Category Archives: Attacks on the Working Class

Mother Jones Reporter Goes Undercover in Private CCA Prison

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My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard

Mother Jones (2016)

Film Review

My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard is a troubling documentary about a Mother Jones senior reporter who goes undercover to work as a prison guard in a private Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) prison in Winnfield Louisiana. The film mostly consists of Shane Bauer’s video diary and interviews with other prison staff and former inmates. Cameraman James West, who attempted to film outside the prison, was arrested by sheriff’s officers for criminal trespass.

Filmmakers mainly focus on the extremely demoralizing working conditions. Entry level guards earn $9 an hour – even in Winn this is insufficient to live on. Working conditions are incredibly dangerous. To save money (and increase profits), CCA keeps staff numbers low, which means there are rarely sufficient security personnel to cope with inmate violence. In fact, guards at Winn Correctional Center are trained not to intervene in shank fights, which are a routine occurrence.

The failure to provide adequate food or medical or mental health care for inmates is even more shocking. Bauer highlights the case of a diabetic inmate who had to have several fingers and both legs amputated for gangrene because prison authorities refused to get medical attention for him.

Parts 2-6 start automatically when Part 1 ends.

Read accompanying article at My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard

 

Black Liberation: How Obama Abandoned the Black Community

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The following is a presentation by Keehanga-Yamahtta Taylor about her book from #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. The main focus of the talk is the total abandonment of the black community by America’s first black president Barack Obama.

African Americans have double the unemployment rate of other US workers, 40% of African American children live in poverty, 55% of black workers earn under $55 and police shoot and kill an average of 900 African Americans a year.*

What Taylor finds even more galling is that Obama persistently blames African Americans for their own living conditions. When most of the world Wall Street for the economic cataclysm visited on white working class in 2008, Obama proclaimed there was “no excuse” for African Americans living in poverty.

Taylor  goes on to discuss the disproportionate shut down of public services (schools, libraries, hospitals, etc) and safety net programs in black communities.

She also points out the total disconnect between policing and crime, which is declining. She gives the example of New York and other cities that use their police force to help meet budget targets, New York City, for example, generates $10 million a year from parking tickets and $1 billion from court fines (derived disproportionately from African American neighborhoods because New York police deliberately target them).

She also cites the problem of overt police racism, as evidenced by the texts cops send each other – with racist messages such as “white power”, “niggers must be killed” and “niggers must be spayed.”

*This number is an underestimate as only 1,000 out of 18,000 urban police departments report police killings to the Department of Justice.

Whistleblower Leaks Secret Assassination and Kill List Documents

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In the following video, Jeremy Cahill discusses his book The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government’s Secret Drone Warfare Program. For the most part, the book consists of leaked documents about the CIA’s “secret” drone assassination program. This is the first time any official documents have been made public.

Cahill’s latest book includes documents setting out the criteria for putting Americans and others on the terrorist “watch list.” Other documents describe the “kill chain,” the process by which prospects are moved from the “watch list” to the “kill list.” When Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, she signed off on every targeted assassination carried out by the Obama White House.

According to Scahill, the watch list contains over one million entries, including 21,000 Americans. Among other data, the watch list includes bank records and confidential medical records.

Scahill begins his talk with fascinating commentary on the three main presidential candidates. Among other observations, he points out 1) that Bernie Sanders supports both the kill list and drone warfare 2)  that Trump didn’t bring fascism to the US – that he merely brought existing US fascism into public view and 3) that Bill and Hillary Clinton were using her private email server to operate a parallel government structure.

In Scahill’s words, Hillary is the “empire candidate.” She has already been endorsed by William Kristol, Max Booth and other neoconservatives. He maintains most of the Republican leadership is preparing to support her presidential campaign.

Scahill is also scathingly critical of Ben Rhodes and the other 20 to 30-year-old “frat” boys who manage Obama’s foreign policy, ie make the decision who to kill next and which countries to invade.

 

The Tea Party: Brought to You by Wall Street

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pity the billionaire

Pity the Billionaire: the Hard Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right

By Thomas Frank

Havill Secker (2012)

Book Review

Pity the Poor Billionaire describes how the right wing corporate elite used the 2008 economic crash to build a pseudo-populist movement (aka the Tea Party) to build blue collar support for harsh free market austerity policies that benefited Wall Street at the expense of working people.

According to Frank,  the Tea Party was the fourth conservative uprising in the last half century. The first was the backlash against the anti-Vietnam war movement that resulted in Nixon’s election in 1968 and 1972. The second was the Reagan revolution in 1980; the third the Contract with America revolution that won Republican control of Congress (in 1994) during Clinton’s first term.

The Demise of Unions and the Left

With each of these movements, US political and economic life became increasingly conservative, with all public institutions – churches, hospitals, universities, museums, the US Post Office and even the Army and CIA – succumbing to pressure to operate according to free market principles.

The same period saw the virtual demise of both labor unions and any organized US left. Nevertheless, according to Frank, right wing strategists managed to flood the media with rhetoric ramping up popular fear the left was “on the march.” It mainly  focused on a fictitious behind-the-scenes conspiracy to provoke a crisis – through overspending that would collapse the US economy.

Swaying Popular Anger from Wall Street to the Government

This messaging, crafted by right wing think tanks funded by right wing billionaires like the Koch brothers and delivered by Glenn Beck, Russ Limbaugh and similar right wing celebrities, was spectacularly effective in convincing a majority of Americans that the neoliberal corporatist Obama is really a socialist.

Oil billionaire Charles Koch warned back in 2008 that the global economic downturn could lead to the same “loss of liberty and prosperity” (for billionaires) as the Great Depression did. He and his brother David went on to deliberately manufacture an “astroturf”* movement (ie the Tea Party) to thwart Obama from enacting the same type of public spending projects Roosevelt used to reverse the 1929 depression.**

They did this by using Tea Party protests and right wing media to sway public anger away from Wall Street and onto the government. Via sophisticated psychological propaganda, working people were systematically conned into believing their interests coincide with those of Wall Street corporations.

*Astroturfing is the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization to make it appear as though it originates from grassroots participants.

**Frank challenges (with data) the common Tea Party assertion that Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms failed to halt the 1929 depression (ie that it took the World War II mobilization to lift the US out of depression). Between 1929 and 1933 (when Roosevelt took office), the US GDP dropped by more than 50 percent. Following the enactment of the New Deal, it increased by 11% in 1934, 9% in 1935, 14% in 1936 and 13% in 1937. Overall GDP growth 1933-37 was the highest the US has seen outside of war time.

Wall Street: More Deeply Corrupt than We Thought (No Really)

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flash boys

Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt

By Michael Lewis

W W Norton (2015)

 Book Review

 Flash Boys is a true story about front running, the unethical practice of a stockbroker executing orders on a stock while taking advantage of advance knowledge of pending orders from elsewhere in the market.* From the bleak picture Lewis paints, it appears that investors – whether institutional or private – have virtually no way of protecting themselves against front running.

Like Lewis’s 2010 book The Big Short, Flash Boys reads just like a thriller, complete with exquisitely drawn heroes and villains. In this case, the heroes are crusading Canadian banker Brad Katsuyama and the assorted geeks and nerds who helped him start his own stock exchange. Katsuyama started IEX in 2013, after the Royal Bank of Canada and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) refused to support his efforts to expose and end the practice of front running. By purposely slowing their transmission rates, IEX makes it impossible for high frequency traders to “front run” the trades occurring on the exchange. This has enabled Katsuyama to protect investors who use his exchange, while simultaneously collecting data on suspicious trades.

Flash Boys, a bestseller, originally came out in 2014. The 2015 edition includes an afterward in which Lewis describes being viciously attacked by the big Wall Street banks and brokers. He also enumerates a number of prosecutions of high frequency traders and brokerage firms (by the FBI, SEC and Financial Regulatory Authority) resulting from from the publicity Katsuyama’s work received from Flash Boys’ publication.

*The way this works in practice is you order 10,000 shares of a stock at a given price and a high frequency trader somewhere buys 10,000 shares at that price and resells them to you at a slightly higher price. Complex computer algorithms enable high frequency traders to exploit minute differences in transmission frequency to execute these secret trades – which usually take place in “dark pools” – private stock exchanges which keep no public record of their trades. All the major investment banks (Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America etc) have dark pools and high frequency traders pay for the privilege of trading in their dark pools.

Will Trump Cause the Downfall of the Republican Party?

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Excellent talk by NPR correspondent Mara Liasson outlining how Donald Trump’s candidacy threatens to put the Republican Party out of business. A pity she never speaks this frankly on public radio.

She explores the efforts by the Wall Street based Republican leadership to woo blue collar voters (based on social issues such as abortion, immigration, etc) without addressing their economic needs – how this has backfired with Trump’s presidential candidacy.

 

Bristol Substitutes Vinegar for Cancer-Causing Roundup

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roundup

In response to growing local concern about a World Health Organization (WHO) warning that glyphosate (aka Roundup) probably causes cancer, the city of Bristol has begun using strong vinegar to kill weeds in streets and parks.

The Bristol City Council decision to substitute vinegar for Roundup is part of a year long trial.

Earlier this month the European Parliament voted to  ban  most uses of glyphosate – particularly “in or close to” public parks, playgrounds and gardens.”

Horticultural vinegar, which contains more acetic acid than regular malt vinegar, can be used as an inexpensive weed treatment. Vinegar-based herbicides will harm any plant they comes into contact with so is best used on patios and driveways rather than lawns. It will only damage the top of the plant, leaving the roots intact.

The trial has been met with mixed reactions in Bristol.   Some residents hate the stench. Others point to European communities who have successfully used vinegar for years. Pesticide Safe Bristol Alliance says it’s ‘bizarre’ the council has opted for vinegar when safer, modern technologies are available.

A Metro online poll is running 55% to 45% in favor of the vinegar trial.

On May 10, the New Plymouth Green Party will present a petition to New Plymouth District Council to end the district’s use of Roundup in our city parks and streets.

Have your say:

The Mommy Tax

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the price of motherhood

The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is still the Least Valued

By Ann Crittenden

Henry Holt and Company (2001)

Book Review

The Price of Motherhood is about the refusal of English-speaking countries to acknowledge the vast amount of unpaid labor women invest in their children. Economists agree that two-thirds of society’s wealth is created by human skills, aka human capital. Yet they also refuse to acknowledge thirty years of psychology research demonstrating that the most critical education producing this “human capital” occurs in the first five years of life.

Not only is most of this work unpaid, but mothers who require part time or flexible work arrangements to address their children’s needs pay an enormous penalty in terms of lifelong earning potential. Crittenden refers to this penalty as the “mommy tax.”

According to Crittendon, while the pay differential between men and women continues to narrow, there has been virtually no change in the pay gap between mothers and unencumbered men and women. Numerous studies identify this “mommy tax,” consistently highest in English-speaking countries, as the primary cause of child poverty in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Likewise a woman’s “choice” to become a parent is the number one cause of poverty in old age.

Crittenden contrasts the US with France and various Scandinavian countries that support working mothers through policies such as free health care, one year paid maternity leave*, and free childcare. Child poverty virtually unknown in France and Scandinavia. In contrast 22% of American and 25% of New Zealand kids grow up in poverty.

The book is also highly critical of economists’ failure to count women’s unpaid labor in the GDP, given its high importance in creating a skilled workforce.** Despite the US refusal to keep data on “non-market” labor (where no money changes hands), more civilized countries do. Crittenden cites figures from Australia (where it comprises 48-64% of GDP), Germany (where it comprises 55% of GDP, Canada (where it comprises 40% of GDP), and Finland (where it comprises 46% of GDP).

Besides including “non-market” labor in the GDP calculations, the book proposes a number of other policy changes to reduce or eliminate the mommy tax. They include federal laws mandating one year paid parental leave, free health care for all children and primary caregivers, and free preschool for three and four year olds; a shorter work week; and equal pay and benefits for part time work. They also include a federal ban on discrimination against parents in the workplace, a universal child benefit, the creation of a single federal agency to collect child support obligations, and a federal mandate requiring divorce courts to award both parents an equal standard of living where there are dependent children.

*The only six countries that fail to mandate paid maternity leave are the US, Australia, New Zealand, Lesotho, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea.

**See review of Marilyn Waring film Whose Counting

Jonathan Kozol and the Pernicious Underfunding of Inner City Schools

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Civil rights activist and education reformer Jonathan Kozol has been working with children in inner city schools for more than forty years. His primary focus is the pernicious under funding of schools that primarily serve minority students. In the talk below, he uses New York City as an example. In the year 2000, a child attending a Long Island school received average funding of $18,000 a year, while one attending school in the South Bronx received average funding of $8,000.

In the 1960s, Kozol worked as a primary school teacher in inner city Boston. He left classroom teaching to focus on teacher training, educational research and social justice organizing. His best known books are his 1967 Death at an Early Age: the Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools, his 1988 Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America, his 1991 Savage Inequalities, his 1995 Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation and his 2000 Ordinary Resurrections. The last two refer to his extensive work in South Bronx public schools and the students he came to know there.

In my view, his most powerful presentations are those in which he talks about Pineapple and Anthony and other students he worked with in the South Bronx.

The talk below is divided into six 8 minutes segments.

Part 1 – Kozol talks about getting his start in a Roxbury (Boston) church freedom school following the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi.

Part 2 – Kozol addresses the severe disadvantages inner city school children start out with, including the highest rate of asthma in the country (due to constant exposure to polluting industries sited in their neighborhoods), periodic episodes of homelessness and the fact that more than one-fourth have fathers in prison.

Part 3 – Kozol addresses  discriminatory funding patterns in inner city schools.

Part 4 – Kozol laments the devastating impact of high stakes testing on inner city students, teachers and principals. Introducing Pineapple and other South Bronx students he has worked with, he explains how pressure to train students for high stakes testing destroys genuine motivation for learning.

Part 5 – Kozol talks about his depressing efforts to lobby Congress to improve funding for inner city schools. He also describes the time Mr Rogers came to visit the South Bronx after school program where he volunteered.

Part 6 – Kozol talks about how teaching in the ghetto politicized him, especially after he was fired by the Boston Public Schools for teaching his African American students about the African American poet Langston Hughes.

How Banks Use Credit Cards to Rip Us Off

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secret-history-of-the-credit-card

The Secret of History of the Credit Card

PBS (2004)

Film Review

The Secret History of the Credit Card is an old Frontline documentary featuring Senator Elizabeth Warren when she was still a Harvard law professor and ex-New York governor Elliott Spitzer when he was still state attorney general. It traces the “secret” repeal (and circumvention) of state usury laws that allowed banks to charge as much as 30% on credit card loans. This, in turn, made credit card banks the most profitable companies in the US. In 2003, several of them earned higher profits than MacDonald’s or Microsoft.

In 1981, when Citibank made its infamous deal with South Dakota, high interest rates were causing a massive loss for credit card companies. Although they paid 12% on average to borrow funds from other banks, state usury laws capped the interest they could charge customers at 9%. In return for South Dakota’s pledge to repeal their usury laws, Citibank agreed to move their entire credit card operation to Sioux Falls South Dakota.

The documentary goes on to explore the various marketing ploys the credit card industry employs to con consumers into increasing the credit card debt on which they pay 18-30% interest.

In 2003, approximately 90 million US credit card customers were “revolvers” (paying 18-30% interest on monthly balances), and 51 million were “deadbeats” (the industry term for credit card users who get “free” credit by paying their full balance every month).

The filmmakers are also highly critical of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Treasury division charged with regulating banks. They provide several examples of attempts by the OCC to undermine the ability of state prosecutors to protect consumers against credit card companies’ flagrant lawbreaking.

In 2004 when this documentary was made, the Better Business Bureau received more complaints about credit card companies than any other industry.

For copyright reasons, the video can’t be embedded. It can be viewed free at http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/secret-history-of-the-credit-card/

Also see Credit Card Nation – a great book on the credit card rip-off.