Day: August 30, 2008

Unions At The Democratic Convention

The two main competing factions within the US trade union bureaucracy are temporarily setting aside their bitter rivalry to unite behind the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. One prominent feature of their intervention has been to attribute the lack of enthusiasm among their own members for Obama to white racism, a charge that they make no attempt to substantiate, and in fact is contradicted by polls that reveal growing anger and alienation among workers from the Democrats and the two party system.

Both AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and Anna Burger, chair of the rival Change to Win union federation, addressed Democratic National Convention delegates Tuesday night. Both union factions are participating in a series of workshops, and other events throughout the convention designed to boost the Obama campaign. Their uncritical support for Obama and the Democrats further underscores the fact that these organizations have nothing to do with defending the real needs and interests of working people.

The speeches of the two union bureaucrats were carefully scripted and, especially on the part of Sweeney, laced with religious and patriotic references. Sweeney and Burger made almost no direct reference to the actual situation facing millions of working people—the slashing of jobs, the gutting of social programs, surging gas and food prices, widening home foreclosures, eroding wages—referring merely to the fading of the “American Dream.” Predictably, the union leaders avoided any concrete reference to questions of policy, limiting themselves to abstract calls for change. They made no serious attempt to explain how the election of Obama would actually improve the social situation of workers.

This silence is understandable given that the Democrats are presenting a social agenda consisting of a few ludicrously inadequate reforms, in no way commensurate with the magnitude of the unfolding economic disaster facing working people.

Poverty On The Rise

The Census Bureau reported Tuesday that the official poverty rate in the United States rose in 2007 to 12.5 percent, compared to 12.3 percent the previous year. According to the bureau’s American Community Survey, last year 37.3 million Americans were living below the income level, which, according to the government, signifies poverty.

This is an increase of 800,000, or 2 percent, over the official poverty level for 2006. As damning as the official figures are, the real scale of poverty in the US is much higher. The government set the poverty cut-off point for a family of four in 2007 at $21,203. Such an income means outright destitution. Millions more Americans live in conditions that by any objective standard amount to poverty.

The number of children living below the official poverty line increased much more sharply in 2007, rising to 13.3 million from 12.8 million in 2006, an increase of 3.9 percent. According to the government’s figures, 17.4 percent of American children were in poverty last year

The official poverty rates for both adults and children are considerably higher than their low points in the 1990s. Between 2001 (when the official poverty rate was 11.3 percent) and 2007—a period of economic expansion marked by a massive accumulation of wealth at the very top of American society—the poverty rate rose by 10.6 percent. The rate for 2007 marked the biggest jump in poverty during an economic recovery in US history.

These figures constitute an indictment of American capitalism and both of its major political parties, which have carried out a ruthless policy of tax cuts for the rich, reductions in social programs, and deregulation of big business for the purpose of redistributing the national wealth from the working class to the financial elite and facilitating an orgy of corporate speculation and profiteering.

Today In Labor History

30 August

Delegates from New York, Boston, Philadelphia and other East Coast cities met in convention to form the National Trades Union. The NTU united craft unions to oppose “the most unequal and unjustifiable distribution of the wealth of society in the hands of a few individuals.” The NTU helped spawn the organization of more than 60 new unions – 1834

Oregon Labor Press founded. It continues publishing today, as the twice-monthly Northwest Labor Press – 1900

OSHA publishes scaffold safety standard, designed to protect 2.3 million construction workers and prevent 50 deaths and 4,500 injuries annually – 1996

A Free South Ossetia?

For the skeptics who raise doubts about their future as an independent state, South Ossetians have one word: Andorra.

The comparison sounded a little strange, looking around this city, the capital of the enclave of South Ossetia, which was burned and battered by Georgian attacks earlier this month. Bullets had torn big chunks out of the pine trees, and the turret of a tank lay upside down in a doorway. Someone had spray-painted the words “Shame, Georgian bootlicker!” on a wall on the main boulevard.

Russia’s recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent nations has filled people here with hope that other countries will follow. To outsiders, that hope may seem far-fetched; Western leaders have made it clear that they consider the regions part of Georgia.

But all is not as it appears.

Russia intends to eventually absorb Georgia’s breakaway province of South Ossetia, a South Ossetian official said Friday, three days after Moscow recognized the region as independent and drew criticism from the West.

Georgia, meanwhile, said it would recall all diplomatic staff from its embassy in Moscow on Saturday because of the Russian military presence in Georgia. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nestrenko criticized the move, saying it “will not benefit our bilateral relations,” Russian news agencies reported.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the region’s leader, Eduard Kokoity, discussed the future of South Ossetia earlier this week in Moscow, South Ossetian parliamentary speaker Znaur Gassiyev said.

Russia will absorb South Ossetia “in several years” or earlier, a position was “firmly stated by both leaders,” Gassiyev said.

Do not say that you were not warned–this will become a major problem for the next president.

Dems Will Come A-Calling

Now that McCain has gotten his running mate and the public is about to puke at the endless BS, the Dems will be looking for chinks in their armor.  IMO, the first one should be that Palin passed a windfall profits tax in Alaska and the treasury is swelling with cash.  A good place to start.
— Palin didn’t back McCain in the primary. She stayed neutral in Alaska’s January primary — perhaps on account of McCain’s opposition to drilling in ANWR. “A lot of us are sitting back and waiting to see if there will be new players in there,” she said in 2007. “That’s probably why that box that says ‘none of the above’ is so popular right now.”

— Mayoral performance. Palin, who portrays herself as a fiscal conservative, racked up nearly $20 million in long-term debt as mayor of the tiny town of Wasilla — that amounts to $3,000 per resident. She argues that the debt was needed to fund improvements.

— Stevens and Young, redux. Palin has distanced herself from the state’s two most popular politicians, but both appeared at Palin fundraisers during her 2006 gubernatorial bid.

— The environment. As governor, Palin vetoed wind power and clean coal projects, including a 50-megawatt wind farm on Fire Island and a clean coal facility in Healy that had been mired in a dispute between local and state governments.

— And, maybe, censorship. According to the Frontiersman newspaper, Wasilla’s library director, Mary Ellen Emmons, said that Palin asked her outright if she “could live with censorship of library books.” Palin later dismissed the conversation as a “rhetorical” exercise.

Just a few suggestions for the media.