UN/ILO Meting on Day of Social Justice

Mary Robinson Challenges both the ILO and the UN on "World Day of Social Justice"

by Mike Tolochko

Mary Robinson the former President of Ireland, former High Commissioner for Human Rights at the United Nations and many other major international positions challenged the International Labor Organization and the United Nations to live up to the highest level of workers, labor union and everyone's social justice on the first day of the implementation of the United Nations General Assembly declaration that February 20th of each year: "World Day of Social Justice."

This UN declaration took place in 2007 and it was followed in June 10, 2008 by the International Labor Organization's adopting of the "Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization." The ILO declaration was signed by governments, employers and workers organizations, which emphasized the ILO's Decent Work concept adopted in 1999.

H.E. Omurbek Babanov, Vice Prime Minister of Krygyzstan, opened the special UN session, Friday, February 20, recalling the importance of past UN actions such as implementation of the Millennium Development Goals especially in regard to the collapse of the world financial system. He called special attention to the crisis with the invasion and destruction of Gaza.

Thomas Pogge a professor of philosophy and international affairs at Yale and author of the book, "World Poverty and Human Rights" cited worldwide poverty and malnutrition. He cited World Bank figures that in 2005 there were 3.14 billion people living in poverty and malnutrition or 48% of the world population. The world economic crisis will radically increase those numbers. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon often talks about the Bottom Billion.

Radhika Balakrishnan professor of economics at Marymount Manhattan College next said, "The current global economic crisis is evidence that the neo-liberal economic policies that have been followed for almost three decades have not worked." She said the policies have made bad assumptions, "about the virtues of the marker." She continued, "neo-liberal fiscal and monetary policies favor those groups with unearned income from interest-bearing financial assets and neglect the fulfillment of the right to work for those whose only asset is their labor."

She later, during the discussion period said that a main problem for academics is that most, a large percent, economic teachers are not equipped to deal with an economy where their main ideology has failed.

H.E. Miguel D'Escoto, president of the General Assembly for the 63rd Session sent a message of support. He said, among other things, "These are trying times for the world, especially for the hundreds of millions of marginalized people who live in poverty and isolation. Last month we were witness to the violence against the most afflicted members of our world community, the Palestinian people in Gaza."

This special session took place in the Economic ad Social Council Chamber of the UN.

Mary Robinson's comment triggered a lot of discussion. She made it clear that the UN has a special responsibility with its Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The celebration of that Declaration on its 60th Anniversary took place in Paris, 2008. Robinson especially pointed to Article 23 of the Declaration, which demands the Right to Work and to right to form Trade Unions. This she coupled with a minimum package of labor union rights. She was very well received by the few hundred of gathered NGOs and activists.

French Strikes; March 19th and in the Colonies

by Mike Tolochko

Mark it down: THURSDAY, 19 March 2009;
This is the date of the next National Strike in France.

At the same time and continuing for a least 4 weeks, French external colonies in the Caribbean of Martinique and Guadalupe, French Guiana on the South American continent, and Reunion [off the East Coast of Africa] have been in general strikes for higher wages; lower taxes on fuel and fruit. The trade unions and left movements are very strong in these places.

While not directly connected, both sets of struggles are fighting against the neo-liberal economic policies of Nicolas Sarkozy's government.

These struggles receive almost no coverage in international news media, especially the struggles on the islands.

Stay tuned

George Will's Habit of Invention

From MediaMatters.org:

The blogger Digby popularized the use of the phrase "The Village" to describe Washington media elites. The mocking nickname was inspired by a 1998 Washington Post article by Sally Quinn about Washington's reaction to the Lewinsky scandal. Quinn quoted David Broder saying of Clinton's effect on Washington: "He came in here and he trashed the place ... and it's not his place." And: "The judgment is harsher in Washington. We don't like being lied to." Others -- journalists like David Gergen and Chris Matthews alongside politicians like Joe Lieberman -- echoed the sentiment that The Village just couldn't tolerate Clinton's lies.

It was all bunk, of course. The Village hated -- and, it must be noted, lied about -- the Clintons long before anyone, Bill Clinton included, had ever heard of Monica Lewinsky. And needless to say, other politicians have both had extramarital sex and told lies without drawing The Village's scorn.

So it's laugh-out-loud funny to suggest that Washington -- specifically, the newsrooms of Washington -- is filled with journalists of such reverence for the truth and honesty that they simply could not accept someone who told a lie. It certainly never manifested itself during the Bush administration -- Broder, for one, famously suggested that Clinton should have resigned because "he may well have lied" but repeatedly refused invitations to say the same about Bush.

But wouldn't it be nice if The Village really was as opposed to lying as Broder claimed? More specifically, if the media elite who serve as Village elders had the good sense to shun their colleagues who habitually misinform, that could go a long way toward reversing the decades-long erosion of public confidence in the news media.

Take, for example, George Will. Will recently used his syndicated Washington Post column to make several false claims about global warming -- something he has done frequently in the past. Will's column sparked widespread condemnation, but the Post refused to run a correction and insisted that it has a "multi-layer editing process and checks facts to the fullest extent possible."

Read the whole article here...

DARWIN'S BIRTHDAY

Thomas Riggins

This month we actually celebrate two famous birthdays that were on February 12-- the 200th of both Darwin and Lincoln-- and this year is the 150th of ORIGIN OF SPECIES.

The January/February issue of PHILOSOPHY NOW (issue 71) has an interesting article by Massimo Pigliucci (“The Evolution of Evolutionary Theory”) which points out that evolutionary theory itself has evolved-- it is now in the middle of its fourth stage, according to the author.

Briefly the stages are: 1. Pre-Darwin (from the ancient Greeks thru Lamarckism); 2. Darwin and the independent co-inventor- Alfred Russell Wallace based on “common descent and natural selection”; 3. ”The Modern Synthesis”-- Darwin didn’t know about genes, so he couldn’t really explain the mechanism by which natural selection took place: Mendel’s discovery of genetics was used to create the modern theory of Darwinian evolution---J.B.S. Haldane, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Julian Huxley, George Gaylord Simpson, Ernst Mayr, and others; 4. contemporary research is exploring new extensions of Darwinian thought in many directions but the Standard Synthesis is still the basic model.

Pigliucci thinks “Darwin’s chief contribution to humanity” is that he demolished any notion of intelligent design with respect to the origins of species-- natural selection is random in the sense that it is not planned.

Pigliucci denies that it is random, saying naturally selected traits “are in the direction of an improved ability of the organisms to function in their environment.” I’m not sure that “direction” is the right word to use. This is probably just a quibble over wording.

What is important is that Darwin allows us, "To abandon a supernaturalist view of life on earth in favor of explanations based on natural causes...” Evolution is as firmly fixed as the basis of scientific knowledge in the biological sciences as is mathematics in the physical sciences. Darwin ranks with Marx, Newton and Einstein ( as well as many others) who have shaped the modern scientific world outlook.

However, after reading about Darwin, it is is necessary to point out the following problem, at least for Americans. Checking the internet, I discovered that about 60% of Americans reject Darwinian evolution. That is an enormous number of scientifically illiterate and uneducated people to have in our population at this time of world crisis.

We will need scientific solutions to the economic and environmental problems facing us. In our society these will only be arrived at through democratic consent. With such a large number of clueless people voting we will have many elected officials at all levels who are, quite frankly, nincompoops. They will be used by antisocial and anti-working class forces to hinder needed reforms and changes.

Already we have seen these forces at work cutting funds for education from Obama's stimulus package, funding groups who deny global warming, and trying to tone down science teaching in the public schools.

Our society is in evolution right now, with the possibility of a qualitative progressive leap forward. We will have to keep vigilant and fight for every program that furthers human education and the study of science and fight against all those who, in the name or religion (or anything else such as "fiscal responsibility") try to hamper this goal.

Why Retirees Should Care About the Employee Free Choice Act

From the Alliance for Retired Americans:

As he hands the baton to Barbara Easterling, George Kourpias has a message for members regarding the Employee Free Choice Act. “There is no doubt in my mind that the fate of workers and retirees is undeniably linked. We cannot have a solid, stable retirement unless we have a solid, stable middle class,” said Mr. Kourpias. By standing together, union workers fought for and won better wages, health care and pensions, and safety and respect on the job. However, Mr. Kourpias is concerned that a great deal of what unions have achieved is crumbling in today’s troubled economy. According to the National Labor Relations Board, in 2007 nearly 30,000 workers faced illegal employer retaliation for trying to join a union – that is five times as many as in 1967. “Workers and retirees must fight together to pass the Employee Free Choice Act so we can finally crack down on companies that break the law and try to block a worker’s freedom to join a union,” Mr. Kourpias declared. He advises seniors to talk to their children and grandchildren; polls have shown that younger workers may not be as aware of the benefits of collective bargaining. Seniors are also urged to call their elected officials in Washington.

The New York Post and Racist Terror in Houston

by Norman Markowitz

Thanks to our blog, I just joined the protest against the New York Post's sociopathic cartoon connecting the recent tragedy of shot by the police after attacking its owner with cops riddling with bullets a chimp made to represent President Obama as they say,"They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus package."

Just good clean KKK, neo Nazi fun? In my response I said that I thought immediately of Julius Streicher, the "editor" of the Nazis anti-Semitic tabloid, Der Sturmer, which specialized in portraying Jews as both lecherous beasts and degraded, dehumanized creatures. Racist portrayals of African Americans as either comical or violent animals, who could be beaten and killed for the pleasure of superior whites was long a staple of newspaper and later animated cartoons in U.S. popular culture(see the late Marlon Riggs great documentary Ethnic Notions, to get a clearer and fuller understanding of this) The message, whether it was from Klansmen here or Nazis there or the "mainstream" publications which helped to legitimize their hatred was simple--Blacks, Jews, or you select a target, forfeit the right to be considered human if they don't keep their place, and we can turn on them, even a President of the United States, when he dares come forward with an economic rescue plan that New York Post owner Rupert Murdoch doesn't like, can be portrayed as chimp shot to pieces by cops, as a warning to any African-American, in this case even President Barack Obama, that he can be killed with impunity if he doesn't do what is expected of him by the likes of Rupert Murdoch.

I came across this atrocity in print after listening to an account of a related atrocity in real life that happened last New Years eve in , Bellaire an affluent suburb of Houston, Texas. I heard about the atrocity on New York Sports Radio while listening to sports analyst Mike Francesa, whose analysis of games, teams, and individuals respect. On New Years Eve, Robbie Tolan, the son of former National League baseball player Bobby Tolan, and his cousin were stopped by police as they drove into Bobby Tolan's home.

The police did not identify themselves and began to arrest the two, forcing them down. While Bobby Tolan and his wife, in pajamas, walked out and Bobby Tolan tried to tell the police officer that the two were his son and nephew and that the car was his, he was pushed against a door and his wife thrown against a garage door. When his son, lying on the ground, turned around and cursed the policeman for pushing his mother against the garage, the police officer shot him in the chest.

And the horror continued as Bobby Tolan, his wife, and his nephew were held in police cars. It seems that the police had run the license plate of the car incorrectly and concluded that it was a stolen car. But they did not follow even elemental police procedure. Although Tolan has
lived in the area and it is heavily patrolled by police, this didn't matter. Although Tolan could here on the police radio that the cops on the seen were being told that the car was not stolen, he was kept in the car as a cordon of police gathered around trying to figure out what to do. Eventually, he, his wife, and nephew were released and were able to get to the hospital to see his son, whose life was literally at stake. With the help of a supportive hospital staff, they kept the police away from his son, who survived but has a bullet in his liver. Tolan discussed all of this in an interview on Mike Francesa's radio program today. What he and his family has asked for is an apology from the local government and the police and so far they have received nothing, except statements of support from some officials for the policeman who shot his some and comments from the mayor that the incident is under investigation.

These two events are not really disconnected, since the values in the New York Post cartoon was in effect acted out by the police, if Tolan's account is accurate(and from what I can garner from press reports of the event, it is). If a president can be so portrayed, why not the son of a distinguished major league baseball player, himself a would-be major leaguer with no criminal record of any kind. Francesa asked Tolan if he thought it would have helped if he had told the police about his baseball background. Tolan said he wouldn't do that but in a community where African Americans constitute 1 percent of the population and (according to the program) 44 percent of police stops, the racial profiling that the local police are denying seems to be a way of life.

This is not just about one Rupert Murdoch tabloid that the hip of New York usually laugh at although for those like myself who are old enough to remember when the Post was New York's only consistent liberal-labor newspaper, there is always more sadness than laughter. This isn't just about one more rich white Southern suburb whose police look for Blacks the soldiers look for potential invaders across a militarized border. It is about the forces who were decisively defeated in the last election, those who sold racism along with other prejudices and sheer ignorance for so long and now become more rabid than ever before.

The petition I signed calls for an apology by the New York Post and the firing of the Editor who passed on the cartoon. Why not a boycott of local New York advertisers whose ads appear in the Post. After all, cartoons like that tell us that the Post's target market is made of KKK and neo Nazi types, who aren't known to have that much disposable income in New York City.

As for the atrocity in Texas, a federal investigation might be called for, since the Civil Rights laws were passed to stop among other things both citizens and police from engaging in acts like this and getting away with it through power structure cover ups.

Racism in all of its forms, ideological, institutional, is still on the playing field, feeding off inequality, offering scapegoats as a substitute for policies to face the present economic crisis. It must be literally knocked down with reasoned condemnation and firm action every time it raises its head.

Speak out against NY Post's racist cartoon

Yesterday, the day after President Obama signed his stimulus bill into law, the NY Post ran a cartoon depicting the bill's "author" as a dead monkey, covered in blood after being shot by police. You can see the image by clicking on the link below.

In the face of intense criticism, the Post's editor is standing by the cartoon, claiming that it's not about Obama, has no racial undertones, and that it was simply referencing a recent incident when police shot a pet chimpanzee. But it's impossible to believe that any newspaper editor could be ignorant enough to not understand how this cartoon evokes a history of racist symbolism, or how frightening this image feels at a time when death threats against President Obama have been on the rise.

Please join me and other ColorOfChange.org members in demanding that the Post apologize publicly and fire the editor who allowed this cartoon to go to print:

http://www.colorofchange.org/nypost/?id=2066-232333

The Post would have us believe that the cartoon is not about Obama. But on the page just before the cartoon appears, there's a big picture of Obama signing the stimulus bill. A reader paging through the Post would see Obama putting pen to paper, then turn the page to see this violent cartoon. The imagery is chilling.

There is a clear history in our country of racist symbolism that depicts Black people as apes or monkeys, and it came up multiple times during the presidential campaign.

We're also in a time of increased race-based violence. In the months following President Obama's election there has been a nationwide surge in hate crimes ranging from vandalism to assaults to arson on Black churches. There has been an unprecedented number of threats against President Obama since he was elected, with hate-based groups fantasizing about the killing of the president. Just a week ago, a man drove from Louisiana to the Capitol with a rifle, telling the police who stopped him that he had a "delivery" for the president.

There is no excuse for the Post to have allowed this cartoon to be printed, and even less for Editor Col Allan's outright dismissal of legitimate concerns.

But let's be clear who's behind the Post: Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch, the Post's owner, is the man behind FOX News Channel. FOX has continually attacked and denigrated Black people, politicians, institutions at every opportunity, and ColorOfChange has run several campaigns to make clear how FOX poisons public debate.

I don't expect much from Murdoch. However, with enough public pressure, we can set the stage for advertisers and subscribers to think long and hard before patronizing outlets like the Post that refuse to be held accountable.

You can help, by making clear that the Post's behavior is unacceptable, and by asking your friends and family to do the same.

http://www.colorofchange.org/nypost/?id=2066-232333

The Weather Makers (6)

THE WEATHER MAKERS: HOW MAN IS CHANGING THE CLIMATE AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR LIFE ON EARTH by Tim Flannery

Reviewed by Thomas Riggins

Part 6

Lets look at just some of the problems we create by burning coal, according to the scientific evidence in Flannery's book.

There are wee bits of dust and particulate matter that drifts in the atmosphere. They are called aerosols. Coal burning plants in the U.S. now pump so many aerosols into the atmosphere that they kill about 60,000 people per year in this country alone (increased mortality thru lung diseases). Lung cancer rates are higher around areas with coal burning plants.

Aerosols also influence "global dimming." This is a phenomenon whereby less sunlight can reach the earth. Soot aerosols, along with jet trails, reflect sunlight back into space cooling the earth. But we are putting so much CO2 into the air that the heat being trapped is greater than the heat being reflected into space. Therefore the earth is warming up. The only thing that can prevent an ecological disaster is to start removing CO2 from the air (which we have not figured out how to do in any meaningful way).

If we stopped putting CO2 into the air today the CO2 already there will continue to heat the earth for decades. So, we are facing a big problem.

Here are some interesting statements from Flannery. It seems that if all new greenhouse gasses were immediately stopped from entering the air, the ones already in the air would continue to heat up the planet until 2050 or so. Then the atmosphere would stabilize at a new higher annual temperature. But we are no way near halting our polluting ways! In fact, we should note that "half the energy" we have burned since the beginning of the industrial revolution has been burned in just the last 20 years. So our polluting is becoming more intense.

Here is what we have to do to stabilize the climate around 2100-- we would need to reduce CO2 by 70% of the 1990 level by 2050. Then we would have CO2 at 450 parts per million. Flannery thinks it more realistic to aim at 550 parts per million with climate stabilization "centuries from now." The earth would end up around 5.4 degrees F [or 3 C] hotter by 2100 than it is now.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change says we must prevent "dangerous" climate change. So what constitutes dangerous climate change? It seems the consensus is about 2 degrees C-- anything over that may lead to disaster. So 2C is the most we can stand for, and if we get to work NOW we may still get 3C by 2100, the outlook is not so hot (no pun intended).

"Earth's average temperature," Flannery writes, "is around 59 degrees F, and whether we allow it to rise by a single degree or 5 degrees F will decide the fate of hundreds of thousands of species, and most probably billions of people."

Besides oceans, rain forests and coral reefs, the world's mountains are also experiencing rapid change. You can forget the snows of Kilimanjaro and the glaciers of New Guinea. The CO2 already in the atmosphere has doomed them and they will be gone in just a few decades.

As the earth warms the mountain habitat changes and animals who were lower down on the mountain move to the top while the topmost species go extinct. We are now in the process of losing mountain gorillas, panda bears and many plant species.

Flannery says some species benefit from global warming. The Anopheles mosquito is spreading and the malaria parasites it spreads will soon be infecting "tens of thousands of people without any resistance to the disease."

Obama's stimulus bill, whatever else it does, may be a boon for malaria parasites. It contains one billion dollars for the coal industry to help develop "clean coal" [there is no such animal] which fosters the illusion that we can survive without closing down the coal industry itself.

We can't save everything, but scientists think if we start taking strong action now we will ONLY lose one third of all existing species on earth. If we don't take action, then by 2100 we will have doomed 60% of existing species to extinction. Is burning coal and other fossil fuels really worth it?

Don't think calculations have not been made. Economists working for the UN in conjunction with the World Meteorological Association have done calculations that concluded it was too expensive to really halt climate change. The rich nations will be able to deal with it. The billions of poor in the Third World will be the ones to suffer but, the economists calculated that the life of a poor person was "worth only a fifteenth of that of a rich person." It is just not cost effective, according to them, to try and save the poor. At this point I wish Flannery would refer to Marxism, but alas he seems not to be a Marxist.

More grim news to come!

“Buy America” Discussion Guide

Listen to the following podcast (episode #93): Interview with Scott Marshall about the "buy America" clause in the economic stimulus:

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/4881 (press play on the mini-player and turn up your computer's volume)

If you do not see that, try copying and pasting the following url into your browser: http://www.gabcast.com/casts/7616/episodes/1234752874.mp3

The “buy America” clause in the Obama stimulus package has been all over the news lately. Political Affairs has prepared a 15 minute audio with Scott Marshall, head of the CPUSA Labor Commission.

Discussion Questions:

1. How does the “buy America” clause in the stimulus package differ from the “buy America” concept promoted in the past?

2. How does the “buy America” clause in the stimulus package affect U. S. trade?

3. Is the ‘buy America” clause in the stimulus package anti proletarian internationalism?

Recommended Readings:

Think Tank report, trade and industrial policy, by CPUSA Labor Commission
http://cpusa.org/article/articleview/952/1/153/

Section 1. The Communist Manifesto
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/marx.html

Springtime of Hope, by Sam Webb (especially sections on financialization and neoliberalism)
http://cpusa.org/article/articleview/994/1/27/

Buy America Provisions, by Alliance for American Manufacturing
http://www.americanmanufacturing.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/buyamericalawsreportr.pdf

To survive, Americans must assert themselves as economic patriots, by Leo Gerard, USW
http://blog.usw.org/2009/01/29/to-survive-americans-must-assert-themselves-as-economic-patriots/

Please share this discussion with your friends. We'd love to read all comments.

Texas Thieves Show that Sweeping New Regulation is Needed Now

by Norman Markowitz

The SEC, acting more quickly than one would imagine under the Bush administration, has accused the Stanford Financial Group of Houston, Texas of "a massive ongoing financial fraud"

The SEC instituted a raid on the group's Houston offices and found that 8 billion in uninsured CDs. allegedly in a bank in Antigua, couldn't be accounted for. It seems that the Group was running something like a Ponzi scheme on its CDs, which most people identify with insured bank deposits, paying high interest on them and misinforming buyers concerning where the CD money was going.

The Stanford Group is also charged with violating a New Deal piece of legislation, the Investment Company Act of 1940, in that it failed to register as an investment company. In an interesting and humorous sidelight, the press reported that the Stanford Group lost 400,000 to Bernie Madoff, the state of the art swindler whom the SEC let get away with much more than 8 billion, but that is little comfort to those who bought CD's that they thought were relatively safe from a company that used them to invest in real estate and other risky ventures. Just as one capitalist, to paraphrase Marx, swallows up many, one crooked capitalist can rob many other crooked capitalists along with millions of people looking for a safe place to put their money like CD's.

This is further evidence that the people need a new National Banking Act and a new Security and Exchange Commission Act, legislation that will both repeal completely the deregulation of the last thirty years and modernize and make much more comprehensive the regulation of finance capital at all levels. Stanford Group executives had to surrender their passports and it is at this point very likely that they will face criminal prosecution. Creating preventive regulation that will stop such con men before they start, or at least relegate them to activities like trying to sell the Brooklyn Bridge or the Golden Gate Bridge to tourists, can be done and should be done.

Take Action: Demand a Vote for Hilda Solis Now

From Labor Up Front:

Confirm Hilda Solis Now!

Congresswoman Hilda Solis' confirmation to be our new Secretary of Labor is now scheduled for a "test" vote on Tuesday, February 24th, in the Senate. This means that she must get 60 votes to stop a filibuster before she can be confirmed.

The Republicans are fully mobilized by big business and the far right to try and prevent her confirmation. Her husband's taxes have nothing to do with it. They are determined to stop her nomination as a way of fighting against the Employee Free Choice Act. She, like President Obama, strongly supports the bill.

This is fully in keeping with the Republican's unsuccessful efforts to derail the economic stimulus package. In fact it is a continuation of the same Republican bankruptcy that pushes tax breaks for the rich and rejects public works and people helping spending. The ultra right in the Republican Party and big business fear Employee Free Choice because of the crucial role the legislation will play in economic recovery. It will mean they and the rich will have to settle for less to promote recovery. After all it was the profiteering of the Banks and big business that got us into this economic crisis.

Hilda Solis and passage of Employee Free Choice will spur economic recovery by raising wages and working conditions for millions of working families. This means good jobs/green jobs from the economic stimulus that get money circulating by creating demand for goods and services. The combination of a Secretary of Labor that actually represents the interests of labor and passage of Employee Free Choice are the best counterbalance to the greed and power of Wall Street and big business. They are our country's best bet for economic recovery.

Take action now

"Concessions to GM" are the Wrong Way to Go

by Norman Markowitz

The press is filled with stories that GM is pushing the UAW to make"givebacks" as part of its restructuring plan under the auto bailout. Its "plan has to be approved by the Treasury. Neither the UAW nor the Obama administration should stand with GM on this issue. If there are concessions, they should be to workers and the government that is"saving" GM and Chrysler from collapse.

A little history, both recent and not so recent, should put this in some perspective for both trade unionists and progressives in and out of the administration. First let's jump back to 1979, when the Carter administration bailed at Chrysler and used its influence to push the UAW to "give Chrysler" givebacks, in effect to workers pay for Chrysler's building of high profit gas guzzlers and profiteering from military related subsidies to run itself into the grand. Carter proceeded to lose the election to Reagan and the U.S. auto industry joined other large industries in busting unions and exporting capital with Reagan administration support. Michael Moore's Roger and Me, shows powerfully what GM did with its givebacks and to its workers in the Reagan era, turning Moore's hometown of Flint, GM's most important industrial center, into a city of evictions, poverty and crime.

If anyone in the Treasury Department has any serious "faith" in GM and Chrysler today showing any real sense of social responsibility, they are still thinking in terms of the trickle down theory that revived under Reagan and hopefully ended under Bush – namely, that in good times you give corporations a everything they want on the principle that they will trickle down some of their profits to workers and in bad times you act like a conservative banker, giving corporations the capital they need to survive as long as they "reduce" labor costs. They are also failing to understand that without the support of labor and low income Americans generally, the administration cannot accomplish its economic goals and defeat the inevitable rightwing Republican attempt at a backlash.

These approaches didn't work for Carter and will not work today. Another approach is for the administration to work with the UAW, to see it as an ally in this process and bring its representatives, its economists, forward to become active participants in process of regulating GM and Chrysler's "bailouts." If the Obama administration established a national single payer health care system for all citizens as a matter of right (the standard and the rule in the developed world) GM's attempt to reduce the costs of health benefits for union retirees would of course become moot, because it wouldn't have the responsibility of paying for those benefits.

If the present UAW leadership studied a little history (not the red-baiting kind or even the former social democratic kind that glorifies Walter Reuther and leaves out Wyndham Mortimer, Bob Travis, Henry Kraus, and other CPUSA activists who led and won the General Motors Strike at Flint in 1937 and made by far the most contribution to the rise of the union) it might realize that it won its greatest victories when its leadership had a "social unionist" outlook, that is, an approach that led them to see that everything that concerned their workers and workers as citizens was their business, that they wouldn't make deals over the heads of the workers or take the position that management could do what it wanted outside of narrow contract enforcement issues.

Nor is it simply a question of "regulation" vs. no regulation of the auto bailout and the larger bank bailout. The New Deal government, for example, established under the National Recovery Administration in 1933, comprehensive industrial codes of conduct to be administered industry by industry by code authorities. Planning prices, production, and guaranteeing workers rights to union unions were in the codes. Labor and consumer representatives were supposed to have seats on the code authorities. But they didn't on most of authorities. The codes were drawn up by government officials with connections to the industries and attorneys representing the industries. The trade union provisions were gotten around by forming company unions. Workers came to call the NRA "national runaround" before it was abolished in 1935 by a rightwing Supreme Court for reasons that had nothing to do with these left criticisms.

The Obama administration can learn from the mistakes of the early New Deal in this regard, Just as it can't get bipartisan support from Republicans with a real progressive program, it can't get auto company managers to do anything more than what they did with the Chrysler bailout if it doesn't establish new ground rules from the beginning.

First, "givebacks" from workers, including retirees, reduces their overall purchasing power and contributes to more layoffs through the economy and more decline. It isn't "countercyclical" in the sense of Keynesian economic theory in that it doesn't act against the downward thrust of the business cycle but accelerates it. Maintaining jobs and wages and restructuring social benefits like health care in the interests of the workers (establishing universal single payer health care) is countercyclical and essential in sustaining and expanding mass purchasing power in Keynesian theory.

While I am not at this moment ready to start throwing stones at Secretary Geithner as some on the left are, the "bailout" should be broadened beyond the Treasury Department to include, from the government side, the departments of labor and health and human services. Most of all, the UAW should play a direct role in the planning and administration of the funds. The Obama administration can and should innovate in administering both the auto bailout and the larger nearly $800 billion rescue plan.

These are questions that will determine both the livelihoods and the quality of life for workers, students homeowners, consumers in the immediate future. The federal agencies which deal with labor, education, environment, health and human services should be part of the planning and administrative processes that will decide how and for what these huge amounts of public money are used. Representatives of labor, environmentalists, students and public sector education, representatives homeowner representatives, should all be involved in both the planning and subsequent administration of these funds if the banks and the corporations are to both held accountable and held in check.

Who won the stimulus battle?

February 15, 2009
From the NYTimes.com
They Sure Showed That Obama
By FRANK RICH

AM I crazy, or wasn’t the Obama presidency pronounced dead just days ago? Obama had “all but lost control of the agenda in Washington,” declared Newsweek on Feb. 4 as it wondered whether he might even get a stimulus package through Congress. “Obama Losing Stimulus Message War” was the headline at Politico a day later. At the mostly liberal MSNBC, the morning host, Joe Scarborough, started preparing the final rites. Obama couldn’t possibly eke out a victory because the stimulus package was “a steaming pile of garbage.”

Less than a month into Obama’s term, we don’t (and can’t) know how he’ll fare as president. The compromised stimulus package, while hardly garbage, may well be inadequate. Timothy Geithner’s uninspiring and opaque stab at a bank rescue is at best a place holder and at worst a rearrangement of the deck chairs on the TARP-Titanic, where he served as Hank Paulson’s first mate.

But we do know this much. Just as in the presidential campaign, Obama has once again outwitted the punditocracy and the opposition. The same crowd that said he was a wimpy hope-monger who could never beat Hillary or get white votes was played for fools again.

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Podcasts: "Buy America" and the economic stimulus package

Political Affairs #93 - "Buy America" and the economic stimulus package

On this episode we discuss the "buy America" provisions of the president's economic recovery package with Communist Party Labor commission chair Scott Marshall.