Very pro union, pulls no punches. Quote at the top of the Web page.

All Over the Board

"The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them." - V.I. Lenin

http://rjones2818.blogspot.com/

Also


How do you know that you're a Made Man?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v474/autorank/001/bidenbono.png

Gliding along the corridors of power.
V.P Biden with aging rock star "Bono"

Your right, I like it.


On eve of GM bankruptcy

Obama administration targets the working class

30 May 2009

The expected bankruptcy filing Monday by General Motors—for decades the largest US corporation and one of the country’s biggest employers—marks a turning point for both American capitalism and the American working class. Its significance is not only economic and financial. It is also a political milestone. The US government set the June 1 deadline which has forced the bankruptcy filing.

The Obama administration holds the whip hand, having advanced $40 billion in bailout funds to the auto bosses, and the White House will effectively control GM, holding 72.5 percent of its stock and appointing a majority of its board of directors. In return for their collaboration, the administration is awarding the United Auto Workers executives a 17.5 percent stake in the downsized GM.

In compelling GM to file for bankruptcy, Obama is giving the signal to all of corporate America to attack the jobs, wages, pensions and health benefits fought for by working people in the course of more than a century. The full power of the US government is being used to set an example of making the working class pay for the crisis of capitalism.

Not since Reagan fired the striking PATCO air traffic controllers in 1981, giving the signal for a wave of corporate union-busting and wage-cutting, has an administration intervened so openly to attack the jobs and living standards of American workers. That assault—aided and abetted by the trade union bureaucracy—led to a permanent reduction in the social position of the working class. Similarly, the current government-corporate offensive is aimed at fundamentally restructuring class relations in the US. There is to be no return to the conditions that existed prior to the current economic crisis. The aim is nothing less than the destruction of all that remains of the gains won by previous generations of workers and the impoverishment of the entire working class.

Tens of millions voted for Obama and the Democrats last November in the hope that the Democratic Party would reverse the policies of the Republican Party and the Bush administration: militarism, attacks on democratic rights and the destruction of the living standards of working people. But the promises of “hope” and “change” have proven to be illusions.

Trillions have been turned over to Wall Street in the form of loans, guarantees and cash handouts from the Treasury and Federal Reserve. But what have the first four months of the Obama administration brought for the working class? Economic figures published this week suggest the answer:

• Some 13.5 million people are unemployed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In addition, another 6.7 million people were working fewer that 35 hours a week in April because of “slack work or business conditions,” and more than 2.1 million are classified as “discouraged” and not seeking work. That brings the total unemployed or underemployed to more than 22 million people.

• A recent survey of 518 large companies by Hewitt Associates, a human resources consulting firm, reported in the New York Times Friday, found that 16 percent of employers had cut pay and 20 percent had cut hours or imposed furloughs, far higher figures than in previous recessions.

• The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that 5.4 million of the 45 million US home loans were either delinquent or in foreclosure in the first quarter of this year. The 12.07 percent delinquency and foreclosure rate is expected to rise sharply under the impact of rising unemployment.

• Subprime and adjustable-rate mortgages are no longer the principal driving force of the foreclosure crisis. In the first quarter of 2009, the foreclosure rate for prime fixed-rate mortgages doubled compared to a year before, to 6.06 percent, and these loans for the first time make up the largest share of new foreclosures.

• Home prices dropped 18.7 percent in March, compared to the year before, according to Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Index, covering 20 large metropolitan areas. A research note by Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics predicted weaker consumption as a result: “Were this pace to continue, the loss of housing wealth this year would be roughly equal to the entire GDP of China.”

• Credit card defaults are nearing the 10 percent mark for the first time in the 20-year history of Moody’s Credit Card Index, hitting a record 9.97 percent in April, the fifth consecutive monthly record. Further increases in unemployment are expected to drive credit card defaults higher through the second quarter of 2010, Moody’s predicted.

It is critical for working people to understand the political meaning of these figures. Obama has summed up his economic philosophy as putting an end to unsustainable levels of consumption spending. It is clear whose consumption is to be cut: Not the luxuries and perquisites of the super-rich, but food, shelter, clothing, transportation, education and other basic necessities of the broad masses of working people.

This reality underlies the most under-reported policy decision of the Obama administration this week. Its flat refusal to provide a bailout for the state of California, which now faces bankruptcy because of two decades of tax cuts for the wealthy, enacted by Democratic and Republican state legislators, has left the state without sufficient revenue to pay for essential services. The White House is essentially telling Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to intensify an austerity policy that has already resulted in widespread furloughs and pay cuts for state employees and the closing of state offices.

Working people must recognize the Obama administration for what it is—the spearhead of an assault by the financial aristocracy. Obama’s policies are not the result of inadequate understanding or bad advice. He is a conscious and willing political servant of the multimillionaires, doing what is necessary to defend their class interests both at home and abroad.

The defense of jobs, living standards and basic democratic rights begins with a decision to break with the Democratic Party, oppose the Obama administration, and build an independent mass political movement of the working class, based on a socialist and internationalist program.

Patrick Martin

http://wsws.org/articles/2009/may2009/pers-m30.shtml

Here's another one:

http://www.soldiersofsolidarity.com/index.html

Here's another one:

http://www.soldiersofsolidarity.com/index.html


That's excellent, especially blue collar benefits monitor.

Great post of Palast - the whole damn thing. That is one kick ass article. I've waited for him to wind up and deliver on the financial rip off. And he did. Diamon's greed and manipulation is amazing.

The U.S. government is looting a pension fund and out sourcing jobs - they are GM.

The U.S. government is looting a pension fund and out sourcing jobs - they are GM.

If this doesn't convince people the whole thing is rigged I'm not sure what will. Social Security is going to be next.

The U.S. government is looting a pension fund and out sourcing jobs - they are GM.

If this doesn't convince people the whole thing is rigged I'm not sure what will. Social Security is going to be next.


I'm tempted to say "bring it on", but only tempted. You would think that the combination of healthcare and social security would provide a rally point sufficient to get something started. There's 10's of millions of us boomers getting ready to head out to pasture and what with those who got flattened by the stock market.....but the fact that we've sat on our hands while so much other shit has gone down makes me fear that this too could be acquiesced to too. Shit.

If they go for it there will be a huge generational split engineered, you can see it on DU right now. Often when I talk to younger folks they already assume that SS is dead for them. Repeat a lie long enough.....Thank you Herr Goebbels

The U.S. government is looting a pension fund and out sourcing jobs - they are GM.

If this doesn't convince people the whole thing is rigged I'm not sure what will. Social Security is going to be next.


Nah, not that many people support the UAW in the first place. Partly because they believe the crapola that Union workers are getting way more than everyone else, partly because they believe the Union leadership is corrupt, and partly because it means squat to the millions of people who are more or less totally beholden to their employer.

I have posted stuff from Greg Shotwell here a few times. Good source - one of the few - for what's happening.

Glad to see he is still writing.

Factory Rat still going, too -

http://www.factoryrat.com/factoryrat/index.php

Right Back Where We Started

Sometimes one can't see the precipice for the pitfalls. When you've lost a job or taken a steep pay cut; when your pension is threatened and your backup plan nose dives; when you're faced with foreclosure or stuck in an abandoned neighborhood; when your biggest investment in life just lost half its value despite all the time, love, money, and labor you put into it; when you're forced to relocate but can't afford to uproot; when you're too young for medicare and too old not to have preexisting conditions that exclude you from health insurance; when you've followed all the rules only to find that the rules have changed; when one or all of the above apply, it's understandable that you may cling to your private barrel of anxieties as the current hurls you down the Niagara.

Understandable, but useless. The barrels that we cling to - contracts, unions, pensions, promises, IRAs, VEBAs - will not protect us. Workers' rights are not defined by law or contract. Workers' rights are defined by struggle. Empty barrels won't protect us from the precipice, and there's no turning back. The United States is not in a recession. We're getting "restructured" and "rationalized".

The good news is, the barrels that once provided an illusion of safety are smashed to smithereens. From the wreckage we can clearly see that either we all rise up together, or no one walks away with dignity, let alone a living wage. The good news is, no one - not the salary workers, the knowledge workers, or the retirees - will be spared. The carbon monoxide of 'Too-bad-for-them-but-I'm-okay' complacency has blown away. Catastrophe demands unity. The good news is, our history can lead us.

Money isn't lost, it changes hands. It's not a conspiracy, it's capitalism. The transfer of wealth from labor to capital didn't begin with the current crisis. We can trace it back to Caterpillar, Staley, Bridgestone, and every lockout since then. We can trace it back to the offshoring of steel, rubber, textile, and electronics; to restructured airlines that pilfered pensions; and PATCO. We can trace it back to narrow interest bargaining and lunch bucket politics that allowed the corps to pick us off, one isolated union at a time. We can trace it back to southern tenant farms and garment sweatshops in Manhattan. What's new isn't the method but the magnitude. All workers in all sectors are under the whip this time.

The Delphi bankruptcy characterizes the contemporary strategy and serves as a template for what the Detroit Three and subsequent industries can expect. Recently Delphi abolished health care and life insurance for salary retirees. The switch enabled the company to report to the SEC that it "swung to a $566 million net profit from a $577 million loss a year earlier" [Autobeat, 5/13/09]. Easy money. Unearned money. Lots of it.

Next, they will liquidate the salary pension. What's to stop them? Capitalism is the law. GM and Chrysler may not achieve all their goals in the quick rinse bankruptcy controlled by the feds, but they'll be back in court to finish the job, just like Delphi. Observe how history repeats itself. Base wages at Delphi were negotiated by the UAW in 2004, eighteen months prior to bankruptcy: $14 per hour and no pension. Base wages at the Detroit Three were negotiated by the UAW in 2007, eighteen months prior to bankruptcy : $14 per hour and no pension. One coincidence leads to another. Each new UAW contract promises security in exchange for concessions from workers. The latest UAW Concession Con promised to deliver members from bankruptcy and plant closings. As soon as it was ratified Chrysler went into bankruptcy and announced more plant closings.

But the nail in the coffin is the agreement to settle the contract in 2011 by arbitration based on non union standards. That isn't a contract, it's a death warrant for the UAW. What could be more clear? The Concession Caucus has effectively decertified the UAW.

The union agrees not to strike and commits to a goal that nullifies any benefit to union membership. This is the price we pay for company stock in a VEBA? The UAW signs confidentiality agreements with the companies and leaves members in the dark. Read the actual contract language at www.soldiersofsolidarity.com.

Read it and weep. Weep for the unsung heroes who risked everything they loved in the depths of the Great Depression so the next generation might labor in dignity. Weep for the youngsters who tread in the footprints of the generation who chose to collaborate with management and sold their birthright for a bowl of maggots that the clipboards call joint programs.

Read it and revolt like the heroes of America's Civil Rights Movement who faced guns and clubs, police dogs and fire hoses, pimped out politicians, and judges controlled by cowards in hoods, so their children might live in dignity.

Read it and recognize that UAW members lost their voting rights.

We're right back where we started. Sometimes, where we started is the right place to be. Recently my wife, Sheila, and I ventured down to the crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi for the annual Juke Joint Festival. Every year it seems there is one old standard that predominates, that bands play at every juke joint we frequent. Each year it's different. This year it was "Big Boss Man" by Jimmy Reed. Over and over again, we heard:

You got me working, boss man / Working 'round the clock.
I want me a drink of water / You won't let me stop.
You big boss man / Can you hear me when I call?
Oh, you ain't so big / You just tall, that's all.

The blues is essentially subversive. Every blues like every river has an undercurrent, a subtext, a baseline shackled to oppression and resistance. A song like "Baby Please Don't Go", for example, isn't just another song about love. It's a song about slavery and addiction; it's a song about poverty and injustice; it's a song about fear and violence and solitary confinement. And like every old blues, it's a song about the struggle, the struggle to be human in an inhuman world - like Detroit or Buffalo or Cleveland, North Carolina. Or a meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa that treats workers like animals, and where the feds arrest those workers under regulations as cruel and uncivilized as Fugitive Slave Laws.

We're right back where we started. The authorities turned fire hoses and police dogs on the children in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 and arrested them just like the police beat and arrested children trying to escape the textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912. The struggle isn't between North and South, black and white, native born and immigrant, it's between labor and capital. When we try to take back what belongs to us, they will beat us and arrest us, and we will know exactly where we stand on the precipice.

The U.S. government is looting a pension fund and out sourcing jobs - they are GM.

If this doesn't convince people the whole thing is rigged I'm not sure what will. Social Security is going to be next.


I remember Clinton's move on Social Security, some state of the union speech. They all clapped.

The GM story is the exemplar. How utterly pathetic to drive them down and then try to steal ther pensions ... for some Wall Street Welfare con..

The U.S. government is looting a pension fund and out sourcing jobs - they are GM.

If this doesn't convince people the whole thing is rigged I'm not sure what will. Social Security is going to be next.


I remember Clinton's move on Social Security, some state of the union speech. They all clapped.

The GM story is the exemplar. How utterly pathetic to drive them down and then try to steal ther pensions ... for some Wall Street Welfare con..


Yep, but utterly pathetic is an understatement, imho,, egregiously evil might be more apropo. WTF.