From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>(WW News Service)
Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 05:00:38 -0500
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>(WW News Service)
Subject: wwnews Digest #237
WW News Service Digest #237
1) Bush tax plan is grand theft
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2) Remembering Stanley Kramer
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3) FTAA threatens workers throughout the Americas
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: torstai 1. maaliskuu 2001 13:07
Subject: [WW] Bush tax plan is grand theft
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 8, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
BUSH TAX PLAN IS GRAND THEFT
No proposal to stop mounting layoffs, hunger
By Fred Goldstein
Speaking in a sugar-coated centrist tone, President George
W. Bush put forward his reactionary program to help the rich
in a televised speech Feb. 27. He ignored the storm clouds
of economic downturn and growing poverty that are haunting
workers and poor people.
The centerpiece of Bush's budget proposal is a massive tax
cut, projected at $1.6 trillion by him but which most
bourgeois economists estimate at $2 trillion. This tax cut
gives small concessions to the workers and the middle class
in order to cover up a huge giveaway to the millionaires and
billionaires.
Rep. Charles Rangel, a Democrat from New York, spoke on CNN
right after Bush's speech. According to him, 60 percent of
the tax cut will go to the richest 10 percent of taxpayers,
and 43 percent of the tax cut will go to the top 1 percent.
These figures echo numerous studies by liberal and labor
economists.
In addition, Bush said he would set up a commission to plan
the privatization of Social Security. Under the guise of
setting up "personal investment accounts," Bush would take a
portion of workers' wages set aside for retirement under the
Social Security system and hand it over to the gambling Wall
Street bankers and brokers.
Bush plans to spend $2.6 billion on research for the so-
called National Missile Defense system, which will
ultimately cost hundreds of billions of dollars to build.
This will further enrich the military-industrial complex and
entrench U.S. military domination around the world.
The NMD is a first-strike system outlawed under the Anti-
Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. The system is designed to
let the United States launch a nuclear strike with the
knowledge that it can prevent effective retaliation. There
is universal condemnation of the NMD throughout the world.
On the home front, Bush pushed his plan to undermine the
public-education system by promoting charter schools and
vouchers. He also plans to funnel social spending through
churches and synagogues under his "faith-based initiative."
Bush declared that he would protect Social Security and
Medicaid with trillions of dollars in the future. But the
rich are going to begin getting their tax cut now--
retroactive to Jan. 1.
The Democrats vied with Bush, singing the same tune with
slightly different lyrics. They would give a smaller tax cut-
-$900 billion--with somewhat less for the rich. And they
would spend $3.6 trillion to pay off the national debt
instead of the $2 trillion projected by Bush.
But that is really only an argument over the amount of money
to give to the rich and what form it should take. Under
either plan, the tax cuts
mean less funding for desperately needed social spending,
housing, schools, childcare, medical care and public
facilities of all kinds. Paying off the national debt to the
bondholders and bankers means giving to the rich while the
masses of workers are living from paycheck to paycheck.
PROJECTIONS IGNORE CAPITALIST CRISIS
Above all, these grandiose projections of trillions for this
and trillions for that are utterly meaningless. The
instability of capitalism, its unplanned and anarchic
character, makes all such projections subject to complete
reversal based on the profit system's boom and bust cycle.
For example, a lead article in the Feb. 8 New York Times
stated that "with a swiftness that has taken many governors
by surprise, the slowing economy has sharply reduced state
tax revenue in the last few weeks, forcing a growing number
of states around the South and Midwest to cut their budgets
for the first time in a decade."
The article continued: "As many as 15 states that depend on
sales and manufacturing taxes are suddenly facing spending
cuts of up to 15 percent, producing the first reductions in
education and health programs in years. 'We had a couple-
hundred-million dollars surplus last year, and now it's all
dried up,' said Gov. Jim Hodges of South Carolina. 'It
happened so fast that most of our state agencies are still
in denial.'"
The capitalist economic slowdown is the important story for
the working class and for Black, Latino, Asian, Native and
Arab communities across the country, as well as for the so-
called middle class.
Capitalist economists are debating whether there is going to
be a "soft landing" or a "hard landing" for the economy. But
for the workers who suffer the devastating consequences of
any "landing"--layoffs, reduced hours, lower wages, benefit
cuts--this debate is a callous and insensitive discussion
among the ruling class's advisers.
'SOFT' OR 'HARD,' IT HURTS WORKERS
The bosses are worried because they were hoping that
capitalist expansion and profit growth would continue
indefinitely. But now growing signs of the inevitable bust
are on the horizon.
To the bosses a "soft landing" means only a minor
interruption in the expansion of their profit margins. A
"hard landing" means that their system crashes--and not only
do profits fall, but bankruptcies and massive layoffs
spread.
Such a development can lead to anger, social unrest and
resistance from the masses of workers, which could spread
and endanger the system itself.
For the past several months each economic indicator has
pointed in the direction of capitalist overproduction and
economic downturn.
There has been a wave of mass layoffs. In January the most
outstanding announcements came from DaimlerChry sler, with
26,000 layoffs; WorldCom, 11,000; Nortel Industries, 10,000;
J.C. Penney, 5,300; Textron, 3,600; Motorola, 2,500; AOL-
Time Warner, 2,400; Amazon.com, 1,300; and NBC, 600.
February started with Verizon announcing 10,000 layoffs and
Dell Computer 1,700.
At the end of February JDS Uniphase, the world's leading
manufacturer of components for optical networks, said it
would cut 3,000 jobs. (Financial Times of London, Feb. 27)
3Com, a network-equipment maker, announced it will eliminate
1,200 jobs because sales to telecommunications companies are
down. (Wall Street Journal, Feb. 27)
SCI Systems, a maker of personal computers and printers,
will lay off 10 percent of its 38,000 workers. (Wall Street
Journal, Feb. 26) Texas Instruments will slow production in
five plants and push out 2,600 workers, or 6 percent of its
workforce, through "voluntary retirement." (Dow Jones
Newswire, Feb. 27).
GOV'T FIGURES CONFIRM GRIM NEWS
The latest government announcements confirm the danger. New
home sales plummeted 10.9 percent in January as "worries
about the economy overwhelmed the attraction of cheaper
mortgage rates," according to the Feb. 27 Wall Street
Journal. It was the biggest drop in seven years. Sales of
existing homes fell 6.6 percent; the experts had expected
these sales to rise in January. It was the second
consecutive month of big drops in existing-home sales.
Orders for durable goods--that is, goods that last three
years or more--fell 6 percent. The decline was led by
aircraft sales, but cars, ships and other transportation
equipment were also affected. Orders for primary metals,
including steel, fell for the fourth month in a row. Orders
for electronics, electrical equipment and home appliances
fell by 6.2 percent. And shipments of big-ticket items fell
for the fourth month in a row--with autos leading the way.
(Associated Press, Feb. 27)
Federal Reserve Board Chair Alan Greenspan admitted on Feb.
28 that there is a "retrenchment" which "has not played
itself out" as a result of "capacities built up in 1999 and
early 2000."
Translated into the language of Marxism--i.e., the language
of the working class--this jargon means that capitalist
overproduction is bringing on an economic crisis.
POVERTY MOUNTED BEFORE DOWNTURN
This economic crisis begins as the level of poverty and
hardship for tens of millions of people is already rising.
Since the destruction of welfare in 1996, the number of food
stamp recipients has plunged from 24.9 million to 17
million, according to the Agriculture Department. (New York
Times, Feb. 26) Yet the Census Bureau estimates that 3.7
million households experience hunger because they don't have
enough money for food. Many more--9.7 percent of all U.S.
households--are regularly in danger of being unable to
afford their basic food needs.
Lisa Hamler-Podolski, director of the Ohio branch of Second
Harvest, the country's largest food bank, told the Times
that a third of the people coming in for food are first-time
applicants. "They are a new class of people, mainly working
poor, who are running out of resources," she explained.
Second Harvest "has doubled the amount of food it
distributes to 2 billion pounds in the last two years,"
according to National Director Douglas O' Brien.
While hunger is rampant, food producers and restaurants
waste 80 billion pounds of food a year because it cannot be
sold at a profit.
In a recent article on homelessness in New York, Martin
Osterreich, head of the city's Department of Homeless
Services, said that the number of people applying to
shelters had risen by 25,000 since the late 1980s. The
number of families applying grew 10 percent in just the last
year, despite tigh ter restrictions. (New York Times, Feb.
8)
Osterreich said this was a national trend. He cited a 25-
city survey by the United Conference of Mayors, which
calculated a 17-percent rise in the number of homeless
families applying for help.
Steven Banks of the Coalition for the Homeless told the
Times: "What we're seeing now is that work isn't enough to
keep people out of the shelter system. The $5.15 per hour
minimum wage is not enough to cover rents greater than $700
or $800 a month."
A study of retirement in the Feb. 26 New York Times showed
that there are a million more people over the age of 65 in
the work force today than in 1985. "Their employers have cut
back or eliminated health insurance for retirees," wrote the
Times.
"The tendency in recent years for employees to move from job
to job has kept some people from building up much of a
pension anywhere. And many employers have eliminated
traditional pensions."
Dain Savage of Watson Wyatt Worldwide, which advises
companies about pension plans, said: "I was speaking to
someone yesterday. His premium for medical insurance was
going to be $100 more than his pension payment. He said he
had been doing hard physical work for 20 or 30 years, and I
think otherwise he'd have liked to quit."
This is the capitalist system. It has no use for anybody it
can't exploit--particularly older workers, youths, and
people who were driven into poverty and unemployment by the
profit system. And for those it can exploit, capitalism has
no mercy.
The workers' labor can make all of the corporations filthy
rich. But when profits begin to shrink because production
has outstripped consumption, the bosses toss the workers out
the door.
All this accumulation of poverty and suffering has taken
place during a period of capitalist boom. Now that a crisis
is in the making, the workers must band together with the
communities and fight to stop layoffs, repossessions and
evictions and to demand food, housing and income for those
with no jobs and no homes.
Working-class struggle is the only answer to the capitalist
crisis.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: torstai 1. maaliskuu 2001 13:10
Subject: [WW] Remembering Stanley Kramer
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 8, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
Pioneer of socially conscious films
REMEMBERING STANLEY KRAMER
By Monica Moorehead
Upon hearing about the Feb. 19 death of the great 87-year-
old pioneer director Stanley Kramer, I took the opportunity
to again watch one of his most awesome masterpieces, "The
Defiant Ones." This 1958 movie starred Sidney Poitier and
Tony Curtis as prisoners--one African American and the other
a racist white--who escape while chained together.
Due to his powerful portrayal of Noah Cullen in this film,
Poitier became the first African American male ever
nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor. The movie won
the distinguished New York Film Critics Awards for Best
Picture and Best Screenplay. Kramer won that award for Best
Director.
The film explored the intense day-to-day relationship of
these two men from divergent social backgrounds, united in
their struggle to elude armed guards and bloodhounds in the
Deep South in order to gain freedom. One message of the film
is that sharing similar, personal hardships can help to
bridge the gap in terms of racial relations.
This film did not have a revolutionary message by any means.
But consider these facts.
This film was released just four years after the landmark
Supreme Court decision outlawing separate but unequal
education in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education.
"The Defiant Ones" was released two years before the
beginning of the massive sit-ins organized by Black college
students at segregated lunch counters in the South.
This film was released several years before the passage of
the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights Acts.
"The Defiant Ones" was a progressive film in terms of its
political content. But its social impact for that particular
time period was nothing short of revolutionary.
'FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION WAS DIFFICULT'
Who was Stanley Kramer? He was a Jewish director who became
independent--by Hollywood standards--during the 1947 zenith
of the McCarthyite anti-communist, anti-Soviet witch-hunts.
During this period Sen. Joseph McCarthy organized fascist-
like Senate hearings that viciously targeted Hollywood
actors, writers, directors, producers and union organizers
who may have sympathized with communist ideas or had some
kind of friendly relations with the Communist Party.
If any Hollywood figure refused to "name names" of those who
may or may not have been associated with the Communist
Party, they were "blacklisted." This meant that those whose
names were on this list could not find employment. Many of
them were eventually driven out of Hollywood altogether.
The livelihood of these creative people was either
compromised or destroyed by the conservative executives who
controlled the big movie studios.
To avoid this situation Kramer raised enough money to begin
his own production company so that he could produce the
kinds of movies he wanted--movies that conveyed a socially
conscious message.
When asked why he made this decision, Kramer said: "To be
independent. The stories that I wanted to tell weren't being
accepted [by the Hollywood studio system.] To have the
freedom of expression was a difficult situation." (Directors
Guild of America Magazine, Dec. 1997-January 1998)
In 1949, he produced and directed a movie called "Home of
the Brave." The movie focused on the racism against African
American soldiers during World War II. The movie starred
James Edwards, the first African American actor to star in a
major film about racism against Black people.
Kramer's most popular film, made in 1967, was "Guess Who's
Coming to Dinner." This movie explored interracial romantic
relationships. That film starred Poitier, Katherine Hepburn
and Spencer Tracy.
As an independent filmmaker, Kramer hired some of the
Hollywood writers who were "blacklisted" to script some of
the films he directed.
They included Nedrick Young and Harold Jacob Smith, who
wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for "The Defiant Ones."
They also wrote the screenplay for Kramer's "Inherit the
Wind," a film based on the real-life trials in Kansas that
focused on the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution
versus the reactionary premise of creationism.
Kramer also hired the late "blacklisted" director Edward
Dmytryk to direct some low-budget films.
Some of the other famous Kramer films included the Oscar-
winning "High Noon." That film's message metaphorically
attacked the McCarthyite purges. He made "Judgment at
Nuremberg," which dealt with the Nazi crimes against
humanity during World War II.
Kramer also made the anti-nuclear-war film "On the Beach,"
as well as two Marlon Brando films: "The Wild One" and "The
Men."
Poitier spoke about Kramer's role as a director.
Poitier was responding to a quote in Premiere magazine that
stated, "Poitier's performances were all about dignity."
(American Film Institute website)
Poitier answered: "It is not a piece unto itself, the Black
exploitation films and the kind of films that I did. It is
really a part of history." He added that today there are
"very few producers like the Stanley Kramers ... who gave us
pictures that were unheard of before then.
"Stanley Kramer made a picture called 'Home of the Brave'
when he had to shoot in secrecy," Poitier concluded, because
Kramer "was fearful that he would be shut down--it was a
picture that starred a Black actor--in those days."
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 8, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
All out for A20-22
FTAA THREATENS WORKERS THROUGHOUT THE AMERICAS
By Leslie Feinberg
A laid-off DaimlerChrysler worker. A liberation fighter in
Colombia.
A teenaged Mexicana in a "free trade zone" maquiladora
sweatshop. An Indigenous farmer in Chiapas.
A Cuban Young Pioneer.
What do they share in common? They are all up against the
determination of U.S. transnational corporations and banks
to squeeze every possible penny of profits out of the
people, land and resources of the Americas.
But on April 20-22, the growing anti-capitalist movement
that emerged out of the clouds of teargas at the Battle of
Seattle will again challenge plans by monopoly
industrialists and bankers to super-exploit this hemisphere.
This time the fight for economic and social justice will
take place in Quebec City, Canada. The anti-globalization
forces plan to mass there, as well as in far-flung border
demonstrations--from Tijuana, Mexico, to Buffalo, N.Y.--to
protest the Summit of the Americas.
This summit draws together the heads of state and trade
ministers from every country in the Western Hemisphere
except socialist Cuba. Their agenda: the Free Trade Area of
the Americas.
Free trade might sound innocuous. But in reality, the FTAA
is a declaration of intensified class warfare against the
workers and peasants of this hemisphere.
It's modeled on the North American Free Trade Agreement. It
is designed to squeeze even more sweat and blood out of the
already super-exploited.
Its implementation also aims to bolster the Pentagon's
strategic military hegemony from Anchorage, Alaska, to the
southern tip of Tierra del Fuego, Chile.
FREEDOM OR FREE TRADE?
The "Free Trade" Area of the Americas is misnamed. It is
really a form of protectionism that ices out U.S.
imperialism's Japanese and European economic rivals.
To farmers and workers throughout this hemisphere, freedom
means at the very least a full stomach, a roof over their
heads, and relief from grinding toil, poverty, bigotry and
repression.
To the titans of industry and Wall Street bankers, it means
freedom of trade. That means the right to trample any
barrier or restriction on trade and commerce that impedes
their ability to absorb the local markets of other
countries.
NAFTA, the FTAA and similar trade pacts establish a legal
framework that allows U.S. transnational corporations to
march in and overwhelm domestic economies of countries that
have been purposefully kept technologically underdeveloped
by imperialism.
NAFTA, for example, has meant a wave of layoffs in the
United States and Canada. At the same time, it has brought
more poverty and more sweatshops to Mexico as companies move
factories there to take advantage of cheaper labor. At the
same time, the flood of U.S. agricultural goods into the
Mexican market has swept small farmers there off their land.
The FTAA surpasses NAFTA in its depth and breadth. The trade
pact would open the economies of 20 nations in the Americas--
all except Cuba--to greater economic penetration by U.S.
corporate capital by the year 2005.
It would expand the right of corporations to sue any
government that dares to limit their profits or their right
to privatize health care, education and other services.
Workers organized into unions are one of the FTAA's targets.
Clearly U.S. moguls' dream to rule this hemisphere
economically and militarily holds great dangers for all
workers, peasants and oppressed peoples.
This exploited and downtrodden class that produces all the
wealth makes bank ers' eyes gleam. But this is the class
that--united--can stay the hand of imperialism.
NO BORDERS IN WORKERS' STRUGGLE
What political course is in the interests of workers--in
North America, and parti cu larly in Latin America and the
Caribbean?
Workers in the United States are justifiably worried about
the loss of tens of millions of manufacturing and other jobs
in the last 30 years due to plant closings. The bosses have
shifted many of these jobs to low-wage areas, particularly
in Latin America and Asia.
How can this flight of capital be arrested?
The capitalists claim the principal barriers to production
are high tariffs, import duties, taxes. But these are merely
symptoms of a deeper crisis: profit-driven economies based
on private ownership of the wealth they produce.
Taxes and tariffs may slow down or accelerate the
circulation of capital. But production for profit under
capitalism outstrips consumption. And so it is this profit-
mad economic system itself that leads to overproduction and
war.
Capitalism is paved with competition for inroads into new
markets. That is what leads to trade wars. And that is the
path, slippery with workers' blood, that led the imperialist
rival powers into two world wars.
The expansion of U.S. capitalism in any direction of the
compass will not benefit working people in this country. It
will only deepen the suffering of the most oppressed here
and around the world.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union noted in a
December resolution that NAFTA resulted in the loss of
400,000 jobs from the United States and plummeting living
standards for Mexican workers.
U.S. workers living in the belly of the beast need to take
the lead in demonstrating solidarity with workers everywhere
against an economic system that cannot meet the needs of the
laboring majority and the oppressed.
The April 20-22 protests offer an opportunity to build just
that kind of class-based coalition.
The ILWU resolution supported the Quebec protests against
the FTAA and encouraged members to take part. The resolution
noted: "The globalizing policies of the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank have already extended the
harm of the free market to some of the farthest corners of
the world. But instead of satisfying international capital's
greed, it has only whetted its appetite for more."
The United Electrical union also passed a resolution
supporting the anti-FTAA protests. "Their plan promises to
benefit multinational corporations, while destroying good
jobs, weakening unions, devastating national economies,
sending people into deeper poverty and destroying the
environment," read the resolution.
It continued: "The trade ministers of the FTAA fear an
interruption in the negotiations could halt the entire
process. Tens of thousands of working people and their
allies in the student, farm, environmental and human-rights
movements succeeded [in disrupting the WTO in Seattle]. We
do have the power to stop the FTAA."
Capitalism is the one barrier that stands in the way of
genuine "fair trade"--a planned economy based on cooperation
among the workers of the world. All out to build the anti-
capitalist movement on A20-22!
Want to take part in the April 20-22
actions in Quebec City, Buffalo,
Vermont, San Diego and Tijuana?
For information contact the International Action Center, 39
W. 14th St., Suite 206, New York, NY 10011; phone (212) 633-
6646; or visit the Web site www.iacenter.org.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
