Archive

(To read Part 1, click here.)

The turmoil in financial markets and the bailout to the tune of $700 billion has turned the public eye and wrath on Wall Street and Washington. While millions are aware of the triggering causes, ranging from predatory lending to deregulation to insatiable greed, what isn’t so obvious is the longer-term process that brought our financial system and economy to the edge of the abyss.

If there were such a thing as a perfect economic storm, I would say we are close to it.

The housing crisis continues and shows no sign of ending; credit and money markets are either churning or freezing up; the stock market is gyrating; unemployment is leaping upward (sharply so in the communities of the nationally and racially oppressed); poverty is up and wages are down; oil and food prices are climbing; the value of the dollar is falling sharply compared to other currencies; the level of indebtedness is astronomical and will be difficult to unwind in the near term. And we sit on the edge of a financial collapse with all the accompanying dislocation and hardship that it would bring.

As the Bush administration attempts to ram a bailout package of nearly one trillion dollars through Congress, it begins to feel like Colonel Sanders asking the public to trust him to take care of the chickens.

If it weren’t so damn serious, there would be something almost comical about it. Here we have the White House, which has squandered trillions of dollars over eight years, and its point man, Hank Paulson, fresh from 38 years of gaming the financial system while working at Goldman Sachs, insisting that Congressional leaders hand over a trillion dollars to them with no debate and no strings attached.

The shockwaves from the financial crisis have left working class families in every part of the country in a state of great worry and fear.

Over $100 billion of public money has been spent to bail out huge financial corporations while millions of people are losing their homes, losing their health care, losing their pensions, losing their jobs and losing college loans. Those who have been paid the least, African American, Latino and women workers, are losing the most.

Statement of the Communist Party USA

The Bush Administration has proposed a massive bailout plan of at least $700 billion (maybe as much as $1.7 trillion) to stabilize the financial system amid the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a Bush appointee, and the President are pushing for the U.S. Congress to rapidly pass the plan this week with little debate and no amendments. The rightwing and the banks want a plan that gives a blank check to Wall Street with no oversight.

This year the Better World Awards was held on Saturday June 14, 2008.

The event took place at the Martin Luther King Jr. Auditorium at 1199 SEIU.

This year the event focused on the “Costs of War and the 2008 Elections”.

Our featured speaker was Judith Le Blanc, National Organizing Director for United for Peace and Justice. The 2008 Better World Award Honorees included: Estelle Katz, Transport Workers Union, Local 100, Brooklyn For Peace and the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.

The week of September 15, 2008 has been a dramatic and unprecedented period in the world of high finance. The economic crisis is not over despite what some pundits and politicians have claimed. A series of government interventions have changed the map of banking and finance.

By John Wojick
Peoples Weekly World

“How do you hide $13 billion? Do you stuff it in an airplane? Do you give it to the CEO? Or, do you share it with your workers?”

These questions are printed on union flyers being distributed by thousands of striking Boeing workers at locations in Washington state, Oregon and Kansas as the total shutdown of the nation's largest airplane maker entered its second day.

A popular video from the Communist Party USA
The next episode in a series on the Communist Party USA(CPUSA) new national office. Green features and new parts of the office are showcased. With a comical intro and outro.

The party-builder will not add to your “to do” list – rather, it aims to keep you up to date on our political focus -- the elections – and provide food for thought with articles on the experience, what works and what doesn’t, of the Party organization, especially the clubs.


In this Issue:

* Organizing in Oregon
* Watch the speech
* YCL summer youth voter training camp
* PWW Fund Drive

The Beijing Olympics represent a vision of the kind of future for which the Communist Party USA strives: a world where people from hundreds of countries come together peacefully to enjoy a common cause.

205 states will participate in the Olympic games, many of whom are in conflict with each other. Iraq and the United States, Israel and Palestine, Russia and Georgia, the D.R. Congo and Rwanda, Sudan and Chad: All of these nations and dozens more will be part of a single, peaceful event.

Everyone in this room knows we’re in bad shape, and it’s not getting better. Every month this year has brought worse news on unemployment numbers, May brought a 0.5% increase to bring the total to 5.5%, an increase that was the largest since the mid-1980s, and the highest rate since late 2004. Over the past six months private-sector employment has fallen by 411,000; the long-term unemployed share is up to 18.3%; the underemployment rate is at 9.7%; all of which add up to the fact that almost 10% of the workforce is unemployed or underemployed.

In This Newsletter:
USW: History in the Making
Action Alerts: UFW; Bad Boss is Back
Round-up of International Strikes
Working Women Survey results
DC stands with Smithfield Workers
Million Member Mobilization
Willamette Reds event
Election 2008: Trumka addresses USW convention
Union Jobs (still more needed!)

Barack Obama is not a left candidate. This fact has seemingly surprised a number of progressive people who are bemoaning Obama’s “shift to the center.” (Right-wingers are happy to join them, suggesting Obama is a “flip-flopper.”) It’s sad that some who seek progressive change are missing the forest for the trees. But they will not dampen the wide and deep enthusiasm for blocking a third Bush term represented by John McCain, or for bringing Obama by a landslide into the White House with a large Democratic congressional majority..... Reprinted from the People's Weekly World Newspaper

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Federal agents seized 32 computers from Pastors for Peace as they attempted to cross the Pharr International Bridge early July 3, 2008 at the US-Mexico border.

The caravan was on its way to donating humanitarian aid to Cuba as part of the yearly Friendshipment challenging the US blockade against the Cuban people.

In this Issue:

• Defeat McCain
  
• CPUSA '08 Elections Blog
  
• Solidarity Pack
• Sustainer Update
  

Video from this past March National Committee meeting of the Communist Party USA. Issues discussed were the 2008 elections, labor, the youth movement, and the Environment.

In This Newsletter:
Unions Begin Big Election Effort
Action Alert: Neglected Priorities
CAW Needs Solidarity
Indian Workers Suspend Hunger Strike
Congress Hotel Strike Marks 5th Anniversary
TRADE Act introduced; Action Alert
Election 2008: Labor says "NO" to Big Oil
Union Jobs (still more needed!)