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The War on
Working Americans
Part II - Part 1
Here
By Stephen Lendman
08/31/07 "ICH" --- - 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.
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