Beaver County and the ‘Cracker’ Debate

Potential site for major new ‘cracker’ plant near Monaca in Beaver County, PA

By Carl Davidson

Our county was was hit hard and early by globalization and the export of jobs. Our towns were largely formed around mills, and when the mills were closed in the 1980s, the towns were stressed to the extreme. Many workers moved away or retired, and those remaining in the towns themselves were largely poor and Black with few options.

Now with the new natural gas boom creating by dubious and dangerous deep underground ‘fracking’ explosions, Shell Oil wants to build a new 'ethylene cracker’ plant that turns natural gas into plastics. Fewer than 1000 people would work in the new $1.2 billion facility, but 10,000 people would be hired over five years to build it, and perhaps another 7000 more for new plastic manufacturing plants draw to be created alongside it.

For the county, it means two things. First, a complete turnaround for employment and new small business and new orders for the tube mill still running. Second, since hundreds of new ‘fracking’ gas wells would be needed to feed the ‘cracker,’ there is serious danger to the county’s water supply and many other health and environmental issues.

So we have a big ongoing debate. Are you for or against the ‘cracker.’ Are you opposed to fracking? Or do you just want to tax and regulate it? And what about clean and green energy?

Natural beauty of our townships soon to be ‘fracked.’

The issue keeps coming up in various forums, including our Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Committee page on Facebook. I had posted some pictures to it showing the natural beauty of our area, which led some to say it could all be ruined by the ‘cracker’. Here’s my brief reply:

'Beauty' looks one way out in the townships. But in the deindustrialized mill towns along the rivers, you see something else--the impact of joblessness is not so pretty. You have to view these things strategically, meaning the whole, not just the part, the future, not just the present, and who are the key engines of change as your allies, if not the unemployed and underemployed. In order to unite the many to defeat the few, you have to find ways to unite people who disagree on many things--no easy task, but it's demanded of us.

Query to me: Why haven't jobs come to Beaver County? The skilled left the area for better jobs and now the perfect storm. I do not know the percentages of skilled or college grads or even people who only have a high school diploma or just a GED in Beaver County.

CarlD: The lack of opportunity means we already have exported a good number of our youth, or at least those with options and prospects. We are demographically now one of the oldest counties, if not the oldest, even though we still have many distressed young people among us, under-employed and unemployed. We have the means to create skills--BCCC, Robert Morris, Geneva and Penn State Beaver--and we have done so.

But I know younger folks in my own family, educated, who have moved away for lack of new industry. For those remaining, the fracking jobs, the trucker jobs related to it and the construction jobs related to the 'cracker' are viewed by them as a Godsend, or potentially so.

Our task is first, to defend clean water, and second figure out a positive way to deal with this developing industry. I doubt that it's going to be stopped, but it can be modified and a share of the profits from it can be diverted toward green renewables in the longer run. The devil is in the details, of course, but I don't think we do well simply to avoid those details with an abolitionist stance not likely to get very far and likely to separate us from real friends. Even people working at building a 'cracker' have an interest in clean water…

Don’t look for this debate to be resolved easily. The opinion and suggestion box is now open! Feel free to comment.

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July 28 - Worker Coops at Aliquippa Coffee House

 Download Flyer as PDF to print

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Occupy Pittsburgh Teach-In: Feb 4

From Occupy Wall St. to Occupy the Hood:

Building Power for the 99%

 

Saturday, Feb 4, 2012

Start: 02/04/2012 12:00 pm
End: 02/04/2012 5:30 pm

Will be held at Community Empowerment Association Training & Culture Center, 7120 Kelly St. in Homewood (accessible by the 67, 69, 71C, and all East Busway (P) buses - www.portauthority.org)

Join Occupy Pittsburgh for our second teach-in, organized by the Occupy the Hood, People of Color and Education Work Groups.

We hope to bring together the social and economic justice community in Pittsburgh, from all neighborhoods, acitivist concentrations, backgrounds, life circumstances and political viewpoints. By speaking together and sharing experiences and insight, we hope to strengthen the community that the Occupy has caused to take shape - in all our diversity of experience.

12 Noon: Lunch

!2:30 pm: Opening Plenary: From Occupy Wall Street to Occupy the Hood:  Building Power for the 99%

Speakers: Helen Gerhardt & Carl Redwood, facilitators: Guillermo Perez

Two Rounds of Workshops

1:45-3:15 p.m. - workshop session #1
3:15-3:30 p.m. - break
3:30-5:00 p.m. - workshop session #2
5:00-5:30 p.m. - group debrief

There will be at least 10 workshops.  Half will be presented by the Occupy the Hood/People of Color Work Group and half by the Education Work Group

 

Workshop Session #1 (1:45-3:15)

1. Who are the 99%?

(facilitator: Nicholas Rushin)

This is a discussion about the workings of class, oppression and exploitation through a materialist and historical perspective.  We are the 99% fighting against the 1%, but how do the 1% and the 99% get to be the 1% and 99%?  Where does wealth come from and who creates it?  How does class affect political struggles?  And how is class different and similar to other forms of oppression like sex and race?

2. The Disparity & Education of Black Students

(facilitator: Vickki Ayanna Jones)
This workshop will recognize, develop & repair the damage that has been done to our children in the educational system & Black people in general.

3. Healthcare for the 99%: Ending Race-Based, Class-Based, All-for-Profit Care

(panelists: Scott Tyson, Physician, PUSH/ Healthcare4ALLPA; Ed Cloonan, Save Our Community Hospitals & Western Pennsylvania coalition for Single Payer; Sandra Fox, Western PA Coalition for Single Payer; Residents from Braddock and surrounding areas, Footage from Tony Buba, Save Our Community Hospitals)

This workshop will consist of film footage and a panel of speakers who will tell the story of how UPMC created race- and class-based barriers to health care with its demolition of Braddock Hospital and building of a surplus hospital for Monroeville. Speakers will also discuss how and why they fought back, from street theatre to a civil rights lawsuit. What are the roots of this problem in U.S. healthcare and what would alternative system look like?

4. Impact of Mass Incarceration

(facilitator: Khalid Raheem, president/CEO of the National Council for Urban Peace and Justice; Steering Committee member of the Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted Persons Movement; member of Occupy the Hood Pitstburgh)

This workshop will explore the prison industrial complex as it pertains to mass incarceration of black males.

5. Gentrification and Our Right to the City

(facilitator: Carl Redwood)

This workshop will share information about the Right to the City Alliance organizing against gentrification using an urban human rights framework. The workshop will explore the forces behind gentrification and provide historical context for the issues we face. Through discussion we will examine how gentrification has impacted our neighborhoods and help us begin to look beyond our current reality to envision the rights we are fighting for. 

5. Bringing Occupy Pittsburgh to the Neighborhoods: Outreach Strategies and Initiatives

(NAMES, DESCRIPTION To Come)

Workshop Session #2 (3:30-5:00)

1. "Why Dismantle and Not Reform?" The Call of Occupy the Hood Pittsburgh

(facilitators: J.O. Yejide KMT & Bekezela Mguni)

This workshop will discuss why the Occupy movement needs radical approaches to change vs. reform of the current economic system in order to meet the needs of people of color and to ensure an equitable and humane future for all.

2. What are the Alternatives to Corporate Power?

(PANELISTS - Jackie Smith, Carl Davidson, etc)

So far the Occupy movement has helped draw public attention to what we're against, but what are the alternatives? This workshop will invite organizers from the region to present ideas that have been developed and tested in communities around the world to show that another world is possible. We will explore publicly-owned banks, community-supported agriculture; community currencies and barter systems; Davidson will present on the Mondragon co-operatives in Spain, and other forms of what is known as the "solidarity economy." Finally, campaigns that are working to counter corporate power to make room for community-based economic initiatives will be discussed.

3, Organizing within Marginalized Communities

(faciliators: Calvin Skinner & Kyndall Mason)

A workshop dedicated to successful strategies to do organizational outreach in marginalized communities with an emphasis on outreach to African-American and members of the LGBT communities.

4. Organized Labor & Occupy: Waging Class War on Two Fronts

(facilitators: Paul Le Blanc & Guillermo Perez)

Thanks to the Occupy movement, the issue of income and wealth disparity in the U.S. and the damage it's doing to our democracy are now front and center in the national discourse. Since its inception the Occupy movement has received considerable support from organizations affiliated with another national movement, organized labor. In this workshop we hope to engage union and Occupy activists in a discussion of how these two movements diverge and intersect and the ways we can work together to advance a common agenda.

5. Economic Disparities: Occupying Solutions for Black Communities

(Nazura Asaseyeduru)

This workshop will challenge the power structure of banks & government as it pertains to economic disparities for People of Color. Thus, participants will look at solutions in which Black communities have to be creative, innovative & self-determining.

Sponsors: Occupy the Hood (PghOccupythehood@riseup.net or call 412-244- 0298) &Occupy Pittsburgh (occupypittsburgh.org) and it'sPeople of Color & Education Working Groups

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Do They Really Want 'Specific Demands' from the Occupiers?

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

I’m getting fed up with pompous pundits lecturing the ‘Occupy!’ movement for not having a set of specific demands.

A case in point: New York Time financial columnist Joe Nocera quoted at length in a story by Phoebe Mitchell in the Daily Hampshire Gazette on Nov 29.  He was speaking at the Amherst Political Union, a debate club at UMass Amherst.

Nocera starts off with the now usual tipping of the hat to the protestors:

“Nocera believes the anger caused by income inequality, a divisive issue across the country in this prolonged economic downturn, is the fuel for both popular uprisings. ‘If we lived in a country that had a growing economy and where the middle class felt that they could make a good living and had a chance for advancement and a decent life, there would be no tea party or Occupy Wall Street,’ he said.”

But we don’t live in such times, and the more interesting story is that OWS and its trade union allies are displacing the Tea Party, and energizing the progressive grassroots. Nocera, however, makes OWS the target.

“He believes that for the Occupy Movement to be successful, it must frame clear demands that outline a plan for creating jobs and refashioning Wall Street to benefit the entire country and not just a select few wealthy investors. Without a solid plan for moving forward, he said, the Occupy protestors will be continued to be viewed by Wall Street supporters as little more than “a gnat that needs to be flicked from its shoulder blades.”

A ‘gnat’ indeed. In due time, a progressive majority may well come to view our dubious ‘Masters of the Universe’ on Wall St as bothersome gnats to be flicked away.

But to get to the main point, Nocero knows perfectly well that there is any number of short, sweet and to the point sets of demands aimed at Wall Street finance capital and the Congress it works to keep under its thumb. Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO has been hammering away at his six-point jobs program—one point of which is a financial transaction tax of Wall Street as a source of massive new revenues to fund the other five.

The United Steel Worker’s Leo Gerard has been tireless for years working for a new clean energy and green manufacturing industrial policy that could create millions of new jobs and get us out of the crisis in a progressive way.

So what happens when these demands are put forward? With our Wall Street lobbyists working behind the scene, the best politicians money can buy declare them ‘off the table.’ Nocera and others of like mind in punditocracy put the cart before the horse. OWS arose as a result of a long train of abuses, year after year of sensible, rational, progressive demands and programs swept off of Congress’s agenda like so many bread crumbs from a dining table. Not even brought to a vote. OWS and a lot of other people are fed up with being dismissed.

The pundits should watch what they wish for. The demands and packages of structural reforms will be back, much sharper and clearer, and with the ante upped by hundreds of thousands in the streets, as well as millions turning out for the polls. In fact, the solutions have always been there for anyone with ears to hear. We’ll see if our voices are loud enough to crack the ceiling at the top, and let some light shine through.

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A Champion of Jobs, Justice and Peace

 
 

Photo: Dwan Walker of ‘One Aliquippa’ with Rep. Conyers at award dinner

Rep. John Conyers Honored at Labor's

Human Rights Dinner in Beaver County

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

Over 400 labor and human rights leaders and activists gathered at The Fez in Beaver County's Hopewell Township Oct. 8 to honor John Conyers, the Congressman from Detroit Michigan, now serving his 23rd term as a long-time champion of labor, civil rights and civil liberties.

Sponsored by the Beaver-Lawrence Central Labor Council, the annual human rights banquet drew local labor unions, the NAACP and African American churches, and activist groups such as the 4th CD Progressive Democrats of America. The elected officials present included County Commissioners Joe Spanik and Tony Amadio, row officers Carol Fiorucci and Nancy Werme, as well as Dwan Walker and his 'One Aliquippa' organization. Walker's recent primary victory has position him to be the town's next mayor. The event was also honored by the attendance of several youth ambassadors from Aliquippa's Council of Men and Fathers.

"There's a high level of energy here," said Tina Shannon, PDA's president and a member of the dinner's organizing team. "Many of us have already worked together for years on Medicare for All, and in the recent 'One Nation' mobilization in Washington, DC. We've built a strong unity by working together, and it's reflected in the turnout here tonight. It'll continue as we fight for jobs"

Conyers was an excellent choice for the labor council's award. Not only is he known worldwide for his leadership in the House Judiciary Committee as a staunch defender of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, he is also responsible for introducing some of the most progressive Bills in Congress.  HR 676 'Improved and Expanded Medicare for All' has been widely promoted here in Beaver County by Unions and Progressive Democrats, including the first Citizen's Hearing on the Bill conducted in Aliquippa featuring Dennis Kucinich as convener. The Beaver County Commissioners and the Beaver/Lawrence Labor Council have both passed resolutions endorsing the Bill. Conyers has also recently drafted another groundbreaking bill, HR 870 Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act, to be funded by a financial transaction tax on Wall Street speculators.

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‘Street Heat’ vs. Finance Capital and the Right

Solidarity Time: Young People Occupying

Wall Street Are Standing Up for All of Us

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

The actions of thousands of young people in New York City's financial district, simply calling themselves "Occupy Wall Street," is now entering a second week, with many camping out overnight in the area's parks. How long its will continue and whether its numbers will swell is anyone's guess, but the response of the NYPD in arresting and otherwise restricting them is already banging heads with our First Amendment rights to peacefully assemble.

"At Manhattan's Union Square, police tried to corral the demonstrators using orange plastic netting," reports the Sept 25, 2011 Washington Post. "Some of the arrests were filmed and activists posted the videos online. One video appears to show officers using pepper spray on women who already were cordoned off; another shows officers handcuffing a man after pulling him up off the ground, blood trickling down his face."

Most of the youth are students, but many are also unemployed and underemployed young workers. And a small but important grouping of staffers and activists with NYC's trade unions have also made their way downtown to spend a few hours helping out.

The students certainly have a just cause. While the denizens of Wall Street have bailed themselves out and paid themselves huge bonuses with trillions from the public treasury, these young people are saddled with a degree of crushing debt to pay for their educations that would have been unthinkable 40 years ago. If they manage to graduate, they face a financial burden large enough for a home mortgage-all before they start their first full-time jobs, assuming their lucky enough to find one that pays a living wage.

But these youth and students are fighting for more than their own immediate concerns. They have raised a whole range of demands-Medicare for All, defending social security, for passing the various jobs bills in congress, opposing racism and sexism, ending the wars, and abolition of the death penalty in the wake of the recent unjust execution of Troy Davis.

They are the cutting edge of a new popular front against finance capital.

Young rebels often manifest a moral clarity that awakens and prods the rest of us. Through their direct actions, they become a critical force, holding up a mirror for an entire society to take a look at itself, what it has come to, and what choices lay before it. The historic example is the four young African American students that sat at a lunch counter and ordered a cup of coffee in Greensboro, North Carolina back in 1960.

The Wall Street protests are thus a clarion call to the trade unions and everyone concerned with economic and social justice. While the youth are clearly a critical force here, when all is said and done, they are not the main force. That power resides in labor and in the wider communities. It's in the hands of everyone that's part of an emerging progressive majority for peace and prosperity, everyone that wants a U-Turn against the country's current path to more wars and deeper austerity.

It's time to exercise that power and lend a hand with active solidarity. More actions are in the works, including an occupation and encampment on Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC starting Oct. 6, following the 'Rebuild the Dream' DC conference focused on a renewed labor-community coalition for the 2012 election.

It's going to take more than votes to push back the right wing and its Wall Street allies. It's going to take some serious 'street heat' as well.

 

[Carl Davidson is a national co-chair of Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, a national board member of the Solidarity Economy Network, and a member of Steelworker Associates residing in Beaver County, Western PA.

If you like this article, make use of the PayPal button at http://carldavidson.blogspot.com  His books are available at http://stores.lulu.com/changemaker]

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Far Right Exposing Its Own Class Hatreds

Shameless Opposition to the Jobs Bill Reveals

The GOP's Deep Hatred of the Working Class

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

If you want to have your class consciousness raised a few notches, all you have to do over the next few weeks is listen to the Republicans in Congress offer up their shameless commentary rejecting President's Obama's jobs bill.

This week's doozy came from Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert, who was outraged that capitalists were being restricted from discriminating in hiring the unemployed, in favor of only hiring people who already had jobs elsewhere. I kid you not. Here's the quote:

"We're adding in this bill a new protected class called 'unemployed,'" Gohmert declared in the House Sept. 13, 2011. "I think this will help trial lawyers who are not having enough work. We heard from our friends across the aisle, 14 million people out of work -- that's 14 million new clients."

One hardly knows were to begin. 

First, the Jobs Bill does no such thing as creating a 'new protected class.' It only curbs a wrongly discriminatory practice.

Second, so what if it did? Americans who uphold the Constitution, the 14th Amendment' equal protection clause, and the expansion of democracy and the franchise generally, will see the creation of 'protected classes' as hard-won progressive steps forward from the times of the Divine Right of Kings.

Third, if Gohmert had any first-hand knowledge of the unemployed, he'd know they usually can't afford lawyers, especially when the courts are stacked against them.

Fourth, to create even more confusion, Gohmert raced to the House clerk to submit his own 'Jobs Bill' before Obama's, but with a similar name. Its content was a hastily scribbled two-page screed consisting of nothing but cuts in corporate taxes.

What's really going on here is becoming clearer every day. The GOP cares about one thing: destroying Obama's presidency regardless of the cost. They don't even care if its hurts capitalism's own interests briefly, not to mention damaging the well being of everyone else.  Luckily, Obama is finally calling them out in public-although far too politely for my taste.

The irony will likely emerge if and when they ever do take Obama down. I'd bet good money that a good number of the GOP bigwigs would then turn on a dime and support many of the same measures they're now opposing.

But most of them, especially the far right, would still likely press on with their real aim, a full-throated neoliberal reactionary thrust that repeals the Great Society's Medicaid and Medicare, the New Deal's Social Security and Wagner Act, and every progressive measure in between.  Their idea of making the U.S labor market 'competitive' and U.S. business 'confident' is to make the whole country more like Texas, with its record volume of minimum wage work and poverty, and then Texas more like Mexico-the race to the bottom. They're not happy with 12% unionization; they want zero percent, where all of us are defenseless and completely under the thumbs of our 'betters'.

In brief, prepare for more wars and greater austerity.

If you think I'm exaggerating, over the next months observe how the national GOP is trying to rig the 2012 elections in Pennsylvania, Michigan and a few other big states. Our Electoral College system is bad enough, but they are going to 'reform' it to make it worse by attaching electoral votes to congressional districts, rather than statewide popular majorities. This would mean Obama could win the popular vote statewide, but the majority of electoral votes would still go to the GOP. Add that to their new 'depress the vote' requirements involving picture IDs, which are aimed at the poor and the elderly, and you'll see their fear and hatred of the working class.

We've always had government with undue advantages for the rich. But just watch them in this round as they go all out to make it even more so. We have to call it out for what it really is, and put their schemes where the sun doesn't shine.

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Jobs Programs: The Right and Wrong Turns

The Hot Potato Too Many Beltway Wonks Avoid:

The Need to Tie Job Creation to Industrial Policy

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

If you want to be a good policy advocate for jobs these days, two starting points will help you a lot. One is to take off your national blinders and see the economy globally. The second is to grasp how the need for revenues to finance the creation of new jobs can best be filled by increasing taxes on unproductive wealth.

A good example of the problem is Robert's Samuelson's 'Job Creation 101' op-ed column in the Sept 12 Washington Post. If we simply follow his lesson plan, we would end up creating new jobs in the third world--and doing so mainly at the expense of the wrong people at home.

Samuelson begins his argument wisely enough by stressing how increasing demand for goods and services creates jobs, and government has to have a hand in it. But then he goes astray:

"If government taxed, borrowed or regulated less, that money would stay with households and businesses, which would spend it on something else and, thereby, create other jobs. Politics determines how much private income we devote to public services.

"To this observation, there's one glaring exception. In a slump, government can create jobs by borrowing when the private economy isn't spending."

On the first point, tweaking taxes so both people and businesses have more cash to spend glosses over the matter of where and how the money is spent. Using extra income to pay down your Visa Card doesn't help job creation much. And if you spend it at Wal-Mart or other big box stores, you'll create some demand to hire more workers in China or Malaysia, but not much here.

On the second point, it's not always wise to create jobs simply by borrowing. It certainly adds to the revenues of the banks and bondholders.  But it's much smarter to go after unproductive pools of capital with progressive taxation. The proposal for a financial transaction tax on Wall Street speculators is an excellent example.

The rule-of-thumb is to tax activities you want to discourage, such as unproductive gambling in derivatives, while subsidizing efforts you want to encourage, such as new green manufacturing startups. It's called 'industrial policy,' and it's why some countries that have one, like China and Germany, are weathering the economic storms better than others.

If Obama's new jobs program is going to be thwarted by a hostile Congress anyway, those politicians who are serious about creating jobs would do well to fight for the best options-direct government programs that fund increasing local demand for local labor and raw materials.  If we had every county in the country funded to build a wind farm or solar array as a public power utility, it would be a good start. So would the building of the new and massive 'Smart Grid' power lines for clean and green energy.

 
When finance capital's opposition in Congress rears its head to crush something that makes perfect sense to everyone else, then we'll learn exactly who is part of the problem and who is part of the solution. If we get political clarity here in a massive way, we'll be in a much better position to assemble the popular power required to get what we really need.

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1000s at Labor Day Focus on Plight of Unemployed

Photo: Aliquippa's SOAR Contingent in Parade

By Kaitlynn Riely
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Labor Day was a day off work for many, but for Shawn Wygant, it was one more day he didn't have a job.

In May, Mr. Wygant, 37, of Forest Hills, was laid off from his job as a washing machine operator for Sodexo. Since then, he has been searching for work, without success.

He uses unemployment benefits to pay his bills and makes large pots of spaghetti to feed his wife, her sister, her brother and a niece and nephew.

Frustration sets in when he sees news reports that say the job situation may not improve for years.

"I can't wait that long," he said. "We need people to start standing up for us."

On Monday morning, he stood in the rain on Freedom Corner in the Hill District as he prepared to march in the Pittsburgh Labor Day Parade. He was one of about 70,000 who participated in the Downtown procession.

On the annual observance of the contributions of workers, Mr. Wygant's story was similar to those of millions across the country who have found themselves unemployed or underemployed in the economic downturn.

Nationally, the unemployment rate is 9.1 percent, and in Pennsylvania, it is 7.4 percent.

Jack Shea, president of the Allegheny County Labor Council, and Frank Snyder, the secretary-treasurer of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, called attention to the plight of the jobless at a news conference before the parade Monday.

For the unemployed and the underemployed, the dreary holiday weather was another chapter in a bleak period of their life.

"For the past two years, it's not been that happy of a Labor Day as they've not been able to find work," Mr. Snyder said.

At this year's Labor Day Parade, one of the largest in the country, Mr. Snyder said he and other leaders of Pittsburgh's labor community wanted to focus on putting people back to work.

That focus includes both union and non-union workers, he said.

"Unemployment does not discriminate," he said. "Union members as well as non-union members, Democrats, Republicans, no affiliation, find themselves unemployed on this Labor Day."

Dave Ninehouser, the Pittsburgh coordinator for PA Wants to Work, said his group was using Labor Day to ramp up its efforts to help the jobless gain access to resources and to spur the creation of jobs.

"This parade is a perfect example of what we need to do," he said. "Come together, stick together, stand together and fight back."

The parade began at 10 a.m. and lasted almost three hours. Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and Bishop David Zubik joined union members ranging from postal employees to Teamsters as they marched from the Civic Arena to the Boulevard of the Allies.

A steady rain fell throughout the morning, but there was a fair turnout, particularly among parade participants.

It was, for many parade participants, a bittersweet Labor Day.

About 5,000 members of the Pennsylvania State Education Association have been laid off from their jobs due to education cuts in the state budget, said Michael J. Crossey, president of the association. As the school year starts, they are out of work instead of in the classrooms, he said.

"We need to start doing the positive things that will move the economy forward," Mr. Crossey said. "This cuts budget doesn't work."

More than 50 people came out in support of the National Association of Letter Carriers, said Mike Plaskon, the executive vice president for Branch 84.

Part of their aim in marching in the parade, Mr. Plaskon said, was to urge Congress to find legislative solutions for the U.S. Postal Service's funding crisis.

"Our job is, we are going to get the facts out there, let the public know that they don't need to close post offices," he said. "They don't need to eliminate Saturday delivery. They just need to fix the funding."

Therese Kisic of Morningside has never been in a union but has family members who have, and she watches the parade every year.

This year, she said, she wished the labor movement would take its jobs message to Congress.

"I want to move this parade to D.C.," she said.

Although the parade had a definite message -- of supporting organized labor, providing access to health care and promoting job creation -- it was still a parade, with bands and banners and a few people throwing candy and other prizes to the umbrella-wielding bystanders.

Sandy and Andrew Pszenny of Franklin Park sat in lawn chairs on the sidewalk outside the DoubleTree Hotel, Downtown, and watched for their daughter Amanda, a piccolo player in the North Allegheny marching band.

They sought cover under their umbrellas as rain fell. It was their daughter's first time marching in a downpour, they said.

"But she's a tough kid. She likes the weather," Mr. Pszenny said.

Kaitlynn Riely: kriely@post-gazette.com o

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Time to Get Serious About Full Employment

Yes, We Need a Jobs Program, But One

That Doesn't Tinker Around the Edges

 

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

Our regional daily newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, to its credit, came out with an editorial today, Aug. 22, 2011, urging President Obama to push for a substantial jobs program over Republican opposition.

"Action on jobs: Obama must push hard to get people back to work" is the headline, and a key point stresses "Mr. Obama now needs to offer proposals equal to the size of the problem. That means bold strokes, not half-measures. If his Republican antagonists in Congress are determined to stand in the way of getting Americans back to work, the president must say so publicly -- and then go over their heads to enlist the nation in his effort."

Terrific, a good framing of the question. Unfortunately, however, once you get into the substance of the piece, it turns into a muddle. The Post-Gazette offers up a hodgepodge of proposals that tinker around the edges of the problem-more tax cuts and credits for jobs created, more unemployment benefits, and oddly, more trade deals, even though these deals mostly result in net job losses.

Here's the heart of the matter. In a down economy, jobs are created by increasing demand, by more customers with bigger orders coming to a firm's doors. The problem is that consumer demand has taken a nose dive when the credit bubble burst. People don't have money to spend. They're cutting back on everything, and trying to unload their debt. This means business-to-business orders shrink as well. Companies may be cash-rich and have high profits, but with no increase in orders or customers at their door, they aren't likely to hire people to do nothing just to get a tax credit.

This is where government has to become the key customer. It has to make huge productive purchases for local work and local materials to build productive infrastructure-county-owned green energy plants, new and improved schools, modernized locks and dams, Medicare for all, investment in young students and veterans like we did with the GI Bill, investment in research in new industries, and so on.

Most important, to work well, it can't be nickel-and-dimed to death. It has to be on the scale of the expenditures for World War 2. That's when the 'multiplier effect' can kick in, and related growth in manufacturing can take off in turn. And it has to be paid for by going to where the most appropriate money is, imposing a financial transaction tax on unproductive and destabilizing speculation by Wall Street.

The best the P-G does on this matter is to support Obama's proposal for an 'Infrastructure Bank,' but urges him to find a way to bypass a GOP roadblock in Congress.

But even that is too passive. It says, in effect, here's a small pot of money. If you want to repair some roads, come and get some.

What we really need is something like the New Deal's Tennessee Valley Authority and Works Progress Administration, but on steroids, a TVA-WPA-CCC 2.0. We need to pass John Conyer's HR 870 Full employment Bill. We need the Dept. of Energy and the Dept. of Labor to go to every county in the country with a fully funded proposal to build new green energy wind farms and solar power arrays as public energy utilities, hiring local workers at union scale, with no obstacles to a union election. And that's just for starters.

Yes, we need a serious jobs program. But it's time for everyone who utters that phrase to get serious themselves. Why? Because it's going to take a massive upsurge in class struggle to get it by removing those standing in the way.

[Carl Davidson is a Steelworker Associate and a retired computer technician living in Beaver County.  His 'Keep On Keepin' On' column appears in Beaver County Blue, website of the 4th CD Progressive Democrats of America.]

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More Taxes for More Wars?

Scrambled Brains in High Places

Photo: Wasted War Junk in Iraq

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

Members of Congress had best be careful. If it hasn't already done so, the 'deficit madness' virus circulating in those hallowed halls will turn your brains into scrambled eggs.

That's the conclusion to draw from the latest bright idea from Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass) reported in the Aug 16 Washington Post-a new tax surcharge on taxpayers across the board to pay for the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"These wars ought to be paid for and not put on a credit card so that our kids will have to pay for this in the future," McGovern said in a recent telephone interview. It's morally wrong for members [of Congress] to call for support of our soldiers and then not ask the rest of us to pay for it .?.?. or have it left to the poor and middle-income and seniors to bear the sacrifice along with our soldiers and their families. That's wrong."

McGovern wants the 'Super-Congress' Deficit Commission to take it up.

Only the last phrase about putting the burden on the poor contains any sense, especially since the overall costs, not to mention lives lost on all sides, is approaching $3 trillion. The rest is just screwy.

But I have a better idea. First, end the wars immediately, and only allocate enough money to get all our troops and contractors back home lickety-split. Second, pass a bill to pick up the tab by doing away with the oil depletion allowances and all other tax breaks on the oil companies. If that's not enough, put a tax on transfers of oil stocks and the profits of military contractors. And if they try to jack up the price of gasoline to cover their war expenses, nationalize them. After all, they're the only ones really benefiting from these foreign policy disasters.

Once that's out of the way, we can turn to the more strategic solution: a job creating financial transaction tax on all Wall Street gambling to fund the clean energy and green manufacturing revolution we need to move away from fossil fuels altogether. There are all sorts of places to begin, from 'shovel-ready' low-skilled jobs repairing the locks and dams on our rivers, to higher skilled jobs building and installing county-owned wind and solar generators as public power utilities.

In short, 'Jobs, Not War!' and 'Windmills, Not Weapons' are much better alternatives every which way than more taxes to pay for more wars. Back to the drawing board, Congressman McGovern.

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London: ‘Shock Doctrine’ as a Two-Way Street

The Approaching Winter of Our Discontent

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

Watching the rebellions of the young and poor continue in London and now spread to other industrial centers in the UK raises an interesting question: Will the Arab spring and the European summer lead to a fall and winter of discontent here in the USA?

All the makings for it are here. We have impoverished communities of the unemployed where there are huge numbers of young people who have never had a regular job of any sort. Now that any form of taxing the rich for funding a jobs program like that proposed by Rep. John Conyers’ HR 870 has been declared ‘off the table,’ it doesn’t appear likely to change, either.

Add to that the GOP’s ‘Shock Doctrine’ (with an assist from the White House) of creating a neoliberal deficit hoax to take from the working class and give to Wall Street, and you spread deeper misery across all of Main Street.

Now the AFL-CIO, thank goodness, is calling for a new round of mass actions against austerity and in defense of the tattered safety net. Add to that the October2011.org project, where the peace and justice movement is planning to camp out in downtown DC’s Freedom Plaza until all the troops are brought home from the wars.

It’s a perfect storm shaping up.  Hopefully, many of our young unemployed and under-employed will be drawn to these events. But any police outrage could set off a chain reaction like those in London-we’ve seen this many times in our history.

We have a few decent politicians facing up to the problem, like the 80 votes of the Congressional Progressive Caucus behind the People’s Budget. But our top political class has declared their efforts ‘off the table,’ too.

In brief, they’re telling us our views don’t count and we have nowhere to go.

That’s what the bigwigs in London thought, too. Now they’re all in a tizzy about riots and violence. In contrast, in one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

“Yes,” said the young man. “You wouldn’t be talking to me now if we didn’t riot, would you? Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you.”

Of course, many small shops and working-class homes, unfortunately, are being harmed in the UK events. Street heat is best when the target is narrowed on the upper class, and you keep the moral high ground. That way you can draw even more millions into relatively peaceful assembly with powerful and lasting implications. But when long-ignored social dynamite explodes, things don’t always work out that way, with the well-controlled niceties of a tea party, no pun intended.

It is right to rebel against outrages and unjust conditions imposed from above. The ‘Shock Doctrine’ is a two-way street, and once it erupts, more than you might think will know which side of the barricades to gather on.

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‘City of Steel’ by Jasiri X, Our Own Rapper

By Jasiri X and Paradise Gray

According to the New Pittsburgh Courier, “The average homicide victim in 2010 was a 33–year-old Black male with four prior arrests, most likely shot on the North Side, in the Hill District or the East End with a 9mm semi-automatic pistol in the early morning hours of a Saturday in July. The average shooter was a 29-year-old Black male with four prior arrests. The motive was likely retaliation. And according to the clearance-rate data, there is a 46 percent chance that he is still at large.”

This is why we decided to dedicate our latest video to the problem of violence in our community.

“City of Steel” was filmed on Pittsburgh’s Northside at, Northview Heights housing project, Allegheny County General Hospital, Zone No.1 Police Station, Union Dale Cemetery, and the newly reopened state prison, SCI Pittsburgh.

“City of Steel” was produced by Rel!g!on and directed by Paradise Gray.

This is the third video, in the four video series entitled “The Pittsburgh Press”, which was made possible by a generous Seed Award from the Sprout Fund.

LYRICS
In Pittsburgh PA you’ll get served each day
You’re either fiending or you’re tryin to be the Kingpin

In the late hours thugs dream to take power
baked powder cocaine entry in the dope game
X or the Big H reps come from big weight
you can catch a big break graduate to biggate
you can catch a big case graduate to triple max
affidavits, eye witness, warrants for official taps
legal fees cripple stacks, ya funds is limping
with your money on crutches you can’t run from prison
now it got ya gums itching, now you’ve begun snitching
saying you’ve become Christian no more drugs and women
but the press leaked ya name so 44 guns is spitting
no more tongues is flipping you got slugs in ya system
ain’t no happy endings in this coke opera
just broke coppers and dope poppers, bodies found in coat lockers
hope nada you’ll get ya folk shot up
only guarantee is they’ll be another boat with product, here

In Pittsburgh PA you’ll get served each day
You’re either a customer or hustler

In Pittsburgh PA you’ll get served each day
You’re either fiending or you’re tryin to be the Kingpin

In the early morning when ya barely yawning
thugs is carry on and what they carry is long and
sound like cherry bombs and will cherry ya garment and
bury ya squadron
for that cash stash that’s buried in your apartment
be wary of a cartridge
that’s loaded and fired by legendary marksmen
dead on with dead eyes dead weight cause dead guys’
don’t tell the Feds lies therefore the lead flies
In Pittsburgh PA you’ll get served each day
we stay on the fast lane of the freeway
each day’s a replay no room for delay
he say she say he spray she lay
on the pavement she’s going away with
her virginity in tack because she said she’d save it
till the day she got married but that day will never come
cause she died at 16 so she’ll stay forever young, here

In Pittsburgh PA you’ll get served each day
You’re either a customer or hustler

In Pittsburgh PA you’ll get served each day
You’re either fiending or you’re tryin to be the Kingpin

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Jobs and GOP ‘Dialectics’: Turning Things Into Their Opposites

By Carl Davidson

Beaver County Blue

People sometimes either groan or laugh when they hear the term ‘dialectics,’ a word which some people use to bamboozle others into thinking they know something when they don’t.

But here’s a great ‘laughing out loud’ example inspired by a few lines for Mike Hall’s current post on the AFL-CIO blog today, Aug. 2:

“The 4,000 furloughed Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) workers and 90,000 workers on airport construction projects stalled by the Republican shutdown of the FAA are worrying about how they will pay their bills in the coming weeks.

“But the only worry House Republicans have is how they are going to spend their six-week summer vacation. House Republicans leaders adjourned the House last night until Sept. 7 without taking action on reauthorizing an FAA bill so the agency—shutdown since July 22—could reopen and construction funds move down the pipeline again.”

So here’s a great example of Republican ‘dialectics’, their ‘Jobs Plan’ of turning real jobs into their opposites, non-jobs. It’s easy to laugh at, if it didn’t mean so much suffering for so many working-class families. I suppose we could say there’s a ‘unity of opposites’ there, too.

One thing that burns me up more than GOP nonsense, though, are many of the mainstream media pundits who don’t have any idea on how to ask a decent follow-up question. When our right wing lawmakers (and their White House allies) go on at length about cutting this and slashing that, taking money from low-income and middle-income workers and giving it to the super-rich, there always comes a point where they assert, ‘and this will create jobs!.’

Back in my youth I taught logic for a year at the University of Nebraska. Full disclosure here: I actually appreciate real dialectics, and other rules of argument. But one point I often made to my students: An assertion is not an argument.

Now why can’t our media pundits say, ‘Wait a minute here, Congressman (or other policy wonk). You’re cutting both spending and jobs, reducing overall demand. Then you assert this creates jobs? Can you tell us exactly how that works? Especially when it’s mainly demand that creates jobs? An assertion is not an argument.”

If I heard it just once on CNN, it would make my day.

My logic course back in 1965 was for incoming freshman. Wouldn’t it be great if news anchors could at least reach that level, even if it’s too much to expect of Congress and the White House? All the more reason we have to rely on our own labor-oriented blogs and news services. We know how to make use of decent dialectics, and put a spotlight on the foolish versions of our adversaries.

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Unemployment: Lies, Blue Smoke and Mirrors

The Neoliberal-Tea Party Jobs Plan at Work

By Carl Davidson

File this under the ‘Why is Anyone Surprised Dept?’

This morning’s Pittsburgh news media lets us know that more and more Pennsylvanians are unemployed. Particularly,  it’s in ‘Unemployment rate up in Pennsylvania’ in the Pittsburgh Business Times by Paul J. Gough.

What’s interesting is how it gets spelled out:

“Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate rose slightly in June as the Commonwealth followed an upward trend of national jobless data that has been rising since the spring.

“The state’s unemployment rate was 7.6 percent in June compared to 7.4 percent in May, according to data released Thursday afternoon by the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry. That translated into a net of 2,600 jobs lost to a total 6.3 million people employed in Pennsylvania. Specific data for Pittsburgh won’t be released for several weeks, but unemployment increased in Pittsburgh to 7 percent in May, the most recent month where data is available.
“Much of the decreases were due to 7,800 jobs cut in education, health and social services. Also losing jobs were financial (2,000 jobs), leisure and hospitality (1,400 jobs), and professional/business services (1,700 jobs).”

What this means is that our GOP governor’s plan is working as designed. He and others of his ilk are determined to slash government spending on social services and the work force that provides them.  If we combine this with taking money from low-income and middle-income workers, and give it to the superrich as tax cuts, we can help the ‘recovery’ of the wealthy by reducing consumer demand from the rest of us.

Now put these two planks together, and you have the GOP-Blue Dog-Tea Party plan for employment, and as we can see, it’s working rather well.

Of course the numbers are going in the opposite direction from what they’ve been claiming will happen. Maybe we just need even more layoffs and even less spendable income at the bottom, and then we’ll really see things take off!

Now Obama’s problem is buying into this. But if he’s going to sell it beyond the business press, it’s going to need a sales team with a lot of lies, blue smoke and mirrors.

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