by Randy Shannon

The United States has the largest prison population and the highest rate of imprisonment on Earth. The prison population across the state of Georgia is on strike. The prisoners are remaining in their cells demanding more humane treatment. Given the diverse racial composition and social groups and gangs in the prison, the complete unity of the prisoners across the state system speaks to the seriousness of the conditions.

Please go to this page to sign a petition to the Georgia Department of Corrections to improve conditions there. Below is a video of Elaine Brown, a prisoner support activists discussing the strike and the conditions.

Inmates in Georgia Prisons Use Contraband Phones to Coordinate Protest

By SARAH WHEATON

Published: December 12, 2010

THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE TO PRESERVE SOCIAL SECURITY & MEDICARE
~  Trusted    ~    Independent   ~    Effective   ~
 
December 10, 2010
 
NEWS RELEASE
 
 

Social Security Experts Detail Why Payroll Tax “Holiday” is No Gift to Americans

 
Briefing reporters today, National Committee President Barbara Kennelly, Social Security Works Co-Director Nancy Altman and CEPR Co-Director Dean Baker warned that passage of a payroll tax holiday could have devastating effects on Social Security’s long-term financing.
 
“As we’ve seen in Washington these days, it’s easy to enact tax cuts but virtually impossible to allow them to expire.  This payroll tax holiday proposal will be no different.  Election year politics in 2012 will doom the repeal of this $120 billion dollar cut and Social Security beneficiaries will then pay the price. The American people understand we’re in an economic crisis yet they don’t want to trade their future security for a short-term benefit. They didn’t ask Congress to cut their Social Security contributions, in fact, poll after poll shows they’d pay more to preserve Social Security. I salute the House for saying we need to give this deal another look because this payroll tax provision is no deal at all.”…Barbara B. Kennelly, President/CEO National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare

Continue reading Social Security Tax Holiday is a Trap →

I Have to Say Something about Obama,
the Tax Cuts,
and the Federal Pay Freeze
The African World
By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

I am sorry, folks. I just have to get my two cents in on President Obama’s proposal to extend the Bush-era tax cuts and freeze the pay of federal workers. I will make this brief.

During the campaign, one of the things that I and a number of other commentators warned about was the sense that we had from then Senator Obama that struggle was not a watch-word. In fact, the then Senator seemed to avoid that as best he could. He wanted us to embrace Martin Luther King’s vision of the need for a non-racial and just United States without acknowledging the extent to which the struggle continued.

Since his election we have seen a combination of some bold ideas and rhetoric matched with a consistent pattern of premature compromising. There have been psychological explanations offered for this but I think that they mainly miss the point. There is, however, a psychological aspect that we must acknowledge.

First, President Obama, as we warned, saw himself primarily reforming the image of the USA rather than the substance. The masses that supported him, however, were looking for substantive change. They were far from united on the character of that change, but they were looking for a champion to advance that. Whether Obama intended on making substantive change is beside the point. What he clearly decided, evident immediately after the election and during the transition period, was to seek to stabilize neo-liberal capitalism and focus on assuring the markets and investors that he was reliable. His appointments have almost all been in that direction.

Continue reading Tax Cuts for Wealthy and Pay Freeze for Federal Workers →

Congressman Jason Altmire is supporting Republican efforts to undermine social security by reducing the social security payroll tax, which goes to savings, instead of the income tax which goes to spending. This will undermine the trust fund’s stability, and justify the Republican’s demand to cut benefits.

Please call Altmire’s office and demand “Hands off Social Security.”

Join us for a noon vigil on Wednesday December 15th.

See the two articles below by Sen. Bernie Sanders and by the National Committee to Preserve Social Security.

by Senator Bernie Sanders

President Obama is right about one thing — Republicans in Congress are holding the middle class hostage.

We have a $13.8 trillion national debt, a collapsing middle class and the most unequal distribution of wealth of any major country. With all this in mind, Republicans in Congress say they will block tax cuts to the middle class and block unemployment benefits to more than two million families unless the President gives huge tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires.

Their behavior is morally bankrupt. It is reprehensible.

But instead of challenging the Republicans for their absurd demands and their outrageous tactics, the President gave them virtually everything they wanted.

I cannot and will not support this deal. I will do everything I can to uphold the promise made to the American people to end the Bush tax cuts for the rich.

One of the most under-reported parts of this deal is a cut to the Social Security payroll tax. In just one year, over $120 billion of revenue will be cut from Social Security under the President’s compromise plan, weakening the program and virtually guaranteeing benefit cuts in the future.

Continue reading Altmire and Republicans Weaken Social Security with Tax Deal →

Statement by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka On Tax Cut Deal

December 07, 2010

Two years ago, working Americans had high hopes that we would ultimately emerge from the deep, punishing financial debacle with a sharp focus on a fundamentally stronger, fairer and more balanced economy.  Today, that vision has dimmed.

The tax cut deal rewards Republican obstructionism by giving the wealthy the tax breaks they demanded.  It throws away precious resources needed for investments in jobs and our economy on upper income tax cuts that will do very little to propel economic growth—setting up excuses for the deficit hypocrites to argue for even more cuts to programs serving working families.  It lards the tax cuts for the top 2 percent with an indefensible cut in the estate tax – giving yet another bonus to the super-rich.  Taken together, this package locks in the growing income inequality that has plagued our country for at least another two years – and quite possibly much longer.

It is unconscionable that the price of support for struggling middle class families and workers who have been unable to find jobs for months and months and months is yet more giveaways for our country’s wealthiest families.  Millions of jobless workers have lived in fear for months while Senate Republicans had the gall to use their hardships as political leverage for the benefit of the rich.

The gains for the middle class and jobless workers in the deal come at too high a price.

The issue we face today is not the lack of power or opportunity.  The question we have to answer is this:  How do we use our power to escape caving in to Wall Street and moneyed interests?  And how do we create the millions of jobs we need now and move toward a future of broadly shared prosperity?

Message to the US:

Blame the Wars, Not China

By Paul Kellogg

Progressive America Rising via PolEconAnalysis

Dec 4. 2010 – There is a growing chorus of voices in the media and the academy singling out the actions of the Chinese state as central to the dilemmas of the world economy. This focus finds its most articulate presentations, not in the xenophobia of the right, but in the polite analysis of many left-liberals.

Paul Krugman, for instance, writing in the run-up to November’s G20 summit in South Korea, praised the United States’ approach of creating money out of nothing (“quantitative easing”) as being helpful to the world economy, and criticised the Chinese state’s attempts to keep its currency weak as being harmful. “The policies of these two nations are not at all equivalent”, he argues, adding his influential voice to the chorus which is increasingly targeting China for the world’s woes.[1] Krugman’s, however, is a simplistic analysis which overlooks the role of the US over decades in creating huge imbalances in the world economy, and has the dangerous effect of scapegoating one of the poorest nations of the world (China) for the problems created by the world’s richest.

Krugman’s argument proceeds through a sleight of hand. He objects to the attempts by the Chinese state to keep down the value of its currency – the yuan – as a series of policies whose “overall effect … on foreign economies is clearly negative”. This is a common theme – China’s “weak-yuan” currency being good for China (making its exports cheaper in world markets) and bad for the rest of the world.

But there is a problem. By his own admission, the US policy of creating money out of nothing will result in a “weaker American dollar”. What he doesn’t say, but what is implicit in his analysis, is that this US policy is identical to China’s – a “weak-yuan” policy in the latter, matched by a weak-dollar policy in the former. Krugman nonetheless lets the US off the hook because, he argues, even though the US dollar is certain to fall in value as a result of the new trillions being created, “that is not the ultimate goal”.

Judging a policy on its intent rather than its effect is disingenuous. Brian Burke’s intent as general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs has been to deliver a Stanley Cup to Toronto. Hockey fans are unlikely to forgive him, though, for the fact that his policies see the Leafs sitting, again, near the basement of their conference. However, let’s take Krugman at face value. Why does he see the US policy as good for the world? Because, he argues, “basically, the United States is pursuing a policy that increases overall world demand” and China “is pursuing a contractionary domestic monetary policy, reducing overall world demand”.

Let’s begin with some of the key facts. At the peak of the economic crisis, the United States, Canada, and the European Union had to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars from the rest of the world to finance stimulus programs to stabilise their economies. China also engaged in serious fiscal stimulus (relative to GDP virtually on the same scale as the United States)[2], but unlike the North American and European powers, it was able to do so without borrowing a penny from the rest of the world.[3]

Continue reading Blame US Wars for Our Economic Problems – not China →