Today's Stories

September 30, 2008

Pam Martens
What Wall Street Hoped to Win

September 29, 2008

Mike Whitney
Black Monday

Jeff Gibbs
"Just Say No!" to Reverse Robin Hood

Paul Craig Roberts
Why America Should Listen to Ahmadinejad

Peter Morici
The Bailout and the Economy

Tim Wise
Racism as Reflex

John Walsh
Sarah Palin is a Rotten Mom

Uri Avnery
Israeli Fascism: Yes, It Can Happen Here

Alan Farago
Hell to Pay: the Financial Collapse and the Housing Market

Andy Worthington
Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Running the 9/11 Trials?

David Michael Green
Where's the Repudiation?

Carl Finamore
Capitalism on Steroids; Labor on Tranquilizers

Iris Keltz
Postcards from the DNC

Bill Hatch
Take This Shrimp Slayer!

Website of the Day
Tina Fey as Palin, Round Two

September 27 / 28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
How McCain Blew It

Linn Washington, Jr.
Alaska's Blacks and Palin: a Strained Relationship

Christopher Ketcham
An Israeli Trojan Horse

Mike Whitney
The People vs. the Banksters

Kevin Alexander Gray Race in the Race: Is Obama Shining Us On?

Anthony DiMaggio
The Unspoken War: Pakistan, the Media and Nuclear Weapons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Their Assets; Our Debts: How Economic Crises Are Overcome

Marc Levy /
Susan Erony
War Jokes Wanted: No Laughing Matter

Stan Cox
Livestock of Mass Destruction: Germ Labs in the Heartland

Saul Landau
Election Drizzle

Ali Khan
Meltdown in American Markets: an Islamic Perspective

David Rosen
The Great Fear: the Sexual Politics of Sarah Palin

Todd Alan Price
Bailing Out the Foes of Public Eduction

Matts Svensson
The Red and White Bird in Gaza

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan Through the Eyes of a Native Son

Robert Fantina
McCain and the Economy

Richard Rhames
Hank-ering for a Bailout

David Krieger
The U.S.-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking Charter Schools

Charles R. Larson
Dear Mrs. Abacha: a Nigerian Email Romance

Kim Nicolini
Sadism in the Desert

Poets' Basement
La Morticella, Holt, Moser and Buknatski

Website of the Day
The Great Schlep

September 26, 2008

Moshe Adler
Bailing Out Wall Street Won't Save Main Street

Bill Quigley
The U.S. War on Unarmed Working Mothers

Jonathan Cook
When Archaeology Becomes a Curse

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Visions of Pinpoint Control: the Romance of Laser Weapons

Madis Senner
Why the Bailout will Fail

Brian Cloughley
US Raids in Pakistan: Violations of Sovereignty

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Oh, Henry!

Joanne Mariner
Passport Fraud and Torture

Dan La Botz
The Financial Crisis: a View from the Left

David Macaray
Ralph's Management Indicted by Federal Grand Jury

Website of the Day
Nader and Obama Girl at the Office

September 25, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Insanity of the $700 Billion Giveaway

Sharon Smith
Democrats and Corporate Bailouts

Ralph Nader
Who Will Show Some Backbone Against the Bailout?

Christopher Ketcham
The Economy of Dead Sperm (or What I Learned From My Race-Car Grandpa Who Had No Bankers)

Eric Toussaint
Is Another Third World Debt Crisis in the Offing?

Robert Weissman
Getting Wall Street Pay Reform Right

David Estabrook
A Better Bailout Plan

Nikolas Kozloff
The Voyage of the SS Peter the Great

Steve Early
The High Price of Purple Dissent

Judith Scherr
Blue Helmets in Haiti

Laray Polk
South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Notes from the Inside

Website of the Day
Letterman Spanks McCain

September 24, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin at the UN: a Tutorial from Uribe

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis: How and Why Congress Should Play for Time

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Trials: Govt. Says Six Years Not Long Enough to Prepare Evidence

Steve Conn
Will Nader's Warning be Acknowledged in the Presidential Debates?

Karyn Strickler
The $700,000,000,000 Power Punch

Diane Farsetta
Stealth Marketers Gone Wild

Dennis Loo
Poisoned Legacy

John Halle
Wealth Tax Now!

Khalil Nakhleh
Palestinians Under the Occupation

Website of the Day
Nader: Debate Crasher

September 23, 2008

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Bail Out on This Bailout

Michael Hudson
Henry Paulson and the New Yazoo Land Scandal

Tariq Ali
Why was the Marriott Targeted?

Patrick Dyer
A Death Row Visit with Troy A. Davis

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah and the Palestinians

Joshua Frank
Oppose Barack Obama? How Dare Thee!

Alan Farago
Pushing the Referees: How the Financial Crisis Occurred

Dave Lindorff
The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar

Tanya M. Kerssen /
Roger Burbach
Bolivia's Popular Upheaval

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Power Liabilities Dwarf Bush's Wall Street Bailout

Website of the Day
Hammered by the Irish: the Video

September 22, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?

Mike Whitney
Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street

Christopher Ketcham
Let It Collapse!

Ron Jacobs
The Predators' Bailout

Anne-Marie McManus
Lost in the Rhetoric of Crisis

Robert Weitzel
The Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: a Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Howard Dean

John Ross
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America

Steve Breyman
Does the U.S. Really Need Cluster Bombs?

Patrick Bond
On the Bellies of the Filth

Uri Avnery
Fly, Tzipora, Fly

Carl J. Mayer
An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal): Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience?

Website of the Day
Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 20 / 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is This the Stake Through Neoliberalism's Heart?

Michael Hudson
America's Own Kleptocracy

Pam Martens
The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design

Lila Rajiva
Putting Lipstick on an AIG

Mike Whitney
Full-Spectrum Breakdown

Richard Rhames
A Bailout to Nowhere

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The NY Yankees and the U.S. Economy

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies: a New Study of Neocon Influence

Susan Block
Palin as Venus in Furs: the Dominatrix Politics of Drilling and Killing

Robert Fantina
Republicans and Subpoenas: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Heidi Walters
Hung Up on Route 36: an 18-Wheeler and a Nuclear Cask

David Yearsley
Germany's Lost Organs: When Bigger Was Better

Raymond J. Lawrence
The Politics of Tribulation: Sarah Palin and the Rapture

David Rosen
One Billion Pills Later: Viagra at 10

David Michael Green
Living in Sarah Palin's America

Anthony Papa
Imprisoned Voters and the Elections

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Freddie, Fannie, Daddy, Nanny

Howard Lisnoff
When We Notice the Homeless

John Goekler
Leaving Every Child Behind

Missy Beattie
Impalement

Dave Zirin
Leave Josh Howard Alone

Charles R. Larson
Holden Caulfield, Rest in Peace

Tim Matson
Too Big for His Birches: Woodlot Economics

Susie Day
Attack of the Angry Fetus

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Gibbons, Jenkins and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Dylan & Baez: Deportees

September 19, 2008

Steven T. Banko
McCain's Passion Play

Mike Whitney
The Point of No Return

Michael Hudson
The Dow Jones' Wonderfully Cheesy Addition

William Kaufman
Shattering the Glass-Steagall Act: the Bi-Partisan Origins of the Financial Crisis

Brenda Norrell
The Fall of Lehman Bros.: Blowback for Black Mesa?

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
The New Rhetoric of Racism: Why Won't Obama Call It Out?

Clifton Ross
Bolivia: Cleaning Up the Bull Ring

Dave Lindorff
Hang On to Your Wallets: the Government's About to Rescue Us!

Cynthia McKinney
Seize the Time!

Susan Hurlich
Storm Survivors: a Dispatch from Cuba

Michael Donnelly
Let's Hand It All Over to the Democrats (They Helped Create This Mess)

Website of the Day
The Crisis Explained

September 18, 2008

Benjamin Dangl
The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Drill, Drill, Drill Scam

Susan Abulhawa
The Lobby Has Spoken: Biden and Israel

Robert Weissman
After the Fall: the Financial Re-Regulatory Agenda

Anne-Marie McManus
McCain's Cinderella: the Fetishization of Sarah Palin

Corey D. B. Walker
The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

William S. Lind
Senator O'Bush: Why Obama is Wrong on Iran and Afghanistan

Ron Jacobs
Washington's False Logic of Torture

Dave Lindorff
American and China: Joined at the Hip

Binoy Kampmark
How Damien Hirst Got Away With It

Website of the Day
An Invisible Army

September 17, 2008

Stephen Conn
Palin and the Politics of Big Oil

Forrest Hylton
Reactionary Rampage in Bolivia

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Leaves Iraq

Gregory Elich
Inside North Korea

Ralph Nader
How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

Franklin Lamb
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila

Pam Martens
The Gang's All Here: Bush, McCain and the Old Iran/Contra Team

Dave Lindorff
The End of the Blue Chip Economy

Peter Morici
The Damage Deepens

Stanley Heller
The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte

Douglas Valentine
Rambling David Foster Wallace

Website of the Day
Free Cindy McCain!

September 16, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling from Direct Hits

Tiphaine Dickson
Citizen Palin: Why Sarah Palin Quoted Westbrook Pegler

Stan Goff
America is Now Rome: an Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Uri Avnery
Tzipi's Choice

Michael Winship
Lipstick on Polar Bears

Jeff Halper
Warehousing Palestinians

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia Versus the Empire

Oscar Gonzalez
Who's Dumber? Ike's Refugees or Wall Street's?

Binoy Kampmark
Cheney and His Records

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Muslims are at Peace with You

Sen. Russ Feingold
Restoring the Rule of Law

Website of the Day
The Next Great Rock Band?

September 15, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

Patrick Cockburn
Take Another Look at the Surge

Charles R. Larson
The Maverick Has No Clothes

Jonathan Cook
The Expulsion of Palestinians from Jaffa

Nikolas Kozloff
Racist Rhetoric in Bolivia

Roger Burbach
Morales Confronts the Insurrection: Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende

Helen Redmond
Where's the Health Care Bailout?

David Michael Green
The Democrats Do Poland

David Macaray
The Boeing Strike

Ralph Nader
Remembering Peter Camejo

Website of the Day
The Ballad of Sarah Palin

September 30, 2008

How Management Killed Detroit

Blaming the Labor Unions

By DAVID MACARAY

“The modern Little Red Riding Hood, reared on singing commercials, has no objection to being eaten by the wolf.”

—Marshall McLuhan

The Republicans’ campaign to portray themselves as “plain folks” and the Democrats as “elitists” will remind movie fans of that line from The Usual Suspects, where the guy in the police station is trying to convince the cops that a renowned villain actually exists and isn’t just a figment of the public’s imagination.  The guy says to the police: “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.”

When Republicans like John McCain (who comes from an aristocratic military family, owns eight homes, and is married to an heiress worth in excess of $100 million) declare, with a straight face, that Barack Obama (a man of mixed race, raised in a humble environment by a single mother on food stamps) is an “elitist,” it makes you realize how confoundingly gullible the electorate can be.

The party that opposed desegregation, opposed abolition of the poll tax, opposed allowing people to register at the DMV, opposed allowing them to register at the polling station on the day of election—the country club party that has done everything in its power to see that the poor and ethnic minorities are discouraged from voting—is now doing similar mischief in Michigan, a “battleground state” in the upcoming election. 

According to media reports, the Macomb County (Michigan) Republican Committee is attempting to disqualify those unfortunate people whose homes have been placed in foreclosure, claiming that because they no longer have a “valid” mailing address, they should be ineligible to vote.  In other words, the Michigan Republicans are arguing that people who’ve had their homes repossessed should be deprived of their constitutional right to vote.

Yet, the Republicans continue to pass themselves off as the “party of the people.”  And therein lies the Orwellian horror.  This ideological sleight-of-hand has to be one of the greatest stunts the Party ever pulled off—right up there with touting the virtues of free market fundamentalism, while, simultaneously, asking the federal government to step in and “nationalize” the beleaguered financial industry.

There’s another weird and annoying lie being shopped around out there, and this one involves Detroit.  With all the recent bailouts making headlines, it was only a matter of time before the auto industry approached the feds, hat in hand, asking for free money.

Despite the Big Three (Chrysler, Ford and GM) being the same companies who, historically, have fiercely resisted government meddling in any aspect of their  business—e.g., safety, air pollution, fuel economy—once again these bastions of free enterprise are at Washington’s doorstep, seeking federal assistance. 

Still, from the automakers’ vantage point, there’s no irony whatsoever involved.  Petitioning the government makes eminent sense.  After all, when you’re in a financial jam, you sniff out the money; and with the banks strapped for cash, the money trail leads you straight to the feds.  If they don’t have enough, they can always print more.

However, unlike the financial institutions whose insatiable greed and woeful shortsightedness were responsible for the current Wall Street crisis, the automakers came armed with a convenient scapegoat.  They blamed the UAW (United Auto Workers) for their predicament.  The pitch worked. The automakers walked away with a $25 billion “relief package.” 

But to blame the union for Detroit’s mess is not only inaccurate, it’s absurd on its face.  If the stakes weren’t so high and the economic consequences so potentially devastating, the charge would be howlingly funny.  Since when do workers call the shots?  Since when do they control anything?  How can working people, who are excluded from the decision-making process and powerless to affect marketing decisions, take the blame for the bosses’ errors?  That’s like an incompetent carpenter blaming his tools. 

And what, specifically, were those management “errors” that led to the automakers troubles?  Well, two of them loom large.

First, even though the Big Three have complained for years that medical insurance costs were eating them alive, comprising almost 40% of their labor payroll, it was Corporate America who did everything possible to torpedo any attempt to adopt a national health care plan.  They’ve been opposing it for half a century—ever since Truman first suggested the plan, following World War II—screaming hysterically that national health care represented “socialized medicine.” 

Meanwhile, American industry continues to compete with industries in countries where medical costs are absorbed by the government.  Workers in neighboring Canada (the United States’ largest trading partner), whose automakers are unionized, have a national health care plan.  Not having to underwrite the employees’ medical insurance is a staggering advantage for companies competing with the United States, one which Detroit itself helped perpetuate.

Second, the Big Three badly misread and misrepresented the market.  Union workers will build any damn vehicle they’re told to build.  You want four-wheel barges?  They’ll build them.  You want military tanks?  They’ll build them.  You want small, safe, fuel-efficient, low-priced cars that will run for 15 years?  They’ll build those, too.

Instead, Detroit’s auto executives, spurred on by the oil companies, resisted manufacturing small, modestly priced, fuel-efficient cars, choosing to build tricked-out, high-profit SUVs, pick-up trucks, and other “novelty” vehicles, and to rely on creative marketing and saturation advertising to carve out the necessary consumer niche. 

It’s reminiscent of smog devices.  While Detroit was futilely spending tens of millions of dollars lobbying Congress not to make air pollution (or safety) equipment mandatory, Japanese manufacturers, recognizing the inevitability (and wisdom) of such devices, were quietly developing an efficient catalytic converter.  Egregiously late to the party, Detroit took years and spent enormous sums playing catch-up.

Of course, it goes without saying that the singular event that changed everything for the auto industry was Japan’s spectacular entry into the U.S. market—and that was something for which Detroit can’t be blamed for not anticipating.  The Japanese auto industry, which, seemingly, came out of nowhere, turned out to be an economic juggernaut and minor revolution.  But, as David Halberstam noted in his book, “The Reckoning,” while Japan’s eventual market dominance was earned through quality products and precision planning, part of it was also “rigged.” 

Rigged how?  In order to gain a foothold in the most lucrative market in the world, the fledgling Japanese auto industry resorted to “dumping,” which is the practice of selling cars at costs lower than are profitable.  They desperately needed entry into the U.S. market, and used any means—even an unethical one—to do it.

In the beginning, Japanese automakers were actually losing money on every sale of certain models sold in the U.S.  To keep the enterprise economically feasible, the Japanese government subsidized the car-makers.  It was a partnership.  Understandably, U.S. companies couldn’t compete with these well-designed, “artificially priced” cars, and although they made their objections known, little was done to address the “dumping” issue.

But that’s ancient history.  The part of Japan’s industrial success that was “earned” (besides the fact that, undeniably, they make an excellent product), was the forging of a healthy, balanced relationship between labor and management. 

The discrepancy between the salaries of Japanese executives and the hourly workers is, even to this day, but a fraction of what it is in the U.S.  Unlike their Japanese counterparts, American executives demand to be treated as corporate “royalty” and to be compensated accordingly.  As a result, although the Japanese auto industry is unionized, their Us vs. Them relationship is far less hostile.

In any event, with or without bailouts, things aren’t likely to improve any time soon for the average American worker—not without a dramatic shift in priorities.  While workers have no say in company policy, they continue to pay the steepest price for management decisions. 

It’s a bleak landscape.  Workers have no cushy landing pad; they have no access to “golden parachutes”; they have no headhunters dedicated to finding them new jobs, no corporate connections, no networks, no fall-back positions, very little flexibility. 

Consequently, working people have little optimism about the future.  All they have is their work.  And with the epidemic of outsourcing, restructuring and downsizing, that work is being systematically taken away from them.

David Macaray, a playwright and writer in Los Angeles, was a former labor union rep.  He can be reached at dmacaray@earthlink.net

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