Economic Uprising

August 12.  The CBS headline says it all: “Lowe’s spent billions on share buybacks, zero on severance for laid-off workers”   The home improvement chain has 300,000 workers and is very profitable.  “”Yet when thousands of those workers recently got the boot, they received no notice and no severance.” , says CBS

“Lowe’s has announced buybacks worth $5 billion annually, or every other year, for the past decade. “ The theory is that if a company buys back its stock, there’s less out there and the price of the stock will go up.  Lowe’s could use the money to raise wages, but….. they don’t want to do that.  The purchasing power of workers wages hasn’t gone up in 40 years.  Executive compensation has skyrocketed.  U.S. companies gorging themselves on Trump’s tax cuts took that money and invested in new factories spent $1 trillion ($1,000,000,000,000) on buying back their own stock in 2018.

The CBS article has a pitiful story about one woman, Patricia Wilkerson.  She had just lost her part time job.  She had been laid off twice by Lowe’s.  This year she was making $12.22 an hour, less than when she was a seasonal worker at Lowe’s in 2003 when she made a royal $13 buck and hour.

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Conference in Bridgeport Sunday, April 28

by Stanley Heller

I go to conferences about climate all the time and mostly people talk about working on very small scale projects.  We should all be supportive of new ideas, for efficiency, recycling, green production,  and the like, but face it we don’t have the time to plant good green seeds and hope a good collection of crops will replace the bad.  In 11 years if we don’t cut back carbon dioxide production in half we’re screwed.  And if it’s not cutback to zero by 2050 we’re screwed.  It’s not me whose saying that, but the conservative consensus of U.N. scientists called the IPCC.

The best writer that I can think of on this subject is Richard Smith.  He does not see fuel taxes, divestment or even “leave the oil in the soil” as solutions.  Read closely his latest piece,  A Radical Direction for the Environmental Movement.  Among others things he says:

• Radically suppress fossil fuel consumption in the industrialized nations across the economy, from energy generation to transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, and services.
• “Contract and converge” production around a globally sustainable and hopefully happy average that can provide a dignified living standard for all the world’s peoples.
• Revolutionize the production of goods and services to minimize resource consumption and to produce things that are durable, rebuildable, recyclable, and shareable—instead of disposable.
• Steer investments into things society does need, like renewable energy, organic farming, public transportation, public water systems, environmental remediation, public health, and quality schools.
• Devise a rational and systematic approach to handling and eliminating waste and toxics as far as possible.
• Provide equivalent jobs for all those workers displaced by the shutting down of harmful industries. Not only is this a moral imperative, but it is also required to gain support of those workers for the huge structural changes we need to save the humans.

By an amazing coincidence Smith will be speaking in Connecticut on April 28.  (Well, not so amazing.  I helped arrange the conference.)  Come hear him and the other speakers at the conference called “The Green New Deal and Other Ideas on Avoiding Climate Catastrophe”  and make plans in these  breakout sessions: 1) An Ecosocialist World and How to Get There, 2) Influencing Environmental Groups in CT and Beyond and 3) What does this Mean for Bridgeport?.   Details at www.pepeace.org and on this Facebook page

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Years ago you went shopping and the grocery store packed all your stuff in sturdy paper bags.  At some point they shifted to cheaper plastic.  If you ask for a paper bag now they’ll give you a bag, but it’s so thin that it tears at the slightest movement.  So, they put your thin paper bag in a plastic bag!  Straws used to be made out of paper.  Now you have to go online to find anything but plastic straws.

How about food trash and refuse inside your home?  It’s so convenient to use a “kitchen-size” plastic bag.  Why don’t they make thick kitchen size paper bags for wet refuse (whatever is not being composted)?

This is not completely a new idea.  Not too long ago everyone just bagged their leaves in big green garbage bags.  It’s outlawed I think all over CT.  Instead we use thick tall brown paper bags.

So, ban the use of plastic for grocery items or for trash containers.

As everyone knows there’s a real problem with plastic bottles.  Americans use 50 billion plastic bottles a year, 50 billion no misprint.  91% of that plastic is not recycled.  Before the 1990’s no one used this crap. Coke didn’t go to plastic bottles until 1993.  How did people get a drink in public in the olden days?  Well for one thing there were public water fountains. People also used metal canteens and thermos bottles And there was also this clear stiff stuff that held everything from soda, to perfume to medicine.  I think it was called glass.  That’s right it was called glass.  You can recycle it forever with just hot water and some soap.

Ban the plastic bottle.  Go back to glass and stick a 50 cent deposit on every bottle to encourage recycling.

And build some more water fountains.

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In talking to the media Ahold Delhaize  the company the owns Stop and Shop, says it needs all kinds of give-backs from workers to “stay competitive”.  With a company that made a profit of near $600 million in the last three months of 2018 their excuse seems to be a load of … potatoes.

The case for the boss was made in an article in the Boston Globe and it has to be treated seriously, because it will influence many people.   The Globe calls the strike the “last stand for unionized grocery workers, whose stores are under attack by a host of competitors, all looking to grab a piece of the supermarket bounty.”  There is some truth in this.  The A&P, Pathmark, and Grand Union supermarkets are gone.  Now Walmart, Amazon, Costco and even the drug store chain CVS sell food items.  They’re are eager to gobble up more of the market (pun intended).

The newer food selling companies don’t have what they think are the terrible burdens of the supermarkets (unions, pensions, health insurance, decent working conditions).  Some like Amazon don’t even have stores.  All of this lets them sell things cheaper and that does put pressure on the likes of Ahold Delhaize.  Law-of-the-jungle capitalism makes it harder and harder for working people to have a decent living.

So, should the workers at Stop and Shop just give in?  Absolutely NOT.

As we say again and again we need system change.  In the meantime go down to the picket lines and help the strikers. For the latest go to the website of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 371.  Go union!

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In his State of the Union speech Trump claimed an unprecedented economic boom and an “economic miracle”.   What is the miracle?  Yes, the elite enjoyed their stock price gains, but what about wages?  How are 157 million employees doing?  Take a look at pay increases minus price hikes, what economists call “real wages”. Trump’s Bureau of Labor statistics tells the tale.  In Trump’s first year in office real weekly wages went up 0.8 percent.  In the second year 1.2%   A grand total of 2%.   What a miracle! Not.

We know from PEW research that workers’ real wages have barely increased over 40 years.  How are Chinese workers doing?  Economist Richard Wolff points that just in the last dozen years real wages in China have quadrupled, meaning they doubled and doubled again.  That’s a 400 percent increase

Here are a couple of graphs.  He’s the 2% raise.  Looks fat. 

But here it is compared to what the Chinese workers received.  Now it looks kind of pitiful.

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January 30.  Trump got his way.  After the stock market tanked in December Trump started screaming at the Federal Reserve for gradually raising interest rates.  He demanded credit remain cheap.  For a while Fed Chairperson Powell attitude was “wait and see”.  Today he basically folded his cards.  He said he would be “patient’ about new increases.  The stock market took this to mean zero increases this year and maybe even a cut.  Ka-ching for the stock market.

In more plutocratic party news Trump is going to have another trillion dollar budget debt, really 1.3 trillion.   “The Treasury’s total net new issuance in 2018 amounted to $1.34 trillion, more than double the 2017 level of about $550 billion. In 2019, it will be $1.4 trillion.”  Continue reading →

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Jan. 15.  You appear on the far-Right Tucker Carlson show on Fox, not to debate him, but to defend Tulsi Gabbard supposedly from “Official Washington”.  You spend your time explaining how Gabbard “questioned Washington orthodoxy” by opposing its policy of regime change in Syria.  Washington hates, you said, “independent minded” and “critical thinkers” like Gabbard.  Yeah, only “Washington” is criticizing her, not anyone on the Left with an ounce of decency.

Let’s assume for second that Obama and “Washington” really was trying to overthrow Assad (as opposed to fighting ISIS in Syria while at the same time trying to undermine and control the democratic uprising).  What was she doing?

You say she is being “ridiculously accused” of supporting Assad.  Let’s look at the record

Gabbard was first elected to Congress from Hawaii in 2012.

In 2015 she supported Russian bombing of Syrians. ““Al-Qaeda attacked us on 9/11 and must be defeated,” she tweeted that October. “Obama won’t bomb them in Syria. Putin did.” She added that it’s “bad enough US has not been bombing al-Qaeda/al-Nursa in Syria” and that “it’s mind-boggling that we protest Russia’s bombing of these terrorists.”  This, of course, as Russia and Assad planes bombed neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, markets, etc. etc.   Needless to say she never criticized a single Russian bombing or any murderous act by Assad. Continue reading →

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Dec. 26.  The recession isn’t here yet.  Amazon reported today that their sales were at a record and not affected by gloom on the stock market.  Stocks then zoomed.  Expect a super-smug Trump tweet.

We are near the top of the business cycle and the big capitalists are predicting a recession.  Wages are a little big higher than last year, but as I’ve written are really no higher than they were 40 years ago.   So, what’s keeping things afloat?  I.O.U.’s, that is debt.

Consumer debt is expected to rise to $4 trillion by the end of this year. Consumer debt is what you’re paying for credit cards, car loans and student loans.  It doesn’t include what homeowners are paying the bank for their houses (mortgages).

“American owe more than 26% of their income in debt  That’s up from 22% in 2010”  Lending Tree has a neat chart showing the percent.  Back in 1980 when Jimmy Carter was president personal debt was far less, about 15-16% of incomes.  To pay this off Americans are spending 1 out of every 10 bucks back to the moneylenders.  Continue reading →

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Update Jan 3, 2019.  After stocks had an awful December Trump brushed it off saying “We had a little glitch in the stock market last month, but it’s still up about 30% from the time I got elected”.  Total BS.  Even if you include the huge one day jump right after Christmas the DOW went up from the day after Trump’s election to this morning by 22%.  So Trump’s statement was well past exaggeration, up to the fib and lie range.   And today…today there was another big tumble.  BTW here’s another neat chart for another stock index, the S&P.   It shows the rise or fall over each modern president’s term.  Who were the best friends of Wall Street?  #1 Bill Clinton,  #2 Barack Obama.

Dec. 24. When they’re making money a lot of people are willing to forgive Fearless Leader for his little peculiarities, things like mad hatred of this group or that, going hugely into debt, firing everyone in sight or bloody wars.  When times get tough though, opinions change.  Are we at that point in the U.S.?

Now you know Trump has been constantly trumpeting (pun intended) how wonderful the economy is and much the stock market has gone up during his presidency.  Well, with stocks tanking he’s, of course, looking for a scapegoat.  He’s found the head of the Federal Reserve to fix blame.  Seems it doesn’t understand that the Fed should borrow more trillions to keep interest rates ridiculously low.

Anyway, how well has Trump actually done in his years of office (with a Congress dominated by Trump yes-men)? There’s a neat site called Market Insider that shows not only the current index numbers like the DOW and S&P, but how these indexes have done over any period of months and years you care to give.  

From the day after Trump’s election to this morning Dec. 24 stocks went up 19%.  Pretty good.  But compare to Obama’s years in office.  From the day he was elected to the day he left the stock market rose 143%. That’s an average of 18% every year for 8 years. Continue reading →

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a bold take on the Green New Deal slogan.  Interview with Richard Smith

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Remember all that money that giant companies kept overseas because they couldn’t pay the “crushing” taxes in the U.S.? (They would have paid the same rate companies pay for business in the U.S. minus what they pay to foreign country.  Weep for them.)    Part of Trump’s “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” was a huge tax cut on corporate profits brought back to the U.S.  It’s unclear how much money came back.  JPMorgan says about $270 billion came back. The Commerce Department says $464 billion.  Sounds like a lot, but either way its just a fraction of the $3 trillion kept overseas.

The corporations also have more cash because of a  cut in their basic tax rate.  The rate was cut almost in half (though the big companies had legions of lawyers and accountants making sure they would never really paying the top posted rate.)  Still they made out like bandits.  The tax money the U.S. took in from companies dropped by a third.  That’s an immense drop and it never happened before in “good times”.

What did the companies do with the money?  Did they raise pay? Did they build factories Continue reading →

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We’ve been told for years that an essential part of the solution to global warming is to put a tax on carbon dioxide.  Gradually but substantially increase it and then the free market would take care of things.  People will gradually turn away from things that use fossil fuel energy.   Climate scientist turned activist James Hansen reacting to peoples’ distrust of government and hatred of taxes came up with a plan he calls “fee and dividend”.  The money raised from the ever-increasing carbon dioxide “fee” would be swiftly be returned to the people.  The government wouldn’t keep any of it.

Easy, peasy.  Problem solved.

The problem is people aren’t going for it.   In Australia the Labour-Green government in 2012 passed a carbon tax that added $500 to a typical tax bill.  By 2014 Labour was ousted and the law gone.   In Washington state last month voters turned down a carbon tax overwhelmingly.   Now we have France where its President Macron’s government levied $39 billion in taxes.  About a quarter of it is supposedly to go to measures for poorer people to transition to transport and heating actions less dependent on fossil fuels.  France exploded.

Drivers took out the yellow vests (required for safety for motorists in case of auto emergencies) and started demonstrations.  Police tried beating them up, gassing them and arresting them, but a strange thing happened.  People turned out in massive numbers, streets were disrupted and some of the violence went the other way.  The carbon tax has been postponed.

To be fair the anger in France is not just about the carbon tax, but against a government that has for decades has been seen as a tool of the rich.  Still the street did not want this tax.

An Alternative

Now here is a awesome article in New Politics by Richard Smith who says that while we do need emergency measures to deal with climate, carbon taxes are NOT the way to go.  He agrees with those who say such a program will wreck our (capitalist) economies.  However, he doesn’t call for weak even more gradual measures or “clever” tinkering ala the New York Times.  On the contrary he calls for much bolder, even drastic action.  He suggests a radical Green New Deal that would:

Ban all new extraction, ration gasoline and diesel, ban production of new fossil-fuel vehicles. Nationalize the fossil fuel industry to phase it out. We do not call for expropriation. We propose a government buyout at fair value (fair to both owners and society). Nationalization will need to extend beyond fossil fuel producers to dozens or hundreds of industrial fossil-fuel dependent industries from pipelines, refineries, distribution networks to power generation, autos, aviation, petrochemicals, some manufacturing, tourism and others whose business is irreversibly based on fossil fuels and who without a government buyout would be bankrupted.

The piece is called “An Eco-socialist An Ecosocialist Path to Limiting Global Temperature Rise to 1.5°C.   Read it.

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Two huge stock market drops last week.  Interest rates for ten-year bonds nearly the same as for three-year bonds.   Housing prices at highs not seen since the giddy and deranged time of 2007-2008.   Nervous Wall Street types whispering the dreaded “R” word  “recession”.

If you actually have extra money putting it into stocks looks like a bad strategy.  You can go to a bank or a broker and get a year CD that pays around 2.5% interest.   Compare that to stocks that lost four or five percent value in just one week.

Just sayin.

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Just finished “A Colossal Failure of Common Sense”.  It was written way back in 2009 by a Wall Street insider named Lawrence G. McDonald.  He was a Vice-President at Lehman Brothers a huge stocks and bonds trading bank.  Its collapse in 2008 set off the Great Recession.  There’s a lot of interesting stories about the greed and recklessness within that company and generally by the mortgage industry crooks who hustled poor people to take huge loans at teaser rates (which ballooned triple  in a couple of years).  But what I found gripping was the speed at which the government could work (on behalf of capitalism).  Within days after Lehman bit the dust stock market prices crashed, and lending froze up.  The Secretary of the Treasury demanded and got $700 billion from Congress to give to the banks in return for temporary part-ownership in some of the biggest banks, insurance companies and automakers.  It didn’t turn things around for years, but the capitalists knew what levers to pull and what cash spigots to open.

Amazingly we didn’t even get an FDR.  Instead it was an Obama. An article this week appeared in The New York Review of Books by Charles Kuttner called “The Crash that Failed”.  He explained President Obama basically just hired back Bill Clinton’s guys and ultimately lent or gave the banks $14 trillion.  A few inadequate regulations were passed, but nothing really changed.  Where FDR had the federal government hire millions, Obama cut the federal work force by 500,000.  Where the Great Depression ended with a lot more equality, the Great Recession ended with a new bloom of billionaires and multi-billionaires.  Bitterness let to the Populist Right, but not all was lost. The capitalists are  rewarding the Obamas.  Barack and Michelle have a nice little book deal arranged for themselves.  $65 million for their eloquence.

We had no plan.  Socialists criticized capitalism endlessly and had talked vaguely over the years about nationalization, but no one had a full proposal for what to do during the next big crash .     There were the examples of Soviet Russia and “Red” China.  They had collectivized economies, but the Left was afraid to talk about them.  Something about purges and gulag and mass murders that had left bad tastes in the mouth.  But there was tons of economic experience that should have been analyzed.

We knew the climate was tanking, but besides calling for a “Green Economy” there were no actual plans.  Of course, few would have listened to us then, but at least we’d have had a starting point   We’re still at square one.  Yes, you can say the word “socialism” now, but the “socialism” being talked about these days is little more than FDR liberalism.  When the next crash comes that’s all going to be irrelevant.

We better start making plans.  The next crisis may come sooner than you think.

Stanley Heller is the author of “The Uprising We Need”.  Buy digital book at amazon.com

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The One Party State has suffered a big blow.  Led by angry women, minorities and unions the House of Representatives has swung Blue.  But have no illusions, the idea we can “take back” the Democratic Party is dead wrong .  “We” never had it and never will

1. The Georgia and Florida elections are still in play.  Particularly in Georgia the possibility of another stolen election is huge.  Hundreds of thousands appear to have illegally been denied their right to vote.  Don’t repeat what Al Gore meekly did in 2000. There needs to be continuous demonstrations especially in Georgia.  No concession until every eligible person who wanted to vote has his or her vote counted.
2. The Move On/Indivisible demonstration of Nov 8 to protect the Muller investigations were massive.  Move On claims hundreds of rallies with a total of 100,000 protesting. And it’s had an effect.  Trump appears to be distancing himself a bit from the loyalist he bought in to sabotage the Russia-Trump investigation.   Broaden the movement, get trade unions involved.
3. We need a Third Party, but how?  The system is so totally slanted in favor of the Two Party Racket.  Can we figure out something like what’s being worked on to bypass the Electoral College?  Supporting the Dems in close races in exchange for places at the debates, minority representation or something even more creative.  But would the Democrats give anything?  With their wins in this election won’t they do the usual, lurch to the Right, take the Left for granted and place their bets on hacks like Biden or Hillary?

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by Stanley Heller

November 5.  Admittedly we are at a tipping point.  If Trump tomorrow keeps control of both houses of Congress, he would have a boot-licking Congress, a Kavanagh court, and a military, FBI and CIA trained for obedience.   

Never thought I would say this, but at least in this election we have to vote for the Democrats.  In most European countries and lots of others you can vote for the party you support in the first round and then go for the lesser evil in the second round.  We can’t do that here.  In the U.S. third parties are vilified as “spoilers”.  We are far from being a democracy.   In 2000 the presidential loser had half-a million more votes than the winner.  In 2016 Clinton had 3 million more votes than Trump, but still Trump was awarded the White House.  Are you kidding me?

The Democrats are the pits, the graveyard of every progressive movement.  All talk about “taking back” the party is absurd. But if the Democrats can win the House and some governor races at least we won’t sink into total demoralization.  We can go back into the streets with pep instead of desperation.

Last night t I went to see “Bohemian Rhapsody”.  Awesome. Brilliant.  Seeing the immense crowds of men and women, gay and straight, black and white cheering the opera of Freddy Mercury and Queen fires you up.

Yes, the billionaires have the money and the guns.  We have the people, or should I say we can have them if we go out and organize.  

In these last few weeks Trump has made some bad mistakes, his idiotic talk about a migrant invasion, his blatant willingness to accept whatever lies the Saudis say about the Khashoggi murder, his racist dog whistles and his open embrace of violence.  He set loose the “nationalists” and set the stage for the murders in Pittsburgh.   Americans are not fools.  Decades of stagnant wages, a Great Recession sharper than we realize and disgust for a corporate-whoring Democratic Party led millions to follow the orange-headed pied-piper, but as Lincoln said you can’t fool all the people all the time.  All the lies and false alarms are unraveling and I think they will catch up to Trump on Tuesday and in the months to come.

Fascist-minded people like Trump don’t have ideas.  They’re popular as long as they seem to be winning, but basically Trump is a failure.  His “strong economy” is based on the cocaine of cheap money, one shot tax cuts, the ravaging of nature and endless pushing of guns and bombs.  His “great” MAGA is rife with addiction, soldier suicides, even a cut in the average life span.  His proudest achievement his Trump bump stock market seems to be on its way down.  I think Trump populism is going down.

The Nazis will Not Take Over

We Are the Champions

We Shall Rock You

P.S. Remember in many states (like CT) you can register right on voting day.

 P.P.S  Read Stan Goff on the election

P.P.P.S  Of course in some races like that for Governor of New York and Attorney General in CT it does make sense to vote for Green Party candidates

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Candidate Trump promised a $1 trillion plan to rebuild roads and bridges and such.  The fancy term is “infrastructure”.  He was going to “create an infrastructure fund that would be supported by government bonds that investors and citizens could purchase.”  He never came through on it.  Oh, he still brings it up once in a while.  Early this year he gathered together some people wearing hard hats in Ridgefield, Ohio and upped the numbers.  He called for a $1.5 trillion plan.  Bit it’s just hot air.  The only new money Trump got for federal construction projects from Congress was $21 billion.  And no wonder, he does nothing to work on the issue.

 What he does talk about is selling guns, especially to the Saudis.  He opened the spigot on weapons sales, selling to practically anyone. Newsweek noted that he sold more weapons in the first half of this year than in all of 2017.  The U.S. sells a bit over 1/3 of all the weapons sold in the world.   Trump crows about it and makes up numbers.  He trumpets his $110 billion “deal” with the Saudis.  That produced, he says, 500,000 jobs or maybe 600,000 jobs.  It’s all BS.  There’s no new $110 billion deal.  It’s about $14.5 billion and the jobs numbers are in the tens of thousands. 

 All the while he shames our country, humiliating Uncle Sam by making him a merchant of death.    He (and most of Congress) makes it seem there is no other way to make a living than by killing and selling the tools of slaughter.

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Do the latest stock market plunges mean anything ?  Two 1,000 point drops in the DOW within four days.  Even after a 500 point gain on the 7^th the DOW is down 2,000 points in a week.  But we’re assured the “fundamentals” are fine, nothing to worry about.  It’s just a “correction” and so it’s “healthy”.  In fact you should follow the supposed practice of Warren Buffet and buy stocks when everyone else is selling.  “Buy the Dip!”

Since the “stock analysts” jobs depend on it, they always see nothing but a rosy tomorrow and they might be right in the short run.  There’s been other big drops out of nowhere that meant nothing at all. (In October 1987 stocks lost 22% of their value in one day, but within a couple of weeks all was back in the black.)

Still another big shock is coming, maybe soon or maybe a bit further in the future.  Capitalism booms and crashes.  It’s the nature of the beast.  We’ve been out of Great Recession for 9 years and in the last couple there’s been a boom.  Even working people got a taste of it in the last couple years with wages actually rising a bit higher than prices.  But we are coming to the top of a business cycle.  Just like other highs things look great.  The stock indexes hit record high one day after another.  And Trump has put the economy on steroids, immense tax cuts, a war on regulations, cutting back the number of people who watch for tax cheats, etc.  Unlike a typical Republican he doesn’t care a tinkers damn about running up the national debt.  The deficit could grow to $1 trillion this year under Trump. So what.  Stocks are up. Dig the Euphoria.  What could go wrong?

Continue reading →

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State governments are always complaining they don’t have enough money.  They face tremendous pressure not to expand sales tax and other flat taxes, as they should.  There are alternatives.  Here are three suggestions.

1) Tax a kind of property mostly held by wealthy people, “intangible” property. What is “intangible” property?  It’s chiefly stocks and bonds.  When I was VP of the state affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers in the early 1980’s in Connecticut we did a study about property holdings in the state, particularly “intangible” property.  We found (as we expected) enormous money held in few hands.

We reasoned that if a house or car could be taxed as property so should a million dollars in stock. Continue reading →

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