My 15 Minutes of Fame on the Internet

by Norman Markowitz

To my surprise, my article "Obama's Mandate for Change" has been picked up by a wide variety of right-wing and more serious conservative sources. They are running with a quote from the article which they are interpreting in odd ways. Some of the right-wing stuff is ugly and has given me some hate mail from what I consider gutter fascist sources, and some "anarcho-fascist" combining the politics of Nazi newspapers like Der Angriff with the language of Screw magazine, but others, from the CATO Institute, and a U.S. News and World Report journalist have been more serious, although very odd in the argument that they are making.

I made the argument in my article for a single payer health care program. That is for me as necessary a benchmark for a modern industrial civilized country in the 21st century as the abolition of slavery was the 19th. Throughout the world that is called socialized medicine. That is not what President Elect Obama is advocating at the moment. My article meant to encourage him to move in that direction, not in the direction that Bill Clinton took in 1993 (regulated insurance company based HMO's) In making my argument I contended that the British Labor Party won over workers who had traditionally supported the Conservative Party for a variety of reasons (provincialism, nationalism, the belief that the elites should rule) by establishing the National Health Service and other important social welfare state policies for all people. I could have mentioned that the Roosevelt administration's enactment of Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Minimum Wages, the Forty-Hour Week and other major reforms in the 1930s had a similar effect in consolidating the political gains of the New Deal administration and making the Democratic party, with all of its flaws, the majority party of the country for at least the next half century, whereas the Republicans had been the majority party from the Civil War to the Depression.

Let me say that the conspiratorial sources don't deserve an answer. Anyone who thinks that I am a "top strategist" for the CPUSA, a leading member "planning" the course of the Obama administration would need the psychiatric services that a National Health Care system would provide (it would be open of course to all people, including these far rightists). The more serious arguments though deserve some answers.

First, my article in no way supports the view that President Elect Obama's present plan is a move in the direction of socialized medicine, no more than his plan represents the status quo, which is what the conservative "free market" publications want to scare him into accepting, which was done with Clinton. The contention that the "survival of the GOP" depends on their defeating Obama's health care plan (with the selected quote from me as evidence) also strains logic and is fairly callous. In fact, there have been a number of intelligent responses on progressive websites that these arguments amount to an understanding that the people would support socialized medicine because it would be good for them and that Republicans must fight to the last conservative to defeat it, even if that means sacrificing a few years of life expectancy for U.S. citizens, not to mention continuing to saddle them with the financial stress of the present private insurance based system, which pushes drugs on them at high prices and, like all private insurance based systems, seeks to pay the least in benefits and get the most in premiums. Some have written that the "at last" the Republicans are being honest. They would fight against a single payer health care system (as they would fight, I would say against the Employee Free Choice Act) because they realize that a stronger labor movement and a citizenry that comes to see health care as a public right, not a private commodity, would over time cost them a lot of votes

Let me quickly make a few more points. One conservative writer adds to my comment that Britain was changed through the National Health Service with the suggestion that the change was not for the better. There is enormous evidence that the NHS saw people who had postponed operations and avoided necessary medical treatment because the did not have the money receiving corrective surgery, living longer, fuller lives. My own father had a hernia for over a quarter of a century until it was finally operated on an emergency in a New York Public Hospital in 1970. Like many people who come from the lower strata of the working class, I grew up with people whose lives were demonstrably shortened by the absence of socialized medicine in the U.S.

There are many thoughtful analytical articles in Political Affairs and the Peoples Weekly World, articles that represent the views of a serious and responsible left, every day on the PA website. It is time that the liberal and progressive websites and blogs begin to disseminate them more directly if they wish to help create a more inclusive peoples movement.

P.S. as a postscript, a friend of mine, commenting on the Internet traffic, suggested that I should try to contact blogs and write for fees, a compliment of sorts in a capitalist society.

AFL-CIO and CtW getting to the table?

By Joel Wendland

New York Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse reported yesterday that the elections have the leaderships of the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win federation talking.

Here's what he says:

In a series of dinners and meetings in Washington, the presidents of several breakaway unions and the presidents of several federation unions have been mapping strategies to help elect Senator Barack Obama and forge joint policies on trade and other issues.

Several union officials involved in the meetings said the leaders had also discussed overhauling the A.F.L.-C.I.O. to address the concerns of some breakaway unions, with the aim of persuading some to rejoin.

It is the need to defeat the Republicans in the November elections that has brought both sides together:

...eager for the Democrats to win the White House and increase their majorities in Congress, the union presidents are trying to maximize their political cooperation, especially in swing states where unions are strong: Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Greenhouse also reports that local union organizations from both federations have continued to work together despite the split on a variety of things from political action and elections to organizing campaigns.

The article goes on to cite labor leaders who believe that after the election struggle, talks may turn to reunification.

For once the big media hasn't tried to exploit differences among workers and their organized leadership. Good article, and important developments.

Labor endorses Barack Obama

The labor movement has united to endorse Barack Obama for president. The 10 million-member AFL-CIO announced its endorsement today. The 7 million-member Change to Win federation endorsed him in early May.

The AFL-CIO statement read in part:

Endorsement Triggers Largest Ever Mobilization of Working Families AFL-CIO Program to Reach Union Voters Nationwide, 13 Million in 24 Priority States www.MeetObama08.org

Calling Sen. Barack Obama a champion for working families, the top leaders of AFL-CIO unions today voted without opposition to endorse him for president of the United States, thrusting the labor federation’s largest ever grassroots mobilization effort into high gear.

“In so many ways―on jobs, health care, gas prices and the war in Iraq―our country is headed in the wrong direction,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said. “Barack Obama has proven from his days as an organizer, to his time in the Senate and his historic run for the presidency, that he’s leading the fight to turn around America. He’s a champion for working families who knows what it’s going to take to create an economy that works for everyone, not just Big Oil, Big Pharma, the insurance companies, the giant mortgage lenders, speculators and the very wealthy. We’re proud to stand with Sen. Obama to help our nation chart a course that will improve life for generations of working people and our children.”

In its endorsement statement, the AFL-CIO General Board cited Obama’s strong support of working families on issues such as health care reform, fair trade that will lift up workers here and around the world, retirement security and the freedom to form unions and bargain for middle-class living standards. Obama has a 98 percent voting record on working families’ issues, compared to just 16 percent for Sen. John McCain.

John McCain's Economic Plan Bites

From Change to Win:

Well, John McCain has finally seen fit to share his "plan" for revitalizing the American economy. He laid out the details in a speech on Tuesday at Carnegie Mellon University.

Unsurprisingly, it's just more of the same old George Bush economics -- big giveaways to the rich, and a few crumbs tossed to the rest of us to distract us from the crumbling infrastructure, undersupported military and mounting national debt the policies result in.

Let's get the biggest part out of the way up front: most of the "McCain plan" consists of just extending George Bush's tax cuts into the future. Since it's already well-established that the Bush tax cuts massively favor the wealthiest 1% of Americans over the rest of us, I won't spend a lot of time on them here. I'll just note that the tax cuts advocated by John McCain in 2008 were fiercely opposed in 2001 by... John McCain...

Read the rest here...

The China Syndrome

by Ben Sears

The US labor movement, in the face of — or because of the enormous challenges it faces — has in recent years broken much new ground. It has demonstrated its ability to act politically and influence elections at all levels. The sea change in Congress in 2006 was in no small part due to labor's electoral effort. And it was all the more effective because organized labor had the organized support of "Working America" which gives workers without a union a way to put their collective muscle into political campaigns. This effort showed tangible results when the Employee Free Choice Act actually got serious and sympathetic attention in the House earlier this year.

On the international front, both the AFL-CIO and Change to Win have shown considerable courage and persistence in their call for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq and thus oppose at least a part of the Bush Administration imperial foreign policy. In fact the readiness to discuss a foreign policy issue in a constructive and open debate marks a significant and welcome change. And of course, the AFL-CIO, a few years ago, dropped its decades long quarantine against Communists. When we recall that that body, at its birth, stated that it would actively join in the witch hunt, it should be obvious that all these changes are major, major positive steps forward.

All of which makes what I am going to say that much more difficult. The AFL-CIO filed a petition with the US Trade Representative calling on the Bush Administration to impose "trade remedies" against China in the form of sanctions or tariffs because, the petition charges, China does not "enforce workers' rights." The petition was originally filed in 2004; the article reporting on it is dated June, 2006, and it is still on the Website. Here is a quote from the article:

"China prevents workers from joining unions and bargaining collectively, denies its citizens safe working conditions, provides no minimum wage and uses forced labor. As a result, Chinese workers' wages are between 47 percent and 85 percent lower than they should be…."

The petition is allegedly based on extensive documentation and was prepared by a Columbia law professor. China's labor policies are, it is argued, responsible for the loss of over 400,000 US jobs between 2001 and 2005. The Web article makes the point that this is the first time the Trade Act of 1974 section 301 has been invoked to protest a nation's labor practices.

OK, so what is disturbing about all of this?

1. The persistence with which forces in the labor movement have pursued this project and targeted China. The AFL-CIO has protested labor policies in other countries, e.g. Colombia or Iraq, but never filed such a petition.
2. The apparent refusal to consider even the possibility of talking face to face directly with (or even recognizing as a workers' organization) the All China Federation of Trade Unions. (I know that at least one American labor leader, SEIU's Andy Stern has been to China several times, met with that organization's leaders and mentioned it in his book "A Country That Works.")
3. The echoes, or hangover, of the Cold War that this whole situation evokes.
4. The use of "dissidents" (and the use of that term itself) from the country in question — China in this case — to give an impression of legitimacy.

The Steelworkers' "Get the Lead Out" campaign can easily be seen as a continuation of this policy thrust. But this is proving hard to write about constructively. Are we in favor low wages? Lead in toys? Etc. etc.? Of course not. But neither, in my opinion, should we support the total failure to have any contact with the main labor organization in a nation of over a billion people. How do we know for a fact what the situation really is on the ground in China — or in the many parts of that vast nation? The failure/refusal of labor leaders to talk to workers organizations in "Communist countries" in the past cost American workers dearly. We need discussion on this and on how to try to ensure that the same thing does not happen again. I invite responses. I very much appreciated the discussion we started to have during our last Editorial Board phone conference.