ObamaCare: Not in business for our health

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5) Reduce the workweek to 30 hours with no cut in pay, and cut the retirement age to 55. Provide unemployment and retirement payments at We propose an EMERGENCY CONGRESS OF LABOR to discuss and 6) To combat inflation: A sliding scale of wages and pensions that match­ 1) Bail out the people, not the bankers! Open the account books of the es the rises in comsumer prices. To combat high medical costs: A free, banks to full public inspection. Nationalize the banks to be supervised by 7) Immediate citizenship for all undocumented workers. No job discrimi­ 2) No foreclosures! No forced evictions! Cancel usurious debt payments, nation; equal pay for equal work — regardless of gender, sexual orienta­ and reduce mortgage payments in proportion to their capitalist-caused 8) Nationalize manufacturing, big agribusiness, energy, and transporta­ 3) Full employment at union wages! An emergency public works program tion corporations and place them under the control of elected committees to employ all jobless workers and youth! Employ people to build what we need — low-cost quality housing, efficient mass transportation, cheap and 9) To mobilize support for the demands it adopts, the EMERGENCY renewable sources of power, schools, clinics — and to conserve our water, CONGRESS should organize ACTION COMMITTEES in every workplace and neighborhood threatened by the crisis. These committees can draw up 4) Immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops and mercenaries from Iraq & Afghanistan! No war on Iran! Close all U.S. bases abroad! No money for 10) To put all these measures into effect, we need a LABOR PARTY — the military — use funds instead for public works! Convert the war indus­ based on a fighting union movement and all people who are oppressed tries to making products for people’s needs and to combat global warming.

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As we go to press, the U.S. Congress has pushed the government into a shutdown—laying off at least 800,000 federal workers and crippling businesses and house­ holds that rely on federal services. Right-wing Republi­ cans hoped the shutdown would stall the Affordable Care Act, known as ObamaCare. Below are excerpts from Bill Onasch’s commentary on the Act. The full article is at www.kclabor.org.

[Open enrollment through the exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act has begun.] The important health sector of the ruling class, despite the occasional kvetch, are pleased. They should be—they wrote the law and the rules for implementing it. If all goes as planned, they will have millions of new customers.

Paradoxically, the traditional favorite party of Big Busi­ ness is fighting like the Japanese garrison on Iwo Jima to stop or cripple this bonanza for the insurance robber bar­ ons. Perhaps even more bizarre, our labor statespersons have assumed the role of Marines aiming to triumphantly raise the flag of ObamaCare on Mount Suribachi.

If the mean-spirited cracked teapots were to succeed in killing or maiming ObamaCare, with no alternative read­ ily available at this late stage, it would be bad news for millions of uninsured individuals and unions who have been bargaining with employers in anticipation of major changes in insurance.

For these reasons opposing the loony right sabotage is an understandable reflex. But I have been bombarded by appeals from labor, women’s, and civil rights groups to not only denounce Republican kamikazes but to also hail the Affordable Care Act as the greatest thing since sliced bagels. Such a position is merely the flip side of the tea­ pot opportunist coin. Both camps subordinate the health of American workers to the perceived short-term politi­ cal needs of a boss party.

A WORKERS’ ACTION PROGRAM TO FIGHT THE CRISIS take steps to implement the following demands — workers’ committees.

decline in value.

forests, farmland, and open space.

SOCIALIST ACTION Closing news date: Oct 2, 2013 Editor: Michael Schreiber Canada Editor: Barry Weisleder designed, and laid out entirely by volunteer labor.

­— $37 for two years Name Address City State Zip Phone E-mail The Affordable Care Act does not resolve America’s health-care crisis. In many ways it makes things worse. The unexpectedly low premiums touted by the President and Secretary Sebelius do not take in to account the ex­ tremely high deductibles and co-pays that accompany these “bargains” in affordable care. The cheapest plans would require spending thousands of dollars out of pock­ et before insurance starts paying 60 percent of further costs.

The best alternative to commodity health care that is expanded by the new law would be socialized medicine such as the British Labor Party established in that coun­ try 65 years ago. That hasn’t gained much traction yet in the USA.

Less comprehensive but still significant and worthwhile [would be] single-payer reform—an improved version of Canada’s Medicare won by the NDP labor party north of the border. In all the pre-ObamaCare polls in which single-payer was included as an option it consistently re­ ceived the most support. … Newly elected AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka tried very hard to be a “player” in the long struggle to get a health care bill through Congress. He immediately jettisoned single-payer and eventually even the sym­ bolic “public option.” In the end, he did his duty for his White House friend through heavy-handed lobbying to get single-payer supporters—whose votes were sorely needed—on board for ObamaCare. The bill would have never passed without Trumka’s diligent efforts. Since then both the AFL and Change to Win unions have tried to justify their cave-in by being the most en­ ergetic and exaggerating apologists for their “friend’s” signature achievement. … ObamaCare will likely survive the current Republican assault [despite the] government shutdown. But this is no victory to crow about from our side. We’ll still be saddled with a substandard health-care system devouring a far bigger share of our GDP than any other country. n the level of union wages and benefits.

universal, public health-care system.

tion, skin color, or national origin.

of workers. • Ashland, Ore.: [email protected] • Boston: [email protected] (781) 630-0250 • Carrboro, N.C.: (919) 967-2866, [email protected] • Chicago: P.O. Box 578428 Chicago, IL 60657, [email protected] • Connecticut: (860) 478-5300 • Duluth, Minn.: [email protected]. www.thenorthernworker.blogspot.com • Kansas City: [email protected] (816) 221-3638 • LOUISVILLE, KY.: [email protected], (502) 451-2193 • Madison, Wis.:

[email protected] • Mankato, Minn.:

[email protected] • Minneapolis/St. Paul: (612) 802-1482, [email protected] • New York City: (212) 781-5157 Malalai Joya tours U.S. On the 12th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Af­ ghanistan, the United National Antiwar Coalition (unac­ [email protected]), with the Afghan Women’s Mission, is sponsoring a national tour of former Afghanistan leg­ islator, women’s rights and antiwar leader, Malalai Joya. The tour began Oct. 3-5 with forums in New York City. • Oct. 6, 7 p.m., First Parish Church, Cambridge, Mass.; Oct. 7; 3:30 p.m., U. Mass Boston Campus Cen­ ter; 7 p.m., Wellesley College; Oct. 8, 1 p.m., Suffolk U. Contact [email protected]. • Oct. 8, 7:30 p.m., Food for Thought Books, Amherst, Mass., [email protected]. • Oct. 9, Albany, N.Y., [email protected]. • Oct. 10-12, Chicago, [email protected]. • Oct. 15, 7 p.m., Foss Center, Augsburg College, Min­ neapolis. Oct. 16: U of M Law School; Macalester Col­ lege. [email protected]. • Oct. 17, 12 p.m., U. Cal., Berkeley, Wheeler Hall. For other Bay Area locations: [email protected]. • Oct. 19, 7 p.m., All Saints Church, Pasadena. Other LA events: [email protected]. • Oct. 21-22, San Diego. For all events: aka0001@ hotmail.com.

For info about Socialist Action and how to join: Socialist Action National Office, P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610, (510) 2689429, [email protected] Socialist Action newspaper editorial offices: [email protected] Website: www.socialistaction.org WHERE TO FIND SOCIALIST ACTION • Philadelphia: [email protected] • Portland, Ore.: (503) 233-1629 [email protected] • Providence: [email protected] (401) 592-5385 • Salem, Ore.: [email protected] • San Francisco Bay Area:

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Fed bails out rich at workers’ expense I Depression of 1929—most people understood n the old days—very old days like the last Great the term “economic stimulus” to mean some form of government investment in the economy aimed at directly producing jobs for working people through various kinds of public works programs. Considerable investment in ventures like construction of massive dams to promote agricultural development, rebuild­ ing deteriorated urban and even rural infrastruc­ tures—like schools, hospitals, and highways—and na­ tional parks and cultural projects were, in the Keynes­ ian tradition, sometimes employed by crisis-ridden capitalist governments to create jobs and serve the “public good.”

This Keynesian “pump-priming,” or productive job cre­ ation aimed at increasing the purchasing power of work­ ing people directly, was in significant part aimed at re­ lieving the political pressure arising from unprecedented working-class discontent that threatened to exceed the bounds of capitalist reform. The massive Depressionera unemployment rate—up to 40 percent, with many of the remaining 60 percent having only part-time employ­ ment—and the generalized degradation of the human condition inherent in the capitalist system contributed to an historic rise in workers’ class consciousness, the for­ mation and rapid growth of powerful industrial unions and socialist organizations.

But even this Keynesian (named after the British lib­ eral capitalist economist John Maynard Keynes) pump priming proved inadequate to revive capitalism’s flag­ ging economy. The relatively token investment in jobs and social welfare programs aimed at heading off an even deeper anti-capitalist mood in a few years gave way to the world’s greatest arms race. Led by major U.S. corpo­ rations, “industry” was “revived” by its near total conver­ sion to war production. Steel and auto plants, mining, and most all other manufacturing industries became war in­ dustries. The jobs created were war-related and the prof­ its generated in a near monopolized war economy went overwhelmingly to the super-rich.

The Great Depression was “ended” via a catastrophic war to re-divide the world’s colonies—a war that cost the lives of over 60 million around the globe and reduced entire continents, minus the U.S., to ruin. On the ashes of this conflagration, capitalism, especially the victorious American brand, was presented with a unique opportu­ nity to play the leading role in rebuilding the infrastruc­ tures of destroyed European cities and dominating new markets without the slightest concern for competition. Indeed, U.S. allies and enemies alike were incapable of offering the slightest resistance. It was to be truly, accord­ ing to capitalism’s pundits, “the American Century.’ In sharp contrast, today’s ongoing five-year “reces­ sion”—in fact, a depression for most Americans—finds the ruling-class few, the great banks and financial insti­ tutions and the government that serves them, incapable of even the most modest investment or “stimulus” to the “real economy” to create real jobs, and especially manu­ facturing jobs that produce commodities to meet human needs and that are a product of human labor. So deep is the worldwide capitalist economic crisis that with few exceptions average profit rates in manufacturing are so low given the unprecedented global competition among and between the leading industrialized nations, that it simply doesn’t pay (at this time, I stress) to invest in yet another round of super-modern factories that have consistently proven to become obsolete soon after they are built. Instead, U.S. capitalism’s “solution” to this di­ lemma has been, especially since 2008, to bail out failing banks and corporations directly to the tune of incredible trillions of dollars.

The most recent example is the great debate on Wall Street and in ruling-class circles over the policies of the nation’s quasi-private central bank, called the Federal Reserve (Fed), and headed by Benjamin Bernanke. That Bernanke will be removed post haste is not disputed by anyone, including by President Obama and his capital­ ist superiors, who really run the country and the nation’s banks and major corporations.

What is in dispute is the Fed’s so-called QE or Quan­ titative Easing policies. QE began in 2008 shortly after the near collapse of the U.S. banking system. It consisted largely in the Federal Reserve Bank’s pumping trillions of dollars into the banking system by printing virtually unlimited amounts of dollars or their paper/computer equivalents, to purchase essentially failed or near worth­ less bank-held mortgage bonds. The essence of the matter was and remains that the government paid trillions to the banks based on the banks’ declarations of the value of their mortgages as opposed to the reality that these same mortgages were near worthless. This QE bailout alone, since 2008, has amounted to a virtual gift of $4.5 trillion to the rich, or an average of a nearly one trillion dollars per year. Add to this the ad­ ditional forms that the bailout has taken, including con­ gressional legislation that amounts to the same gifting to the corporate few, and the total bailout figures are even more astounding, in the tens of trillions of dollars—that is, more than the nation’s entire annual GDP. Bernanake lit the ruling-class fuse in May 2013 when he announced that, given the much-hyped “strength­ ening” of the economy, the Fed might “taper” off the monthly amount of money printed (which is gifted to the rich) from $85 billion to perhaps $5-$10 trillion dollars less. Plus, Bernanke hinted that the Fed might increase the banks’ borrowing rate from zero to perhaps a few per­ centage points or tenths thereof.

The latter would represent a move away from essential­ ly “lending” banks free money, or close to zero percent, supposedly to invest in the real economy to “stimulate” job growth. In truth, the banks and associated recipients of the government’s free money used the occasion to in­ vest in the stock market and other speculative endeavors, driving it to all-time highs. Meanwhile, the real economy continued to decline, all government assertions to the contrary.

Thus, when Bernanke even hinted several months ago that the government’s money trough might be tapered off a bit, the corporate/banking hierarchy responded with what became known as a “taper tantrum.” This amounted to a modest decline in the stock markets here and abroad and a decline in speculate investments abroad, including those that helped fuel China’s “shadow” banking sys­ tem—which has led to a spectacular real estate bubble, wherein literally millions of new housing units and whole cities were constructed with no one to live in them. The “taper tantrum” response to Bernanake ended with his backing off for the moment, but not without his return­ ing to the matter a few months later, again sending shiv­ ers down the spine of the banksters and all other financial speculators who had become “addicted” to a gambling casino economy without roots in real production—that is, without manufacturing real commodities in the U.S. Indeed, from 2000 until today the U.S. manufacturing employment has declined from 18 million to 12 million jobs. President Obama’s much touted creation of one million jobs since January 2013 neglects to reveal that 600,000 are low-wage, part-time, and no-benefit jobs. Another 100,000 are temporary work. In truth, since the beginning of this year 250,000 full-time decent-pay­ ing jobs have been lost.

A serious look at U.S. employment figures reveals the devastating state of the real economy. Of the 155 million non-supervisory workers in the country today, some 50 million are either unemployed, part-time, or temporary workers—that is, approximately one-third of the entire workforce! Further, the average weekly earnings of those who do have work, adjusted for inflation, is less than it was in 1982.

And even these figures could be called into question when one considers that in today’s economy for some Tony Savino / Socialist Action time now, a two-person income is required for a family to live at the same level that one person could earn a genera­ tion ago. However approximate this estimate, it reveals that the income of workers in general has declined in the neighborhood of 50 percent over this period. Today’s top 10% of the income brackets consume a higher proportion of the national income than ever before in U.S. history, while working people are made to pay the price of the government’s funding the follies of the rich, or better, the cost of bailing out a failing capitalism. This is reflected in every arena of public life, from massive assaults on wages, working conditions, health care, pen­ sions, education, and social services—and now planned assaults on Social Security, Medicare, and food stamps. Bernanke’s “Surprise Move To Maintain Pace of Stim­ ulus,” headlined in the Sept. 19 New York Times, was explained by his supposed concern that unemployment rates continued to be troubling, thus indicating that the economy had not sufficiently recovered to discontinue the present monthly $85 billion in gifts to the banks. Capitalist ideologues have today re-defined “stimulus” to mean giving free money to the rich and maintaining low interest rates for the purpose of supposedly benefiting working people. The rich, according to this logic, will in­ vest in new job-creating industries, and low interest rates, so the fiction goes, will enable workers to buy cars and homes at affordable mortgage rates.

These stated intentions of capitalist ideologues have nothing in common with the reality. The re-opening and booming of the textile industry in South Carolina after a two-decade absence is a prime example. U.S. textile manufacturers like Parkdale Mills, the largest cotton buyer in the U.S., according to The New York Times, have returned to the U.S. and are in full swing—producing for the domestic market and for export, fabric and clothing at profit rates competitive with their previous production in Bangladesh, China, India, and Mexico.

The Times interviewed Bayard Winthrop, who heads the clothing manufacturing behemoth American Giant. “When I framed the business,” said Winthrop, “I wasn’t saying ‘From the cotton to the ground to the finished product, this is going to be all American-made.’” “This wasn’t some patriotic quest,” Winthrop insisted. And indeed it wasn’t. Like all capitalists his loyalty was to the dollar, not to the working class. In addition to the savings in transportation costs, the turnaround time, and other technical matters, what interested this capitalist the most was the fact that, according to the The Times, “wag­ es aren’t that much more overseas.” By wages, of course, Winthrop included in his calculations not only the low-wage, zero-benefit and part-time non-union labor force that is likely employed throughout the reconstructed in­ dustry but the fact that today’s largely automated textile plants use some 200 low-wage workers to do the work that 2000 did just a decade or two ago.

Capitalist globalization has always been predicated on the hunt for low-cost labor. In the course of the past three or four decades of outsourcing U.S. jobs the U.S. workforce has been reduced to pitiful wage levels that (continued on page 5, in “Fascism shall not pass!”)

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