Richard Mellor

AFSCME Local 444, retired

Oakland CA

http://www.weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com

8-3-09

“You never want to let a serious crisis to go to waste,” President Obama's White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, said after the election. What he meant by that he said was that a crisis offers, “…an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before”

The terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 offered a golden opportunity for US imperialism to extend its reach in to the global marketplace, and to rid itself of unreliable former allies like Saddam Hussein. The attacks allowed the US to do things it would have been much more difficult to do before.

The present economic crisis, the worst financial crisis in 70 years, is offering similar opportunities as the “shared sacrifice” necessary to survive it savages public services, and employers, both public and private take the opportunity go after and eliminate gains that workers have won through decades of struggle. It would be allowing a good crisis to go to waste if they didn’t take advantage of this golden opportunity that their system has offered them.

Employers are eliminating jobs and ridding their workplaces of damaging work rules and safety protections that impede profit taking. They are driving down wages and conditions in order to ensure the US worker can compete (work harder for less) with our brothers and sisters throughout the former colonial world and Eastern Europe. They are helped in this venture by the trade Union leaders who suppress any resistance to this offensive that emerges from within the ranks of organized Labor and that might challenge employer’s rights and the sanctity of the market. They have no independent position from the employers, supporting the team concept on the job and the Democratic Party in the political arena.

We have all witnessed how the speculators and moneylenders have benefited from this crisis with the assistance of their two parties that dominate political life; that ensure the capitalist class maintains its dictatorship over society. The huge bailouts, the bonuses, the swindling; workers are sickened by it all.

Capitalist politicians have handed over and will hand over trillions more of working people’s money in the form of debt that has to be paid by future generations. As services and jobs are slashed and state governments lose millions in revenue due to the crisis, the federal government throws some of our cash at them to alleviate the effects. But much of this public money is being used to coax corporations in to investing in or remaining in a state or municipality. The corporations are not allowing a good crisis to go to waste and are blackmailing states and municipalities, threatening to pull out of one region for another if they don’t get taxpayer help. One state or municipality is turned against another as they compete for the favors of a corporation----this is economic terrorism and a reflection of this real world we live in, the dictatorship of capital over society. The nationalizing of Capital, the taking in to public ownership the banks and finances houses is the only way we will stop this blackmail.

Some examples of this blackmail: Michigan coaxed GM to build a small car plant there rather than Wisconsin or Tennessee. The cost: “$44 million in incentives and a 100% tax break on new equipment for 12 years.” (Business Week 7-13-20-09) New Jersey passed an economic recovery package with $1.5 billion in corporate tax breaks. Ohio doled out $1.7 million in tax incentives to Wal-Mart and Caterpillar got $10 million in subsidies from the taxpayers of Texas to coax them to build an assembly plant in the state that would create 1200 jobs. Business Week also reports that Pepsi threatened “..to move its headquarters from Somers N.Y., if local lawmakers didn’t pass favorable tax and other policies.” When we go on strike to keep jobs and services, we are accused of blackmail, and since 911, of terrorism no less. Yet this is all our money they are using.

Along with spending public money to bribe corporations to provide work, state governments are also spending our money on the bribing industry in Washington as they put lobbyists on retainers. The Wall Street Journal reports today that, “Towns, cities, counties and states spent a total of $21.4 million on lobbyists between April and June.” The bribing industry, that Obama said he would eliminate, is not allowing a good crisis go to waste either.

Some bribery firms receive $10,000 to $30,000 a quarter as a retainer fee, says the WSJ. Some counties hire more than one firm. One lobbyist says that this is a “good investment” as many communities don’t know how to “navigate funding processes.”

The love affair with Obama is getting a bit sour as his allegiance to Wall Street becomes clearer to the average worker. The money-lending firm of Goldman Sachs was Obama’s largest private contributor and many of the firm’s former employees are now in government service. We now live in the United States of Goldman Sachs, one commentator suggests. Despite all the promises before the election about taxing the rich and those earning above $200,000, both Lawrence Summers, Obama’s top economic advisor, and Treasury Secretary, Timothy Getiner (the guy who forgot to pay his taxes) are now making it more clear that this was simply rhetoric. Rhetoric is an acceptable campaign strategy in American politics you see.

They have dealt with a crisis of capitalism by shifting the burden of it on to the backs of workers and the middle class as they always do. They have dealt with a crisis brought about by massive social indebtedness by borrowing more money. The federal deficit is almost $2 trillion. One government official has even suggested that the US government could be in to this crisis for as much as $23 trillion as it continues. As this goes on, nine banks that received $175 billion in taxpayer bailouts paid $33 billion in bonuses. Five thousand employees of these bank’s employees received over a million dollars apiece.

The present administration will continue to savage workers’ rights and living standards, the trillions of taxpayer money that has been used to save capitalism will have to be paid. More attacks, inflation and increased protectionism between regions domestically and nations globally are on the horizon.

Resistance to this offensive of capital has been increasing throughout the world. From the opposition in China to the privatization of a steel mill and beating to death of its owner, to the workplace occupations in France and Britain and the protests in eastern Europe and strikes in South Africa workers are beginning to fight back.

Resistance in the US has been retarded somewhat due to the role of the trade Union leaders and the particular brutality of the US regime despite all the talk of freedom. Workers have a justified fear of the state, especially workers of color. It could not be ruled out that kidnapping of bosses here would be met with death or long prison sentences. There is little confidence that the leaders of organized Labor would mobilize their ranks and bring the full weight of its members and the working class to bear were this to happen.

It is hard to say where an explosion will take place in the US but take place it will. We can win victories if we organize and not limit our tactics and strategy to that which is acceptable to the trade Union leaders and the Democratic Party. We can challenge their laws, occupy offices, workplaces, and our homes when the moneylenders send the sheriffs to evict us from them. In the Union we must build where we can opposition caucuses that use these tactics and method and challenge openly the collaborative policies of the Union hierarchy.

A very favorable period has opened up. The employers are not the only ones that cannot let a crisis go to waste. We can take advantage of the situation as the hatred and disgust at the rich and their system that lies beneath the surface of U.S. society is significant to say the least.

The period of the dominance of the US economic model is over. The US working class can play an important role in ushering in a new period for US Labor and for workers throughout the world.