign and efforts to move universal health coverage forward, rising costs are still years from being contained – meaning years of still rising deductibles and co-pays even for those who are covered. Even if coverage becomes more universal, a big struggle lies ahead to insure workers can actually afford to use the coverage.

Paul Krugman cited the poem above using “the worse lack all conviction” to indict the Blue Dog tendencies intimidated into completely opportunistic and short-change and dead-end and duck-your-head positions. But the answer has to lie as much in the fires that can be built in each town or city to mobilize majorities to get organized and take responsibility for themselves and their own protection. The elected representatives at all the grassroots levels must be, or become, champions of redressing inequality and restoring equity, or be replaced by leaders who are. Current polls have humorous (if the situation were not so serious) conclusion that 60 percent of the country is unsatisfied with Obama, 70 percent are unsatisfied with the Democrats, and 80 percent are unsatisfied with the Republicans! The Left is small in the US – but, like in Bethlehem, big things can happen. To the Beast approaching – No Pasaran! Each town can say: you shall not pass!

Photo by Julie Hunter, courtesy AFL-CIO, Flickr, cc by 2.0

White House Promotes Recovery Act, Health Reform

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:26:00 +0000

In a bid to promote some of its major legislative accomplishments, the Obama administration this week highlighted some positive impacts of the economic recovery act and announced new rules created under the health reform law that will improve health insurance for tens of millions of Americans.

In advance of her quarterly report to Congress on the recovery act, top White House economic advisor Christina Romer told reporters, July 14, that the stimulus package has "raised employment" by more than 3 million jobs since going into effect in 2009. But, she added, more needs to be done to ensure that all working families feel the full benefits of the recovery.

Romer reported that at the end of the second quarter of 2010, the stimulus package boosted the GDP between 2.7 and 3.2 percentage points over what it would have been if the law had not gone into effect. Also in the second quarter alone, stimulus programs created or saved some 800,000 jobs, 30 percent more than in the first quarter of 2010.

While direct payments and tax cuts for about 95 recent of working families were important features of the law, she emphasized the "public investment" portions of the stimulus act and its role in job creation. A significant number of the projects funded by the recovery act will be put into place this summer, creating new job opportunities.

The recovery act is funding "everything from conventional construction, like roads, bridges and airports, to 21st century infrastructure like the smart electrical grid, universal broadband and health information technology," Romer said. In addition, stimulus funds are being invested in promoting green industries such as wind energy, energy efficiency retrofits and new research on long-life batteries.

Romer also reported that almost $100 billion of the recovery act "leveraged" new investments from the private sector with tax incentives, loan guarantees, and matching grants in job-creating industries. She estimated that this part of the program encouraged some $380 billion in new investments. She called these types of programs "public-private partnerships" and predicted they would be an important source of new job growth going forward.

Even with these successes, Romer noted, some urgent problems remain as demonstrated by the high unemployment rate. She called for passage of pending legislation that would provide additional aid to state governments to help them avoid laying off thousands of teachers or public safety personnel to cut their budgets. In addition, the administration wants swift passage of financial reform and a new small business stimulus package to help speed economic recovery, she said. The President is also working hard to make sure recovery act funds are moving quickly into the economy and are spent efficiently, she explained.

Extension of unemployment insurance is also a top priority, Romer added. Some 2.1 million unemployed workers have already seen their unemployment insurance benefits stop as a result of Senate Republicans legislative maneuvers to block an extension. Another three million will lose theirs by the end of this month without congressional action.

Health reform

On top of the report on the economic recovery, the administration also announced, July 14, a new regulation authorized under the health reform law that will make preventive care available to tens of millions of people without an additional cost.

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the new rule requires new health insurance policies created after September of this year to cover preventive services at no additional costs.

The new rules will help Americans gain access to services such as blood pressure, diabetes, and cholesterol tests, many cancer screenings, routine vaccinations, pre-natal care, and regular wellness visits for infants and children, an HHS press statement said. People will also have free access to counseling services for smoking and healthy dieting.

Some observers expect the new rules will also require insurance companies to cover the cost of prescription birth control.

In a White House event announcing the new policy, First Lady Michelle Obama stressed the importance of preventive care for keeping families healthy. “Getting access to early care and screenings will go a long way in preventing chronic illnesses like diabetes, heart disease, and high-blood pressure,” she said. “And good preventative care will also help tackle an issue that is particularly important to me as First Lady and as a mother – and that is the epidemic of childhood obesity in America today. These are important tools, and now it’s up to us to use them.”

"Too many Americans don't get the preventive services they need and the number one reason is cost," HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters. The health reform law changes that.

Sebelius pointed out that provision of regular preventive health services such as these could help avoid 100,000 deaths each year. She estimated that 41 million people with insurance now, either through their employer or in individual plans, will benefit from this new regulation.

"The administration is laying the foundation to help transform the health care system from a system that focuses on treating the sick to a system that focuses on keeping every American healthy," Sebelius explained.

President Obama toured an electric vehicle manufacturer in Kansas City this week. (White Hous Photo)

Pro Athletes Say No More "Drill, Baby, Drill"

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:24:00 +0000

What do a NASCAR driver, NFL stars, Olympic athletes and pro hockey players have in common with you? They care about the ongoing BP oil spill and the Gulf Coast communities that are hurting as a result. And they want to see this crisis as a sign that our country must move away from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy.

These star athletes showed their concern by traveling to the Gulf Coast this past week to visit members of the community and witness the damage caused by BP's oil spill. Joining with the Sierra Club, a number of athletes took a boat tour of the affected region, starting from Myrtle Grove Marina in Louisiana and traveling to Barataria Bay, Cat Island, and Bay Jimmy where some of the worst damage of the spill has begun to impact water and inland environments.

After the trip, they spoke with reporters by telephone and connected people's common concerns for healthy families and a clean environment.

Mike Richter, a former New York Rangers goalie said, "We need to support the Gulf Coast communities, get this oil mess cleaned up, and get our country off of oil."

Richter tried to explain his shock at what he saw. "Seeing this disaster firsthand," he said, "I was struck by the vastness of the problem. We have to get off of fossil fuels, oil in particular, now."

Athletes have a special role to play in helping to publicize the problem and its solutions, Richter explained. "We understand the connection between the environment and health. We want everyone to understand these issues aren’t just about the environment, they’re about people, health, economy, and quality of life."

"This is not a Gulf Coast problem, it’s everyone’s concern. It’s not a someday issue, it’s something we have to deal with now," he added.

Leilani Munter, an ARCA/NASCAR racer and green energy promoter, emphasized the disaster should spark change in our thinking about energy. "I just really hope that the one good thing that can come out of this is that this is our clean energy wake-up call, and it's time for us to realize that the way that we're living on this planet is not sustainable."

"The reality of what we saw today, this is 'drill, baby drill,'" the rising NASCAR star told reporters in a direct reference to the slogan chanted by former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin at her party's nominating convention in 2008. "This is what it's gotten us. It's time for us to move beyond that."

"In the wake of this disaster my greatest hope is that we will move towards clean renewable energy and my greatest fear is that we won't," Munter added. "America needs to check into rehab and end our addiction to oil."

Atlanta Falcons fullback Ovie Mughelli said that as an athlete with notoriety he has a responsibility to help the kids who look up to him to understand the situation in the Gulf and to care. "Some kids not in the green movement might say, why should I care? It's not my problem. Let some rich people take care of it," Mughelli, who runs a foundation for kids that brings football and environmentalism together, thoughtfully remarked. "No. Kids who care least about the problem sometimes are the kids who are affected by it the most."

"All I can do is spread awareness, help bring resources to the problem, and hope that this is a wake-up call to move towards renewable energy away from oil and do right by our kids," Mughelli added. "It shows why we need a complete culture change."

Boston Bruins hockey player Andrew Ference added, "Seeing the grass covered in oil and the birds covered in oil, smelling the oil in the air, was like experiencing a symptom of a greater worldwide problem. The fact is, our generation has all the technology and all the scientific knowledge to solve these problems. Now we just need the guts and the willpower to actually do it."

Olympic skier Stacey Cook, Olympic track and field star Loree Smith, former Olympian Gary Morgan, tennis pro Chanda Rubin, Tampa Bay Buccaneer Mike Alstott, and professional snowboarder Krista Bradford Ference also participated in the trip.

The trip came on the heels of ongoing Obama administration efforts to halt deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, promote a transition to a "green economy," and pressure BP into cleaning up their mess and paying for ongoing damages to local communities.

The Politics of Avatar

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:12:00 +0000

Original source: The Guardian (Australia)

Now that the dust has settled and Avatar has been released on DVD and the Gee-Whizz of 3-D has abated and most people have seen the film, it is time to take stock of the highest grossing movie of all time and assess its true political impact.

Avatar is pure escapism – cartoonish in its characterization.

This is no meek topic! From the outset, Sydney Morning Herald columnist Miranda Devine waded in to pan the movie as “left wing propaganda”, anti-American (“…while American soldiers are dying in dangerous wars”) and with a “sanctimonious hippie sensibility”. “The snarling vipers of left-wing Hollywood have been let off the leash in a way previously unmatched in a high-priced blockbuster,” she snarled. Miranda’s knee-jerk response pretty much sums up her usual level of analysis.

Just to fulfill the prophecy, Solidarity’s reviewer, David Glanz, claims that Avatar shows us the way “…if ordinary people unite, we can win extraordinary victories over capitalism,” and concludes “…The right hates this movie for a reason. On a moon far away in time and space, the battles of today are being fought in 3D – and they are being won.”

Hmmm. “A moon far away,” indeed.

Colin Murphy, in Le Monde Diplomatique, had a more measured view. In an article entitled “Avatar, not as liberal as it looks”, Murphy suggests that director James Cameron’s clever use of classic American narrative clichés such as “heroic self-defenze”, and that of “the lone good soldier who defies corrupt orders from the hierarchy” (as in Rambo, one of Cameron’s first Hollywood scripts) to support an authentic, natural, freedom-loving community (the Na’vi) – all this turns the innocent Na’vi into “Americans”.

The same Americans whose “holy tree”, the Twin Towers, was destroyed by heartless terrorists, forcing them to take matters into their own hands – the modern “Boston Tea Party” protestors, perhaps.

Comforting sub-texts

Murphy is correct on this basic point: Avatar poses no threat to the American military psyche. It is comforted from the very start by the fact that the narrator, Jake Sully, speaks as an archetypal “American”. He has lost the use of his legs fighting as a marine, he is a veteran, thus in a sense he can do no wrong. We are assured from the very beginning that, no matter what happens in this story it is a dialogue within the heart of the Empire itself.

Jake Sully, speaks as an archetypal “American”.

And the Empire provides opportunities unavailable to the rest of us: they can zoom to the farthest corners of the universe, there is the latest in scientific power and the chance to immerse oneself in the exotic, to change form and to embrace love with a different (but nevertheless, beautiful) species.

It’s an adventure exclusive to the rulers of the galaxy. Wow! Just like John Smith and Pocahontas, just like Dances With Wolves and The Last Samurai and a hundred other romantic colonialist epics: these colonisers are so nice, who (no matter how exotic) could fail to love them? Wouldn’t we all just love to be part of this Empire, rich in adventure and exciting things to do?

The Indigenes of Pandora, the Na’vi, are drawn in such idyllic, romanticised “oneness with nature” terms as to be risibly Disney-esque. It all hearkens back to the “noble savage” vision that permeated European colonial art and literature of the latter 18th Century. They’re so spiritual: they have a huge natural cathedral rather like Enid Blyton’s “Faraway Tree” and they commune with beasts and luxuriant plants and everything. No class struggle there!

But the Na’vi’s resistance to ruthless exploitation of “Unobtainium” mines is pretty hopeless: they are naïve, disorganized for warfare, and still shoot bows and arrows. Heaven forbid that, like the Vietnamese, they devise their own strategy for slaying the Beast. Only when the expertise of the Empire (good ole Jake) comes to them, only when, in fact, the American military psyche consents to their rebellion, do the Na’vi stand a chance. They can then get on with the job of engaging in some “Firepower Pyrotechnics” so we can witness wham-bam explosive violence in all-consuming 3-D surrounda-fluff. After all, that’s what everyone came to see: simple “Entertainment”.

Examine the context

Too much analysis of Avatar itself, however, can be mind-numbing and counter-productive without an evaluation of its context, its “place in the world”. As Marxists, it is our obligation to do so, since to study a work of art in isolation denies society the courtesy of acknowledging its role in the creation of Avatar, and the impact it has.

Let us assume that Avatar is indeed the anti-capitalist, anti imperialist, eco-sensitive “spectacle” that most admirers/critics claim it to be. On the surface, at least, it does appear to be just such an ideological attack on the American Empire. Why then, did one of the world’s foremost transnational globalisers (“capitalist-imperialists”), namely, Rupert Murdoch, finance the film?

Murdoch is CEO of the most rapacious media network in the world today, News Limited. This “parent” company owns 20th Century Fox, the producer of Avatar. At a confessed minimum, the capital put up to make the movie was US$230 million. Time magazine offered a revised estimate of US$300 million in production costs, however, with marketing costs to create the necessary “hype” and Cameron’s own delayed contribution, according to the New York Times, the total pre-release amount was pushed to US$500 million, making it easily the most expensive movie of all time.

Meanwhile, world capitalism faced a “Global Economic Crisis” – not a time for risky investments. In the background, the Iraqi occupation and war in Afghanistan, conflicts rabidly encouraged by Murdoch media both in the United States and here in Australia, showed no signs of any resolution, let alone “victory”. So why would Murdoch, no friend of the working class, nor of rebellion and most certainly no fan of worthy left-wing causes, stoop to financing his own gravedigger?

There are several options to consider. One, that Murdoch took no editorial interest in Cameron’s project and didn’t comprehend the danger within it, a prospect surely not in accord with his own form as a successful investor and Icon of the Empire. The evidence is that he took a close and personal interest in its progress. There was a lot of money at stake.

Two. Rupert Murdoch really is an aesthetic philanthropist who is prepared to sponsor oppositional views for the sake of Art and Culture, regardless of how they may impact upon him personally. At least one Hollywood blogger seriously posited this view. All evidence is to the contrary, however. Whether the opposition was his own employees at Wapping or whistleblowers on the phoney “weapons of mass destruction” issue, Murdoch has always been utterly ruthless in dispensing vilification and suppression of ideological opponents.

Three, that he is an entrepreneurial gambler prepared to take the risk of cultivating mass opposition to wars in the Middle East, the despoliation of the environment and capitalist excess for the sake of a windfall for News Ltd in the face of sliding returns from the GFC. In fact, the latter did occur, and Avatar’s receipts kept News Ltd in the game while others crashed. But Murdoch, a “gambler”? Not on this scale, and not with any real prospect of global uprisings upsetting those self-same profits. No way. It was the issue of “mass opposition” he was sure about.

Only the final option can be seriously countenanced, that is, that Murdoch the producer was in no way threatened by the thematic content of Avatar. On one level we can say that this is a far cry from Miranda Devine’s recurrent nightmare of the American Project being subverted. Rather it is a clear gesture of contempt towards the Left and how it might exploit the issues so clearly presented: it is just too weak to mount any serious challenge to the institutions of capitalism.

On another level, it is hardly the fault of the Left that tens of thousands of cinema-goers are not rushing from Avatar screenings shouting “Down with Capitalism” because the film is simply not effective as a vehicle for active engagement. Far from it. Its role is to create passivity, and it does so beautifully.

Imperialism with an Avatar face

Back to the film itself. The purpose of Sully’s transformation as an avatar was to find some peaceful way of winning over the Na’vi: in the words of Dr Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), to find a “diplomatic solution” to their resistance. Of course it had to fail if we were to achieve our inevitable wham-bam climax, but the audience is nevertheless left with the subliminal conclusion: all that death and destruction could have been avoided if Sully’s mission had been fulfilled.

After all, an Empire that can create “other people” can surely convince an innocent bunch of Pandorans to share their goodies. If only the Bush-style militarists hadn’t taken over with their “Bust through or Bust up” strategy, America would not have suffered the humiliation of defeat and been shown the door. The Empire’s civilisation is really too sophisticated for that!

Sully’s love affair with Neyitiri (Zoe Saldona) is central, here. It proves that the Na’vi could be lulled and taken over nicely. After all, he was invited to provide the leadership in their liberation struggle, wasn’t he?

Just coincidentally, a very “nice” President has been elected to lead the United States. In many respects, Obama is the liberals’ last hope of grasping the heart of the Empire. His role is to win back the respectability of US imperialism world-wide – to undo the damage of the Bush term fiasco, fix up the economy and regain moral leadership of the globe. Already troops have been “peacefully withdrawn” from Iraq (actually there are still 90,000 + troops there), and the language of the Afghan war has changed, from using drones to selectively bomb the enemy into oblivion, to “supporting and protecting” the local populace.

For liberals like James Cameron, this is Avatar’s sub-textual alternative to the barbarity of Bush-style militarism. And it is something that people like Rupert Murdoch, at least tactically, might be prepared to endorse. Fundamentally the aim, US hegemony on a social, political and economic plane, remains the same, but the strategy must be more subtle, more sophisticated, more “cultured”.

Form over content, every time

Whatever “deep” interpretations we might tease from the movie, however, the general public’s appreciation of Avatar is at a more basic level: after a rollicking ride through some amazing 3-D Utopian immersion, a predictable plot with some pretty clunky acting leads to the defining battle where good defeats evil. End of story. Successful, passive “Entertainment”.

What remains is a residue of image and form: the sub-aquatic blue of Pandora; the strangely alluring and exotically CGI (computer generated imagery) crafted Na’vi; the noise and 3-D confrontation of battle lurching from the screen. Form totally overshadows substance, the “meaning” of the movie is utterly secondary. Now, ain’t that the way of it all? Small wonder Rupert and his News Ltd ilk could be relaxed about James Cameron’s message.

Avatar is pure escapism. There is simply no “reality” to it, even as allegory or parable. It is sci-fi, way, way out there, “on a moon far away in time and space”, it is so “exotic” as to be absolutely remote from suburban life and, yes, it is cartoonish in its characterisation. In short, it deliberately aims to make its audience sit back, relax, and be an object. Not, it must be stressed, as a “subject”, one capable of engaging in the consequent reality of action, no, everything is co-opted onto the screen.

Today, it would seem, the audience is less inclined to even discuss issues arising from the cultural immersion around them. “Why ruin a good movie by analyzing it?” they say, “Just enjoy it for what it is: entertainment,” they say, “You read too much into things,” they say, “Oh do shut up,” they say, “you are making a scene.” There is a fear, here, a “self censorship” that seeks to avoid the confrontation of debate, conflict, and the hidden truths which might emerge.

Those truths relate to capitalism and the way we separate “work” from “entertainment”. The way we sit back, exhausted, switch off mentally and allow junk to flow through us. To engage, to exercise our critical faculty, to clarify our own position, to act on our “entertainment” might involve some work for our minds, some conclusions which in turn might require struggle and our emergence to adulthood.

For surely, we are being manipulated by the capitalist entertainment industry, which is treating us all like children. If we do not resist, the Empire’s avatars will have our minds and US hegemony is assured, without so much as a shot or arrow being fired.

José Saramago: What He Did, Why He Matters

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:10:00 +0000

Editor's note: Be sure to read the PA interview with Jose Saramago.

Original source: People's Democracy (India)

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Jose Saramago declared, “In this half-century, obviously governments have not morally done for human rights all that they should.

The injustices multiply, the inequalities get worse, the ignorance grows, and the misery expands. This same schizophrenic humanity that has the capacity to send instruments to a planet to study the composition of its rocks can with indifference note the deaths of millions of people from starvation. To go to Mars seems easier than going to the neighbour. Nobody performs her or his duties. Governments do not, because they do not know, they are not able or they do not wish, or because they are not permitted by those who effectively govern the world: The multinational and pluricontinental companies whose power – absolutely non-democratic – reduce to next to nothing what is left of the ideal of democracy...It is not to be expected that governments in the next 50 years will do it. Let us common citizens therefore speak up...Perhaps the world could turn a little better.”

On June 18 2010, Saramago died in Lisbon. He was 87. He was a member of the Portuguese Communist Party and died a communist, whose heart always beat for the downtrodden. He was born into a family of landless peasants in 1922, some hundred kilometers to the northeast of Lisbon in Azinhaga, a small village in Portugal.

He started his life as a car mechanic, later worked as a translator, as a journalist, then as a novelist. Over the course of 60-year stint in writing, he covered the repressive Salazar dictatorship in Portugal, Franco’s fascist regime in Spain and American interference in foreign nations. He called George W Bush a “liar emeritus”. His persistent, “hormonal communism”, he called it – like a beard that keeps growing – was formed in the period of Salazar's fascist dictatorship with its pervasive secret police, when to be a member of the underground Communist party meant taking huge risks.

His books Baltasar and Blinunda, The Stone Raft, Gospel of Jesus Christ, Blindness, All the Names, Death at Intervals, The Cave and Cain were statements on humanism and atheism.

He said, “I’ve always considered myself a quiet non-believer, because atheism as a public militancy seemed useless to me, but now I’m changing my mind. The reactionary insolence of the Catholic Church needs to be answered with the insolence of lively intelligence, of reason, of the responsible word. We can’t let the truth to be offended everyday by the self-proclaimed representatives of god on earth, whose only real interest is power. The church doesn’t care about the destiny of souls, what it has always pursued is control over the bodies. Reason can be an ethics. Let’s use it.”

José Saramago shed new light on the interrelation – complex, dynamic and in no sense reducible to dogma – between the literary and the political, the world of the arts and the world of everyday human struggle: an interrelation of which Portugal's Nobel laureate has become, through his labour as a writer and his practical activity, a supreme exponent for our hard times.

He always stood by the underdog and berated those who did vespers at the altar of unbridled consumption. He made god human and gave him all the follies humans have; he severed and floated nations down the sea noticing their weaknesses and cataloguing their traumas; he remade history by just inserting a single word; he stopped death in its endless tracks for months and took account of its absence narrating the spiritual and political upheaval its absence brings and, in one of his last works, sent an Indian elephant Solomon from Lisbon to Vienna, journeying humorously and meditating on society's oddities. In his public life, as in his books, Saramago never pulled his punches and strongly opposed globalisation and its attendant problems.

For Saramago, democracy was in need of regeneration, since economic power determines political power. “I'm doubtful of democracy”, he says. “Participation in political life is insufficient. People are called in every four years, and in between, the government does what it wants. That's not specific to Portugal”. Yet, even he is heartened by Barack Obama's election. “It's a beautiful moment, democracy in action, when millions were mobilised - including people who had never voted before - for a new candidate, and a black candidate at that. It's a kind of revolution”. But alas, all the expectations this Nobel laureate had for the recent Nobel Peace prize winner, were belied and one need not harbour any doubts that if Saramago lived a little longer, he would have used his pen to denounce the present day imperial actions of the US led by president Obama.

Literature on its own will not save the world, but it is made out of multiple human experiences and sufferings and as a certain weapon, if properly used, serves its role in changing the world and making it a better place to live. The Nobel laureate eloquently denounced today's neo-liberal society, in which to be born confers no inherent rights, as a world which is absurd; indeed Kafkaeseque, thanks to the 'contamination of relationships by the perversion of the human'. He concluded by affirming the crucial humanist vocation of the writer: “The profession of the writer is the profession of being a man or a woman, a human being”.

This thread of humanism is found in all his writings, even when they deal with illusionary subjects. Commenting on the various reviews of his Death at Intervals, published in Britain earlier this year, Saramago says “I don't see it as a love story. Some people read it as love winning over death, but to me, that's pure illusion”. In his view, “the Church tried to find an explanation for the creation of the world, and they've been defending that idea ever since – with violence. It's a murderous intolerance, like the Inquisition burning people who are seen to be different. The new Pope wants rigid dogma to be respected and not questioned. I'm against that. We can't accept truth coming from other people. We must always be able to question those truths”. In fact the story of this novel was inspired by the idea of “what would happen if death took a holiday”. In this novel, when people in a landlocked country stop dying, a clandestine mafia in league with a crisis government takes the moribund across the border to be buried. Death, here personified as a woman, is being kept from her job by a love affair with a cellist. Unfortunately, death kept its time with Saramago and robbed him from us, thus ending his love affair with humanity.

His novel The Elephant's Journey, which is stated as a “brilliant comedy about the stupidity of humankind”, traces the travels of Solomon, an Indian elephant. It was “99 per cent pure invention”, Saramago says. “I was fascinated by the elephant's journey as a metaphor for life. We all know we'll die, but not the circumstances”. This is indeed true even for him, as it is for all of us. He was 40 pages into the book when he was rushed to hospital last winter with a respiratory illness, he recalls: “They were reluctant to take me because I was in such a serious condition”. Chuckling, he adds: “they didn't want to be the hospital where José Saramago died”. Allowed home, he immediately resumed writing. “What I find surprising and strange is that there's a lot of humour in the book - it makes people laugh. No one would guess how I was feeling”.

José Saramago’s vast, remarkable, and unique literary work will remain a milestone in the history of Portuguese literature, in which his is one of the most prominent names. He was the only Portuguese writer to receive the Nobel Prize in the field of literature in 1998 for the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.

José Saramago was a member of the Portuguese Communist Party since 1969 and his death represents a loss for the entire Communist movement – more for the Party which he chose as his own until his final days. He helped to build the April 1974 Revolution as an active participant in the resistance to fascism. He continued this activity after the Day of Liberation with his engagement in the revolutionary process that profoundly transformed Portugal. As with his novels, refusing to be restrained within traditional boundaries, Saramago was never afraid to express his political views. His opposition to the European Union is well documented, as his commitment to the Palestinian cause and opposition to Israeli Zionism.

Saramago said, “We’re not short of movements proclaiming that a different world is possible, but unless we can coordinate them into an international movement, capitalism just laughs at all these little organisations.” Saramago was an inspiration. His death matters to millions. The real tribute to Saramago, thus, should be by strengthening the movements against imperialism on a global scale.

Illustration by Victor Velez

Japan: What Lessons Can be Drawn From Greek Fiscal Crisis?

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:08:00 +0000

Original source: Akahata (Japan)

“If Japan continues to follow the present path, it will become like Greece in two or three years, or even in one or two years.” This is what Prime Minister Kan Naoto is repeating claiming during the ongoing Upper House election campaign, threatening voters with the claim that their nation will fall into a financial crisis like Greece if they do not approve a consumption tax hike now. This argument can be shown to be false by the following two points:

More than 70 percent of Greek debt owned by foreigners

Comparing the two countries’ debt level, Japan’s debt amounts to nearly 200 percent of its GDP while that for Greece is a little more than 100 percent of its GDP. Both of their debt-to-GDP ratios is about 80 percent when considering their net debt, the amount calculated by deducting government financial assets from the total debt.

However, what should be emphasized is who owns these debts. In Japan, domestic financial institutions are the major holders of the bonds issued by the government. More than 90 percent of government bonds are domestically owned while only seven percent are held by foreign investors.

In the case of Greece, more than 70 percent of its national bonds are in the hands of investors outside the country. Given the fact that about 50 percent of such bonds in the United States and Germany are possessed by foreign investors, it can be said that Japan’s rate of public bonds owned by foreigners is low.

Whether selling government bonds domestically or overseas will create totally different outcomes in the country’s economic conditions. Interest payments received on government bonds will circulate within the country if the bonds are owned by domestic investors. On the other hand, they will flow outside the country if foreigners are the major bond holders.

The other major difference is the danger of a possible increase in the speculative trading of public bonds. Greece, whose bonds are mainly owned by foreign investors, has witnessed a sharp fall in stock prices since the bond holders offered them up for sale all at once.

Corporate tax cuts led to huge financial loss

One of the factors that caused the Greek fiscal crisis was its drastic reduction in the corporate tax rate.

The corporate tax rate in Greece until 2000 was the same as Japan, 40 percent. This has been steadily decreased for 10 years to the current rate of 24 percent. Because of this, corporate tax revenues dropped from 4.1 percent to 2.6 percent of the nation’s GDP during the period between 2000 and 2007.

The 1.5 point cut in corporate taxes would be equivalent to a seven-trillion yen loss in corporate tax revenues for Japan.

The Greek government has raised the consumption tax rate from 18 to 19 percent in 2006 and to 23 percent this year. However, the revenue from the consumption tax has not been able to cover the loss caused by the corporate tax cuts. This has accelerated the fiscal crisis.

In Japan, business circles as well as the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry are calling for the effective corporate tax rate to be lowered from 40 to 25 percent. The ruling Democratic Party of Japan, led by PM Kan, has included the corporate tax reduction demand in its election platform.

However, what we need to realize is that by implementing what they have been calling for, in 10 years Japan may suffer from its financial collapse as Greece is now suffering.