Naomi Klein, author of “No Logo,” and “Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” can be likened to the canaries that miners kept in cages down in the deep shaft mines. These canaries would sound alarms when the air would start to be thick with gases, before it was fatal for the miners allowing them to evacuate the mine. In Klein’s latest book, “Shock Doctrine,” she discusses the idea of disaster capitalism, and how has been implemented in many countries using “Shock Doctrine” on the heels of a war, a coup, and a natural disaster.
The idea of shock doctrine was first articulated by Milton Friedman, noted economist and who created the “Chicago School of Economics.” Friedman said that in order to impose economic programs that would be in normal times, not popular with the people, a crisis can be used to impose these programs. Friedman was an advocate that everything should be a component of the market place, all services, and products should be dictated by the market. This includes those things that are normally considered to be in the public domain, like education, transportation and safety. He was for the elimination of public schools and their portfolio turned over to private schools. He also said that there should be no regulation of trade, with no tariffs at all, a world where goods and services flowed back and forth over borders without any inhibiting factors. It sounds good in theory, but in practice it tends to create more poverty for those on the bottom and pushing all of the wealth created by it to the top 1%. We have seen the implications for NAFTA on our manufacturing sector in this country, as more and more jobs are shipped to low wage destinations offshore. Now the idea of Shock Doctrine has come home to public higher education, because of the plunging economy and the lessening of tax revenues by the state.
In the last year or so, for the first time, the impact of decreased revenues on higher education from the state is now being noticed by the public. This is happening even though tuition and fees have been spiking for the last 19 years in Ohio. Now, we are facing more cuts in the SSI, or the State Share of Instruction revenue stream from the state to the Universities. When I was a freshman in the fall of 1973 at BGSU, my tuition for up to 20 hours was $225.00. The state at that time was paying over 70% of the cost of public higher education. Now tuition will increase another 3.5% in the spring, we will be soon at a tuition level of $10,000 if these increases continue. Along with the tuition we have seen increases in fees, some for capital projects like the “Stroh,” others for services like the “shuttle fee.” The transference of educational costs from the public to the private person is a component of the “Shock Doctrine,” because of the ‘budget’ these transfers are explained as necessary to the idea of higher education.
Now we are seeing other components of “Shock” with the announcement last summer of mandatory furlough days for those who make $50,000 or more, now the news of a planned voluntary “University Employee Separation Program” (UESP) for faculty and staff in fiscal year of 2010-2011. This plan is different from many “buyouts” offered to public employees in that it does not offer any “retirement credit” but only money that will be paid out over an undetermined period of time. It is also different from other “buyouts,” that while it seems to be aimed at older faculty and staff, but is also available to those employees with as little of 15 years. This is similar to those programs in the private sector that offer only money with the idea of cutting the overall number of jobs. The other components of this voluntary UESP being, faculty who retire and take the buyout can only teach part-time for the year immediately after the separation. They can only be “rehired” after a ten year period has passed.
Logically, this could make more room for the NTT (non tenure track) professors to become tenured. But using the concepts of the Shock Doctrine, this is an opportunity to decrease the numbers of tenured and tenure track faculty and to increase the numbers of NTT and adjunct faculty, which will lower costs of instruction. Also it could have a chilling impact on academic freedom. In other words, faculty could become more cautious in what they say or write. We could see the evaluation of certain academic programs strictly on the basis of FTE, for some programs and departments, this would be a disaster. This is all part of the drive to make public higher education into a corporate model.
We are already part of the way there with a corporate influenced structure of administration that has been empowered by the state to do what it takes to cut costs; and to further commodify education at a price the market will bear. The ideal corporate model of higher education is a system that caters exclusively to the demands of the market place, and places no financial burden on them. Take a look around, “the canaries in the mine shaft” are sounding the alarm and we are running out of time.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
Tempest in a Teapot
When does Debt, Become Debt?
The recent “Tea Parties” called nationwide to protest the huge debt that the nation has incurred are interesting, because the people who are calling them are of the party that created most of the debt, the GOP. GOP leaders, local, state and national are wailing and moaning over the debt crisis like it came to light on January 20th of this year. I guess they are hoping that people have a short memory and have forgotten that 99% of our present debt burden occurred on the watch of President George W. Bush. In 2001, shortly after he came in office, he passed with the help of a GOP lead House and Senate, a 1.3 Trillion dollar tax cut that largely (over 48%) benefited the top 1% of our society, with the bottom 60% getting a so-called rebate of $600 that turned out to be an advance on your 2001 return. That September 11th, we entered a new era of our epoch with the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, our nation was at war with an abstract idea, called Terrorism.
Unlike other times in our history when we went to war, we fought them and paid for them with increased taxes at the same time. In this war against terror, we did not raise taxes or even restore the 1.3 trillion dollars in tax cuts enacted earlier in the spring, but raised spending for war aka defense, from 380 Billion to over 500 Billion, not counting what we were spending in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2002 we passed another $380 Billion in tax cuts, again favoring the top 1% of our society. Meanwhile, the war on terror crept into our daily lives with the passage of the Patriot Act and the creation of monolithic government agencies, who under the guise of “Homeland Security,” listened in on our phone conversations, e-mails, purchases and the books that we checked out of the library without cause. The war that began with our invasion of Afghanistan in early 2002 was escalated in 2003 by the invasion of Iraq to prevent the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) by the Hussein regime. The WMD were never found and never there, but we still are there, spending billions each week to spread democracy and freedom to a people whose only wish is for us to get out of there. This war was and is still fought by selling debt, as the House and the Senate authorize over $1.2 Trillion dollars in discretionary war spending each year that dwarf’s our total spending on social programs for the people. The debt buyers are the Chinese, Japanese, Saudis and others who want to park their money in the safest place in the world, the US.
From January 20th, 2001 till the 19th of January, 2009, there was no mention or protest from the party of Conservatism, the GOP, about out of control deficit spending by the Administration and the leadership in the House and the Senate. Now, the GOP have taken up the cry of the budget with a vengeance, citing the stimulus bill as wasteful spending, even though it represents a lifesaver being tossed to Americans drowning in the seas of financial insecurity. The Trillions of taxpayer dollars being spent to “bail out” the banks and financial houses were represented last fall, as necessary as the financial community was said to be “too big to fail.” At the same time, the millions of Americans were slipping under the waves of a financial tempest induced by allowing the foxes (AIG, CitiCorp, and the Bernie Madoff’s) to run the financial hen house. This scenario was caused by the repeal of a law, “Glass-Steagle” that had been in effect since the Depression to keep banks from becoming involved in riskier financial entities, like Hedge funds, and Derivatives. It was repealed with GOP and Democrat votes in a US house and senate influenced by Phil Graham, Mitch McConnell, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers, then signed into law by Bill Clinton in his final months in the White House.
So if we are to protest, call a Tea Party in the real spirit of those dissenters who dumped his majesty’s tea in Boston Harbor. Don’t be political pawn, who is used to take a shot at the current administration, but do your own research and blast all of the usual suspects, GOP and Democrat, who cleared the way for our present situation, where the top 3% control 60% of the economy.
The recent “Tea Parties” called nationwide to protest the huge debt that the nation has incurred are interesting, because the people who are calling them are of the party that created most of the debt, the GOP. GOP leaders, local, state and national are wailing and moaning over the debt crisis like it came to light on January 20th of this year. I guess they are hoping that people have a short memory and have forgotten that 99% of our present debt burden occurred on the watch of President George W. Bush. In 2001, shortly after he came in office, he passed with the help of a GOP lead House and Senate, a 1.3 Trillion dollar tax cut that largely (over 48%) benefited the top 1% of our society, with the bottom 60% getting a so-called rebate of $600 that turned out to be an advance on your 2001 return. That September 11th, we entered a new era of our epoch with the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, our nation was at war with an abstract idea, called Terrorism.
Unlike other times in our history when we went to war, we fought them and paid for them with increased taxes at the same time. In this war against terror, we did not raise taxes or even restore the 1.3 trillion dollars in tax cuts enacted earlier in the spring, but raised spending for war aka defense, from 380 Billion to over 500 Billion, not counting what we were spending in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2002 we passed another $380 Billion in tax cuts, again favoring the top 1% of our society. Meanwhile, the war on terror crept into our daily lives with the passage of the Patriot Act and the creation of monolithic government agencies, who under the guise of “Homeland Security,” listened in on our phone conversations, e-mails, purchases and the books that we checked out of the library without cause. The war that began with our invasion of Afghanistan in early 2002 was escalated in 2003 by the invasion of Iraq to prevent the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) by the Hussein regime. The WMD were never found and never there, but we still are there, spending billions each week to spread democracy and freedom to a people whose only wish is for us to get out of there. This war was and is still fought by selling debt, as the House and the Senate authorize over $1.2 Trillion dollars in discretionary war spending each year that dwarf’s our total spending on social programs for the people. The debt buyers are the Chinese, Japanese, Saudis and others who want to park their money in the safest place in the world, the US.
From January 20th, 2001 till the 19th of January, 2009, there was no mention or protest from the party of Conservatism, the GOP, about out of control deficit spending by the Administration and the leadership in the House and the Senate. Now, the GOP have taken up the cry of the budget with a vengeance, citing the stimulus bill as wasteful spending, even though it represents a lifesaver being tossed to Americans drowning in the seas of financial insecurity. The Trillions of taxpayer dollars being spent to “bail out” the banks and financial houses were represented last fall, as necessary as the financial community was said to be “too big to fail.” At the same time, the millions of Americans were slipping under the waves of a financial tempest induced by allowing the foxes (AIG, CitiCorp, and the Bernie Madoff’s) to run the financial hen house. This scenario was caused by the repeal of a law, “Glass-Steagle” that had been in effect since the Depression to keep banks from becoming involved in riskier financial entities, like Hedge funds, and Derivatives. It was repealed with GOP and Democrat votes in a US house and senate influenced by Phil Graham, Mitch McConnell, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers, then signed into law by Bill Clinton in his final months in the White House.
So if we are to protest, call a Tea Party in the real spirit of those dissenters who dumped his majesty’s tea in Boston Harbor. Don’t be political pawn, who is used to take a shot at the current administration, but do your own research and blast all of the usual suspects, GOP and Democrat, who cleared the way for our present situation, where the top 3% control 60% of the economy.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Teaching the Three "R"s in the 21st Century
Once upon on a time, the main subjects we learned in school were called the three R’s, Readin’, “Ritin,” and Rithmetic. The students who finished their schooling in those times went on to become leaders in the private and public sectors, astronauts and used that foundation to construct their adult lives. While they were in school from the first day to that walk across the stage to receive their diploma, children were allowed to be children and reach maturity on a schedule mapped out by nature, not by bureaucrats and politicians. Now that schools and teaching have been “improved” by scores of bureaucrats and politicians who can talk Ed-Speak, (but probably have not or could not teach a class), with their proficiency tests, rubrics, outcomes and all of the other bells and whistles; the three R’s in use now are Repression, Restriction and Ritalin. The age of zero tolerance is here, applying equally to the 17 year old students soon- to- be- new- graduates and the newest five year old Kindergarten students.
Once it was essential for children to be children, but now they must grow up immediately, do not collect $200 while passing GO, but go straight to adulthood. The message is clear, we have found the enemy and it is our children, so no time to be a child and do those child-like things, being five is no excuse, shape up or ship out! We live in a time of diminished expectations, which are in some part our collective responsibility, for we traded oversight and looking out for each other; for every person for themselves and screw you. For this we must punish the young, by being lousy, exhausted or indifferent parents, teachers and administrators, while faulting the kids and subjecting them to the new “three R’s.”
The first “R,” Repression, the first order of the new order, start the regimentation early at five years of age. While we live in an era of colors to tell us how safe we are, from green to red, with green being safe and red being danger of an imminent terrorist attack, our children are now color coded in school for behavior with green for good and red for evildoer. The message being transmitted is stay in the green, stay away from red. Five year olds are being taught that authority figures have the power and that it is futile to resist, by acting like a child. The next “R” is restriction.
A child’s life is one of restriction, by always being in the “green,” and that acting like a child or a kid is definitely behavior rated “red” or future evildoer. Don’t point your finger at another kid and make a sound like a gun for that is definitely red behavior, playing and using your imagination is not allowed. Don’t get angry when you’re hurt by another child, for that is not allowed and is restricted. And if the threat of not being coded with the right color works, we’ll break out the chemistry set and cook up something to keep you down, repressed and restricted like “Ritalin.”
“Better living through Chemistry,” a marketing slogan that has brought us plastics, Agent Orange, polyvinylchloride, the Love Canal and a baker’s dozen of new forms of cancer, now gives us model children out of a bottle. A child acts up in class, he or she must have ADD or ADHD, quick get the magic bottle of Ritalin out and as quick a wink, the child is submissive and very much in the green. Of course, the child is actually in a zombie like state, more comatose than awake, but what a well behaved and trouble free student in the classroom. We live in a time of processed food, thought and behavior, why not processed children?
As our children act out the violent adult fantasies with each other from B movie scripts in class rooms, birthday parties and on playgrounds that are shoved down their throats by us, the adults. We naturally blame them, bemoaning and wondering aloud “why don’t our children act like us when we were children?”
Monday, March 30, 2009
Teaching the Three C's in Higher Education
Teaching the Three C’s in Higher Education
Since 1980 there has been a disturbing trend in higher education, the growing influence of the corporate mindset on the administration, curricula, faculty and thought process of public and private universities and colleges and even community colleges. This has been in general regarded as a positive thing, and for it brought with it an influx of cash from the corporate sector to higher education. All of this was started by the Bayh-Dole act that allowed private concerns to take advantage of research done by public institutions, ostensibly paid for with your tax dollars. This law allowed the patenting of public research by the corporate sector for profit. Since that time public-private relationships have flourished between the corporate sector and public higher education, so much so that community engagement in the present means developing closer relationships with big business, not the public community as it once meant. An analogy would be if big Pharma had been allowed to patent Dr. Jonas Salk’s miracle of the 20th century, his polio vaccine, instead of the public sector manufacturing and distributing it to everyone, rich, poor and otherwise.
The influence of the corporate sector can be seen in the expansion of educational ideas and theories that emphasis the development of “skill sets” by students to be used in the workplace over the development of critical thinking skills by those students. The Humanities are now seen as disciplines that do not add to the skill set process pushed by the business community. The programs in the Humanities area are ones that can be eliminated to make room for more job oriented programs in times of tight funding as we are now experiencing. While this kind of thinking seems practical on the surface, there is an agenda at work within it at the same time. For workers who have acquired not only skill sets but also the ability to think critically, represent a threat to the corporate power paradigm. While workers who have only been taught skill sets for their job and cannot think critically, represent no threat to the power paradigm. The process can be called teaching the Three C’s, Corporate Capitalism, Colonization and Censorship, all of which represent a huge threat to democracy as we know it.
Corporate Capitalism has evolved since the early 19th century in the US and the west from small entities to huge structures dwarfing even the largest nations in power and influence. This process has been represented as something that is responsible for the economic expansion of the west in the 20th century, while the social programs (educational aid for the masses, social welfare programs to eliminate poverty and unionization) that really underwrote this expansion are not discussed. Corporate capitalism has been caricatured as the benevolent father figure in higher education. Especially since 1980, as corporate capitalism being the engine that creates the wealth of nations, which is opposite of what had been taught before, that it is human labor or work that is the engine that creates wealth and capital. Now in the first decade of the 21st century, we have seen the real creation of unfettered corporate capitalism, greed, corruption and ruin for the common people. But the corporate capitalist mindset toward higher education is still in charge, with an emphasis on numbers of students, outcomes (code for how many students are passing) and creating a good image of the educational corporate entity, all of this sacrifices the learning aspect long part of higher education. What about Colonization, what role does it play in higher education?
Colonization is a tool that was developed by the West in the 700 years spanning from the Crusades to the end of World War II. The appealing idea of Colonization is the development what we were taught in junior high and high school 40 years ago, “spheres of influence,” where one nation is in control of the flow of raw materials and finished goods in that area. When we think of this, images of India, Africa and China come to mind, as the West carved out spheres of influences on those nations or continents called colonies. This type of control lasted for hundreds of years; the effects of it are still resonating in the present world for those who care to look close enough. Now we see these same strategies being used by global corporations in controlling “spheres of influence” in the global market place. The idea of colonization in the corporate setting is not limited to the global south or the less developed nations as Imperialist colonization was at its peak. Now through the flow of capital, people in the developed world are struggling under the new corporate colonization as well as the people in the less developed world. This bringing colonization to a new high was for the most part encouraged by the colonizing mindsets nurtured in university settings here in the US and elsewhere in the West. For it is taught as bringing progress to the world, not bondage and control of the world. In order for the colonizing mindset to find a home in the university, there has to be a process, one that is underwritten by large amounts of cash gifts to public and private universities. This process is the dumbing down or elimination of those courses that have historically and consistently been critical of colonizing and colonization. By making large “gifts” of cash, the corporate colonizers buy “access” to the administrations of universities to make suggestions on curricula and course offerings. This is presented as being counsel that in the best interests of the universities and also in the best interests of keeping the cash flowing. So trade policies that would have condemned in a earlier time by those in the university as being counterproductive for progress and adverse to all people; are now represented by those in the University setting as an expansion of prosperity, freedom and democracy to less developed nations via trade. Along with the corresponding argument of the resulting increase of skill levels and competitiveness by those workers in the developed nations by sending low skill jobs abroad. The process that is contingent on this type of message succeeding is censorship.
Censorship is the limiting of information and knowledge to a people for the express purpose of controlling them. It is sometimes masked as preventing the distribution of materials that are seen as dangerous, either in a prurient sense or in empowerment sense. When a institution participates in Censorship, it is betraying the foundation of its existence, to provide all of the knowledge it can to its audience and let them decide. We see more and more examples of this process, sometimes in an overt manner or in a covert manner. An overt manner would be the removal of an art work, the cancelling of a informational demonstration or creating rules that actually inhibit the learning process behind the mask of security and safety. A covert manner of censorship would be the elimination of a course that contained an element of critical thought on a topic that is not in the interest of the university’s corporate patrons. In this time of budget crisis, the areas that are taking the biggest hits are those programs that have been instrumental in fostering critical thinking in the student body.
In the 21st century, the teaching of the Three C’s has replaced the ideas of thought, reasoning and articulation of larger ideas of human kind in the University setting. What will be the outcome of this as we are fond of talking about outcomes in education these days? The idea of outcome and not the investment of the public are all overpowering in a society duped into turning their children into people who are skilled at picking C, but not in understanding the ideas behind C. As Pogo, the cartoon character of the comic strip of the same name said in 1969, in a reference to the Vietnam War, “We have found the enemy and it is Us.”
Patrick Saunders
Since 1980 there has been a disturbing trend in higher education, the growing influence of the corporate mindset on the administration, curricula, faculty and thought process of public and private universities and colleges and even community colleges. This has been in general regarded as a positive thing, and for it brought with it an influx of cash from the corporate sector to higher education. All of this was started by the Bayh-Dole act that allowed private concerns to take advantage of research done by public institutions, ostensibly paid for with your tax dollars. This law allowed the patenting of public research by the corporate sector for profit. Since that time public-private relationships have flourished between the corporate sector and public higher education, so much so that community engagement in the present means developing closer relationships with big business, not the public community as it once meant. An analogy would be if big Pharma had been allowed to patent Dr. Jonas Salk’s miracle of the 20th century, his polio vaccine, instead of the public sector manufacturing and distributing it to everyone, rich, poor and otherwise.
The influence of the corporate sector can be seen in the expansion of educational ideas and theories that emphasis the development of “skill sets” by students to be used in the workplace over the development of critical thinking skills by those students. The Humanities are now seen as disciplines that do not add to the skill set process pushed by the business community. The programs in the Humanities area are ones that can be eliminated to make room for more job oriented programs in times of tight funding as we are now experiencing. While this kind of thinking seems practical on the surface, there is an agenda at work within it at the same time. For workers who have acquired not only skill sets but also the ability to think critically, represent a threat to the corporate power paradigm. While workers who have only been taught skill sets for their job and cannot think critically, represent no threat to the power paradigm. The process can be called teaching the Three C’s, Corporate Capitalism, Colonization and Censorship, all of which represent a huge threat to democracy as we know it.
Corporate Capitalism has evolved since the early 19th century in the US and the west from small entities to huge structures dwarfing even the largest nations in power and influence. This process has been represented as something that is responsible for the economic expansion of the west in the 20th century, while the social programs (educational aid for the masses, social welfare programs to eliminate poverty and unionization) that really underwrote this expansion are not discussed. Corporate capitalism has been caricatured as the benevolent father figure in higher education. Especially since 1980, as corporate capitalism being the engine that creates the wealth of nations, which is opposite of what had been taught before, that it is human labor or work that is the engine that creates wealth and capital. Now in the first decade of the 21st century, we have seen the real creation of unfettered corporate capitalism, greed, corruption and ruin for the common people. But the corporate capitalist mindset toward higher education is still in charge, with an emphasis on numbers of students, outcomes (code for how many students are passing) and creating a good image of the educational corporate entity, all of this sacrifices the learning aspect long part of higher education. What about Colonization, what role does it play in higher education?
Colonization is a tool that was developed by the West in the 700 years spanning from the Crusades to the end of World War II. The appealing idea of Colonization is the development what we were taught in junior high and high school 40 years ago, “spheres of influence,” where one nation is in control of the flow of raw materials and finished goods in that area. When we think of this, images of India, Africa and China come to mind, as the West carved out spheres of influences on those nations or continents called colonies. This type of control lasted for hundreds of years; the effects of it are still resonating in the present world for those who care to look close enough. Now we see these same strategies being used by global corporations in controlling “spheres of influence” in the global market place. The idea of colonization in the corporate setting is not limited to the global south or the less developed nations as Imperialist colonization was at its peak. Now through the flow of capital, people in the developed world are struggling under the new corporate colonization as well as the people in the less developed world. This bringing colonization to a new high was for the most part encouraged by the colonizing mindsets nurtured in university settings here in the US and elsewhere in the West. For it is taught as bringing progress to the world, not bondage and control of the world. In order for the colonizing mindset to find a home in the university, there has to be a process, one that is underwritten by large amounts of cash gifts to public and private universities. This process is the dumbing down or elimination of those courses that have historically and consistently been critical of colonizing and colonization. By making large “gifts” of cash, the corporate colonizers buy “access” to the administrations of universities to make suggestions on curricula and course offerings. This is presented as being counsel that in the best interests of the universities and also in the best interests of keeping the cash flowing. So trade policies that would have condemned in a earlier time by those in the university as being counterproductive for progress and adverse to all people; are now represented by those in the University setting as an expansion of prosperity, freedom and democracy to less developed nations via trade. Along with the corresponding argument of the resulting increase of skill levels and competitiveness by those workers in the developed nations by sending low skill jobs abroad. The process that is contingent on this type of message succeeding is censorship.
Censorship is the limiting of information and knowledge to a people for the express purpose of controlling them. It is sometimes masked as preventing the distribution of materials that are seen as dangerous, either in a prurient sense or in empowerment sense. When a institution participates in Censorship, it is betraying the foundation of its existence, to provide all of the knowledge it can to its audience and let them decide. We see more and more examples of this process, sometimes in an overt manner or in a covert manner. An overt manner would be the removal of an art work, the cancelling of a informational demonstration or creating rules that actually inhibit the learning process behind the mask of security and safety. A covert manner of censorship would be the elimination of a course that contained an element of critical thought on a topic that is not in the interest of the university’s corporate patrons. In this time of budget crisis, the areas that are taking the biggest hits are those programs that have been instrumental in fostering critical thinking in the student body.
In the 21st century, the teaching of the Three C’s has replaced the ideas of thought, reasoning and articulation of larger ideas of human kind in the University setting. What will be the outcome of this as we are fond of talking about outcomes in education these days? The idea of outcome and not the investment of the public are all overpowering in a society duped into turning their children into people who are skilled at picking C, but not in understanding the ideas behind C. As Pogo, the cartoon character of the comic strip of the same name said in 1969, in a reference to the Vietnam War, “We have found the enemy and it is Us.”
Patrick Saunders
Saturday, December 13, 2008
The Working Class Devours Itself
Social Darwinism in the 21st Century, the working class devours each other
In the weeks of the close of 2008, we have seen an amazing thing, that the fate of millions of working class families is being downplayed by the other members of the working class. I am talking about that dark night of disaster that could befall the members of the one of the greatest labor organizations to come out of the shadows of the Great Depression, the UAW.
We seen the financial giants of Wall Street stride smugly into the hearing rooms of the nation’s capital, and walk away with a bonanza of taxpayer bucks, with no questions and no strings attached in October. The Big Three or the US automakers announced that they are on thin ice financially and in need of some help, 25 billion dollars worth. When the big three CEO’s sat at the hearing tables in Washington, they were asked how they traveled to the meeting, and were roundly criticized for using their corporate jets. Then they were told to come up with a plan and come back and talk. Well, after traveling by hybrid vehicle back to DC, they submitted a plan for 34 billion dollars of assistance. This amount was reduced to 14 billion and is in jeopardy of being shot down by a block of GOP Senators from the Deep South. Why is there so much resistance to helping our US auto industry?
The UAW is the reason, for the white power paradigm has long hated this organization. When the UAW was created in the 1930’s, it represented all workers, white and black, fighting for better pay, benefits and working conditions for all. In the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s; it was the UAW who marched alongside the civil rights protesters. A presence at all of the demonstrations, from the march on Washington in 1963 to the Memphis Sanitation Workers strike in 1968, was Walter Reuther, the first President of the UAW, who became a icon and martyr of the movement. The UAW not only fought for its members, but for all who were marginalized in our society, all of the progressive policies from the New Deal to the present have the stamp of the UAW on them. Social Security, Unemployment insurance, Medicare, Medicaid to name a few, came from the social movements of progressive industrial labor organizations like the UAW.
Starting in the early Reagan years, the UAW came under attack, with the upsurge of imports eating away at the market share of the US automakers. This is when the concept of “team” came about, management and labor working together to increase efficiency and cut costs. Actually, if you examine this period of the 80’s and 90’s, it was management who came away from the table with the lion share of cost reductions, introduction of robotics, work rule changes and a declining worker population. The workers and the UAW were consoled with the fact, that they saved their jobs for the moment. The auto boom of the 90’s was not shared by the UAW by the big three, for the jobs kept declining, with plant closures, line consolidations and spinning off of the parts plants. This increased the profit share of the big three 1,000 fold, while the gain share by labor was nil, other than the profit sharing payments that some workers received at the time; which if considered alongside the rule changes, job reductions and plant closures were insignificant. The beginning of the new millennium was the start of another round of problems with market share for the big three.
This slide to the bottom by the US automakers was also dragging the UAW with it. The Big Three, who had a fascination with SUV’s and trucks, that when loaded up with accessories normally seen on luxury cars, yielded them fantastic profits. All made possible by the work rule changes, automation and job cuts agreed to by the UAW. The labor cost of a new vehicle had slid to only 10%, including wages, healthcare and pension; while the profit share had sky rocketed.
As energy prices started to spike, the US automakers made even bigger SUVs’ and trucks that were harder and harder on gas. They resisted calls from their dealers and the public to make more fuel efficient vehicles for one reason; the profit margin on them was lower. All the while, the big three whipsawed the members of the UAW, having them compete amongst themselves for product lines; who ever made the most concessions received the work. In 2007, the contract talks yielded the greatest step backward in the history of the UAW, with the members agreeing to a 50% wage reduction for new workers, increasing the timeframe for temporary workers to one year and eliminating or reducing healthcare, and pension benefits. The industry went through a series of buyouts of workers who are grandfathered under the older agreements. As a result the numbers of workers receiving the higher wages were cut. Now comes the final chapter in 2008 and the decimation of millions of worker families by their fellow workers.
Instead of being critical of the failure of the US automakers to react to the energy prices, calls for green cars and re-engineering the idea of the auto in our society, we have seen the tried and true method of bash the workers used by their enemies and surprisingly by their fellow working class members. I am constantly amazed that folks who have and still are being marginalized into poverty by wages that have lost purchasing power take delight in the plight of the autoworkers. They used the tired clichés and rhetoric, of the US Chamber of Commerce and the right to pour salt into the wounds of the autoworkers caused by the assault on them by the GOP.
Why cannot workers, all workers understand that the battles that other workers are fighting are really their battles too? For a loss of wages, benefits and other things that were hard fought for by our predecessors’ on the picket line, in the streets and in the courts; will come home to all of us eventually.
In the weeks of the close of 2008, we have seen an amazing thing, that the fate of millions of working class families is being downplayed by the other members of the working class. I am talking about that dark night of disaster that could befall the members of the one of the greatest labor organizations to come out of the shadows of the Great Depression, the UAW.
We seen the financial giants of Wall Street stride smugly into the hearing rooms of the nation’s capital, and walk away with a bonanza of taxpayer bucks, with no questions and no strings attached in October. The Big Three or the US automakers announced that they are on thin ice financially and in need of some help, 25 billion dollars worth. When the big three CEO’s sat at the hearing tables in Washington, they were asked how they traveled to the meeting, and were roundly criticized for using their corporate jets. Then they were told to come up with a plan and come back and talk. Well, after traveling by hybrid vehicle back to DC, they submitted a plan for 34 billion dollars of assistance. This amount was reduced to 14 billion and is in jeopardy of being shot down by a block of GOP Senators from the Deep South. Why is there so much resistance to helping our US auto industry?
The UAW is the reason, for the white power paradigm has long hated this organization. When the UAW was created in the 1930’s, it represented all workers, white and black, fighting for better pay, benefits and working conditions for all. In the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s; it was the UAW who marched alongside the civil rights protesters. A presence at all of the demonstrations, from the march on Washington in 1963 to the Memphis Sanitation Workers strike in 1968, was Walter Reuther, the first President of the UAW, who became a icon and martyr of the movement. The UAW not only fought for its members, but for all who were marginalized in our society, all of the progressive policies from the New Deal to the present have the stamp of the UAW on them. Social Security, Unemployment insurance, Medicare, Medicaid to name a few, came from the social movements of progressive industrial labor organizations like the UAW.
Starting in the early Reagan years, the UAW came under attack, with the upsurge of imports eating away at the market share of the US automakers. This is when the concept of “team” came about, management and labor working together to increase efficiency and cut costs. Actually, if you examine this period of the 80’s and 90’s, it was management who came away from the table with the lion share of cost reductions, introduction of robotics, work rule changes and a declining worker population. The workers and the UAW were consoled with the fact, that they saved their jobs for the moment. The auto boom of the 90’s was not shared by the UAW by the big three, for the jobs kept declining, with plant closures, line consolidations and spinning off of the parts plants. This increased the profit share of the big three 1,000 fold, while the gain share by labor was nil, other than the profit sharing payments that some workers received at the time; which if considered alongside the rule changes, job reductions and plant closures were insignificant. The beginning of the new millennium was the start of another round of problems with market share for the big three.
This slide to the bottom by the US automakers was also dragging the UAW with it. The Big Three, who had a fascination with SUV’s and trucks, that when loaded up with accessories normally seen on luxury cars, yielded them fantastic profits. All made possible by the work rule changes, automation and job cuts agreed to by the UAW. The labor cost of a new vehicle had slid to only 10%, including wages, healthcare and pension; while the profit share had sky rocketed.
As energy prices started to spike, the US automakers made even bigger SUVs’ and trucks that were harder and harder on gas. They resisted calls from their dealers and the public to make more fuel efficient vehicles for one reason; the profit margin on them was lower. All the while, the big three whipsawed the members of the UAW, having them compete amongst themselves for product lines; who ever made the most concessions received the work. In 2007, the contract talks yielded the greatest step backward in the history of the UAW, with the members agreeing to a 50% wage reduction for new workers, increasing the timeframe for temporary workers to one year and eliminating or reducing healthcare, and pension benefits. The industry went through a series of buyouts of workers who are grandfathered under the older agreements. As a result the numbers of workers receiving the higher wages were cut. Now comes the final chapter in 2008 and the decimation of millions of worker families by their fellow workers.
Instead of being critical of the failure of the US automakers to react to the energy prices, calls for green cars and re-engineering the idea of the auto in our society, we have seen the tried and true method of bash the workers used by their enemies and surprisingly by their fellow working class members. I am constantly amazed that folks who have and still are being marginalized into poverty by wages that have lost purchasing power take delight in the plight of the autoworkers. They used the tired clichés and rhetoric, of the US Chamber of Commerce and the right to pour salt into the wounds of the autoworkers caused by the assault on them by the GOP.
Why cannot workers, all workers understand that the battles that other workers are fighting are really their battles too? For a loss of wages, benefits and other things that were hard fought for by our predecessors’ on the picket line, in the streets and in the courts; will come home to all of us eventually.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
What can Big Three do in order to survive?
PATRICK SAUNDERS
As Yogi Berra said so aptly, “its déjà vu all over again.” The column by Mark Mix, spokesperson for the National Right to Work Committee echoed its same old tired refrain, blame the workers and the unions, and arguing against helping the U.S. auto industry — Ford, GM and Chrysler in their time of trouble.
Mr. Mix’s argument that lays all of the woes on the doorstep of the UAW simply does not hold water in the present time. The UAW leadership has worked hand and glove with the Big Three since the early 80s to make their operations more efficient, allowing drastic changes in work rules, the introduction of automation and robotics that lowered the labor cost per unit to its lowest point. While this allowed the Big Three to greatly increase their profits on larger cars and SUV’s loaded with accessories once thought to be luxuries. The UAW and its declining worker-membership base were not allowed to have input into the type of products being made.
If you look at the UAW plants in this region, the impact of the concessions by labor was shown in the drop in work force. The now closed Ford plant in Lorain once employed more than 5,000 workers. After the concessions of the 80s, the workforce there shrank by one half in the early 90s and by another 50 percent before it closed its doors several years ago. The former New Departure in Perkins Township that had thousands of workers now has about 800. The former Ford/Visteon/ACH plant in Margaretta Township has shrunk by half or more from about 2500. The UAW members have been forced into a defensive posture, ratifying contracts in 2007 that cut wages by 50 percent to an average worker wage of $29,000 a year and reduced benefits (pension and healthcare) won by years of negotiating to a mere shadow of their former selves. What this means is that auto workers with families cannot afford to buy the cars they make every day. So to picture them as an omnipotent power in the 21st century as Mr. Mix did in his column is far from the truth.
Mr. Mix talks about the foreign plants in our country, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai and Mercedes being among them and their profitability. He points out that they are in “Right to Work” states, but does not discuss that those states took on major debt in infrastructure costs, economic aid and training of employees to lure those plants. In Alabama, the Mercedes plant located there costs the state annually more than the taxes it produces. The average wage in all of those plants is about $15 per hour and they are heavily automated to reduce the number of workers needed. Their workforce is also much younger than the Big Three’s and has not incurred the healthcare and pension costs of the big three. The ripple from these plants in the local economic pond has not helped those states to shake off the desperate poverty that traps more than half of their citizens.
One element that Mr. Mix does not discuss is healthcare costs, something that the Big Three cannot control, health care costs run about $1600 per unit in the US, opposed to about $250 per unit in Canada, the land of the hated socialized medicine, but where most of the new auto plants have been built. Healthcare, a central issue of the recent campaign is one of the causes of our inability to compete on a global scale, for all of the other developed nations have a single payer healthcare system in place. This allows manufacturers to concentrate on producing products, and not on negotiating increasing costs with HMOs, PPOs and Insurance corporations for health care services that rank 37th in the world in quality and first in cost. But that would cast aspersions on those who really fund the National Right to Work Committee and pay Mr. Mix’s salary.
The question we should be asking ourselves, what will happen if the Big Three are allowed to crumble? In our area, there are at least a dozen plants that will probably close or reduce operations drastically. Across the Great Lakes Region are hundreds of thousands of families who are directly tied to the future of the big three, either through employment or their retirement pension. What will happen to these folks? Retirees will find their income reduced by at least 33 percent when the Federal Pension Benefit Guarantee Fund absorbs them into its system, which is also running in the red from the increase of failures of private corporate pension funds in the last 10 years. Health care for the employees will end immediately and retirees will find their healthcare either drastically reduced or cease to exist as the payments cease from the auto companies into the UAW VEBA (the UAW took over the administration of the retiree healthcare from the Big Three) created last year from the new contracts. These folks are going to be forced to ask the government for help to live and their request has to be answered, for they are our neighbors, friends, and family. So instead of killing the messenger of bad news, which Mr. Mix advocates, what about discussing the shape that the U.S. auto industry should take in the future to compete in the global market? What about breaking the hold that the fossil fuel cartel (BP, Exxon, OPEC etc.) has over our economy? Involving the manufacturing expertise and trained workforce of the Big Three in creating a green solution for our transportation quandary in this country would be a better choice than letting them be bought up piece meal on the cheap by foreign corporations in a bankruptcy fire sale.
After all, we don’t want Toyotas to be the only make of car racing on the NASCAR circuit, do we?
PATRICK SAUNDERS
As Yogi Berra said so aptly, “its déjà vu all over again.” The column by Mark Mix, spokesperson for the National Right to Work Committee echoed its same old tired refrain, blame the workers and the unions, and arguing against helping the U.S. auto industry — Ford, GM and Chrysler in their time of trouble.
Mr. Mix’s argument that lays all of the woes on the doorstep of the UAW simply does not hold water in the present time. The UAW leadership has worked hand and glove with the Big Three since the early 80s to make their operations more efficient, allowing drastic changes in work rules, the introduction of automation and robotics that lowered the labor cost per unit to its lowest point. While this allowed the Big Three to greatly increase their profits on larger cars and SUV’s loaded with accessories once thought to be luxuries. The UAW and its declining worker-membership base were not allowed to have input into the type of products being made.
If you look at the UAW plants in this region, the impact of the concessions by labor was shown in the drop in work force. The now closed Ford plant in Lorain once employed more than 5,000 workers. After the concessions of the 80s, the workforce there shrank by one half in the early 90s and by another 50 percent before it closed its doors several years ago. The former New Departure in Perkins Township that had thousands of workers now has about 800. The former Ford/Visteon/ACH plant in Margaretta Township has shrunk by half or more from about 2500. The UAW members have been forced into a defensive posture, ratifying contracts in 2007 that cut wages by 50 percent to an average worker wage of $29,000 a year and reduced benefits (pension and healthcare) won by years of negotiating to a mere shadow of their former selves. What this means is that auto workers with families cannot afford to buy the cars they make every day. So to picture them as an omnipotent power in the 21st century as Mr. Mix did in his column is far from the truth.
Mr. Mix talks about the foreign plants in our country, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai and Mercedes being among them and their profitability. He points out that they are in “Right to Work” states, but does not discuss that those states took on major debt in infrastructure costs, economic aid and training of employees to lure those plants. In Alabama, the Mercedes plant located there costs the state annually more than the taxes it produces. The average wage in all of those plants is about $15 per hour and they are heavily automated to reduce the number of workers needed. Their workforce is also much younger than the Big Three’s and has not incurred the healthcare and pension costs of the big three. The ripple from these plants in the local economic pond has not helped those states to shake off the desperate poverty that traps more than half of their citizens.
One element that Mr. Mix does not discuss is healthcare costs, something that the Big Three cannot control, health care costs run about $1600 per unit in the US, opposed to about $250 per unit in Canada, the land of the hated socialized medicine, but where most of the new auto plants have been built. Healthcare, a central issue of the recent campaign is one of the causes of our inability to compete on a global scale, for all of the other developed nations have a single payer healthcare system in place. This allows manufacturers to concentrate on producing products, and not on negotiating increasing costs with HMOs, PPOs and Insurance corporations for health care services that rank 37th in the world in quality and first in cost. But that would cast aspersions on those who really fund the National Right to Work Committee and pay Mr. Mix’s salary.
The question we should be asking ourselves, what will happen if the Big Three are allowed to crumble? In our area, there are at least a dozen plants that will probably close or reduce operations drastically. Across the Great Lakes Region are hundreds of thousands of families who are directly tied to the future of the big three, either through employment or their retirement pension. What will happen to these folks? Retirees will find their income reduced by at least 33 percent when the Federal Pension Benefit Guarantee Fund absorbs them into its system, which is also running in the red from the increase of failures of private corporate pension funds in the last 10 years. Health care for the employees will end immediately and retirees will find their healthcare either drastically reduced or cease to exist as the payments cease from the auto companies into the UAW VEBA (the UAW took over the administration of the retiree healthcare from the Big Three) created last year from the new contracts. These folks are going to be forced to ask the government for help to live and their request has to be answered, for they are our neighbors, friends, and family. So instead of killing the messenger of bad news, which Mr. Mix advocates, what about discussing the shape that the U.S. auto industry should take in the future to compete in the global market? What about breaking the hold that the fossil fuel cartel (BP, Exxon, OPEC etc.) has over our economy? Involving the manufacturing expertise and trained workforce of the Big Three in creating a green solution for our transportation quandary in this country would be a better choice than letting them be bought up piece meal on the cheap by foreign corporations in a bankruptcy fire sale.
After all, we don’t want Toyotas to be the only make of car racing on the NASCAR circuit, do we?
Thursday, July 24, 2008
“The Road to Megiddo”
In the time of the Tuthmosis III, one of the greatest Pharaohs of Egypt fought a great battle in 1479 B.C., in a town called Megiddo in Palestine. The outcome of that battle set the tone for the region for hundreds of years, in that Egypt reigned supreme, until she fell apart from the inside as most great powers do. That battle was of such significance at the time, that it became the fabric of a legend known as “Armageddon,” the battle to end all battles and to end the world, as we know it.
The recent happenings in Southwest Asia, referred to by many as the Middle East, with Israelis’ attacking the “Hezbollah” in Lebanon, after some of their soldiers were kidnapped by them, could open the entire region to more strife and suffering if that is possible. But the burning question is, what will we do, the most powerful nation in the world about this latest threat to the peace of the world? As the talking heads talk ceaselessly about yet another challenge to the administration of George Bush, I wonder what is really going on in his mind, as he confronts what amounts to a multi-faceted problem in dealing with a region, whose significance in terms of importance is best articulated in the prices posted at the local gas station?
Up to now, we have been dealing with problems that are at most two dimensional, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Al Qaeda. Now we have fires breaking out all over, the Iranians are in the mix for hegemony in Southwest Asia (as they did in the days of Alexander the Great), a group of Islamic Taliban style fundamentalists are on the verge of taking over in Somalia, trains are blowing up in India, the North Koreans have fired missiles of different shapes and abilities in a challenge to that region and us, the IDF (the Israeli Army) has rolled back into the Gaza Strip in retaliation to the Palestinian Militia capturing an Israeli soldier, and now Lebanon is erupting again after a relative lengthy period of quiet (even with the strife about the assassination of the former Prime Minister, it was still quiet compared with the years of war prior). The one player that has the ability to control or bring some sanity to the process is our country in all of these issues.
But when you have a President who seems to be under the sway of evangelicals who believe in the end times, and the last battle, the battle of Armageddon, will he act in such a way to stem the movement towards chaos or will he let it flow as if to fulfill the prophecies of the Christian evangelical movement?
The Islamic “evangelicals” also believe in the re-creation of the Caliphate in that region, in which an Islamic government headed by a single person will rule as in the days after the rise of Mohammadism. The Christian Evangelicals believe that this will be the beginning of the return of the Son of God to Earth and his establishment of his kingdom. In Israel, there are also the Jewish “evangelicals” who believe in the re-establishment of the Jewish Kingdom of old; and it will rule as in olden times. These folks are also part of the settler movement on the West Bank. It is their fondest wish to foment the chaos needed to set in action, the return of the Kingdom of David.
In some ways, there is similarity in these dueling beliefs; all entail the establishment of monarchial governments. The Islamists see a caliphate headed by a man, picked by the imams and mullahs to carry out the word of Allah. While the Christians see a return of Christ to Earth to rule and I am sure that they see themselves (Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, etc.) as the chosen to assist in this rule. The Jewish “evangelicals” see a Jew ordained by God on the throne of David, ruling and in the just manner of David, with the aid of Yahweh, or God, the Jewish God, which incidentally is the basis for both Christianity and Islam. All of these ideas are utopian in nature that each of these kingdoms will be perfect and harmonious in their rule over the Earth.
I guess that there could be some hope, if it was not for the human factor attached to all of them, for all of these ideas, although divinely inspired; the framework for them has come from man. For it is man, who set these ideas to paper and created the texts that outline these coming events; and after you look at the history of man kind on this planet, it gets rather disheartening, for as long as man and human kind are part of the equation, it seems like we will be subject to its (humanity) failings, as demonstrated in the past. For the bottom lines in all of these harmonious kingdoms, are the forced imposition of a belief system on everyone and the eradication of those who will not accept that belief system. Which does not sound any different than spreading freedom and liberty by us, which is not going over to good in Afghanistan and Iraq at the present or when the Taliban tried to force their beliefs on the Afghanis?
History has shown us that our time on earth is transitory, and at some time in the future, the residents or perhaps visitors to this planet we call earth, will be searching the archaeological ruins of our time, like we searched the ruins left by that Great Pharaoh, Tuthmosis III. Will they, our children's children's children's children's children, ad infinitum, be as dismayed at what they find to be cause of end of our epoch, that dismayed the majority of us who lived during that time? Which are our human failings of prejudice and hate in dealing with each other’s beliefs, cultures and differences; and to make a world based on harmony and peace? Will these human failings truly be the cause of our “Megiddo,” that great battle of legend, or can we learn from the past and not be condemned by it?
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