Posted by
Jeremy Wells on September 6, 2010
This article is cross-posted from the World Socialist Web Site Perspectives series.
September 1, 2010
Recent weeks have seen a collapse in US home sales, a weakening of manufacturing activity, an upward trend in jobless benefit claims and, on Friday, a downward revision of second-quarter gross domestic product growth from 2.4 percent to 1.6 percent.
The latter figure is far below the rate of economic expansion needed to bring down unemployment, now at its highest levels since the Great Depression. On the contrary, the sharp slowdown in economic growth heralds a further rise in the jobless rate.
Month after month of mass unemployment, compounded by sweeping cuts in social services at the state and local level and wage cutting in both the private and public sectors, have already produced a social disaster for tens of millions of Americans. One million families are losing their homes to foreclosure every year. Hunger and homelessness are on the rise.
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Posted by
Jeremy Wells on September 1, 2010
Blog administrator’s note: I have taken the liberty of reformatting Jerry’s post for clarity.
My comment below is an edited version of one first posted on the AFL-CIO NOW blog, to the article Trumka: Palin’s Rhetoric Is Dangerous, Poisonous by James Parks, Aug 26, 2010.
The radical right, massively funded by the most reactionary corporatist elements of the ruling class, dominating the corporate owned mass media, have created a “class-war” terrorist media campaign to drown out any expression or understanding of the many crises now impoverishing millions of working people. The AFL-CIO is feeding off this terrorist media campaign, to frighten working people to again support the Democrats and Obama yet again in November 2010. There is, we think, a small but growing element within the organized labor movement that understands the need to break away from both Democratic and Republican parties. to form a party the struggles for the economic survival needs of working people.
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Posted by
Jeremy Wells on August 31, 2010
This article is cross-posted from the World Socialist Website.
Jesse Jackson, UAW hustle votes for Democrats at Detroit “jobs” march
By Shannon Jones
31 August 2010
A section of the march
The “Rebuild America: Jobs, Justice and Peace” march held in Detroit August 28, had nothing to do with rebuilding the devastated city, creating jobs, or achieving peace.
The event, called by UAW President Bob King and the Reverend Jesse Jackson, was little more than a campaign rally for the Democratic Party, which has overseen wholesale job and wage cuts in Detroit and nationally while escalating military violence around the world.
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Posted by
Jeremy Wells on August 27, 2010
This article is cross-posted from the World Socialist Web Site.
US primaries: Millionaire candidates, right-wing politics and few voters
By Bill Van Auken
26 August 2010
Democratic and Republican primaries held in five states on Tuesday were dominated by multi-millionaire candidates, right-wing politics and the participation of scant numbers of voters.
The primaries took place in five states—Arizona, Florida, Alaska, Vermont and Oklahoma—and are among the last to be staged before November’s midterm elections. They failed to produce the sweeping anti-incumbent movement widely predicted in the media and left the outcome of the upcoming general election very much in doubt. The results reconfirmed only one certainty: the politics of both big business parties are shifting rapidly to the right.
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Posted by
Jeremy Wells on August 24, 2010
This article is cross-posted from the World Socialist Web Site.
Indianapolis auto workers drive UAW executives out of meeting
By Andre Damon
17 August 2010
Workers at a General Motors stamping plant in Indianapolis, Indiana chased United Auto Workers executives out of a union meeting Sunday, after the UAW demanded workers accept a contract that would cut their wages in half.
As soon as three UAW International representatives took the podium, they were met with boos and shouts of opposition from many of the 631 workers currently employed at the plant. The officials, attempting to speak at the only informational meeting on the proposed contract changes, were forced out within minutes of taking the floor.
The incident once again exposes the immense class divide between workers and union officials, who are working actively with the auto companies to drive down wages and eliminate benefits.
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Posted by
Jeremy Wells on August 20, 2010
This link to the original World Socialist Web Site Perspective article.
WSWS Perspective
Obama’s “Mission Accomplished”
20 August 2010
The White House and the Pentagon, assisted by a servile media, have hyped Thursday’s exit of a single Stryker brigade from Iraq as the end of the “combat mission” in that country, echoing the ill-fated claim made by George W. Bush seven years ago.
Obama is more skillful in packaging false propaganda than Bush, and no doubt has learned something from the glaring mistakes of his predecessor. Bush landed on the deck of the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003 to proclaim—under a banner reading “Mission Accomplished”—that “major combat operations” in Iraq were over. A captive audience of naval enlisted personnel was assembled on deck as cheering extras.
Obama wisely did not fly to Kuwait to deliver a similar address from atop an armored vehicle. He merely issued a statement from the White House, while leaving the heavy lifting to the television networks and their “embedded” reporters, who accompanied the brigade across the border into Kuwait and repeated the propaganda line fashioned by the administration and the military brass. More…