The Most Truth Packed into a few Seconds of a Fictional Hollywood Movie

“The richest one percent of this country owns half our country’s wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It’s bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own.”—Gordon Gekko to Bud Fox (Wall Street, 1987, directed by Oliver Stone)

A Great Working Class American Classic Film, Salt of the Earth!

So many real world working class American issues packed into only the first 10 minutes of the great radical film Salt of the Earth! Lets list them: Accumulation by dispossession, internal colonialism, western expansion, sexual division of labor, childbirth, racism and child hood fights, work place safety, organized labor and the UNION!, debt. Salt of the Earth is a great film made by people blacklisted from Hollywood by McArthyism in the 1950s. Check it out! Availble in full from Netflix or in pieces on Youtube.

No, You Give Me A Break!

Now this is just the most silly argument from John Stossel for whatever kind of health care reform, no matter how shitty.

"That's what health insurance does to medical care. Patients rarely even ask what anything costs. Doctors often don't know. Often nobody even gives a damn. Patients rarely ask, "Is that MRI really necessary? Is there a cheaper place?" We consume without thinking. By contrast, in areas of medicine where most patients pay their own way, service gets better, while prices fall.

Why not just have a free market where people can buy whatever kind of health insurance they want? Competition would then bring prices down."

No, people are not going to consume as much health insurance as they can. And no, competition is not going to magically lower prices. But cutting out the executive salaries and stock dividends that go to for-profit insurance company investors would. And generally people don't sit around and say, "Hey, I feel fine, but I think I will go get poked and prodded by a doctor and nurse, because hey, what the heck it free."

I am sure for a well paid free-market ideologue propagandist like Stossel he actually believes that it is a simple matter to go out and buy the health insurance ones needs. This is far outside of the reality of most working Americans. Their reality is that if they don't get insurance through a group plan from their employers, then they can't afford it period. They can't even come close to affording it. I know, I did shop around for it before I had my present job, and I could only afford to pay for my son, leaving myself uninsured.

It is easy to make these delusional "free-market" arguments from one's perch in the elite corporate media. But it just doesn't fly here in working-class America!

Several Good Articles and Blog Posts on Health Care Reform

Here are some links and exerpts from several good blog posts and articles I have read on the inter-tubes about health care reform (or not).

Here is a link to a video and partial transcript of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) being interviewed by CNN's Wolf Blitzer at the Crooks and Liars web site. Problably only Bernie out of all the 100 senators has the cajones to say what needs to be said. Sanders is defending single payer, here are some good money shots:

Sanders: United Health Insurance. A couple of years ago the head of that company was a guy named William McGuire. He received $1.6 billion in stock options. Now, do you think that's a cost effective way of putting money into health care? We don't have enough primary health care doctors -- one guy has $1.6 billion.

SANDERS: All that we're changing -- we're not telling people they should go to a different doctor. We're not telling people they don't have a free choice --

BLITZER: But you're telling them they should go to a different health insurance company.

SANDERS: Do you think people are saying, Oh, my God. I want a freedom of choice of hundreds of health insurance companies? That's not what they're saying. They're saying, I want to go to the doctor that I want to go to. I want to go to the hospital --

First, Sanders draws attention to something that is rarely addressed in mainstream discourse, and that is the fact that for-profit insurance companies are parasitic on the system. You and your employer pay your insurance premium, part of which is paid out not for health services, but to stock dividends and corporate executive salaries. Also, notice how Blitzer simply adopts the anti-reform framing of confusing choice of insurance companys and choice of doctors. Sanders rightly clears up this obfuscation in arguing that a single-payer system would still allow people a choice of doctors.

Next article is from the web site Dissident Voice and Kevin Zeese. Here is the introduction:

"Thursday, as Senator Tom Harkin (D-IO) left the health care hearing room he leaned over to me and said:

I used to sell insurance. The basic rule is the larger the pool the less expensive the health care. Today we have 1,300 separate pools – separate health care plans – and that is why health care is so expensive; 700 pools would be more efficient and less expensive and one pool would be the least expensive. That’s why single payer is the answer.

Nothing like common sense."

Finally, I picked up this link from Louis Proyect on the Marxmail list to a Pappadablogger, who spills the beans on how so many prominent Democrats are in the monied pockets of the health for profit industry, either through campaign contributions, personal ties, or as actual share holders. Here is a small excerpt:

"A key House committee member, Rep. Jane Harman from California, is not only married to one of the richest men in the country, she personally has – are you still sitting down? – Congresswoman Harman personally owns $3.2 million of healthcare industry corporate investments.

In fact, the 11 key members of the House and Senate have a total of $27 million in healthcare corporate investments. And they will write the bill? Are you feeling sick yet?"

Yep!

Leo Panitch on The Relevancy of Marx, Climate Change and the Need for Financial and Industrial Planning

Leo Panitch has been the editor of an excellent series of yearly edited volumes known as the Socialist Register, each organized around a particular theme.

Recently, Leo Panitch was asked to author an article for Foreign Policy magazine on the relevancy of Marx to understanding modern capitalism. This was the event that led the Real News to interview Leo. I have embedded Part II below, but you can find Part I on You Tube.

In summary of Part II, Panitch discusses the financial-economic crisis, the collapse of Detroit's auto industry, and the problems of addressing climate change under capitalism.

Panitch points out that the "cap and trade" schemes currently being devised are a lot like the complex financial products of derivatives, mortgage securities, and credit default swaps that played a role in the speculative housing bubble that lead us into the current financial crisis. And of course there is the more obvious problem that these schemes only create incentives for industries to voluntarily reduce carbon dioxide emissions it it is profitable. They don't directly create policies that drastically cut emissions, which is really what is needed.

This is basically all that the present liberal wing of the ruling class establishment has to offer. Basically they are afraid to consider the more rational alternatives like economic planning. Instead of massive bank bail-outs, Panitch argues that a socialist response would be the nationalization of the banking and auto industries to be run as a public utilities. With those financial and industrial assets in hand they could be directed towards re-orientating production into green technologies.

Panitch points out that the collapse of the auto industry is a great loss of human skill and know-how. There is no reason that those people could be put back to work building solar panels.

Another key point of the interview is that Marx was not in the business of giving advice to capitalist states. He was under no illusion that those who control the state and economic institutions of capitalism would implement rational solutions to problems if it was contrary to their class interests. As always, what is needed is a working-class movement from below.

Sometimes Capitalists Can Be Such Fucking Pricks!

Somewhere in Capital, Marx is famous for arguing that the evils of capitalism are not due to some inherent moral depravity of the owners of the means of production. Instead the dehumanizing conditions of workers are the result of capitalists responding to the structural imperatives of the system. They must make decisions with the goal of maximizing profits, and the interests and well-being of working people are a casualty of this drive to maximize profits.

However, sometimes in an effort to protect their assets and interests, capitalists can stoop to new lows in callousness and disregard for the workers they employ. Here is an example from the BBC web site, "Spain to Punish Barbaric Bakery"

...The statement comes amid shock over the case of a Bolivian worker whose arm was cut off in an accident at work. Bosses at the bakery in Valencia are accused of dumping him 100m (330 feet) from the hospital entrance and throwing the severed limb in a rubbish bin.

A Spanish trade union has lodged a complaint against the bakery. The union - the Workers Commissions (CCOO) - claims that in the early hours of 28 May, the arm of Franns Rilles was severed in a kneading machine while he was working. It was allegedly dumped in a rubbish bin and only discovered by police the following day, by which time it was too late to reattach it.

Investigation

Mr Rilles was allegedly warned by the son of the bakery owner not to tell doctors where his accident had taken place, and was left a distance of some 100m from the hospital entrance, while bleeding heavily. Mr Rilles, 33, worked 12-hour days at the bakery, earning 23 euros a day (£20; $32) under no contract, for about a year and a half, the union says.

He is recovering in hospital, reported Spanish news agency Efe. Police are investigating allegations of mistreatment. The case has made national headlines, and on Thursday Work and Immigration Minister Celestino Corbacho vowed that "the weight of the law" would come down on the bakery if the allegations are substantiated. Mr Corbacho said abusive practices were on the rise as workers' vulnerability jobs increased amid the economic downturn.The bakery has reportedly been shut down and two bosses detained.

Sotamayor, Not So Empathetic After All, Sticks to the Letter of Bourgeios Law

As is well known, President Obama has said that one of the qualities, among many, he would like in his supreme court nominees is that of "empathy". And of course the mainstream idiot-right that so dominates American political discourse seized upon this one word to criticize Obama and his nominee Sotamayor. They have of course also seized upon the words of a speech by Sotamayor, saying that the "rich experiences of a wise Latina woman" might lead a judge to make better decisions than a white-male judge. Never mind that much of the noise by the idiot-right is without substance.

On the other hand, their has been some substantive talk about Sotomayor and her judicial record. Republican Senator John Kyle would at least seem to be a little more reasonable, but of course within the boundaries of Bourgeois Democracy. From CBS News:

Kyl on the other hand said she will definitely have to assure members
of the Judiciary Committee that she will live by the oath of the Supreme Court.

The Republican Senator took out a piece of paper and read the oath which reads, "'I will administer justice without respect to persons and do equal right to the poor and to the rich.'"

Kyl said that oath means that she will have "not bring in her empathy for the poor person, for example. If the law is on the side of the rich person, then she has to rule
in favor of the rich person. If she will do that, then I think she'll have no trouble in her confirmation hearing."

I don't think law makers such as Kyle, whether Democrats or Republicans, who make laws that favor the rich and corporate interests in the first place have anything to worry about.

Former attorney and famous Salon.com blogger Glen Greenwald has written about the idiot-right's silly noise about the Sotomayor nomination, and he has also brought to light facts about Sotomayor's actual judicial record. I highly recommend these articles.

As it so happens, Greenwald was actually the attorney for a plaintiff that lost a race and age discrimination lawsuit against a hospital. I have copied and pasted the parts I want to emphasize here below, and I snipped a bunch, so do read the original if interested.

Thursday May 28, 2009 07:29 EDT A Revealing Anecdote About Sonia Sotomayor

(snipped intro)

My writing about this issue from the start has not been based on my
view that Sotomayor is the best choice for the Court. There is still too
much unknown about her to reach a conclusion in that regard (though see this
encouraging snippet of her at Oral Argument in a critical case). My
interest has been due to the fact that the smears against her were both totally
unrecognizable, driven by very ugly sentiments and enabled by reckless
"reporting" methods. Along those lines, I want to recount the facts behind
a case I had before Judge Sotomayor because it helps to demonstrate just how
false and baseless are the attacks thus far against her:

That case, Norville v. Staten Island University Hospital, involved one
of the most sympathetic plaintiffs I had in my legal career. The
plaintiff, Wendy Norville, was a black woman who grew up in poverty in the
Caribbean, moved to the U.S., and put herself through nursing school while
working as a maid and raising her children as a single mother. After
graduating at the age of 44, she went to work at SIU hospital as an R.N. in the
neurology unit, where, for the next 12 years, she compiled an exemplary record
of uniformly excellent performance reviews.

During her 13th year as an R.N., while working in the neurology
unit, a very tall male patient had a seizure while lying on a table.
Norville attempted to restrain the patient to prevent him from injuring himself
or falling on the floor, and when doing so, she sustained a very severe back
injury. She was unable to work for a full year, but after extensive
rehabilitation, she told the hospital she wanted to return to work, but her
back injury imposed some mild physical restrictions -- such as limitations on
her ability to lift heavy objects -- and she requested that they find a nursing
position for her where heavy lifting was not required.

The hospital claimed that the only positions they could offer her
were ones that were part-time or would require her to lose all of her union
seniority and benefits, and after a couple of months of pretending to search
more, the hospital notified her that there were no comparable positions for her
and they thus fired her. Because she was 56 years old and disabled by
then, she was unable to get hired by another hospital. So after working
for 12 years as an R.N., she was left fired and unemployed -- all because of an
injury she sustained on the job, while helping a patient. She then
sued the hospital (which was large and fully insured) for failing to
accommodate her disability under the ADA and for race and age
discrimination (they had accommodated white nurses far more injured than
she and also rejected her for the one open nursing position in favor of a much
younger nurse).

If ever there was a case where one's "emotions" for "the
downtrodden, the powerless and the voiceless" would be strong, it was this
one. This was a poor, black and highly admirable woman who -- through
no fault of her own -- was left jobless and impoverished at the age of 56, suing
a large and fully insured corporation. And her case was not only
emotionally compelling, but legally strong as well: the federal judge
presiding over the case from the start refused to dismiss any of her claims at
the close of discovery, holding that there was ample evidence to support all of
her claims and to enable a jury to decide in her favor.

Right before her trial was to begin, that judge got caught up in a
massive criminal trial, and as a result, a federal judge from Louisiana was
shipped to New York to preside over the trial. This visiting judge hated
the case and the plaintiff from the start. At trial, he excluded most of
her best evidence showing discrimination, then dismissed her race and age
discrimination claims before they even got to the jury, and then -- on her sole
remaining claim for violations of the ADA -- gave the jury patently
unfavorable and inaccurate instructions about the law that caused the jury to
decide against her.

That was the state of the case as it was appealed to a three-judge
panel of the Second Circuit. Judge Sotomayor was by far the most active
questioner at Oral Argument and it was she who wrote the opinion for the unanimous appellate court. Without a trace of sympathy or even interest in the plight of the plaintiff, Sotomayor methodically recounted the evidence of discrimination and, in as cold and legalistic a manner as possible, concluded that Norville "produced insufficient evidence at trial to show that the hospital"
discriminated against her. She thus affirmed the trial judge's
dismissal of Norville's claims of race and age discrimination.

So there you have it, evidence that Sotomayor isn't that empathetic at all. "In a cold and legalistic manner" she sided with the wealthy owners of the hospital and insurance companies. And that is how the system is set up, defend the interests of the wealthy, and dispose of people no longer useful to the profits-first capitalist system.

To the American Working Class (or Sheeple?), Time to Fight Back!

This is an excellent article from the Counterpunch website on the recent history of American working people rolling-over as their employer's cut into their wages, benefits and pensions; and he contrasts that with the behaviour of the French people when faced with similar adversity.

Have We Turned Into Sheep? By DAVID MACARAY

Here are some key quotes:

"Although people joke about France’s laid back, c’est la vie attitude,
let’s give French workers credit for knowing how to respond to an outrage.
When corporations try to tell French workers they’re going to slash their health
care benefits or mess with their pensions, the workers behave the way people
should behave when the wealthy and powerful try to snow them. They go
totally ape-shit."........

"While there are no simple answers, one thing is clear. We’re making
it way too easy for these people. Without resistance, nothing’s going to
change. Without resistance, corporations, politicians and, yes, union
leadership will continue to pacify us with promises and excuses."

"Food Inc.", Another Item in Why Capitalism Sucks

Well here is another quick post and embedded YouTube trailer on a film that looks like it will be very informative, but of course never quite radical enough. I still can't wait to see it, but it probably won't be coming to a theatre near me, as I don't live in the big city with any theatres showing any alternatives to big Hollywood bullshit. But hopefully it will put another chink in the armour of obscurantist illusions about the insane system of profits above people and nature that is capitalism. Louis Proyect over at the Unrepentant Marxist has seen the entire film and has a review, and some excellent commentary.

On a personal note I have lately become more aware the consequences of capitalist factory farming from both an ecological and a healthy diet perspective. Thanks in part to the author Michael Pollan who is a featured commentator in the film. Despite that fact, it is nearly impossible, or at least very expensive and difficult to escape from the system of factory farming produced and overly processed foods. The solution is not simply for us to vote as consumers by shopping at Whole Foods or some other overpriced yuppie-hippy grocery store. Instead, to solve these human and ecological problems requires systemic transformations.

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Summer Study Projects: Marx's Capital and David Harvey's Limits To Capital

Recently I became aware of the online course Reading Capital with David Harvey, a radical geographer and Marxist theoretician. The course lectures are delivered through either mp3 audio or various video formats. I downloaded the first two course sections and listened to them on a long drive to a temporary work detail location. After doing so I decided that I wanted to make another attempt at reading and understanding Karl Marx's classic "Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production", that is with David Harvey's assistance. Its tough book to read alone without some direction. There is also an online forum for the course, so one can even hopefully engage in discussion with others reading the text.

In I think the second lecture Harvey mentions that many people give up the attempt at a serious reading of Capital in the very tough third chapter. Come to think of it, thats about where I put it down about four years ago!

I also just ordered and received David Harvey's book Limits to Capital which is a book that attempts to put the theoretical ideas of Marx's Capital in today's historical context. Although I haven't seriously started reading the book, while scanning the pages to the 2006 edition I came upon an interesting factoid.

After Mexico began its program of neoliberal economic restructuring and privatization in 1988, twenty four Mexican billionaires appeared on Forbes' 1994 list of the world's wealthiest. Then of course the North American Free Trade Agreement was passed in the early 1990s. By 2005 Mexico had more billionaires than Saudi Arabia. NAFTA had the effect of massively restructuring the agricultural sector of Mexico's economy, turning small farming campesinos into wage workers. While some of this population was absorbed into the border zone "maquiladora" factories, many of these still could not compete with lower wage labor in China. Ultimately many of these people migrated to the United State to become cheap labor and treated as second class "illegal immigrants". This is one example of the process that Harvey calls "accumulation by dispossession". In the video below Harvey talks further about "accumulation by dispossession" in lecture 12 of the online course.

Employers Depress Wages, Not Immigrant Workers!

I would like to give a hat-tip to the blog Amerikanbeat for getting me started on this rant. So also check out what he has to say.

Nothing annoys me more from the anti-"illegal"-immigrant worker rhetoric than the complaint that "illegal immigrants depress our wages". To paraphrase a caller I recently heard on a talk radio show, her voice dripping with contempt: "These illegal alien Mexicans come in here and will work for anything."

This is patentely absurd. Of course, being that human labor is a commodity to be bought and sold on the market under capitalism, the greater numbers of workers, and the more desperate they are for a wage, the stronger the downward pressure on wages. But the undocumented worker does not get up early in the morning and say to him or herself "I am just an illegal alien, therefore I will accept $5.00 per hour even though I probably could get $8.00 per hour."

Of course immigrant workers are perfectly willing to work for as high a wage as he/she can secure. I saw it for myself recently in a scene in the documentary Farmingville POV, where yes, immigrant workers turn down an offer for $7.00 and demand at least $10.00. (This is actually a pretty decent documentary, also available on Netflix).

It is of course the capitalist employers who depress wages whenever they are able to, given the conditions of the labor market, to maximize their profits. It is the illegal status of the immigrant worker that creates an even more unequal balance of power between employer and worker, undermining the latter's bargaining power. But lets be clear, it is the employer, not the worker who tries to pay as low a wage as possible given the circumstances. And it is the conditions of U.S. capitalism with its dehumanizing divisions of workers into legal vs. illegal that gives the bosses more power to depress wages.

So why on earth would you blame the relatively less powerful so-called "illegal immigrant" for depressing wages? It is simply absurd to blame them for not having all the social and political resources that comes with legal status to demand a higher wage. This kind of thinking is a testament to how dehumanizing patriotic- nationalist and bourgeois ideology is in destroying basic feelings of empathy and solidarity between people based on legal status, race and ethnicity. Makes me angry and sick!