The Municipal Convention Center Racket Is Alive And Well – OpEd


Las Vegas, Nevada. Photo by Thomas Wolf, Wikipedia Commons.

January 20, 2022 
By Doug French*

The crown jewel of Las Vegas trade shows, the Consumer Electronics Show, just left town having attracted only a quarter of the show’s typical attendance. At the same time, the Consumer Electronics Show was the first big test for Elon Musk’s Boring Company’s one mile underground tunnels running from one end of the Las Vegas convention center to the other, theoretically turning a twenty-minute-walk into a one-minute-ride.

Alissa Walker describes the scene in Musk’s underground tube for New York magazine’s Curbed, “This week, a one-minute video showed the vehicle stuck in traffic for at least that long, as the driver—a human; more on that in a minute—merges into an underground parking garage, where dozens of people are getting into seemingly ordinary cars, all of them also about to get stuck in seemingly ordinary traffic, except they’re trapped inside what looks like the world’s longest MRI machine.”

The Las Vegas’s convention authority, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, paid Boring Company $50 million for this pair of mile long tunnels. Ms. Walker points out that Musk’s company is contractually obligated to move 4,000 people per hour for 13 hours a day during major trade shows. The penalties can run up to $300,000 per event or a total of $4.5 million.

The assumptions for these penalties were based upon driverless vans holding a dozen passengers, which hasn’t materialized. Walker writes, “it’s plain to any observer that there are not 4,000 people moving through this tunnel per hour, and recent data showed it’s more like 1,300 people per hour—about the capacity of standard (and, often, autonomous) people movers all over Vegas—meaning the Boring Company has massively shortchanged its client.”

And then there is this from a twitter post, “so I rode Musk’s loop at the convention center just once to see it. Never again. Total Death Trap. Can anyone else see the problem with having a tunnel that’s too small to fit a fire engine, filled with Teslas, which have huge batteries in therm (sic)? The plan if one catches fire, I shit you not, the cars behind are to reverse back down the tunnel out.”

The tweeter has a point. There have been so many Tesla fires, a website has been created to keep track and provide details.

Meanwhile, Ms. Walker continues, Boring Company has found more business in Las Vegas. “[I]n October, Musk’s Boring Company won unanimous approval from Clark County to extend his tunnels beneath the Strip, with contracts to build stations at several hotels. The hotels are footing the bills for the next phase, so at least the city’s money won’t continue to be buried in this underground money pit.”

In other Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority news, its board of directors approved a $40 million budget to host the 2024 Super Bowl, “the largest noncapital amount ever spent for a single event by the LVCVA,” the Las Vegas Review Journal’s Richard Velotta reports. The committee expects to spend $60 million to host the big game and thus will have to raise $20 million from somewhere. It’s believed the committee will sell corporate sponsorships to fill the gap.

Las Vegas was built by money from suckers. We can now add the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and the strip hotels to the list.

*About the author: Douglas French is President Emeritus of the Mises Institute, author of Early Speculative Bubbles & Increases in the Money Supply, and author of Walk Away: The Rise and Fall of the Home-Ownership Myth. He received his master’s degree in economics from UNLV, studying under both Professor Murray Rothbard and Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

Source: This article was published by the MISES Institute

WATCH: Katie Porter tears down defense contractor whose employee bragged about ripping off taxpayers

Matthew Chapman
January 19, 2022

Rep. Katie Porter (screengrab)

On Wednesday, during a hearing, Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) grilled Nick Howley, the executive of defense contractor TransDigm, about private boasts that the company was ripping off taxpayers — and it didn't go well for him.

"Do you recognize these words?" asked Porter. "Quote, 'We didn't have to give up a dime. I'm just full of B.S., and they took the bait.'"

"I don't — I don't have knowledge or recall it," said Howley.

"Okay," said Porter. "That is from a TransDigm exhibit. You don't need to see it, but that is from an exhibit in this investigation. That is your salespeople talking about a deal that they had just made with the military for jet engine parts in 2018. 'We don't have to give up a dime.' Your salesperson said, 'I'm just full of B.S., and they [being the D.O.D. and taxpayers] took the bait.' Mr. Howley, does TransDigm have a code of business ethics and conduct?"

"Oh, as any company does," said Howley. "Of course we do. It's on our website."

"Okay, does that code require fair dealing?" asked Porter.

"Yes," said Howley. "And it says what it says, but of course it requires fair dealing."

"Do you think it's fair dealing to be full of bull sh*t and get the taxpayers to take the bait?" asked Porter.

"I don't have a comment on that," said Howley. "I'm not familiar with that situation. I don't know what it is. I don't know who the person is. I don't know them. I just can't comment on it."

"Mr. Howley, will you find out who that person is?" asked Porter.

"I presume you have it," said Howley after a slight pause. "You have an email. I presume you have it. I don't know who it is."

"Mr. Howley, as Executive Chair of the board, being paid $68 million when a typical board member of a Fortune 100 company receives $319,000 — I mean, here is the typical board member of a Fortune 100 company. See this flat line? You can't even see it. Here's you. For $68 million, you need to enforce your company's code of business ethics."

Watch below:

WORKING FROM HOME
Taking office chair home in pandemic not a sacking offense, labor court rules

The plaintiff took the chair without asking after being told to work from home by her employer — the Archdiocese of Cologne. The judge said that while it was a clear transgression, it did not warrant her dismissal.

The court said firing the employee on the grounds that she took an ergonomic office chair home without asking permission was unjust

The dismissal of the legal adviser of the Catholic Archdiocese of Cologne because she took home an office chair was deemed illegal by a German Labor Court on Tuesday.

In the judge's ruling, he said that taking the chair was a clear transgression by the employee, but not one that justified her dismissal. He deemed that the termination of her contract was unjust.

The employee had taken the liberty of seizing the office chair as the archdiocese asked staff to work from home due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The judge found that the necessary equipment had not been made available to staff when the archdiocese told its employees to work from home in most circumstances early in 2020.

Church argued chair was of 'considerable value'

The attorney for the archdiocese had argued that the ergonomic office chair was an "object of considerable value" and that taking it was "illegal." He also said that the employee called in sick soon after taking the object.

The plaintiff, who worked under Archbishop Rainer Maria Woelki, had been employed by the Archdiocese of Cologne since 2008.
Separate damages sought in connection with sex abuse scandal

A large part of her work in recent years had involved processing the legal complaints the archdiocese is facing pertaining to child sexual abuse. However, the labor court on Tuesday rejected a separate claim of hers for damages of at least €50,000.

She had argued that she was traumatized by this work and that she had not been offered sufficient support and training for the task by her employer. Her lawyer spoke of post-traumatic stress disorder linked to this work as the reason for her calling in sick.

The judge however found that given her position at the head of the legal team, she could have sought to arrange suitable counseling and support for legal staff herself.

The termination of her contract occurred on July 22, 2021.

What Tuesday's ruling means for the future employment of the woman remains unclear. The verdict can be appealed.

Support among shoppers still strong for King Soopers strike, despite empty shelves at other chains


Photo by: KMGH

By: Russell Haythorn
PostedJan 19, 2022

DENVER -- Outside King Soopers stores throughout metro Denver, there is still a lot of support for those on the picket lines.

“I know how hard they work,” said Lauren DeGeorge, who regularly shops at King Soopers, but hasn’t since the strike started. “I’ve got family friends with a son who is employed by King Soopers.”

That support is certainly appreciated by those on the picket lines like Laurie Delmonico.

“We love that people appreciate the situation that we’re in,” said Delmonico, who works part-time for King Soopers. “We’re out here for unfair labor practices. I want to see people make more money.”

What’s even more telling is what it looks like inside grocery stores that aren’t King Soopers.

We checked Safeway, Target and Sprouts. Many meat sections are completely out of chicken.

They’re also running low on milk, cheese and a lot of fresh produce. And the toilet paper and tissue aisles are picked over.

Compare that to the tissue aisle, toilet paper, paper towels at King Soopers, which were well-stocked at the locations we checked on Wednesday.

It’s a sign that people are supportive of the strike, even in the second week.

Shoppers are going elsewhere, even if it means long lines and paying more.

“I spent probably triple the amount of money I would because I had to go to Whole Foods just up the street,” DeGeorge said. “And I’ll keep doing it. You do what you have to do.”

How long shoppers will tolerate long lines and empty shelves at the grocery store is anyone’s guess, but they are likely to grow fatigued at some point.

“Even that won’t go forever,” Delmonico said. “We realize that and we respect that this needs to be resolved at some point. People will get tired.”

For now, there is still support and still hope for a resolution that benefits the workers.

“My end goal for being out here is that I would like to see people be able to survive while they’re working. They need to be paid a living wage,” Delmonico said.

“Absolutely,” DeGeorge said. “If that’s going to be what it takes for the higher-ups to listen to what the employees have to say, then I’m totally on board with it.”

UK asylum reforms would ‘fail to meet UK’s human rights obligations’

Joint Committee on Human Rights says reforms would be inconsistent with Refugee Convention

Migrants arrive at the Port of Dover on board a Border Force vessel after being rescued while crossing the English Channel. Reuters
Soraya Ebrahimi

Jan 18, 2022

The government’s asylum reforms would “fail to meet the UK’s human rights obligations” and risk exacerbating an “already unacceptable” backlog of claims, a group of peers and MPs have said.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) has been reviewing proposed laws contained in the Nationality and Borders Bill currently going through Parliament.

Its latest report scrutinising the provisions in the bill says that segregating “different categories of refugee” based on how they arrived in the UK “would be inconsistent with the Refugee Convention and potentially a discriminatory breach of human rights”.

UK's Patel plans to ‘crack down’ on asylum claims and eco-protesters in 2022

Instead of combating people smugglers, the legislation would “penalise asylum claimants” for not using safe and legal routes to the UK which “lack sufficient capacity to support them”.

This and other plans as part of the overhaul, such as introducing the possibility of offshore processing of asylum claims, “risk undermining the humanitarian and cooperative principles on which refugee protection is founded”, the committee said.

Changes to how the age of asylum seekers is determined may lead to more children being “wrongly identified as adults, with severe consequences which would amount to a denial of children’s rights” and there was “no justification” for plans to use scientific methods to determine age “given their inaccuracy”, the peers and MPs said.

Another element of the bill which would allow the home secretary to remove a person's citizenship without notice in the interests of national security “undermines the principle of fairness” and should be scrapped, the group concluded.

A child clutching a teddy steps ashore in Dover, Kent, southern England, accompanied by Border Force officers after being rescued from a small boat trying to cross the English Channel. PA

“The UK has a proud history of championing the human rights of refugees. We should continue in this tradition and do all we can to be a place of welcome and support for people who have been persecuted,” said Joanna Cherry, the committee’s deputy chairwoman.

“Rather than coming up with new punitive measures and lambasting the difficulties in rejecting asylum applications, the government should focus on dealing with the lengthy backlog of cases.

“Fundamentally, this bill increases the likelihood that the UK turns its back on people it should be helping. This would be wrong and the government needs to rethink these proposals.”

“The Nationality and Borders Bill will stop the abuse of our system and give victims who have been exploited the support they need to rebuild their lives,” said a government representative.

“It is compliant with our legal and international obligations. It will continue to offer protection to the most vulnerable and step up measures to break the deadly trade of people smuggling.

“The power to deprive British citizenship on ‘conducive to the public good’ grounds is used sparingly, complies with the UN Conventions on Statelessness and always comes with a right to appeal. The bill does not change this.”

Florida on Pace for Smallest Orange Crop in Over 75 Years

The orange production has been on a quarter century slide due to citrus greening, a bacteria that can cause massive fruit drops and eventually kill the citrus tree

Published January 19, 2022 •

An orange hangs from a tree as Tim Brown, owner of Brown’s Grove Citrus and Produce, walks though the company’s grove in Sarasota, Florida, U.S., on Friday, Jan. 3, 2014.


Florida is on pace to produce the smallest crop of oranges in more than 75 years, according to a forecast released this month.

The Sunshine State is on pace to produce 44.5 million 90-pound boxes of oranges during the current season, according to a forecast released last week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That is a 1.5 million box reduction from the previous forecast in December.

If the current forecast holds true through the rest of the citrus growing season, it will be the smallest orange crop since the 1944-1945 season when the state produced 42.3 million boxes of oranges. The citrus growing season in Florida lasts from fall into late spring. Comparing that to the 1997-1998 harvest season, when that production number was previously up to 244 million boxes of oranges.

With that small a crop, California will surpass Florida in orange production for the first time in recent years.

The processors who are making the orange juice in result need to buy more fruit, which leads to higher costs needed to manufacture the orange juice. According to NBC News, the national average for a bottle of orange juice is up 15 cents from 2020.

“The disappointment of another decline in the forecast is hard to overstate. But so too is the determination of Florida’s citrus growers who remain focused on delivering great-tasting and high-quality fruit while – simultaneously – seeking new solutions to citrus greening,” said Shelley Rossetter, assistant director of global marketing at the Florida Department of Citrus, in a statement.

Florida's orange production has been on a quarter century slide due to citrus greening, a bacteria that can cause massive fruit drops and eventually kill citrus trees, as well as another disease which can cause the leaves and fruit of citrus trees to drop prematurely and create unappealing lesions on the fruit.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there is no current cure for citrus greening, which is known to devastate millions of crops in the United States and across the globe. It is spread by a disease-infected insect. Infected trees in result produce fruits that are green, misshapen and bitter, and unsuitable for sale.

The January forecast for grapefruit remained unchanged from the previous month at 4.1 million boxes.

Copyright AP - Associated Press

PRISON NATION USA

Reducing Native overrepresentation in jails

Since 2000, the Native American jail population nationwide is up 85 percent, according to the Prison Policy Initiative

Selso Villegas accepts the Martin Luther King Community Service Award in January 2017. (Photo by Andy Morales, courtesy of Selso Villegas)

Kylie Cochrane
CRONKITE NEWS

PHOENIX – Selso Villegas knows the criminal justice system well. His daughter has battled a drug addiction for years, so for the past decade, he has cared for his grandchildren, including two grandsons who have been incarcerated. But as a Native American, Villegas and his family face additional hurdles.

“We were conquered and we were put on reservations, isolated,” said Villegas, executive director of water resources for the Tohono O’odham Nation. “So I think our biggest problem for young men and women is that we were stripped from our social development.”

Villegas’ grandsons are a part of a disproportionately large group of American Indians held in southern Arizona jails. Data from the Safety and Justice Challenge – which is funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation – shows that Native Americans are 1.8 times as likely as White Americans to be booked into a Pima County jail.

“Racial bias and racial bias compounded by poverty or economic struggle really make certain communities much more vulnerable to getting involved in and trapped up in the criminal legal system,” said Valena Beety, a law professor at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University.




Selso Villegas attends the Native American Wellness Day Pascua Yaqui in August 2019, representing Pima County’s Safety and Justice Challenge. (Photo courtesy of Selso Villegas)

Villegas blames colonization for the situation Native Americans are in today.

“We were conquered, and we’re put on reservations, isolated,” he said. “So I think our biggest problem for young men and women or men is that we were stripped from our social development.”

Every year in the United States, more than 10 million people are jailed, according to data from the U.S. Department of Justice. The Safety and Justice Institute says about 75 percent of them are behind bars for nonviolent offenses related to traffic, property, drug or public order offenses. And, since 2000, the Native American jail population nationwide is up 85 percent, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.

The vast majority of people in jail are awaiting trial, meaning they haven’t been convicted of any crime. And jail time for any reason can have a cascading effect.

“Even three days of being in jail can mean you lose your job,” Beety said. “That can mean you’re abandoning your children legally, so your custody of your children could be in question.”

Danny Ortega, a Phoenix attorney who specializes in civil rights, said the goal should be to keep people out of jail.

Phoenix attorney Danny Ortega specializes in civil rights cases. (Photo courtesy of Ortega Law Firm)

“Because we all know that when you keep people in jail, particularly poor people, it really breaks down the structure of the community and of the family,” he said. “There’s just a recycling of people in prisons and jails.”

With a parent behind bars, he said, “then those children, because of poverty, begin to deal with the adversity that their parents dealt with. Then they become involved in the same activity to survive, and so it’s a survival issue.”

That’s why Pima County in 2016 started to address the drivers of its jail population with financial support from the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge.

“Our main strategies at that point were to reduce the jail population safely without impact to community safety,” said Kate Vesley, the director of justice services for Pima County. “And also to reduce racial and ethnic disparities at disproportionality and the justice system.”

Pima County Attorney Laura Conover. (Photo courtesy of Pima County Attorney’s Office)


The county has implemented such solutions as pretrial behavioral-health diversion programs and warrant resolution. The measures have reduced the number of incarcerated and addressed some racial concerns, officials say.

In 2014, the average daily jail population was 2,136. Today, it’s about 1,700 inmates.

“It had gotten down last year into the 1,300s which was a bit of a historic low, because of COVID, and it has crept back up since then,” Pima County Attorney Laura Conover said.

“The criminal justice system has been inherently racially and ethnically disparate, if not intentionally focused in a punitive way upon racial and ethnic minorities,” she said. “When we are honest about that, then we make sure our policies going forward address that.”

One way is through the warrant resolution program, in which county probation officers try to persuade certain offenders who have skipped court dates to surrender without the threat of jail time for failure to appear.

“These are the people that seem to be their own worst enemies,” said David Sanders, the county’s chief probation officer. “They’re not necessarily a serious threat to public safety. And if they can be re-engaged in treatment and probation supervision, they’re much better off than living in the shadows, with a felony warrant outstanding, not able to work or able to participate in normal events in the community.”


Valena Beety is a law professor at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. (Photo courtesy of Valena Beety)

Villegas, as the executive director of water resources for the Tohono O’odham, can use his influence to facilitate a relationship between the tribe and Pima County. He’s a member of Safety and Justice Challenge and works on a variety of initiatives – including warrant resolution.

“I encourage our tribal members, the Pascua Yaqui and Indigenous people that I know that have warrants,” he said. “When I see them, I tell them, ‘You need to go to Pima County and tell them you want to clear up your own failure to appear warrants.’”

Still, Pima County has a long way to go in addressing racial disparities.

“We’re only now beginning to dig into the systemic impact that over-policing and over incarceration have had on communities of color,” Vesley said.

The county tracks racial inequity at various steps in the criminal process. For example, the 2020 Pima County probation annual report shows Native Americans make up 4.4 percent of the county’s census rate and probation population, but they represent 6.3 percent of probation revocations.

“We’d never looked at it (race), and the MacArthur grant kind of opened our eyes to that,” Sanders said.


Now the probation department publishes racial and ethnic disparities each year.

“In theory, our revocation rate should not be any higher than our census rate, and that’s our goal,” he said.

But change can’t come soon enough for Villegas.

“There’s very few people out in our nation that are really advocates for change, and I’m one of those people that they want to advocate for change because these are community members,” he said. “And we do need them to come back home. There are 9.7 million of us left; every one of us counts. By 2030, we may not have that number.”

For more stories from Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org.

THIS IS CLASS WAR

Lyft Makes Largest Donation in Massachusetts History to Keep Drivers Down

The more than $14 million went to a coalition fighting to stop ride-hailing and delivery companies from having to classify their drivers as employees.

Lyft driver Al Aloudi speaks to demonstrators during a March 25, 2019 San Francisco protest against the company's paycuts and its announcement that it is going public on Friday. (Photo: Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

BRETT WILKINS

January 19, 2022

As Massachusetts becomes the latest battleground state in the fight for gig worker rights, advocates on Wednesday accused Lyft of attempting to purchase a law by giving over $14 million to a committee pushing a ballot initiative to prevent app-based drivers from being classified as employees.

"Remember when gig corporations bought a law in California for $200 million? They're at it again––this time, in Massachusetts."

The Boston Globe reports Lyft gave $14.4 million to Flexibility and Benefits for Massachusetts Drivers, a coalition established to fund an upcoming state ballot measure to keep ride-hailing and delivery app drivers classified as independent contractors. Such a policy would free companies like Lyft from having to pay a minimum wage or provide certain workplace rights, protections, and benefits that employees receive.

Records reveal that most of Lyft's investment came in a single $13 million December contribution—by far the biggest ever recorded by the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance.

"Big Tech is trying to buy an election," tweeted Jerry Berger, a professor at Boston University's College of Communications. "The Legislature has the ability to prevent it. IF they act. Always a big IF."

Zephyr Teachout—a professor at the Fordham University School of Law in New York City and author of Break 'Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom From Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money—denounced Lyft, Uber, and DoorDash for "spending millions to make sure they can profit without responsibility."

While proponents of the Lyft-backed measure—which has also received more than $1 million in funding from each Uber, DoorDash, and Instacart—argue that it would protect driver flexibility and confer benefits including healthcare stipends and paid sick time, labor advocates counter that gig workers should already receive such rights under existing laws.

"Big Tech is trying to buy an election. The Legislature has the ability to prevent it. IF they act. Always a big IF."

In July 2020, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, a Democrat, sued Uber and Lyft for classifying drivers as contractors, alleging violations of state wage and labor laws while accusing the companies of getting a "free ride" and having "profited greatly" from "systematically" denying drivers "basic workplace protections and benefits."

Lyft's largesse has allowed Flexibility and Benefits for Massachusetts Drivers to hire some of the state's best political consultants, including the Dewey Square Group, described by the Globe as "a public affairs firm with deep roots in Democratic politics," and Conan Harris & Associates, which was founded by the husband of U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who has argued that app-based drivers are "misclassified" as contractors, and "need benefits and full labor protections."

Opponents of the upcoming Massachusetts ballot measure are devising creative ways to try to overcome their tremendous funding disadvantage.

Bloomberg reports Massachusetts Drivers United is selling 50 $200 non-fungible tokens (NFTs) which let buyers play a game of whack-a-mole against a giant rat named Big Gig that tunnels under a map of the United States, popping up in states with proposed anti-driver legislation.

"We're using technology to fight back," Massachusetts Drivers United executive director Henry De Groot explained. "Uber, Lyft, and their peers have used technology to circumvent labor laws and deny app workers basic protections and benefits. We invite the crypto community to wage a campaign against the billionaires who control Big Gig."

The Massachusetts fight closely mirrors California's battle over Proposition 22, which was approved by voters in November 2020 and exempts app-based driver companies from classifying their workers as employees.

Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash spent a combined $160 million in support of the measure—more than 10 times the amount spent by opponents—making it the most expensive ballot initiative in California history. The companies also pressed drivers to vote for Prop 22, while prominent critics of the bill faced intense harassment.

Related Content

Race to the Bottom Continues for Workers as Uber, Lyft Win Prop 22 Passage After Historic Money Dump

Last August, a California judge ruled Prop 22 unconstitutional, finding that the law "appears only to protect the economic interest of the network companies in having a divided, ununionized workforce."

Although the California Labor Federation hailed the decision as "a major and deserved win for drivers and gig workers," the ruling was appealed, and Golden State drivers remain classified as contractors.

As was the case with Prop 22 in California, some Massachusetts observers reacted to Lyft's mega-donation with calls for systemic reform. Kevin Connor, chief of staff to state Sen. Harriette Chandler (D-1st Worcester), tweeted that "there should be donor limits on MA ballot initiatives campaigns."

The nonpartisan advocacy group We the People Massachusetts called for a more sweeping solution.

"We need the #WeThePeopleAmendment to overturn Citizens United and other SCOTUS decisions that have gutted campaign finance regs and have made 'buying a loophole' in our laws possible," the group asserted, referring to a constitutional amendment introduced by U.S. House Democrats to end the controversial 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that affirmed unlimited corporate political contributions.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

America's Class War: Organized Labor Is the Best Tool to Push Back Against the Rich

Organized workers, often defying their timid union leadership, are on the march across the United States.

US Senator Bernie Sanders (C) takes selfies with people after speaking to striking Kellogg's workers in downtown Battle Creek, Michigan, on December 17, 2021. (Photo: Seth Herald/AFP via Getty Images)

CHRIS HEDGES

January 19, 2022 by Scheerpost

There is one last hope for the United States. It does not lie in the ballot box. It lies in the union organizing and strikes by workers at Amazon, Starbucks, Uber, Lyft, John Deere, Kellogg, the Special Metals plant in Huntington, West Virginia, owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the Northwest Carpenters Union, Kroger, teachers in Chicago, West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona, fast-food workers, hundreds of nurses in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.

As history has repeatedly proven, organized labor, allied with a political party dedicated to its interests, is the best tool to push back against the rich.

Organized workers, often defying their timid union leadership, are on the march across the United States. Over four million workers, about 3% of the work force, mostly from accommodation and food services, healthcare and social assistance, transportation, housing, and utilities have walked away from jobs, rejecting poor pay along with punishing and risky working conditions. There is a growing consensus—68% in a recent Gallup poll with that number climbing to 77% of those between the ages of 18 and 34—that the only way left to alter the balance of power and force concessions from the ruling capitalist class is to mobilize and strike, although only 9% of the U.S. work force is unionized. Forget the woke Democrats. This is a class war.

The question, Karl Popper reminded us, is not how we get good people to rule. Most of those attracted to power, figures such as Joe Biden, are at best mediocre and many, such as Dick Cheney, Donald Trump, or Mike Pompeo, are venal. The question is, rather, how do we organize institutions to prevent incompetent or bad leaders from inflicting too much damage. How do we pit power against power?

The Democratic Party will not push through the kind of radical New Deal reforms that in the 1930s staved off fascism and communism. Its empty political theater, which stretches back to the Clinton administration, was on full display in Atlanta when Biden called for revoking the filibuster to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, knowing that his chances of success are zero. Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, along with several of the state's voting rights groups, boycotted the event in a very public rebuke. They were acutely aware of Biden's cynical ploy. When the Democrats were in the minority, they clung to the filibuster like a life raft. Then Sen. Barack Obama, along with other Democrats, campaigned for it to remain in place. And a few days ago, the Democratic leadership employed the filibuster to block legislation proposed by Sen. Ted Cruz.

The Democrats have been full partners in the dismantling of our democracy, refusing to banish dark and corporate money from the electoral process and governing, as Obama did, through presidential executive actions, agency "guidance," notices and other regulatory dark matter that bypass Congress. The Democrats, who helped launch and perpetuate our endless wars, were also co-architects of trade deals such as NAFTA, expanded surveillance of citizens, militarized police, the largest prison system in the world and a raft of anti-terrorism laws such as Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) that abolish nearly all rights, including due process and attorney-client privilege, to allow suspects to be convicted and imprisoned with secret evidence they and their lawyers are not permitted to see. The squandering of staggering resources to the military — $777.7 billion a year — passed in the Senate with an 89-10 vote and in the House of Representatives with a 363-70 vote, coupled with the $80 billion spent annually on the intelligence agencies has made the military and the intelligence services, many run by private contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton, nearly omnipotent. The Democrats long ago walked out on workers and unions. The Democratic governor of Maine, Janet Mills, for example, killed a bill a few days ago that would have allowed farm workers in the state to unionize. On all the major structural issues there is no difference between the Republicans and the Democrats.

Once workers begin to exert power and extract demands from the ruling class, the struggle educates communities about the real configurations of power and mitigates the feelings of powerlessness that have driven many into the arms of the neofascists.

The longer the Democratic Party does not deliver real reforms to ameliorate the economic hardship, exacerbated by soaring inflation rates, the more it feeds the frustration of many of its supporters, widespread apathy (there are 80 million eligible voters, a third of the electorate, who do not cast ballots) and the hatred of the "liberal" elites stoked by Donald Trump's cultish Republican Party. Its signature infrastructure package, Build Back Better, when you read the fine print, is yet another infusion of billions of government money into corporate bank accounts. This should not surprise anyone, given who funds and controls the Democratic Party.

The suffering and instability gripping at least half the country living in financial distress, alienated and disenfranchised, preyed upon by banks, credit card companies, student loan companies, privatized utilities, the gig economy, a for-profit health care system that has resulted in a quarter of all worldwide COVID-19 deaths—although we are less than 5% of the world's population—and employers who pay slave wages and do not provide benefits is getting worse. Biden has presided over the loss of extended unemployment benefits, rental assistance, forbearance for student loans, emergency checks, the moratorium on evictions and now the ending of the expansion of the child tax credits, all as the pandemic again surges. The handling of the pandemic, from a health and an economic perspective, is one more sign of the empire's deep decay. Americans who are uninsured, or who are covered by Medicare, often frontline workers, are not reimbursed for over-the-counter COVID tests they purchase. The Supreme Court—five of the justices were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote—also blocked the Biden administration from enforcing a vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers. And on the horizon, fueled by the economic fallout from the pandemic, are large-scale loan defaults and another financial crisis. The worse things get, the more discredited the Democratic Party and its "liberal" democratic values become, and the more the Christian fascists lurking in the wings thrive.

As history has repeatedly proven, organized labor, allied with a political party dedicated to its interests, is the best tool to push back against the rich. Nick French in an article in Jacobin draws on the work of the sociologist Walter Korpi who examined the rise of the Swedish welfare state in his book "The Democratic Class Struggle." Korpi detailed how Swedish workers, as French writes, "built a strong and well-organized trade union movement, organized along industrial lines and united by a central trade union federation, the Landsorganisationen (LO), which worked closely with the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Sweden (SAP)." The battle to build the welfare state required organizing—76% of workers were unionized—waves of strikes, militant labor activity and SAP political pressure. "Measured in terms of the number of working days per worker," Korpi writes, "from the turn of the century up to the early 1930s, Sweden had the highest level of strikes and lockouts among the Western nations." From 1900–13, as French notes, "there were 1,286 days of idleness due to strikes and lockouts per thousand workers in Sweden. From 1919–38, there were 1,448. (By comparison, in the United States last year, according to National Bureau of Economic Research data, there were fewer than 3.7 days of idleness per thousand workers due to work stoppages.)" There are a few third parties including The Green Party, Socialist Alternative and The People's Party that provide this opportunity. But the Democrats won't save us. They have sold out to the billionaire class. We will only save ourselves.

Unions break down political divides, bringing workers of all political persuasions together to fight a common oligarchic and corporate foe. Once workers begin to exert power and extract demands from the ruling class, the struggle educates communities about the real configurations of power and mitigates the feelings of powerlessness that have driven many into the arms of the neofascists. For this reason, capitulating to the Democratic Party, which has betrayed working men and women, is a terrible mistake.

The rapacious pillage by the elites, many of whom bankroll the Democratic Party, has accelerated since the financial crash of 2008 and the pandemic.

Class struggle defines most of human history. Marx got this right. It is not a new story. The rich, throughout history, have found ways to subjugate and re-subjugate the masses. And the masses, throughout history, have cyclically awoken to throw off their chains.

Wall Street banks recorded record profits for 2021. As the Financial Times noted, they milked the underwriting fees from Fed-based borrowing and profited from mergers and acquisitions. They have pumped their profits, fueled by roughly $5 trillion in Fed spending since the beginning of the pandemic, as Matt Taibbi points out, into massive pay bonuses and stock buybacks. "The bulk of this new wealth—most—is being converted into compensation for a handful of executives," Taibbi writes. "Buybacks have also been rampant in defense, pharmaceuticals, and oil & gas, all of which also just finished their second straight year of record, skyrocketing profits. We're now up to about 745 billionaires in the U.S., who've collectively seen their net worth grow about $2.1 trillion to $5 trillion since March 2020, with almost all that wealth increase tied to the Fed's ballooning balance sheet."

Kroger is typical. The corporation, which operates some 2,800 stores under different brands, including Baker's, City Market, Dillons, Food 4 Less, Foods Co., Fred Meyer, Fry's, Gerbes, Jay C Food Store, King Soopers, Mariano's, Metro Market, Pay-Less Super Markets, Pick'n Save, QFC, Ralphs, Ruler and Smith's Food and Drug, earned $4.1 billion in profits in 2020. By the end of the third quarter of 2021, it had $2.28 billion in cash, an increase of $399 million in the first quarter of 2020. Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen made over $22 million, nearly doubling the $12 million he made in 2018. This is over 900 times the salary of the average Kroger worker. Kroger in the first three quarters of 2021 also spent an estimated $1.3 billion on stock buybacks.

Grocery store workers cheer as they picket outside a King Soopers store after rejecting the latest contract offer from the chain that is owned by Kroger, Co., Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, in east Denver. The grocery store strike is the first in Denver since workers walked off their jobs in 1996. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

"Kroger is the only employer for 86 percent of their workers, making it their sole source of earned income," Economic Roundtable in a survey of Kroger workers found. "Working full-time to earn a living wage would require Kroger to pay $22 per hour for an annual living wage total of $45,760. The average annual earnings of Kroger workers, however, equal $29,655. This is $16,105 short of the annual income needed to pay for basic necessities required for the living wage. More than two-thirds of Kroger workers struggle for survival due to low wages and part-time work schedules. Nine out of ten Kroger workers report that their wages have not increased as much as basic expenses such as food and housing have increase. Since 1990, wages for the most experienced Kroger food clerks have declined from 11 to 22 percent (adjusted for inflation) across the three regions surveyed. Across the entire grocery industry, 29 percent of the labor force is below or near the federal poverty threshold."

More than one-third (36%) of 10,000 employees at Kroger-owned stores in Southern California, Colorado, and Washington said they were worried about eviction. More than three-quarters (78%) are food-insecure. One in 7 Kroger workers faced homelessness in the past year. Nearly 1 in 5 (18%) Kroger employees said they hadn't paid the previous month's mortgage on time.


More than 8,000 unionized Kroger's King Soopers employees went on strike on Jan. 12 in Colorado, demanding higher wages and better working conditions from the country's largest grocery store chain and fourth-largest private employer.

This is where one of the emerging front lines in the class struggle are located. It is where we should invest our time and energy.

Our capitalist democracy from the start was rigged against us. The Electoral College permits presidential candidates such as George W. Bush and Trump to lose the popular vote and assume office. The awarding of two senators per state, regardless of the state's population, means that 62 senators represent one quarter of the population while six represent another quarter. The founding fathers disenfranchised women, Native Americans, African Americans, and men without property. Most citizens were intentionally locked out of the democratic process by the ruling white male aristocrats, most of them slaveholders.


All the openings in our democracy were the result of prolonged popular struggle. Hundreds of workers were murdered, thousands were wounded, tens of thousands were blacklisted in our labor wars, the bloodiest of any industrialized country. Abolitionists, suffragists, unionists, crusading journalists and those in the anti-war and civil rights movements opened our democratic space. These radical movements were repressed and ruthlessly dismantled in the early 20th century in the name of anti-communism. They were again targeted by the corporate elites following the rise of new mass movements in the 1930s. These popular movements, which rose again in the 1960s, moved us, inch by bloody inch, towards equality and social justice. Most of these gains made in the 1960s have been rolled back under the onslaught of neoliberalism, deregulation, and a corrupt campaign finance system, legalized by court rulings such as Citizens United, which allow the rich and corporations to bankroll elections to select political leaders and impose legislation. The modern incarnation of 19th-century robber barons, including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, each worth some $200 billion, summon us to our radical roots.

Class struggle defines most of human history. Marx got this right. It is not a new story. The rich, throughout history, have found ways to subjugate and re-subjugate the masses. And the masses, throughout history, have cyclically awoken to throw off their chains.

Copyright Robert Scheer, 2020.



Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He is the host of the Emmy Award-nominated RT America show On Contact. His most recent book is "America: The Farewell Tour" (2019).

VULTURE CAPITALI$M

Critics Warn Puerto Rico Debt Plan Will Lead to More Austerity

"The island's ability to resume growth and avoid cuts in anti-poverty programs are both chief concerns," said one economic justice advocate.

Puerto Ricans sit in the street in New York City as they protest

 against a hedge fund that owns over $2 billion of Puerto Rico's

 debt on October 21, 2019.

 (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

JULIA CONLEY

January 19, 2022

Progressives and anti-austerity campaigners on Wednesday were wary of a federal judge's ruling which wiped out 80% of Puerto Rico's debt—the product of four years of negotiations between the U.S. territory's government, creditors, and a fiscal control board that Puerto Ricans derisively call "la junta."

"Some believe the debt should've been cut down further... Others say the debt shouldn't be paid by the Puerto Rican people without auditing it and holding those responsible accountable."

While Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said the debt restructuring plan, which reduces $33 billion of the island's debt to $7.4 billion, will be "very good for Puerto Rico" and will "serve our people," critics said the plan will do little to help future generations of workers on the island while allowing some Wall Street hedge funds which previously bought up the debt to profit off of the deal.

Under the debt restructuring plan announced by Judge Laura Taylor Swain of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York, bondholders "will receive $7 billion in cash and other benefits," according to economic justice coalition Jubilee USA.

In a victory for Puerto Rican activists, existing pensions for retired teachers and other public sector workers will not be cut, as the fiscal control board previously planned following restructuring talks last year.

But while the deal was hailed by the board as the beginning of "a new chapter to lead to renewed economic prosperity," independent Puerto Rican journalist Bianca Graulau pointed out that the government will not be able to make cost-of-living adjustments to pay for public employees.
As Graulau reported, while the deal saves Puerto Rico $50 billion in debt payments and allows for repaying loans at a discount, it still commits the island "to debt payments that some say are unsustainable."

After a federal law giving foreign companies tax incentives to operate in Puerto Rico expires at the end of 2022, economist José Caraballo-Cueto of the University of Puerto Rico told the New York Times, the government's general fund will be reduced—translating to "more austerity measures to essential services or higher taxes to make the payments."

"Some believe the debt should've been cut down further," said Graulau. "Others say the debt shouldn't be paid by the [Puerto Rican people] without auditing it and holding those responsible accountable."

Puerto Rico's debt exceeded $70 billion and it owed $55 billion in unfunded pensions when it entered bankruptcy in 2017. Its debts were partially brought on by decades of lost tax revenue after the U.S. Congress repealed a tax break for businesses on the island in 1976. "Vulture" hedge funds then bought up the debt, only to sue the Puerto Rican government when it defaulted on paying the funds back—forcing the bankruptcy filing.

Jubilee USA said while "there is room for optimism, only time can tell if the debt cuts were deep enough to prevent Puerto Rico from needing another debt restructuring in a few years."

"We remain concerned by some of the assumptions of the debt deal. The island's ability to resume growth and avoid cuts in anti-poverty programs are both chief concerns," said executive director Eric LeCompte.

Julio López Varona of the Center for Popular Democracy was far less optimistic, saying Swain "turned her back on Puerto Ricans and approved a debt adjustment plan that leads us down the path of austerity and bankruptcy."

"The plan that was approved today is a plan predicated on continuing the suffering that we have suffered for decades and that has led thousands of people to leave the island while those who remain suffer from a lack of resources, basic services, and increases," said López Varona. "This is not over, last year we worked with pensioners to achieve the elimination of pension cuts from this agreement. We will now take our claim to Congress and the White House to make sure the board can no longer abuse and pass legislation that helps us achieve the fair recovery we deserve."

Congress put the fiscal control board in place in 2016, and it is set to remain on the island until Puerto Rico can show four consecutive years of balanced budgets.

Former San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz denounced the board's claim that the ruling brings a "new chapter" for Puerto Rico.

"A new chapter of austerity which has not worked anywhere else in the world," tweeted Yulín Cruz. "Reducing the debt at what cost?"

The economic justice campaign Hedge Clippers, which targets "unscrupulous hedge fund managers, private equity firms, and Wall Street speculators," said that as long as the vulture funds profit off the debt restructuring plan, "people suffer."

"This is why we have always said that the only way to ensure a just recovery for Puerto Rico is to cancel the debt," Hedge Clippers said.
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