Opinion Editorials, September  2007

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"Unrecognized" Palestinians 

By Stephen Lendman

ccun.org, September 12, 2007

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/ 

Israel's population today is about 7,150,000. About 5.4 million are Jews (76%) plus another 400,000 Jewish settlers in over 200 expanding settlements on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank that includes Palestinian East Jerusalem. They're the chosen ones afforded full rights and privileges under the laws of the Jewish state for Jews alone.

Palestinian Arabs are another story. Their population is around 5.3 million (plus six million or more in the Palestinian diaspora). Around 3.9 million live in occupied Gaza and the West Bank, and another 1.4 million are Jewish citizens of Israel (20% of the population), including about 260,000 classified as internally displaced. Palestinians get no rights afforded Jews even though those inside Israel are citizens of the Jewish state, have passports and IDs, and can vote in Knesset elections for what good it does them. They're subjected to constant abuse and neglect, are confined to 2% of the land plus 1% more for agricultural use, and are treated disdainfully as nonpersons.

Arab Israeli citizens live mainly in all-Arab towns and villages in three heartlands - the Galilee in the north; what's called the "Little Triangle" in the center that runs along the Israeli side of the Green Line separating Israel from the West Bank; and the Negev desert region in the country's south. These communities aren't geographically consolidated and are surrounded by established Jewish communities, hostile to Arab neighbors, and with Israel's full military might backing them. A minority of Palestinians also live uneasily in mixed Jewish-Arab cities like Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Jerusalem in the West Bank and others.

The Plight of Palestinian Nonpersons in "Unrecognized Villages"

The term is Orwellian in its worst sense. How can something real not officially exist? Around 150,000 or more (accurate numbers are hard to come by) Palestinian Arabs today live in over 100 so-called "unrecognized villages," mainly in the Galilee and the Negev desert. They're unrecognized because their inhabitants are considered internal refugees who were forced to flee their original homes during Israel's 1948 "War of Independence" and were prevented from returning when it ended.

These villages were delegitimized by Israel's 1965 Planning and Construction Law that established a regulatory framework and national plan for future development. It zoned land for residential, agriculture and industrial use, forbade unlicensed construction, banned it on agricultural land, and stipulated where Israeli Jews and Palestinians could live. That's how apartheid worked in South Africa.

Existing communities are circumscribed on a map with blue lines around them. Areas inside the lines can be developed. Those outside cannot. For Jewish communities, great latitude is allowed for future expansion, and new communities are added as a result. In contrast, Palestinian areas are severely constricted leaving no room for expansion. Their land was reclassified as agricultural meaning no new construction is allowed. This meant entire communities became "unrecognized" and all homes and buildings there declared illegal, even the 95% of them built before the 1965 law passed. They're subject to demolition and inhabitant displacement at the whim of Israeli officials. They want new land for Jews and freely take it from Arab owners, helpless to stop it.

All Israeli public land is administered by the Israel Land Authority (ILA) that has a legal obligation to treat all its citizens fairly. Instead and with impunity, it serves Jewish interests only using various methods to do it. It restricts and prohibits Palestinian land development by:

-- putting large Arab areas under its control through the creation of regional councils;

-- zoning restrictions mentioned above;

-- transferring public land adjacent to Arab communities to Jewish National Fund (JNF) ownership that mandates it's only for Jews;

-- connecting the cost of leasing land to military service that discriminates against Palestinians not required to serve and almost none do;

-- declaring national priority town areas for Jews only;

-- delaying, restricting and prohibiting local development in Arab communities;

-- ignoring Arab needs in regional and national plans;

-- allowing Palestinians little or no representation on national planning committees;

-- enforcing a policy of forced evictions and demolitions of buildings without appropriate permits. In "unrecognized villages," no permits are allowed Palestinians on their own land. Entire villages thus face prosecution in the courts and loss of their homes, land and possessions through a state-sponsored policy to remove them judicially.

It gets worse. No new Palestinian communities are allowed, and existing "unrecognized villages" are denied essential municipal services like clean drinking water, electricity, roads, transport, sanitation, education, healthcare, postal and telephone service, refuse removal and more because under the Planning and Construction Law they're illegal. The toll on their people is devastating:

-- clean water is unavailable almost everywhere unless people have access to well water,

-- the few available health services are inadequate,

-- many homes have no bathrooms, and no permits are allowed to build them,

-- only villages with private generators have electricity enough for lighting only,

-- no village is connected to the main road network,

-- some villages are fenced in prohibiting their residents from access to their traditional lands,

-- in the North, only one school remains open and children must travel 10 - 15 kilometers to attend another; as a result, achievement levels are low and dropout rates high.

It's worse still when home demolitions are ordered. It may stipulate Palestinians must do it themselves or be fined for contempt of court and face up to a year in prison. They may also have to cover the cost when Israeli bulldozers do it under a system of convoluted justice penalizing Palestinians twice over.

Discriminatory Israeli Law

Israel is a signatory to the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Its Preamble states "the obligation of (signatory) States under the Charter of the United Nations to promote universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and freedom." It then covers what states must observe in 53 Articles that stipulate the following:

-- "All people have the right of self-determination."

-- "Each state party....undertakes to respect and ensure to all individuals within its territory the rights in this Covenant, without distinction of any kind" for any reason.

-- "Every human being has the inherent right to life," to "be protected by law," and no activity may be undertaken to destroy any rights and freedom covered under this Covenant.

-- "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

-- "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention."

-- "Everyone....within the territory (shall) have the right to liberty of movement and freedom to chose his residence (and) to be free to leave any country (and not be) deprived of the right to enter (or return to) his own country."

-- "All persons shall be equal before the courts and tribunals."

-- "Everyone shall have the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law."

-- "All persons are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law."

-- In states with "ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities (those persons) shall not be denied the (same) right(s)....as the other members."

In Israel, for all intents and purposes, the ICCPR is a nonstarter. It applies to Jews alone, not to Arabs and other non-Jews. Israeli laws allow it by subjecting non-Jews, and specifically Arabs, to three types of discrimination:

-- legal direct discrimination guaranteeing Jews alone the right to immigrate and become citizens; it also gives various Jewish organizations in the country quasi-government status serving Jews only.

-- indirect discrimination through "neutral" laws and criteria applying principally to Palestinians; government preferences and benefits are predicated on prior military service most Palestinians don't perform; the categorization of the country into preferential zones for Jews provides them privileges and benefits denied Palestinians.

-- institutional discrimination through a legal framework facilitating a pattern of privileges afforded Jews only; they're allocated through budgets and resources showing preferential treatment for Jews and discrimination against Palestinians; Israeli courts enforce the bias by refusing to hear cases where Palestinians claim their rights have been denied;

-- even when courts hear cases and rule favorably, Palestinians get only crumbs; an example was in the early September Supreme Court decision that Israel reroute part of its illegal apartheid wall and return a small portion of stolen land to the people of Bil'in; a far greater issue was ignored by allowing the illegal Modiin Illit settlement on Bil'in land to remain intact; for anti-occupation Gush Shalom, the court decision message to settlers is do as you please, build fast and expect court approval retrospectively.

Israel professes to be a democracy. It is not by any reasonable standard. It defines itself as a Jewish state which contradicts its claimed democratic credentials. It treats Jews preferentially and entitles them to special consideration denied non-Jews who are discriminated against as second-class citizens and denied comparable rights.

Israel has no formal constitution and instead is governed by its Basic Laws that before 1992 guaranteed no basic rights. That year, the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom passed authorizing the Knesset to overturn laws contrary to the right to dignity, life, freedom, privacy, property and to leave and enter the country. The law states "There shall be no violation of the life, body or dignity of any person. All persons are entitled to protection" of these rights, and "There shall be no deprivation or restriction of the liberty of a person by imprisonment, arrest, extradition or otherwise."

For a nation committed to violence, the irony is particularly galling that a section of the Basic Law also deals with "The Right to Life and Limb in Israeli Law." It states "Israeli law has abolished the death penalty for murder (and corporal punishment)." It notes this penalty exists in principle but only under limited circumstances such as for treason during war and under the Law for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. It further notes Israel's 1998 Good Samaritan Law requires assistance be given in situations "of immediate and severe danger to another." Omitted from the Basic Law is the right to equality so all rights in it apply to Jews only.

Palestinian Arabs have none, yet can stand for public office in the Knesset. Some do, a few are elected but have no power beyond a public stage to state their views and be shouted down or ignored. They're also constrained by the 1992 Law of Political Parties and section 7A(1) of the Basic Law that prohibits candidates for office from denying "the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people." No candidate may challenge the fundamental Jewish character of the state or demand equal rights, privileges and justice under the law for Arabs and Jews. The essential Zionist identity is inviolable, the rule of law works for Jews alone, and Palestinians are denied all rights, equal treatment and justice under a legal system for Jews that discriminates against Arab Muslims. In South Africa it was called apartheid.

The Current Plight of Palestinian Israeli Citizens in the Negev

About half the 160,000 Bedouin Arabs today face forced displacement in the Negev. Why? Because they live in dozens "unrecognized villages" making their homes illegal under Israeli law. They face imprisonment and fines if they refuse to leave so their land can be cleared, homes demolished, and the area Judaised for a Negev development plan. It's described as "A Miracle in the Desert" that aims to populate the area with a half million new Jewish residents in the next decade. Plans are for 25 new communities and 100,000 homes on cleared Bedouin lands. For the past two years, Israel has been ethnically cleansing the Negev and erasing Bedouin villages to make it possible.

All Bedouin Arabs in "unrecognized villages" face what those living in Tawil Abu Jarwal endured in January. The entire village was destroyed when the Israeli military (IDF), a large police contingent and special task forces, a helicopter and bulldozers came in January 9. They demolished all 21 of its homes that consisted of shacks, brick rooms and tents. It followed a month earlier assault when 17 other homes were destroyed and their residents forcibly displaced. The people became homeless, and 63 of them in January were children. In late 2006, Israel's interior minister, Roni Bar-On, announced his intention to destroy all 42,000 "illegal structures" in the Negev in a bandit declaration of planned forced ethnic cleansing against people helpless to stop it.

It's happening in Al-Sadir, Tel-Arad, Amara-Tarabin and on June 25 to Bedouin families in the small villages of Um al-Hiran and Atir that are homes to about 1000 people. Hundreds of police and Israeli security forces destroyed over 20 of their homes to make way for a Jewish community called Hiran to replace them. People living in them lost everything including their possessions they had no chance to remove. Haaretz reported Atir villagers lived there for 51 years after being transferred to the area in 1956 under martial law. The article continued saying the Israeli Regional Council of "Unrecognized Villages" will move displaced families to a refugee camp in the center of Jerusalem (where Bedouins don't wish to live) "as part of the government's (forced ethnic cleansing) relocation project" to make the "desert bloom" for new Jewish only communities.

This is what all Negev Bedouin Arabs now face unless something can stop it. Large numbers of them attended an early August protest conference. It was held in solidarity with unaffected Palestinians who together called on Arab and other countries to support their right to remain in their homes and denounce Israel's racist apartheid laws.

Arab Knesset member, Talab Al Sane, spoke on their behalf. So did Hussein Al Rafay'a, head of the regional council of the "unrecognized villages," who said Israel wants Palestinians to be refugees in their own lands and has been forcing them into this status by a policy of home demolitions and continued displacement. Arabs once owned 5.5 million dunams of land (550,000 hectares) in the Negev, he said. They now own less than 200,000 (20,000 hectares) and are threatened with losing all of it. "We will resort to the Security Council, and the international court (in the Hague) to provide the residents and their lands with needed protection."

With an assured US veto in the Security Council and Israel's record of ignoring UN resolutions and World Court rulings against it, there's little chance for success and every likelihood legal Israeli Arab citizens will continue being displaced from their own land.

Advocacy for Palestinian Arabs in "Unrecognized Villages"

Israel denies all Palestinians their basic rights. However, those living in so-called "unrecognized villages" face a special threat - demolition of their homes, loss of their land and possessions, and frightening displacement that will make them refugees along with millions of others in their own land. Few organizations advocate on their behalf, but a group that does is called The Association of Forty.

It's a grassroots NGO in Israel committed to promoting social justice for Israeli Arabs and to gain official recognition for their "unrecognized villages." It was formed in December, 1988 when Arab and Jewish residents from several of the affected villages and other areas formed the Association. It now "represents the residents of the 'unrecognized villages' and their problems, and promotes support locally and internationally" on their behalf. It seeks official recognition for the villages, an improvement in their living conditions, and "full rights and equality for the Arab citizens of the state" of Israel.

Its work consists of initiating "the preparation and implementation of active projects within these villages such as paving roads, improving existing roads and helping the residents to achieve their rights, to connect their villages to the network of water, electricity and telephones, to establish and operate kindergartens and clinics for mother and child care, and to obtain educational non-curricular activities for the schoolchildren...." It publishes a monthly newspaper, Sawt Al-Qura, has photographic exhibitions, films and documentaries that reflect the plight of the villages. It also organizes study days, holds local and international conferences, and participates in other international ones.

The Palestinians Enduring Struggle for Freedom and Justice

Palestinians today live under horrendous conditions. By any standard, they're appalling, repressive and in violation of fundamental human rights principles under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stating:

-- "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights."

-- "Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms....in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind."

-- "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person."

-- "Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law."

-- "All are equal before the law and are entitled....to equal protection."

-- "Everyone has the right to own property (nor shall anyone) be arbitrarily (be) deprived of his property."

Israel offers these rights to Jews alone. It denies them to Palestinian Arab Muslims in violation of its own Basic Law professing "Fundamental human rights....founded upon recognition of the value of the human being, the sanctity of human life, and the principle that all persons are free." It continues stating the Basic Law of Israel "is to protect human dignity and liberty....(that) There shall be no violation of the property of a person....(that) All persons are entitled to protection of their life, body and dignity....(that) All government authorities are bound to respect the rights under this Basic Law."

The Basic Law also states Israel is a Jewish state, and the message is clear. All rights, benefits, privileges and protections are for Jews alone. All others are unwelcome, unwanted, unprotected, and unequal under the law. For them, justice unrecognized is justice denied and for Palestinians it's willful and with malice.

They face constant harassment, abuse and near daily assaults in the West Bank and even worse treatment under virtual imprisonment in Gaza. Their democratically elected government was ousted by a US-Israeli orchestrated coup in June to the shameless applause of Western leaders and silence from Arab ones. They're now isolated, surrounded and dangerously close to a humanitarian disaster affecting 1.4 million people.

It's no better for Israeli Palestinian citizens. They're nonpersons in their own land, are treated like intruders, given no rights, face constant harassment and mistreatment, get no justice, and face imminent loss of their homes, land, freedom and lives any time Israeli authorities wish to act against them. Yet they persist and endure as do their brethren in the Occupied Territories. They reach out to the world community, press their case, and a delegation from occupied Palestine stated it at the World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya in January.

It was a call to action and cry for help for "freedom, justice and (a) durable peace" and an end to six decades of repression. It called for a "global Campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel until it ends its apartheid-like regime of discrimination, occupation and colonization, and respects the right of return of Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons."

It called for "Consumer boycotts of Israeli products; boycott of Israeli academic, athletic and cultural events and institutions complicit in human rights abuses; divestment from Israeli companies (and) international companies involved in perpetuating injustice, and pressuring governments to impose sanctions on Israel...."

Silence is not an option, and people of conscience can help. Noted author and documentary filmmaker, John Pilger, believes "something is changing," and he saw it in a recent full page New York Times ad having a "distinct odour of panic." It called for boycotting Israel, and Pilger senses the "swell....is growing inexorably, as if an important marker has been passed (and it's) reminiscent of the boycotts that led to sanctions against apartheid South Africa.....once distant voices," notes Pilger, have "gone global," it caught Israel off guard and may signal change. But not easily or fast and may not happen at all unless global pressure becomes mass public outrage that this injustice no longer will be tolerated by people of conscience anywhere.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to the Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on TheMicroEffect.com Saturdays at noon US central time.

posted by Steve Lendman @ 4:16 AM

Tuesday, September 04, 2007 Middle East Madness

Middle East Madness - by Stephen Lendman

Administration rhetoric is heated and the dominant media keep trumpeting it. It signals war with Iran of the "shock and awe" kind - intensive, massive and maybe with nuclear weapons. Plans are one thing, action another, and how things play out, in fact, won't be known until the fullness of time that may not be long in coming. For now, waiting and guessing games continue, and one surmise is as good as another. The more threatening they are, the less likely they'll happen, or at least it can be hoped that's so.

It's not media critic, activist and distinguished professor emeritus Edward Herman's view. He writes "the situation now is even more menacing than we faced in 2002-2003 when the Bush gang was readying us for the invasion (and) occupation of Iraq. There is strong evidence that Bush-Cheney and company are about to attack Iran (and) the groundwork is being set with a flood of propaganda, helped by the media and Democrats." It may be "his last (crazed) hope for immortality" and possible attempt to revive "Republican strength through this classic maneuver of cornered-rat politicians."

Most frightening is that the Bush administration doesn't have enough of a bad thing and may want more of it. This time, however, the stakes are incalculable, the risks over the top, and the chance for success (from an American perspective) almost nil if post-WW II history is a good predictor. Distinguished historian Gabriel Kolko notes in all its conflicts since 1950, America never lost a battle and never won a war. It's a world class bumbler, never learns from its mistakes, and only succeeds, in Kolko's words, in making an "unstable world far more precarious" than if it left well enough alone.

Enter Iran with George Bush having a way with words about the Islamic Republic. They're hotting up and sending ominous signals. At the American Legion Reno convention August 28, Bush, with typical bluster, accused Iran of threatening the Middle East with a nuclear holocaust and said he authorized US military commanders in Iraq to "confront Tehran's murderous activities." He accused the Ahmadinejad government of supporting violent Iraqi forces he calls "radicals and extremists....Either the forces of extremism (or freedom) succeed. Either our enemies advance their interests in Iraq, or we advance" ours.

Earlier in the month, Bush threatened Iran stating: "When we catch you playing a non-constructive role, there will be a price to pay." He added recent US-Iranian meetings in Baghdad were "to send a message that there will be consequences for....people transporting, delivering EFPs (roadside bombs)....that kill Americans in Iraq."

This type language points to a widened Middle East war with Iran the target in mind and sanity of those planning it in question. Or maybe not? Questions remain in the run-up to the September 11 Iraq progress report General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will deliver to Congress. Packaging is everything, and the date chosen was planned to heighten public fear of the event on that day that may help explain what's going on - not attacking the Islamic Republic but shoring up flagging support for a war gone sour and worry later about more of it with Iran.

Or maybe not, according to a report called "Considering a war with Iran: A discussion paper on WMD in the Middle East." On August 28, the Raw Story web site published a summary of what two respected figures wrote. They are: British scholar and arms expert Dan Plesch, Director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London and Martin Butcher, former Director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) and former adviser to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament.

Their work compliments others saying war with Iran is coming, and things are too far along to stop it. Their analysis is detailed, elementary in their opinion, and very frightening. They conclude the Pentagon has plans for a "massive, multi-front, full-spectrum" shock and awe-type attack on Iran short of a ground invasion. In involves destroying enough of the country's military capacity and armed forces, nuclear energy sites, economic infrastructure and more to destabilize and oust its regime or reduce its status to "a weak or failed state." It continues saying:

-- 10,000 sites are targeted using bombers and long range missiles;

-- the US has enough ground, air and Marine forces in the region to devastate Iran on short notice;

-- covert US (and possibly UK) and armed popular resistance activities are already ongoing in the Iranian provinces of Azeri, Balujistan, Kurdistan and the country's major oil producing region of Khuzestan in the southwest bordering Iraq and the Persian Gulf.

-- nuclear weapons are deployed but unlikely to be used short of clear evidence Iran already has them, may in short order, or if its believed only these weapons can destroy its hardened Natanz nuclear facility;

-- the Bush administration has avoided publicizing its war preparations leading Plesch and Butcher to believe confrontation is more likely;

-- no information is available on possible Iranian WMD weapons, but the authors state its military "has missiles and probably some chemical capacity;" those aren't WMDs and many other nations also have them; at least eight of them (not Iran) have nuclear ones as well, several are prepared to use them, and the US states it as first-strike policy;

-- significant "risks and impediments" exist but eliminating Iran as a regional power and regime change are stated goals in the administration's National Security Strategy (updated in 2006);

-- except for the UK and Israel, no other nations are known to support US plans;

-- according to anonymous UK military sources, the Bush administration switched its main focus to Iran after March, 2003 even when its forces became bogged down in Iraq;

-- region-based Marines outside Iraq are deployed to protect oil tankers, shipping lanes in the Gulf, the Straits of Hormuz and be able to confront and destroy Iranian forces;

-- US Special Forces will continue covert search and destroy missions in Iran and efforts to incite internal uprisings against the Iranian government;

-- there's no assurance Iraqi Shias will support their Iranian allies; their leaders may act in their own best interests inside Iraq that may preclude backing Iran under US attack;

-- US 2008 presidential candidates are posturing to see who can be toughest on confronting a potential Iranian threat even though there is none; Europeans are puzzled that political expediency trumps reality especially concerning a wider Middle East war; the Bush administration may worry most about an "Iran of the regions" and may attack the Islamic Republic to avoid it;

-- if an attack on Iran succeeds (with long odds against it) and the US is better able assert "its global military dominance....then the risks to humanity....and to states of the Middle East are grave indeed."

Enter the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

IAEA's August 30 report on Iran was bad news for the Bush administration based on what its Director, Mohamed ElBaradei, told the press: "This is the first time Iran is ready to discuss all outstanding issues which triggered the crisis in confidence. It's a significant step. There are clear guidelines, so it's not, as some people are saying, an open-ended invitation to dallying with the agency or a ruse to prolong negotiations to avoid sanctions....I'm clear at this stage you need to give Iran a chance to prove its stated goodwill."

The Bush administration was dismissive to enraged in response with statements claiming the agreement is inadequate and Tehran must suspend all (its perfectly legal) nuclear enrichment, or else. State Department spokesman Tom Casey disdainfully said: "There is no partial credit here. Iran has refused to comply with its international obligations, and as a result of that the international community (meaning the US and other nations it can bully, bribe or threaten) is going to continue to ratchet up the pressure."

The message is clear and all known information confirms it. Washington wants regime change in Iran. The open question is by what means and when. It doesn't matter that Iran is a signatory to the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), is in full compliance with it, and in 1974 entered into an agreement with the IAEA "for the application of safeguards in connection with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons" to remain in force as long as Iran is so obligated under NPT provisions. The agreement stipulates all Iranian "source or special fissionable materials" and activities relating to them are subject to IAEA Safeguards "with a view to preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful purposes."

IAEA reported Iran's uranium enrichment program slowed, is operating well below capacity, and isn't producing nuclear fuel in significant amounts. As of August 19, it had 1968 centrifuges operating and 656 others in various stages of assembly or testing. IAEA verified this level of enrichment is well below what's needed to build a nuclear bomb. IAEA also said an outstanding issue related to plutonium experiments was satisfactorily resolved.

Iran and IAEA also announced a timetable to resolve by year end "all outstanding questions" regarding the implementation of Iran's Safeguards Agreement as well as other non or less relevant questions. They include: lab experiments involving minute amounts of plutonium and plutonium-210 and the source of the enriched uranium micro-contamination at a technical University in Tehran. Although not obligated to do so, Iran also agreed to resolve other minor issues as a show of good faith. As it's now proceeding, Iran is on track to verify total compliance with its Safeguard Agreement obligations by yearend. That should make it less vulnerable to a US attack, but don't bet on it. Bush administration officials are never short on reasons to justify its plans and facts on the ground won't deter them.

They've already denounced the IAEA report as an Iranian ploy to buy time and seems to imply IAEA partnered with Iran against Washington. ElBaradei's response to this was: "My responsibility is to look at the big picture. If I see a situation deteriorating (and) it could lead to war, I have to raise the alarm or give my advice." Earlier he said: "I have no brief other than to make sure we don't go into another war or that we go crazy into killing each other. You do not want to give (an) additional argument to the new (Bush administration) crazies who say 'let's go and bomb Iran.' "

Bush Administration Strategy: Usually Wrong but Never in Doubt

In the run-up to its March, 2003 attack on Iraq, the Bush administration proved it didn't lack tricks and schemes to justify war. Iran now faces the same threat with one provocative act from Washington after another. In an unprecedented and outrageous move against a sovereign state, the New York Times and Washington Post reported August 15 the administration plans to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (a major branch of its military) a "global terrorist" organization. It's based on unsubstantiated claims IRGC's elite Quds Force is arming, training and directing Shiite militias involved in attacking US Iraqi troops.

It contradicts Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, however, that Iran's role in the region is constructive. That comment runs counter to Bush claiming Iran as "the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, (is) active(ly) pursui(ng)....technology that could lead to nuclear weapons (and) We will confront this danger before it is too late."

Washington further insists IRGC is helping Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, interfering in various other ways in Iraq, and is aiding US-designated "terrorist" groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. It has no evidence, reports are CIA confirms it, but no matter. All that counts is Washington claims it, case closed. That's how schoolyard bullies run playgrounds and global godfathers do it everywhere.

In the long-running US-Iran saga, it remains to be seen how events will play out. Expect more heated rhetoric, and don't ignore Dick Cheney's influence. Barnett Rubin's recent comments about him from his Global Affairs blog are all over the internet. Cheney's already unofficially on record urging war on Iran and presently proposes bombing suspected Quds Force sites in Iraq. Earlier reports were he and other administration hard-liners considered air attacks against Quds Force headquarters near Tehran. If they come, it risks all-out war so, for now, they were tabled.

Barnett now says he has a message from a well-connected insider that "the Office of the Vice-President (plans) to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day" to be backed by hawkish think tanks and similar elements in the dominant media. It will involve a "heavy sustained assault on the airwaves" to win over public support that will be considered successful at "35 - 40 percent."

It's already begun on-air and on the pages of the lead and most influential proponent for war on Iraq in the Judith Miller days, The New York Times. It may now be playing the same role promoting war with Iran with one example showing up in Michael Slackman and Nazila Fathi's September 3 article: "On Two Fronts, One Nuclear, Iran Is Defiant." Its headlined tone (differing from explanatory comments buried below) contradicts IAEA evidence and claims "to reaffirm the country's refusal to back down to pressure from the United States over its nuclear program and its role in Iraq."

That came after an opening salvo that "Iran's leaders issued dual, defiant statements on Sunday (September 2)." It continued saying President Ahmadinejad claimed the nation had 3,000 active centrifuges to enrich uranium (IAEA inspections confirm 1968), and "the top ayatollah (Ali Khamenei) appoint(ed) a new Islamic Revolutionary Guards commander who once advocated military force against students." This is just a sampling of what's ahead from the Times and other dominant media elements. They're enlisted, like in 2002, to beat the drums of war and maybe get one for their efforts.

Then there's Congress on both sides of the aisle and presidential candidates hawkishly posturing for whatever they imagine it gains them. The public overwhelmingly opposes more war and wants the Iraq one ended. But those ideas are nowhere in sight on the campaign trail or Capitol Hill where the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007 will likely pass easily now that Congress is reconvened. It cleared the House Foreign Affairs Committee 37 to 1 June 28 and after passing both Houses will become effective January 1, 2008. It hardens the existing Iran Sanctions Act by closing loopholes in it with the intent to thwart all foreign investment in Iran and strangle the country economically.

It also prohibits nuclear cooperation between the US and any nation aiding Iran's commercial nuclear program and requests the White House designate Iran's IRGC a "terrorist" group and block assets of any nation, organization or group supporting it. As summer wanes, fall approaches and the administration touts progress in Iraq it claims will continue (with Bush's grandstanding six hour visit for a staged performance at Al Asad Air Base in Al Anbar province part of it), the prospect for more "progress" Iraqi-style awaits Iran. That's unless public pressure builds and/or cooler heads in Washington and other capitals denounce what some distinguished analysts believe may ignite WW III if it comes. That's incentive enough for us all to become engaged and stop this rush to madness in the Middle East not likely to be contained where it starts.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on TheMicroEffect.com Saturdays at noon US central time.

posted by Steve Lendman @ 4:40 AM

Friday, August 31, 2007 Labor Day Hypocrisy

Labor Day Hypocrisy - by Stephen Lendman

Labor Day is commemorated on the first Monday in September each year since the first one was celebrated in New York in 1882. Around the world outside the US, socialist and labor movements are observed on May 1 to recognize organized labor's social and economic achievements and the workers in them. This day gets scant attention in the US, but where it's prominent it's commonly to remember the Haymarket Riot of May 4, 1886 in Chicago. It followed the city's May 1 general strike for an eight hour day that led to violence breaking out on the 4th.

Labor Day became a national federal holiday when Congress passed legislation for it in June, 1894 at a time working people had few rights, management had the upper hand, only wanted to exploit them for profit, and got away with it. It took many painful years of organizing, taking to the streets, going on strike, holding boycotts, battling police and National Guard forces, and paying with their blood and lives before real gains were won. They got an eight hour day, a living wage, on-the-job benefits and the pinnacle of labor's triumph in the 1930s with the passage of the landmark Wagner Act establishing the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). It guaranteed labor the right to bargain collectively on equal terms with management for the first time ever.

All of it was won from the grassroots. Management gave nothing until forced to and neither did government. It always sides with business never yields a thing unless threatened with disruptive work stoppages or possible insurrection. All this is in a democracy that claims to be a government of the people, by the people and for the people, most of whom are ordinary working class ones.

Since a worried Congress passed the 1935 Wagner Act during The Great Depression, the state of organized labor declined, especially post-WW II. It accelerated precipitously during the Reagan years under an administration openly hostile to worker rights in its one-side support for management. It continued unabated, under Republican and Democrat administrations, and today stands at a multi-generational low.

Under George Bush conditions got much worse. Since coming into office in 2001, he sided with management openly on policies to strip workers of their right to organize and be able to bargain for a living wage and essential benefits. He hired anti-union officials, denied millions overtime pay, cut pay raises for 1.8 million federal workers claiming a "national emergency," and schemed to end Social Security as we know it by plotting (unsuccessfully so far) to let Wall Street sharks take it over.

Since labor's ascendency decades earlier, corporate America, in league with government, shamelessly denigrated unions and the rights of working people in them. In 1958, 34.7% of the work force was unionized, but now the figure is around 12% overall, and only 7.4% in the private sector - the lowest it's been in seven decades.

Even worse, most jobs are low-pay service sector ones because the nation's manufacturing base and many higher-paying positions in finance and technology have been offshored to low-wage developing nations. Workers there can be hired for a fraction of the pay scales here or as virtual serfs at below poverty wages as low as $2 a day or less and no benefits. They fill legions of sweatshop factory jobs in countries prohibiting unions and fair worker practice standards for Wal-Mart's "Always low prices" on the backs of ruthlessly exploited working people.

Nonetheless, on the first Monday each September, this nation "remembers" working Americans with a federally-mandated holiday in their "honor." Who's celebrating when it's disingenuously commemorated at a time worker rights are threatened, ignored, forgotten, and uncared about by heartless governments beholden to capital. They scorn working people who are no longer as deceived with meaningless bread and circus droppings at the expense of what they need most: good jobs at good pay, essential benefits, job security, and a government on their side doing what counts most - supporting their rights with worker-friendly legislation.

Workers are reminded every day that backing like that is off the table by governments shamelessly mocking their day. It's commemorated in name only by a nation beholden to capital, the corporate giants controlling it, and the best democracy their money can buy for them alone.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on TheMicroEffect.com Saturdays at noon US central time.

posted by Steve Lendman @ 4:22 AM

Wednesday, August 29, 2007 The War on Working Americans - Part II

The War on Working Americans - Part II - by Stephen Lendman

This article was written to assess the state of working America in the run-up to Labor Day, 2007. Organized labor today is severely weakened following decades of government and business duplicity to crush it. Part I reviewed the labor movement's rise in the 19th century and subsequent decline post-WW II and especially in the last three decades. Hope arose for some change in the Democrat-led 100th Congress. A weak effort emerged, but Senate Republicans killed it.

Organized labor is struggling to remain relevant and claw its way back. The enormous obstacles it faces are reviewed below as well as the condition of working Americans today in a globalized world affecting their lives and welfare heading "south" in the "land of opportunity" offering pathetically little.

The Loss of High-Paying Jobs from Outsourcing Under Globalized Market-Based Rules

World trade isn't new, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was its mid-20th century version after 23 founding nations signed it on October 30, 1947 in Geneva. Earlier in 1946, they drafted the International Trade Organization (ILO) that followed the creation of the IMF and International Bank for Reconstruction (now the World Bank) at Bretton Woods in 1944. Fifty-three nations then signed the GATT in Havana in March, 1948 as the founding international instrument governing world trade.

Subsequent rounds of negotiations followed through number eight launched in Punta del Este, Uruguay (the Uruguay Round) in 1986. It was signed in Marrakesh, Morocco in April, 1994 by most of the 123 participating countries as the updated version of the original 1947 GATT. It was then succeeded by the WTO January 1, 1995, one year to the day after NAFTA took effect as another worker rights legislative weapon of mass job destruction. DR-CAFTA followed next for the Central American countries signing on to it after El Salvador did first in March, 2006.

The WTO is well-seasoned with a corporate-friendly alphabet soup of Uruguay-negotiated agreements like the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), and others all designed for one purpose. It's to override member states' national sovereignty so they're now governed under a uniform set of global market trading rules favoring capital.

They're designed for the Global North, giant corporations and the rich at the expense of Global South developing nations, ordinary people everywhere, concern for environmental standards as well as sanity and public safety. Along with the IMF, World Bank, and other international lending agencies, this entire structure is big capital's neoliberal scheme to commoditize everything, including people and life itself in the human genome, to strip-mine the planet for profit.

Globalized trade has a long history, but the notion of a globalized marketplace came into its own in the 1980s. It was hailed as a western, mainly US, prescription for economic growth and prosperity lifting all boats. In fact, only yachts benefitted by design so the privileged could gain at the expense of all others preyed on.

The UN's International Labour Organization's (ILO) commission on the social dimensions of globalization is comprised of representatives from labor, government and business. In 2004, it issued a damning appraisal of world trade rules harm and the subsequent distress caused by unfair practices. It ranges from how TRIPS prevents affordable generic life-saving drugs being sold in developing countries to the shifting tax burden from business and the rich to workers, and much more.

In the US and West, the damage comes from exporting jobs and offshoring manufacturing and service operations to low-wage countries. It began in the late 1950s when modest numbers of them went to Canada to take advantage of the cost savings there. The pace then quickened in the 1960s and 1970s with the exodus of production jobs in autos, shoes, clothing, cheap electronics, and toys as well as routine service work like credit card receipt processing, airline reservations and basic software code writing.

What started as simple assembly and service work early on, then took off in the 1980s. It spread up and down the value chain and now embraces almost any type good or service not needing a home-based location such as retail clerks, plumbers, and carpenters; top-secret defense research, design and selected types of manufacturing; and certain types of specialized activities companies so far have kept at home. What's moving abroad, however, is big business getting bigger with Gartner Research estimating outsourcing generated $298.5 billion in 2003 global revenues.

The toll adds up to a global race to the bottom in a country where services now account for 84% of the economy. The once bedrock manufacturing portion is just 10% and falling as more good jobs in it are lost in an unending drain. Since the start of 2000 alone, about one in six factory jobs, over three million in total, have been affected. The sector is less than a third of its size 40 years ago and one-fourth the peak it hit during WW II.

It's been devastating for the nation's 130 million working people. No longer are unions strong and workers well-paid with assured good benefits like full health insurance coverage and pensions. Today, all types of financial services comprise the largest economic sector. Much of it is in trillions of dollars of high stakes speculation annually producing wads of cash for elite insiders (when things go as planned) and nothing for the welfare of most others and the good of the country.

Worst of all is the poor and declining quality of most service sector jobs measured by wages, benefits, job security and overall working conditions. It's because fewer good ones exist, unions are weak, and workers are at the mercy of employers indifferent to their plight. People are forced to work longer and harder for less just to stay even. Jobs in this sector are mostly concentrated in unskilled or low-skill areas of retail, health care and temporary services of all kinds. They pay lots less than full-time jobs, and have few or no benefits and little prospect for future improvement. This all happened by design to crush worker rights and commoditize them like all other production inputs.

The Department of Labor now projects job categories with the greatest future expected growth are cashiers; waiters and waitresses; other restaurant-related workers; janitors and cleaning personnel; retail clerks; and child care workers - all low-skill areas. Harvard degrees aren't required. Neither are high school ones.

Most in-demand higher-skilled jobs are projected to be for nurses, post-secondary teachers and sales representatives. There are still plenty of high-tech jobs in areas like network systems and data analysis and software engineering applications and systems. But watch out. They're being lost as well to low-wage countries in an unending domestic job drain affecting all types of work able to be done anywhere. It shows why domestic job growth is stagnant (despite the hype it isn't), eligible workers are dropping out of the work force, and the decline is sure to continue unless legislation stops it. None is in sight or imagined.

The loss of good well-paying jobs means fewer high-end and a range of low-skilled ones are all that remain for vast numbers of young people whose future looks bleak. Two research studies among others highlight the problem. One by University of California staffers in 2004 estimated up to 14 million American jobs are at risk to outsourcing, and another by Gartner Research predicts as many as 30% of high-tech jobs may be lost to low-wage countries by 2015. In addition, writing in the March/April, 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs on what he calls a "third Industrial Revolution," former Federal Reserve vice-chairman Alan Blinder estimated 28 - 42 million American service sector jobs are vulnerable and could be lost to foreign labor.

In low-wage countries, they're done at far less cost to US employers in their company-owned or subcontracted out operations. Blinder added starkly "We have so far barely seen the tip of the offshoring iceberg, the eventual dimensions of which may be staggering." Veteran financial analyst and writer Bob Chapman calls this the "rape of our economy" with enormous, wrenching and destructive consequences to the lives of millions of working people pursuing an illusory American dream.

It affects the skilled and unskilled alike for all types of jobs at risk. Chapman cites India as an example noting once only low-skill and routine programming jobs went there. Now, he says, it's "software aeronautical engineers, banking, insurance, investment banking and drug research" along with many other high-end jobs where companies can hire skilled professionals at a fifth the cost of US and European ones. So why wouldn't they, and more are in a growing trend.

All types of financial jobs at all levels are also being eliminated with financial institutions moving sizeable chunks of investment banking, research, trading operations, and other professional jobs abroad for big cost savings. Deloitte Touche estimates the industry will outsource 20% of its cost base by 2010 with more to come in a continuing job drain for big cost savings abroad. The ones lost will be in financial services and most other sectors in a trend looking like it won't end until the US is as low a wage nation as those now taking our jobs.

An Unprecedented Fall in Workers' Standard of Living

Over the past 30 years, most people have seen an unprecedented fall in their standard of living. Adjusted for inflation, the average American worker now earns less than in the mid-1970s with the minimum wage unchanged at $5.15 an hour since 1997 until the 110th Congress raised it in pathetically small steps to a wholly inadequate top level. Beginning July 24, it rose to $5.85, will go to $6.55 July 24, 2008 and to $7.25 July 24, 2009. Until the increase, minimum worker pay was at the lowest point relative to average wages since 1949. It got many states, comprising over half the population, to raise their own, but it's not enough.

A recent study released by the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) shows the dire state of things. It reported about one in three jobs in the country, about 47 million of them, pay low wages (defined as two-thirds the median wage or $11.11 per hour or less) with few or no benefits like health insurance, pensions or retirement accounts. It's barely enough for a family of two adults and two children to exceed the official understated poverty level of $20,444 in 2006 (or $9.83 an hour), and by this definition one in four workers (35 million) only earned poverty-level wages. But millions of others fall below it because official statistics way understate the problem, and workers earning around $11.11 an hour in cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other large ones can't get by if they have to support a family on it.

These growing millions now comprise a permanent underclass in a nation unwilling to admit what census data and private research now show. America is a rigid class society by design with extreme wealth at the top, a declining (maybe dying) middle class, and a growing underclass of low-paid workers and poor, many desperately so.

Following the inequalities of the 1920s, the nation experienced what economic historians Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo called "the Great Compression." Income gaps narrowed from the positive effects of New Deal and Great Society programs, strong unions, and an equitable tax system for individuals and corporations. From then to now, call it "the Great Expansion" of inequality with the gap between rich and most others the greatest it's been since the Gilded Age of the "robber barons" and getting worse.

Business Week magazine highlighted the trend in December, 2003 and accompanying research. It showed a decline in social mobility over the past few decades. The article was called "Waking Up from the American Dream - Meritocracy and Equal Opportunity Are Fading Fast." It noted the "Wal-Martization" of the country corporate America embraces to control labor costs by outsourcing jobs, de-unionizing, hiring temps and part-timers, and dismantling internal career ladders to boost profits at the expense of people. What's left is a proliferation of dead-end, low-wage jobs with public policy skewed to keep it that way. It needs stressing again. This didn't happen by chance. It was by design to destroy organized labor, and so far it's working.

In its most recent State of Working America - 2006/2007, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reports the official poverty level in 2004 stood at 12.7% or 37 million people, including 13 million children. It also showed for the first time ever, poverty in the country grew in the first three years of an economic recovery. In its study, EPI cited factors today they call "historically unique:"

-- increased globalized trade;

-- low union membership;

-- more low-skilled and high-skilled immigration; and

-- fewer favorable social norms guiding employer behavior to provide "adequate safety nets, pensions, and health care arrangements."

EPI noted the biggest challenge in today's "new economy" isn't (macro) growth but how benefits get distributed with such a high proportion skewed upward.

Left out entirely are the 16 million 2005 census figures show are on the very bottom living in "extreme" poverty that's defined as a family of four with an annual income of $9903 or less. Even more disturbing is how fast the poverty rate is increasing. The numbers of those worst off grew by 26% from 2000 - 2005 or 56% faster than for the total poverty population. Further, it happened mostly in years of economic expansion after the 2001 recession ended late that year. Notable also is the disturbing decline in higher-paying jobs leaving what's left for unskilled or low-skill workers. They pay pitiful wages and few, if any, benefits with crumbling social safety net protection left to pick up the slack.

The Oakland Institute policy think tank promotes social and economic justice. It recently reported its disturbing assessment of things saying 10% of the US population (around 30 million) "experiences hunger or is at risk of going hungry." A December, 2006 Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the UN University study also reported disturbing findings. They showed the richest 1% of adults owned 40% of global assets in 2000, and the richest 10% held 85% of them.

EPI reported the top 1% controls more than one-third of America's wealth, the bottom 80% has 15.3%, and the top 20% holds 84.7% of it. In contrast, the poorest 20% are in debt and owe more than they own. Globalization, automation, outsourcing, the shift from manufacturing to services, weak unions, deregulation, and other harmful economic factors all add to the problem.

Other data show an astonishing generational shift of well over $1 trillion of national wealth annually from 90 million US working class households to for-profit corporations and the richest 1% of the population. It created what economist Paul Krugman calls an unprecedented wealth disparity getting worse that shames the nation and is destroying the bedrock middle class without which democracy can't survive.

A similar conclusion also came from an analysis of income tax data by Professor Emmanuel Saez of the University of California-Berkeley and Professor Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics. Both men are noted for their work on income inequality. Their research found the top 1% of Americans in 2005 (about 3 million people) got their largest share of national income since 1928 - 21.8%, up from 19.8% a year ago or a 10% gain. Further, the top 10% received 48.5% of all reported income in 2005, also the highest level since 1928, up 2% from 2004, and one-third since the late 1970s.

The top one-tenth of 1% (about 300,000 people) did best of all, to no surprise. It got as much income in total as the bottom 150 million Americans combined. In addition, while total reported income rose almost 9% in 2005, average incomes for the bottom 90% of the population dropped .6% from the previous year.

Further, the Bush administration tax cuts for the wealthy greatly widened the income gap between rich and poor that was the whole idea behind them with a healthy piece of the benefits going to big corporations. In the 1950s, they contributed an average of 28% to federal revenues. That dropped to 21% in the 1960s and about 10% and falling since the 1980s. It's happening with the corporate tax rate at 35%, but few of the giants pay it. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), 94% of major corporations now pay less than 5% of their income in taxes, and corporate tax payments overall are at their lowest level in 60 years. In addition, many large companies pay no tax, and some end up with sizable rebates on top of huge corporate welfare subsidies under a system of socialism for big corporations and the rich and "free market" capitalism for the rest of us.

Saez and Piketty also reported their findings may be understated because the wealthy are more likely to file late tax returns so those who did weren't included in the study. Also, the IRS acknowledges it can account for only about 70% of business and investment income, most, of course, going to high-income earners. What's missing is $300 - $400 billion a year that adds up to trillions of untaxed dollars for the rich with the rest of us having to make up for it.

Recent US Commerce Department data is also disturbing. It shows the share of national income going to wages and salaries the lowest on record with their data going back to 1929. And the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) finds wage and salary growth in the current recovery growing at half the average rate for post-recessionary periods since the end of WW II while corporate profits in the current period grew over 50% more than the post-WW II average. It's the first time on record, corporate profits got a larger share of income growth in a recovery than wages and salaries - 46% to 34%.

The Growth and Shredding of Social Services in America

The golden age of social service benefits and worker protections emerged during The Great Depression, but they didn't begin then. An obligation was felt to help the needy as early as colonial times but without an organized effort to do it. Back then, local towns and villages did it through the poor relief system and almshouses. That began changing as the nation became less agrarian and more industrial when a number of states added services like cash allowances, mothers' pensions and by the mid-1920s old age assistance for the blind. Also, then and earlier, the Federal government and States began recognizing the need for public welfare social insurance financed through contributions guaranteeing protection for all rather than public assistance for the needy alone.

The first instance of it began in 1908 with a Federal workers' compensation law covering some government workers. States then added their own, and by 1929 all of them had it except four holdouts. Other efforts followed including State and local retirement plans and Federal benefits and services for veterans. Even the private sector added their own with token amounts of health care, pensions, life insurance and sick pay.

The Great Depression hard times of the 1930s changed everything creating a golden age for worker rights and benefits mentioned above. It followed the roaring 1920s era of anything goes corporate greed and loose regulation. It ushered in the Roosevelt administration's New Deal to aid the needy and reform the economy when 25% of the working public had no job in 1933. Those in power feared the worst knowing they had to act to save capitalism at a time of mass hostility to it they feared might erupt in a Russian-style 1917 revolution.

They did it then like never before or since starting by passing the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933. It was based on a "bubble up" theory of recovery to raise wages and thereby stimulate consumer purchasing power hoping it would lead to increased production and new investment. Despite good intentions, things go as planned. The Depression dragged on until the 1939 early WW II build-up began ending it. It packed greater economic punch than in earlier public sector spending. Those efforts were less for reform and more for what John Maynard Keynes recommended - upgrading infrastructure to revive durable goods production that, in turn, would revive the economy.

Still New Deal policies were remarkable in how mirror opposite they were to what's been enacted since 1980 and especially in the gilded age of George Bush. There were stimulative loans and grants to the States and landmark measures like the FDIC insuring bank deposits, the SEC regulating financial markets, and the NLRB through the Wagner Act explained above. Most important was a broad array of social programs. They included Federal emergency relief, public works and others under an alphabet soup of initiatives. They were way inadequate, but, nonetheless, tried to jump-start a moribund economy by providing substantial work and relief for the unemployed and needy.

The high water mark came in 1935 with the passage of the landmark Social Security Act. To this day, it's still the single most important piece of social legislation in our history. More than any other government program, it's the one most responsible for keeping vast numbers of elderly people out of poverty as well as providing other essential services and benefits for the needy and disabled. Other important social legislation came out as well including Unemployment Insurance with the Federal government partnered with States; the Railroad Retirement System; Public Housing; and Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Insurance.

Post-WW II there was lots more:

-- the National School Lunch Program (established in 1946);

-- Aid to the Permanently and Totally Disabled (APTD - in 1950) that later became Supplemental Security Income (SSI) in 1972;

-- Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI);

-- Medical Assistance for the Aged (preceding Medicare);

-- Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC - 1960);

--the Food Stamp Program (1964);

-- the School Breakfast Program (1966);

-- the WIC food assistance program (1972);

-- Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC - 1975);

-- Low Income Home Energy Assistance; and

-- Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF - 1997 successor to AFDC that was a huge step backwards explained below), among others.

Lyndon Johnson's Great Society earlier saw other landmark social legislation with the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. It guaranteed the elderly and indigent health care coverage at affordable, minimal or no cost when they needed it most.

That was the good news, but it changed with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Mark Weisbrot from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) called his administration's rollback of social services his "project of building a bridge to the 19th century in areas of social policy." It was that and more, but despite it, the dominant media shamelessly exalted him in life (see Mark Hertsgaard 1989 book "On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency") and practically deified him following his death on June 4, 2004. Left out of the eulogies was the true scorched earth legacy he left behind. His "war on international terrorism" was a devastating precursor to its updated version under the current administration. This article, however, only addresses his domestic damage on people least able to handle it.

The Reagan administration instituted a generational decline of worker rights and vital social programs. It allowed them to erode through higher payroll taxes, raising the retirement age, increasing Medicare premiums, and cutting Medicaid benefits for the poor. His years were characterized by large increases in military spending, big tax cuts for the rich and big business while slashing social benefits, union worker rights and running up huge deficits.

Discretionary domestic spending for most social programs, other than Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, was cut by one-third from 1981 - 1988. Programs for low income earners were hard hit with a 54% cut. Subsidized housing lost over 80%, housing assistance for the elderly 47%, and training and employment services over 68%. Reagan also reduced health and safety protections and weakened federal statutes guaranteeing workers the right to organize and bargain collectively.

Beneath his avuncular persona, Reagan was callous and indifferent to notions of equal justice, civil liberties and human need. He showed it in his support for the Christian Right's hate campaign against gays and lesbians in its early days of ascendency by refusing to address the AIDS problem he allowed to become a global epidemic.

HIV/AIDS first surfaced in the US among gay men in New York and California in 1981, Reagan's first year in office. It was called a "gay disease", and still is largely today by those who demean it. Most notably, extremist Christian Right leaders call it God's revenge against gay people they say are diseased sinners. When the Centers for Disease Control first reported the outbreak they, too, stigmatized the gay community as disease-carriers calling it GRID - gay-related immune deficiency.

Ronald Reagan went along with this notion refusing even to mention AIDS or do anything to address the problem in the first seven years in office. It caused enormous setbacks for HIV/AIDS research and appalling discrimination against the infected and gay community overall. In addition, there were no government-directed efforts at prevention or education. It thereby allowed a health problem that might have been contained to become an epidemic killing a half million people in the US alone and infecting an estimated one million others now living with the disease.

Worldwide the numbers are catastrophic with an estimated 25 million deaths and another 34 - 47 million people currently infected. In addition, millions more are added to the numbers each year who might have been helped if the Reagan administration had led a worldwide effort to contain what's now an out-of-control plague in parts of the world like sub-Saharan Africa. None of this was mentioned in Reagan's eulogy that should have been a denunciation for this and his other crimes against humanity George Bush is now doing his best to match or exceed.

The GHW Bush years followed the "Reagan Revolution." They were pathetically "kinder and gentler" domestically and made worse by a "new world order" imperial agenda harming working people everywhere that's standard practice now under all Presidents. It was the same under Bill Clinton who called himself a Democrat but never governed like one. His tenure included NAFTA and WTO responsible for mass and growing poverty, human misery and ecological destruction under one-way globalized trade rules providing cover for predatory capitalism.

So-called "welfare reform" in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) also was passed. Before it did, the needy got welfare payments through Aid to Families with Dependent Children or AFDC help. That changed in 1996 with time limits set so no one would be helped for more than five years under the new program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or TANF. Under it, the Federal government allots fixed block grants to the States they then administer at their discretion meaning the needy now get cheated by an uncaring state.

TANF also requires most recipients to participate in some kind of work or training to qualify for help. It doesn't matter that much of it goes to single mothers with young children needing them at home to provide care unavailable if the law prevents it. There's also no relief during recessions when jobs are lost and unskilled workers are least able to find one.

Clinton's main social initiative was his ill-conceived health care "reform." It was a complex mess based on the notion of "managed competition" and marketplace medicine instead of what's really needed in the form of a "single-payer" national health insurance program modeled on the kind in Western Europe, Canada or that all members of Congress and the administration get. They cover everyone, irrespective of ability to pay, and for US legislators and the executive it's gold-plated for life.

The Clinton plan (dubbed "Hillarycare") offered the public less choice for more affordability but wanted big insurers and HMOs to run it guaranteeing an illusion of full coverage the way it is now. Profits always trump need with insurers targeting young and healthy prospects while avoiding those posing the greatest risks.

The pace of social spending cuts accelerated dramatically under George Bush who'd eliminate them all given the choice, and he's working on it. He's against all of them to fund more tax cuts for the rich and provide multi-billions for his permanent state of war plus every imaginable weapon system the Pentagon and defense contractors want to wage them.

Bush's assault on organized labor was covered above, but he has lots more targets as well. Education is one of them in his appalling No Child Left Behind Act. It focuses on testing, not children. It's a boon to corporations supplying the materials but not to teachers who hate them. It forces them to teach "to the test" instead of educating students in course material that's the only way to run a classroom. Otherwise, kids don't learn, but that's part of the scheme as what kind of future do all but the well-off have to look forward to.

The Bush education agenda also promotes school vouchers disguising a broader goal to privatize public education and aid the white supremacist parochial part of it. Christian Right zealots support these schools because of their brand of hard right extremism dangerous to everyone outside the faithful. In most areas where vouchers are used, 80% of them are for these type schools. They renounce proved science like evolution and teach creationism instead, repackaged as "intelligent design."

They also preach an extremist Christian doctrine waging war on truth and democratic principles of a free and open society. They replace it with faith-based pseudoscience on everything from creation to HIV/AIDS to pregnancy prevention to global warming to militarism, and all the while denounce non-believers as heretics. These schools also threaten the survival of public education. They divert funding from them and violate the constitutional separation of church and state which is why the Bush administration supports them.

His administration also opposes college aid at a time tuitions and fees are more unaffordable than ever and rising much faster than inflation. An undergraduate year at Harvard now costs over $50,000 with all expenses included, but even lower-tuition state schools aren't affordable for many with the University of Illinois typical of most others. It's much cheaper than Harvard but still costs about $26,000 a year "base rate" that's unaffordable for low-income families without considerable financial aid. George Bush's solution - cut or freeze maximum allowable Pell Grants so even holding them steady means amounts offered don't keep up with rising costs and needy students lose out.

Bush's prescription for health care is no better at a time 47 million have no coverage, millions more are underinsured, and 80 million in the country have no coverage at some time during the year meaning they need to be judicious about when they're sick. Administration solutions are pathetic at best showing no intent to tackle a problem this huge. Suggested tax breaks are so inadequate, families with annual incomes under $10,000 would only save $23 in 2007. Those with higher incomes fare little better with the Bush plan only covering 9 million uninsured leaving 38 million others (and rising) with no help.

Then there's Bush's 2003 Kafkaesque Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act (MMA) scamming seniors. It took strong-arming threats and bribes in an all-night congressional session to get it passed. Its controversial Part D costs tens of billions annually, does little for most Medicare recipients, but provides huge benefits for "Big Pharma." It's able to charge top dollar because the administration won't negotiate lower prices the way the Veteran's Administration (VA) does getting big savings on all drugs it buys so veterans today only pay $8 a prescription. Two decades ago, they paid nothing.

More social wreckage gets into each new FY budget with billions of new cuts heaped on past ones. It's to free up more funds for the military, the rich, and corporate allies with the White House now audaciously proposing a further cut in corporate tax rates. It's part of a near-three decade agenda furthering the interests of the privileged at the expense of all others. In America today, social welfare and the greater good are nonstarters.

Earlier damage included -

-- killing OSHA workplace ergonomic rules more than 10 years in the making;

-- revoking grants to study workplace safety and health;

-- cutting funding for job training; and

-- more cuts for enforcement positions at OSHA and the Mine Safety and Health Administration that was a key reason for the early 2006 Sago and Alma mine deaths in West Virginia, the latest tragedy in Utah (not earthquake caused), and the death of 60 miners and counting since January, 2006.

-- Bush also proposed paying welfare recipients below-minimum wages;

-- denying Homeland Security employees protection for being a whisleblower;

-- blocking release of funds to monitor Ground Zero;

-- ignoring New York rescue workers' health;

-- cutting health care benefits for veterans and billions more cuts for Medicare and Medicaid;

-- raising interest rates on student college loans;

-- cutting the number of WIC-eligible participants;

-- reducing the number of adults eligible for food stamps and children qualifying for school meals;

-- cutting the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, child care, Head Start, affordable housing units for the elderly, home energy assistance (LIHEAP), Employment/Training Services, and education for the disadvantaged; and

-- stiffening work requirements for two million adults (mostly single mothers) on welfare.

His administration is also at fault for the Walter Reed Hospital scandal because medical facilities for military personnel and veterans across the country are understaffed, underfunded and allowed to deteriorate under federal or private contractor management. The result is inadequate or sub-standard care for the severest of problems, and the worst is yet to come with tens of billions of new planned cuts through FY 2011. Only Bush's plummeting approval rating may slow him down. But it doesn't stop his war machine from getting all the funds it wants and lots more for the asking in supplemental add-ons.

Looking Ahead - Tough Choices with No Easy Answers

The state of working America today is bleak with few signs of improving in a globalized world of corporate omnipotence and an indifferent to hostile government. It backs the rights of the privileged while scorning the social welfare needs of all others. Somehow, some way this must change, but wishing only works if backed by effective action. A look back suggests how.

Past labor successes were noted above. What worked before can again, and there's nothing complicated about it. Above all, new leaders are needed because too many today are uninspiring at best. They must be committed and dedicated to the rights and needs of ordinary working people and be willing to go to the wall for them. Effective mass organizing is needed to build unity and strength of numbers, educate workers on what they lost, and lead the fight to win them back. It means taking to the streets, storming the halls of Congress, going on strikes, holding boycotts, doing battle when necessary that in the past meant paying for it in blood and lives.

It worked when it won an eight hour day, a living wage keeping pace with inflation, essential benefits like health care coverage and pensions, and a more level playing field guaranteeing labor the right to bargain collectively on equal terms with management. Those gains weren't handed over because change never comes from the top down. They were fought for and won with lots of blood and sweat expended to get them. Why not again?

It's called democracy, equity and justice and one thing about them is clear. Achieving and keeping them requires a strong middle class of ordinary working people that, in turn, needs a vibrant labor movement as a foundation and springboard for progressive grassroots social change. Organized labor is in tatters today at barely over 7% of private sector workers (a 100 year low). It's on life support, needs a survival strategy, and is heading for the dustbin of history only major change can avoid. The way is through organized people out-muscling organized money. It happened before and can again.

This is the great class struggle of our time against long odds for success. The stakes though are huge, and our future as a democratic society depends on the outcome as former US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis explained in 1941 when he said "We can (either) have a democratic society or we can have great concentrated wealth in the hands of the few. We cannot have both." The concentration is greater than ever at a time American workers are in their weakest position in decades.

Bowed but not broken, they're in a war for survival with the rest of us, and their sovereign worker rights and ours in a free society are at stake. It's no time for timidity. It's a time for unity and pressing ahead. It happened once. Why not again, and the time to go for it is now with the rest of us pitching in to help for our own preservation and survival.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on The MicroEffect.com Saturdays at noon US central time.

posted by Steve Lendman @ 4:10 AM

Monday, August 27, 2007 The War on Working Americans - Part I

The War On Working Americans - Part I - Stephen Lendman

As Labor Day approaches, what better time to assess the state of working America. It's under assault and weakened by decades of eroding rights in the richest country in the world once regarded as a model democratic state. It's pure nonsense in a nation always dedicated to wealth and power, but don't try finding that discussed in the mainstream. Today, it's truer than ever making the struggle for equity and justice all the harder. That's what ordinary working people now face making beating those odds formidable at the least.

In a globalized world, the law of supply and demand is in play with lots more workers around everywhere than enough jobs for them. It keeps corporate costs low and profits high and growing with Business Week (BW) magazine reporting in its April 9 issue "the share of (US) national income going to corporate profits (compared to labor) is hovering around a 50 year high." BW then quoted Harvard economist Richard Freeman's research paper saying only "a global pandemic that kills millions of people" could cause a labor shortage and elevate worker bargaining power.

There's little in sight, and the result is a huge reserve army of unemployed or underemployed working people creating an inevitable race to the bottom in a corporatized marketplace. It harms workers everywhere, including in developed nations. They're outsourcing good jobs abroad to lower wage countries and pressuring workers to do more for less because they've got little bargaining power to fight back. More on this below.

Organized Labor in the US - Its Rise and Decline

Organized labor's rise began modestly and was fragile in the earliest days of the republic. It gained strength in good economic times, then lost it in downturns like the depression in 1873. By the 1880s, things were better as the nation underwent rapid industrialization. With it came rising prosperity and workers wanting a share of the benefits. They turned to unions for help with skilled artisans leading the way helping the unskilled as well in their efforts to organize.

New labor organizations arose, older ones expanded, and as they did, they grew more active and militant. It led to the "great uprising of labor" in 1886, including the landmark Chicago May 4 Haymarket Riot protesting police violence against strikers the previous day. Its impact was hugely negative at first. It forced organized labor to regroup and settle in for a long period of recovery.

This was at a time the incipient labor movement was over two million and rising beginning with its organizing efforts launching it in the 1870s. By the 1880s, it had enough strength to stage huge strikes for better pay and working conditions like the struggle for an eight hour day that had 80,000 strikers parading peacefully down Chicago's main Michigan Avenue on May 1, 1886 in what's now regarded as the first ever May Day Parade.

Workers were helped from community-based emerging independent political parties sensitive to their rights. That's unheard of today in an age where no effective political party stands for working people despite Democrats and Republicans saying they do. Workers are now on their own. They're left to struggle in a global marketplace with pathetically little help weak unions can provide.

Earlier in the 19th century, the first national union arose as workers began asserting their rights. It was called the National Labor Union (NLU), emerged after the Civil War, but was short-lived. Next came the Knights of Labor in 1869 with a mandate to protect all workers including women and blacks after 1883. They were represented by industry groups rather than trade and skill level that was common until then. Its goals were high but achievements few at a time of widespread worker repression in the 1880s. It led to its decline as a more resilient union emerged the result of disaffection with the Knights.

It was called the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and was founded by Samuel Gompers in 1886 to replace its predecessor, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions. The ill-fated American Railway Union (ARU) followed in 1893, the largest industrial union of its day for a time, and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) that at its peak in the 1920s had 100,000 members.

The Wobblies are still around 102 years after Big Bill Haywood, Eugene Debs and others founded the union in 1905 as a commitment to working people in their struggle with corporate employers. It's motto was "an injury to one is an injury to all," its goal was revolutionary, and it's still true to its root ideology today as stated in the current IWW Constitution:

"The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people.....Between (workers and employers) a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the (unfair) wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth....It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism....By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old."

That philosophy under dedicated men like Haywood, Debs and others set the Wobblies on a collision course with government and big business that tried to crush it. During WW I in 1917, it was vicious under Woodrow Wilson's Justice Department (DOJ). It used the repressive Espionage and Sedition Acts to raid and disrupt union meeting halls across the country. It's the same tactic used today against Latino immigrants and Muslims in the concocted "war on terrorism" and the one against undocumented workers.

In 1917 and later, Wilson's DOJ acted much the same way arresting 165 Wobbly leaders on the grounds they hindered the war effort by using their First Amendment right to speak out against it. They were tried near war's end in 1918, all convicted, and given long prison terms under a Democrat President thought of reverentially today. Bill Haywood was luckier. After conviction, he was released on bail and fled to the Soviet Union where he remained until his death, but the IWW was never again the same.

They were hammered again from 1918 - 21 during the infamous Palmer Raids under Wilson Attorney General Mitchell Palmer. He targeted radical left wing groups like the Wobblies at the time of the first "Red Scare" after the 1917 Russian Revolution. It launched J. Edgar Hoover's career in the DOJ Bureau of Investigation's new General Intelligence Division that later became the FBI in 1935. The IWW is still around, still dedicated to its founding principles, but it's worldwide membership is only around 2000, mostly in the US.

The AFL fared much better. It became the largest union in the first half of the 20th century even after the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1935 with which it merged in 1955. Today, it's still the country's largest federation of unions. Its web site claims a membership of around 10 million workers, even after the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Teamsters, UNITE-HERE and United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) broke away from the federation in 2005. The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBC) did as well in 2001, and the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA) left in 2006. They formed a new Change to Win federation in September, 2005 representing about 5.5 million workers. It likely left AFL-CIO with fewer members than it claims with its true size closer to 8 million or less.

AFL-CIO's state is a metaphor for the times. Organized labor today is weak in the face of declining membership and corporate dominance with workers losing out in a globalized world. It's fall has been long-term and painful with worker rights hammered since the 1980s. It's a long way today from when the landmark Wagner Act passed in 1935 under Franklin Roosevelt. It established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) guaranteeing labor the right to bargain collectively on equal terms with management for the first time ever, but it wasn't an act of kindness.

It came at the height of The Great Depression when those in power feared the worst. FDR and Congress acted to save capitalism at a time they feared mass worker hostility might boil over like it did in 1917 Soviet Russia. Like all other worker victories, this one came through struggle. It was from organizing, pressing their demands, taking to the streets, going on strike, holding boycotts, battling police and National Guard forces supporting management against working people, paying with their blood and lives and finally achieving results. They got an eight-hour day, a living wage, and on-the-job benefits because strong unions went head-to-head with management and won. It's worlds different now with corporate giants in bed with friendly governments, and Democrats and Republicans vying to see which party can be more accommodative.

From the 19th century forward, it was never easy for labor from the height of the movement's strength to the present. Unions were always disadvantaged even at a time of reasonable labor-management harmony. The passage of the harsh 1947 Taft-Hartley Labor-Management Relations Act showed how tenuous their position always was. Harry Truman vetoed the bill but was overridden. He called it a "slave labor bill" and then hypocritically used it 10 times, the most ever by any President to this day. The law throttles organized labor by giving the President power to stop strikes by court-ordered injunction for 80 days. He can claim the national interest, some other one, or none at all that's always the same one - to help corporate management deny workers their rights.

Taft-Hartley is still the law and was last invoked by GW Bush in the summer of 2002 against 10,500 west coast dock workers "locked out" (not striking) by the Pacific Maritime Association representing shipping companies and terminal operators.

Earlier in 2001 and new in office, Bush showed his anti-labor stripes straightaway. He invoked the Railway Labor Act blocking a threatened strike by 10,000 mechanics, cleaners and custodians at Northwest Airlines set for March 12. He acted again against United Airlines' 15,000 mechanics in December. He also took management's side in August, 2006 against Northwest's 8700 flight attendants' planned job action against the bankrupt airline's unfair demands for huge wage cuts and increases in hours worked. Bill Clinton was just as unfriendly invoking the Railway Labor Act against American Airline's pilots and to prevent railroad strikes 13 times.

Laws like these, and Presidents' willingness to use them, crushed the spirit and letter of the Wagner Act. They greatly weakened or revoked hard won provisions, and as a consequence, diminished union clout. Taft-Hartley allows stiff penalties for union violations but minimal ones for companies. It enacted a list of "unfair (union) labor practices" prohibiting jurisdictional strikes (relating to worker job assignments), secondary boycotts (against firms doing business with others being struck), wildcat strikes, sit-downs, slow-downs, mass-picketing against scabs brought it, closed shops (in which employees must join unions), union contributions to federal political campaigns, and more while legalizing employer interventions aimed at preventing unionizing drives.

It began a process of gradual erosion of union power to bargain collectively. That's their weapon now weakened because of devious employer tactics. They can illegally fire union sympathizers (thousands each year) and get away with only minor wrist slap fines after years of expensive litigation to prove wrongdoing. Further, employers can fire workers for any lawful reason like incompetence or no stated reason at all. Even the right to strike is neutralized with employers able to hire replacements or threaten to ship jobs offshore. With government on their side, they're empowered to fire union workers and legally replace them with lower-paid scabs or Latino immigrants.

The Reagan administration marked the beginning of the current trend in its first year. He was contemptuous of organized labor while hypocritically saying "I support unions and the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively." He showed it in August, 1981 by firing 11,000 striking PATCO air traffic controllers, jailing its leaders, fining the union millions of dollars, and effectively busting it in service to the monied interests backing him. It was a shot across organized labor's bow and a clear message to business and industry of what to expect from a friendly Republican President. Nothing changed since under Democrat or Republican administrations with workers unable to match the power and influence of capital. The toll ever since has been devastating.

Union membership has been in steady decline from its post-war high of 34.7% in the 1950s. It held fairly constant through most of the 1970s at around 24% where it stood in 1979. At the end of the Reagan era, it was down to 16.8% and is currently around 12% overall with about 36% of government workers unionized but only 7.4% of them in the private sector. It's the lowest it's been since the beginning of the mass unionization struggles of the 1930s and in the private sector in over 100 years. It's because of Democrat and Republican antipathy to organized labor and corporate threats to close plants and outsource jobs. It's forced workers to take pay cuts and fewer benefits that are dropping to where they'll be none, and they'll be on their own to live or die by market-based rules rigged against them.

George Bush supports corporate interests aiming to crush unions so they have free reign to treat workers any way they wish or go find other work. In the wake of 9/11, he took on public sector unions straightaway. He denied 170,000 new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees their civil service protection and right to bargain collectively. Those affected included Transportation Security Administration (TSA) newly federalized airport screeners. They lost their right to unionize in the name of national security that could as easily been for any reason or none at all. But this was just for starters. Bush also wants federal positions contracted out to private companies. That jeopardizes 850,000 federal employees likely to get lower pay, fewer benefits, loss of other unionized rights, and many of them ending up out of work.

Overall, organized workers always get higher wages and greater benefits, which explains why strong unions are vital. The evidence comes from David Sirota in his his 2006 book, "Hostile Takeover." He showed:

-- 89% of union members have employer-paid health care coverage compared to 67% for nonunion members; as fewer companies now provide it, those numbers are lower; in addition, companies continue making employees pay a greater share of the cost of coverage;

-- employers pay a larger share of union member health care premiums than nonunion members get (but the percentage is falling);

-- over two-thirds of union members have short-term disability insurance compared to about one-third for nonunion workers;

-- union members get about 26% more vacation time and 14% more total paid leave than nonunion workers; and

-- Economic Policy Institute (EPI) data show union influence gets high school graduating members about 8.8% more pay than nonunion workers.

Greater worker clout under unions is why management wants to destroy them. It's to deny working people their right to organize, earn more and get greater benefits corporations don't want to provide. It's happening in the gilded age of George Bush, and a recent example came in a ruling late last year when his administration's NLRB ruled 3-2 against registered nurses' right to union membership if they perform certain minimal supervisory duties.

It was in a case where United Auto Workers (UAW) were trying to organize nurses at a Taylor, Michigan-based hospital. US labor law doesn't guarantee supervisors the right to organize making the NLRB ruling hugely important for up to eight million workers in other trades. It may potentially deny their right henceforth to qualify for union representation if employers want to use this ruling to add enough supervisory responsibilities to employees' job descriptions to throw them into a union-exempt category.

Bush further ended the Clinton administration's regulation requiring federal agencies vet companies' compliance with the law when awarding federal contracts. He also issued harsh anti-union, anti-worker executive orders (EOs) as well as a tsunami of other repressive ones. He barred automatic union-recognition agreements on federally funded construction projects, abolished labor-management cooperation partnerships aimed at improving productivity and working conditions, and mandated contractors henceforth must inform employees they no longer had to join a union without having to tell them it's their legal right.

Just the way Ronald Reagan busted PATCO, George Bush tipped his hand straightaway in office. He's a company man and union-hater, so henceforth it's been open season on workers and their rights under his administration. His policies range from:

-- a one-sided support for management;

-- stripping workers of their right to unionize;

-- cutting pay raises for 1.8 million federal workers on the pretext of a "national emergency;"

-- denying millions overtime pay;

-- appointing anti-union officials;

-- scheming to weaken (and then end) retirement security by replacing Social Security with risky private accounts managed by Wall Street sharks that so far has gotten nowhere because of public opposition to it;

-- weakening environmental regulations and protections; and more in an endless war on workers in service to corporate interests that elected and own him.

The failed "immigration reform" legislation was, in fact, a Trojan Horse. It's down but not dead and remains a thinly veiled scheme targeting all workers. It's a dagger aimed straight at organized labor in a plan to create a workplace of unempowered serfs, a "bracero America," including US citizens having few or no benefits and no security. If this legislation ever becomes law, workers will be at the mercy of business to hire and fire them at will.

Another anti-labor tool is the repressive Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arm. It conducts paramilitary border and workplace assaults on undocumented Latino workers as part of a larger agenda to disenfranchise all working Americans and deny them the right to bargain collectively with management through unions. By targeting undocumented workers first, the eventual aim is to create a large exploitable disposable reserve army worker pool; strip all workers of their rights; empower employers to offer low wage, low or no benefit jobs; and pretty much be able to operate as they please.

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) - Some Hope for Worker Rights Now Denied

EFCA was introduced to "amend the (landmark pro-labor) National Labor Relations Act (passed in 1935)" that's been systematically dismembered piece by piece ever since. Its aim was to "establish an efficient system to enable employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to provide for mandatory injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts, and for other purposes." On June 26, Senate Republicans blocked labor's top legislative priority by preventing the bill's supporters from getting the 60 votes needed to end debate and bring it to a vote.

For now the bill is dead, but if it ever passes, it will change federal law on worker rights. They'll henceforth be able to organize by signing cards authorizing union representation, penalize employers violating worker rights to do it, and establish new mediation and arbitration processes for first-contract disputes. It might also end or slow down the firing, demoting, laying off, or suspending without pay of over 20,000 US workers annually because of their union activities.

The bill was introduced in the 108th and 109th Republican-controlled Congresses but failed to pass. It was introduced again in the 110th Congress on February 5, 2007, got 233 co-sponsors by month's end, and passed in the House March 1, 2007 for the first time. On March 2, it was placed on the Senate calendar where leading Democrats expected it to pass despite Republican opposition. They were wrong.

That's bad news for a bill that would have won back some worker rights after decades of losing them. It's backed by over five dozen organizations including the NAACP, United for a Fair Economy, Jobs with Justice and numerous other civil, human and labor rights groups. The US Chamber of Commerce and other organizations joined with big business against the bill. They oppose all worker rights, and their lobbying paid off. They claimed the bill allowed them the right to organize before employers can explain why doing it is not in their best interest. Ignored is that union workers always have more rights that include higher pay, greater benefits and added job security. That's bad for business and why corporate giants fought to kill the bill.

They have a powerful ally in the White House making their job a lot easier. In a mid-February speech before a business lobby group, Dick Cheney announced George Bush would veto EFCA legislation if it passed on his watch. He assured those attending this administration will keep its anti-labor record unblemished on something polls show 77% of working Americans want but won't get as long as George Bush is in office.

Global Unionization - Another Potential Ray of Hope

In April editions of The American Prospect, the Washington Post and ZNet, Harold Meyerson wrote about "a radical new direction for the globalized economy" in his article titled "Unions Gone Global." He noted the United Steel Workers (USW) here are negotiating a merger with two of Britain's largest unions to create "the first genuinely multinational trade union" that with about three million members will be the world's largest. Meyerson reported the goal, as USW's Gerald Fernandez put it, is "to fight financial globalization (by) fight(ing) it globally....by building a global union (in this case a) federation of metal, mining, and general workers."

The partners in this one stated a commitment to "fund human rights and union rights in parts of Africa and Colombia" where more unionists are killed annually than anywhere else, and the country gets billions in US aid each year to help out. They also plan a global effort "to protect employees' retirement benefits" from corporate predators wanting to end them. For now, there's no way to know if the idea behind the merger will spread, whether workers here and abroad will benefit from it, or even if the USW and their British partners will follow through effectively on their committed aims to help win back what unionized workers have been losing for years.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour Saturdays on TheMicroEffect.com at noon US central time.

posted by Steve Lendman @ 4:18 AM

Friday, August 24, 2007 Market Efficiency Hokum

Market Efficiency Hokum - by Stephen Lendman

You know the story triumphantly heard in the West. Markets work best when governments let them operate freely - unconstrained by rules, regulations and taxes about which noted economist Milton Friedman once said in an interview he was "in favor of cutting....under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible (because) the big problem is not taxes (but government) spending.

Friedman is no longer with us, but by his reasoning, the solution to curbing it is "to hold down the amount of income (government) has (and presto) the way to do it is to cut taxes." He seemed to forget about borrowing and the Federal Reserve's ability to print limitless amounts of ready cash the way it's been doing for years and during the current credit squeeze. Friedman further added in the same interchange "If the White House were under (GW) Bush, and House and Senate....under the Democrats, I do not believe there would be much spending."

Clearly, either the Nobel laureate wasn't paying attention or age was taking its toll late in his life. Since 2001, Democrats embraced tax cutting and overspending policies as enthusiastically as Republicans with both parties directing the benefits hugely to the right pockets. They're on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms where recipients know "free markets" work great with a little creative resource directing from Washington.

Financial Market Efficiency

In investment finance, Eugene Fama is generally regarded as the father of efficient market theory, also known as the "efficient market hypothesis (EMH)." He wrote his 1964 doctoral dissertation on it titled "The Behavior of Stock Market Prices" in which he concluded stock (and by implication other financial market) price movements are unpredictable and follow a "random walk" reflecting all available information known at the time. Thus, no one, in theory, has an advantage over another as everyone has equal access to everything publicly known (aside from "insiders" with a huge advantage). That includes rumored and actual financial, economic, political, social and all other information, all of which is reflected in asset prices at any given time.

Those buying this theory believe Milton Friedman knew best. He became the modern-day godfather of "free market" capitalism and leading exponent that markets work efficiently and best when unfettered by government intervention that generally gets things wrong. In 1958, Friedman explained it in his famous "I, Pencil" essay. In it, he illustrated the notion of Adam Smith's invisible hand and conservative economist Friedrich Hayek's teachings on the importance of "dispersed knowledge" and how the price system communicates information to "make (people) do desirable things without anyone having to tell them what to do."

Friedman's "pencil" story explained "a complex combination of miracles: a tree, zinc, copper, graphite, and so on." Added to these ingredients from nature is "an even more extraordinary miracle: the configuration of creative human energies - millions of tiny know-hows configuring naturally and spontaneously (responding to) human necessity and desire and in the absence of any human master-minding." None of them working independently was trying to make a pencil. No one directed them from a central office. They didn't know each other, lived in many countries, spoke different languages, practiced different religions, and may have even hated each other. Yet, their unrelated contributions produced a pencil.

By Friedman's reasoning, this could never happen through central planning. It sounds good in theory, but how does it jibe with reality. The Soviets split the atom, were first in space ahead of the US with Sputnik 1, and developed many advanced technologies even though they were outclassed an