Day: October 3, 2008

FLASH!!!! House Passes The Bailout

Now we see just how good these yo-yos are.  The Bill has passed the House and now it goes to the Pres for his signature.  THe vote was 263 aye and 171 nay.  Now let us see just how the taxpayer profits from this.  Parts of it will create jobs, so they say….I say we will see.

If you are for the bill, then good luck…If you were against it. then we will be able to say “told you so”.  Which I love saying.  Wall Street is jerking off…Main Street is still split….Washington did everything they could to help Wall Street.  If you like pork, then this bill is for you.  I still want to know which of the guys tacked on 192 million for rum producers and 160 million for auto racing and wool research and those darn wooden arrows for kids.

There will also be a hearing to find out what happened, chaired by Waxman.  Does not say much for the committees in the Congress that oversee the economy.  Apparently they did not care or they were making lots of cash,  Time to change the chairs of these committees.

Personally, I think this was a mistake, but I will reserve condemnation until later.

Last Word On The Debate

I have been listening all day at what the MSM is saying about the debate…..most seem to think that Palin won the debate.  Why?  Because she did not embarrass herself or John McCain.  But I was expecting no different.  The media spent four long days making the viewer wanting to watch the debate.  By asking “which Palin will show up?” and such.  They set the stage for people wanting to see if the same person that did not have an answer to what newspapers she read was gonna be on stage last nite.  The media made damn sure that the expectations of Palin were low so that if she showed up and made it 90 minutes she could claim victory.

Personally do not care how many children a candidate has, all that tells me is that their reproductive system is functioning properly.  Do not care if they hunt, do not care if they ride a train.  What should be the most important thing is that they address the issues of the day, not some made up song and dance trying to appear to be more average than they are.

Of course, Palin looked good!    She was well scripted and vague and damn right silly.  She was trying to get a zinger in that would be in the news for the next couple of days, but failed miserably.  She wanted to talk about what she had been trained to speak on, that helped eliminate any gaff by her.  May I suggest that in future debates that there be a rule that one must answer the question put to them and not make up their own .

The media won this debate.  They got what they wanted and what they had worked so hard for in the past four days.  Palin looked good.  Now they can talk about all those that said she would fail, even though they are the ones that were saying it.

Yes Irene, it was a horrible debate…for one thing it was not a debate it was talking points.  For another, Palin was just absolutely cute, well in her own mind.  Biden was boring, at least for the first half of the session.  All in all, a waste of time if you were looking for anything beyond talking points.

It is time to find a brand new format, this one is just not working.

Is The Working Class Disappearing?

The idea of the ‘crisis of the working class subject’ takes the analysis one step further, saying in effect that class consciousness has declined to such a degree that the overwhelming majority of working class people have no consciousness of themselves as part of a class that has its own interests other than those of the ruling class; using Lukacs’ distinction the working class is a “class in itself” but no longer a “class for itself”.

The idea that the working class is no longer a “class for itself” is an exaggeration, but like most caricatures is based on aspects of reality that workers have to identify and integrate into their strategy and tactics. Consciousness, especially mass consciousness, is a dynamic factor that is subject to change and sometimes, in periods of crisis, is subject to abrupt shifts. So any attempt to capture and interpret mass working class consciousness is likely to be partial and one-sided. Before we get into the detail of that we have to say something about the changing structure of the working class.

John Major in 1996 argued that “we are all middle class now” – in other words working class living standards have risen to such a degree that the difference with middle class people have become blurred. However Cumbria University academic Phillip Bond has recently argued the precise opposite – the ‘middle classes’ are being forced into the working class.

“The facts are astounding. Contrary to the delusions of the free-market fundamentalists, the Reagan revolution has come at a great cost to the working and middle classes. In the US, the top one per cent have seen a 78 per cent increase in their share of national income since 1979 with the bottom 80 per cent of the population experiencing a 15 per cent fall.

Wage earners have coped with this structural shift by taking on unprecedented levels of debt, working more and asking their partners to join the workforce. Family life has suffered; children see less of their parents than at any time in the last 100 years and since nobody has any time, civic life has virtually vanished.

Class consciousness may have declined in Western countries, but a decline does not denote an absence. To truly become a ‘class for itself’ the working class, has not just to fight for its immediate interests but to fight for an historical alternative.

So my answer is–NO!  The working class is not disappearing, it is however, in a coma.  The current economic crisis may be the jolt needed to bring them out of the vegetative state.

Today In Labor History

03 October

The state militia is called in after 164 high school students in Kincaid, Ill. go on strike when the school board buys coal from the scab Peabody Coal Co. – 1932

The Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America is founded in Camden, N.J. It eventually merged with the International Association of Machinists, in 1988 – 1933

Pacific Greyhound Lines bus drivers in seven western states begin what is to become a three-week strike, eventually settling for a 10.5 percent raise – 1945

The United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) is formed as a self-governing union, an outgrowth of the CIO’s Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee. UPWA merged with the Meatcutters union in 1968, which in turn merged with the Retail Clerks in 1979, forming the United Food and Commerical Workers (UFCW) – 1943

Folk singer/songwriter Woody Guthrie (“This Land is Your Land”, “Union Maid” and hundreds of others) dies of Huntington’s disease in New York at the age of 55 – 1967

What Went Wrong?

First, “greed” and “corruption” are not the main or even significant characteristics of this crisis. Both are endemic in all class-divided systems and usually become more prevalent, more visible and less tolerable to the masses of people when a system is in general decline.

This crisis specifically is not the result of “irresponsible” people who went into debt to purchase or refinance homes (John McCain’s initial response), or even the “predatory lenders” who got them to do so. Debt means interest and interest is and has always been a major source of capitalist profit.

In an unregulated or deregulated system, creditors routinely manipulate people of low and moderate incomes, often desperate people, to take loans which they then sell to those higher on the financial food chain, creating a house of cards based on quick profits gained from such manipulation. No one is safe, including the investors in the institutions at the top of the financial food chain, those in the higher professional and managerial strata with income significantly higher than most of the people who think of themselves as “middle class.” This dynamic creates a political economy which, to paraphrase the 17th century Philosopher Thomas Hobbes, encourages a war of all against all.

Crises of this kind, that is, instability rooted in the anarchic drive of capital to find ever bigger markets, drive out competitors, commodify all goods, services, and social relations, is the heart of the capitalist system. Each crisis grows greater with capitalist consolidation and expansion.
This specific crisis is peculiar to the capitalist system as it has evolved into bank-controlled monopoly or finance capital. In recent decades this system, or state monopoly capitalism, has substantially done away with the regulatory reforms whose purpose was to save it from itself, devolving or deregulating itself into a speculative market jungle, but one where the state funds are still available to protect speculators.
Money is made not by creating new productive capacity in a national economy, but by financial piracy and loan sharking, manipulating stock prices, reducing dividends to general shareholders, merging companies, cutting jobs, cannibalizing pensions to repay the debts created such activities and walking away with super-profits.
The crisis of capital was more than an accident or a cycle. It was a structural crisis that would continue and eventually worsen even with these forms of positive state regulation. Certainly it took World War II to end the depression. It also took a greatly strengthened labor movement, which both helped to create New Deal political majorities and which New Deal policies then strengthened, to raise general U.S. living standards from the 1940s to the 1970s. Even with Cold War repression and general economic expansion producing rightward general trends in labor and government, the regulatory reforms remained in place and served to prevent any major financial crisis.
Markets like commodities have no life of their own. Economy is political and social, shaped by social interactions and relationships in political contexts. Nothing is pre-ordained. Commodities and “markets” do not control human beings, who must sacrifice to them, and “feel pain” when they are angry. Human beings create and control markets and commodities. How they do that depends on their class interests and the structures of political economic power in the system in which they live.

This radical shift to the private sector could become one of history’s largest transfers of ownership, control and wealth from public trust to private till.  But more is at stake.  The concept of democracy itself is being challenged by multinational corporations that see Americans not as citizens, but as customers, and government not as something of, by, and for the people, but as a market to be entered for profit.

And that Irene, is what went wrong.

Do Not Tell Lou Dobbs!

Or maybe we should.  Then he can take credit for the good news.

A report released Thursday by the Pew Hispanic Center indicates that fewer people are trying to enter the United States illegally and that there has been no growth over the last year in the number of illegal immigrants living here.

Experts said the loss of low-wage jobs in the American economy, combined with intensified enforcement at the border and at workplaces across the country, had caused those who might be considering an illegal border crossing to think twice before risking what has become an increasingly dangerous journey. The result has been a significant reversal after a decade of rapid growth in illegal immigration.

The Pew report found that illegal immigration to the United States had dropped to about 500,000 annually since 2005 from an average yearly rate of 800,000 from 2000 to 2004. Since 2000, the average number of legal immigrants entering the United States each year has remained steady at about 600,000 to 700,000.

The Pew study was not devised to explain why the inflows of illegal immigrants had declined. He speculated, however, that the trend was the result of a combination of factors, led primarily by a weakening economy and rising rates of unemployment in the construction and service industries, which rely heavily on immigrant labor.

Latest SAG UpDate

Finally some news of the SAG negotiations.

Film and television actors ratcheted up pressure on Hollywood’s major studios on Wednesday when negotiators, stalled in labor talks with producers, sought backing to put a strike authorization vote to guild members.

Contract negotiators for the Screen Actors Guild, which is the largest U.S. actors union with some 120,000 members, passed a resolution seeking the endorsement of SAG’s national board for guild members to vote on whether to call a work stoppage which, if one occurred, would be the second halt this year.

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents major studios, shot back with its own statement asking, “Is this really the time for anyone in the entertainment business to be talking about going on strike?”

But SAG said a strike authorization vote by members “is necessary to overcome the employers’ intransigence.”

A strike authorization ballot is not a vote on a work halt, but it does give union leaders leverage in the contract talks that stalled back in July after a final offer from the AMPTP.

The First And Only VP Debate

OK, how many here watched the to see if the babbling Palin would be the one to show up?

First, I would like to say that I wish I had watched this through the bottom of a shot glass.

This debate as with the last debate as with all these things are just flippin’ boring.  A new style or format is badly needed.  If any of them are popular it is because of something other than the content.  The drinking game may be the only way to make these things interesting.

Onto the analysis–If the plan was to “do no harm” then both candidates did a pretty good job.  Biden stuck to and regurgitated the Oba stand on the wealth of issues, Israel, diplomacy, healthcrare, on and on and on……Palin did not push the McCain position so well–no real specifics.

Palin was sort of “aw shucks” style with a few cute little folksy quips.  Biden was short and to the point–that was unusual for him–but in the long run he was teetering on boring.  Biden is full of….facts, Palin is full of–talking points, she was well schooled but none of it sounded like it was something she really believed.

As always, Americans need a winner and a loser, it is part of the DNA.  I scored it a sloght win of Biden.  Why?  He was on the Obama/Biden points, he defended Obama as well as himself well.  Palin, while well schooled did not seem, to me, to defend MCCain very well and that was her job for the evening and she failed.  The good news is she did not shoot anybody in the butt with glib answers.