WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME
THE MERRIMACK VALLEY DISASTER: IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT OLD PIPES
According to the New York Times, “Since 1998, at least 646 serious gas distribution episodes have occurred across the country, causing 221 deaths and leaving nearly a thousand people injured. …” And the reasons for such episodes are not always found. Perhaps it could not be otherwise, since America has allowed private companies to control the production and distribution of natural gas from the industry’s beginnings. Sure, we call those companies “public utilities” and tell ourselves that federal and state government regulate them. But, like all corporations answering to the siren call of the market, gas companies exist to make profits for their shareholders. To the exclusion of all other considerations—be they health, safety, environmental, or economic. Even though the small local gas companies of the 1800s have long since merged to become large and powerful combines, and even though they are allowed to be monopolies in the areas they control, they continue trying to save money on costs and make as much profit as regulators allow. More
Puerto Rico has not recovered from Hurricane Maria
Sixty-four Puerto Ricans died during Maria and an estimated 2,975 Puerto Ricans perished from hurricane-related problems in the five months afterwards – many from treatable chronic illnesses because the power outage prevented them from getting antibiotics, insulin and other medical care. To say that the island of 3.3 million has not yet recovered – from the damage or the trauma – is an understatement. One year after Maria, nearly every pillar of Puerto Rican society remains devastated. More
NAOMI KLEIN: There’s Nothing Natural About Puerto Rico’s Disaster
Long before Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico was a textbook example. Before those fierce winds came, the debt — illegitimate and much of it illegal — was the excuse used to ram through a brutal program of economic suffering, what the great Argentine author Rodolfo Walsh, writing about four decades earlier, famously called miseria planificada, planned misery… It was a plan so widely rejected that no elected representatives could be trusted to carry it out. Which is why in 2016 the U.S. Congress passed the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, known as PROMESA. That law amounted to a financial coup d’etat that put Puerto Rico’s economy directly in the hands of the unelected Financial Oversight and Management Board. In Puerto Rico, they call it La Junta… It was in this context — with every Puerto Rican institution already trembling from La Junta’s assaults — that Maria’s ferocious winds came roaring through. It was a storm so powerful it would have sent even the sturdiest society reeling. But Puerto Rico didn’t just reel. Puerto Rico broke. More
The Aftershocks Of The Economic Collapse Are Still Being Felt
The stagnant economy, austerity measures and resulting increased debt have opened a space for people to search for and try out alternative economic structures that are more democratic. They have also created conditions for a rise of nationalism on the right. Roos concludes that the “real confrontation is yet to come.”… There will be another economic crisis in the near future which will present opportunities for rapid transformational change, if the movement is organized to demand it. JP Morgan issued a report on the tenth anniversary of the collapse warning of another collapse and mass social unrest like the US has not seen in 50 years. It is up to us now to prepare for that moment by developing our vision for the future and working out the types of institutions that will bring it about. The other option, if we are not prepared, could bring fascism and greater repression. More
Ten Years After the Crash, We’ve Learned Nothing
Ten years ago, on Saturday, September 13th, 2008, the world was about to end… But history is written by the victors, and the banks that blew up the economy are somehow still winning the narrative. Persistent propaganda about what happened 10 years ago not only continues to warp news coverage, but contributed to a wide array of political consequences, including the election of Donald Trump… The companies enjoy a vast smorgasbord of seen and unseen subsidies, even earning interest on their reserve capital (a trillion-dollar perk the Fed gave them after the crash, essentially paying banks to be banks). Most of the biggest banks pay little to no tax, a serious problem Trump has made worse. More
PLUTOCRATS ARE PLANNING A STEALTH COUP
Democracy is tough for 1 percenters. They’ve got all that money but, hypothetically, no more voting power than their chauffeur or yacht captain or nanny in a one-person, one-vote democracy. In this one-person, one-vote democracy, though, they’ve got a plan to fix all that for themselves. They’re paying for it. And they’re accomplishing it, even though that means stripping voting rights from non-rich minority groups. Their goal is to make America more of a one-dollar, one-vote plutocracy… Their attempts to distort the democratic system go back decades. In 1980, their hired hand Paul Weyrich told a group of conservative Christians he didn’t want everyone to vote. “Our leverage in the elections, quite candidly, goes up as the voting populace goes down,” Weyrich said. He used tens of millions donated by the 1 percent to create the right-wing Heritage Foundation to promote autocracy and to launch the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an organization dedicated to entertaining state lawmakers at fancy resorts to get them to pass 1 percenter-friendly laws. In 2014, $8-billionaire Tom Perkins flat out said the rich should get more votes. Perkins recommended the country be run like a corporation: “You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes.” More
Historic McDonald's Strike Brings Anti-Harassment Fight to Picket Line
On September 18, McDonald’s workers staged a nationwide strike protesting sexual harassment, with employees walking off the job during the lunch rush in 10 cities. Workers in Chicago, Durham, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Orlando, San Francisco and St. Louis left their jobs in the first nationwide walkout over sexual harassment in United States history. The strike built on a legacy of previous labor organizing against sexual harassment, including the historic strike in 1912 of 500 garment workers who left their jobs at the Kalamazoo Corset Company to protest such conditions, as well as a wave of anti-harassment organizing by clerical workers, flight attendants and service workers beginning in the 1970s. More
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