Reasons to be Impossible

From Marx and Coca Cola, he reports that Senate Republicans killed the Car maker bailout because: "This is the democrats first opportunity to payoff organized labor after the election. This is a precursor to card check and other items. Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor, instead of taking their first blow from it."

Who said the class war was dead? The same theme emerges over at electoral vote:"A striking pattern has emerged in the fight over bailing out the big three automobile companies. Senators from the north are for it and senators from the south are against it. Why? It turns out there are assembly plants in both the North and the South. The ones in the North are owned by American companies and are highly unionized; the ones in the South are owned by foreign (mostly Japanese) companies and are not unionized. Hourly pay in northern and southern ones is comparable but benefits are much better in the North. Southern senators who oppose the bailout don't really object to the government interfering with private industry and don't really even mind a government-appointed car czar running the companies. The sticking point is that they want to break the unions and force union members to take cuts in pay and benefits to bring them down to the level that the workers in the South get."

Over at Dave's Part young master Osler notes the drive is now on over here for paycuts, and hopes that Unions will resist. Of course, we know that unions are powerless in the face of unemployment, and with a stagnant pool of around two million to start with, when it grows to (fingers crossed against) 5 million, there'll be fuck all we can do. I'm afraid it's political action or nothing.

To be clear, I noted Charlies reproduction schemas and disportionality as being the means of analysing crisis - I noted that only destroying capital really gets us out of the mess, but hammering wages might enable some firms to survive. It would be counter productive because, like pump priming it leaves the root cause intact, but it would help some capitalists maybe to the disadvantage of others. Certainly, they'll try it, because the only alternative is suicide - that's the point of crisis, that in trying to save themselves, capitalists make it worse for themselves (and for us).

To the ballot boxes, mes braves, to take up cudgels against the crisis that is capitalism.

Labels: 323.4, Class struggle, Economic crisis, Trade unions, Unemployment, Wages

A classic feature of economic crises is that suddenly corruption is unveiled - economic growth is the great rock that, when it is lifted, is found to be covering for the lice festering beneath.

Simply put, during the good times, a plausible story can allow an otherwise worthless company to keep on borrowing, so long as investors keep making profits, no-one looks too closely, but when the chips are down, and someone gets bilked, suddenly we all realise that everyone gets bilked. In this case, not, that the firm was judged to be reasonably sound and a secure investment, not a fringe risky business, level headed investment folk, not mad speculators, have been burnt here.

Of course, Davy Cameron reckons there must be a day of reckoning. of course, it has to be the consciously bourgeois party that says that, coming from Labour it would be called a return to class war. I always laugh at the cretins who see the PRC (China)'s long prison sentences for fraud as being some proof of socialism.

Labels: 343.5, Conservative Party, Economic crisis, Economics, Fraud

The notoriously litigious Barclay Clones have given us a textbook in bourgeois revolution - they have used their financial might to bring democracy to the Island of Sark through the courts - and now democracy has arrived, and voted against what they wanted (their own privately owned Bond villain base, it seems) they have decided to punish the puny mortals for their temerity to use their democracy, by disinvesting in the tiny island and causes relative mass unemployment. Their spokedroid has said: "The island cannot at the same time treat the Barclay family in the way that it has and expect them to continue investing large sums of money into its economy." Hulk Smash. Mongrol Smush. Big Jobs!

Once again, they prove that democracy is impossible in a society of unequal wealth - the microcosm of Sark has given the totalitarian pair their opportunity to prove that. It also shows the value of Harry's place style democratisation.

And what of the publicity shy scheming meglomaniacs themselves? Well, through their purely viscious actions they have exposed themselves to more headlines and public oprobrium than most folk could manage in a life time - I hope their lawyers hands drop off writing out all the vexatious writs that will now follow to keep the filth wallowing pigs able to live in their castles in the air.

Labels: 323.4, Democracy, Feudalism, Revolution, Sark

From the Marx and Coca Cola Blog:

Ms. Darling, who was pregnant when her insurance ran out, worked at Archway for eight years, and her father, Franklin J. Phillips, worked there for 24 years. ...So Ms. Darling asked her midwife to induce labor two days before her health insurance expired.

I checked his source (New York Times) and came across this line he didn't quote: "“I was scared. I remember that the bill for my son’s delivery in 2005 was about $9,000, and I knew I would never be able to pay that by myself.”"

Labels: 368, Economic crisis, Health care, Poverty