[Peace-discuss] Fw: Labor Must Not Bow to the Wall Street Blackmail! -- After the House Rejection of the Bailout Plan & the Dow Jones Plunge, Labor Must Mobilize to Put a Full Stop to the $700 Billion Corporate Bailout and Fight for an Emergency Plan to Bail Out Working People

[Ricky Baldwin]

Chicago Jobs With Justice is having a just say no rally.  Are we doing anything here?

 Ricky 


"Only those who do nothing make no mistakes." - Peter Kropotkin



----- Forwarded Message ----
From: The Organizer <theorganizer at earthlink.net>
Sent: Monday, September 29, 2008 10:52:59 PM
Subject: Labor Must Not Bow to the Wall Street Blackmail! -- After the House Rejection of the Bailout Plan & the Dow Jones Plunge, Labor Must Mobilize to Put a Full Stop to the $700 Billion Corporate Bailout and Fight for an Emergency Plan to Bail Out Working People

Labor Must Not Bow to the Wall Street Blackmail! --
After 
THE ORGANIZER
NEWSPAPER
P.O. Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94140.
Tel. (415) 641-8616; fax: (415) 626-1217.
To UNSUBSCRIBE, contact <theorganizer at earthlink.net>
PLEASE EXCUSE DUPLICATE POSTINGS
------------------------------------------------ 

After the House Rejection of the
Bailout Plan & the Dow Jones Plunge:

* Labor Must Not Bow to the Wall
Street Blackmail

* Labor Must Mobilize to Put a
Full Stop to the $700 Billion Corporate
Bailout and Fight for an
Emergency Plan to Bail Out Working People

By ALAN
BENJAMIN
(Editor of The
Organizer Newspaper)

Sept. 29, 2008 --
The House of Representatives voted today to defeat the $700 billion
Wall Street bailout plan that had been worked out over the weekend at
the insistence of President George W. Bush and House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi. The proposed plan aimed at nationalizing the debt of the
bankers who profited from the home-mortgage speculative orgy of the
past few years.

By a vote of 227 to
206, the House killed the bill --  with 94 Democrats and 133
Republicans voting against the bailout plan.

The vote stunned
much of the media and establishment. Bush, Pelosi, and House Minority
leader Boehner had aggressively pushed the revised bailout plan. A
narrow YES vote was widely expected. So great was this expectation
that Senate majority and minority leaders anticipated they would be
voting today in the Senate to approve the agreement passed in the
House.

Almost immediately,
in reaction to the vote in the House, the Dow Jones industrial average
lost 777 points Monday, its biggest single-day fall ever.

Soon after, in
response to this stock market dive, Democrats and Republicans --
prompted by Bush, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, Pelosi and
Boehner -- pledged that they would try again to get a corporate
bailout plan passed in the House on Thursday, Oct. 2. It was agreed
that the House would reconvene on Thursday, instead of adjourning for
the year as planned.

Simply announcing
that a new vote would take place on yet another bailout plan was
necessary, Paulson announced, to "restore confidence" in the
credit markets. Paulson then warned that the members of Congress had
to go back to the drawing board. "We need to work as quickly as
possible," he said. "We need to get something done. ... We
need to put something back together that works."

Nancy Pelosi chimed
in. "What happened today cannot stand," she said. "We
must move forward, and I hope that the markets will take that
message."

Pelosi was joined in
her plea by Barack Obama, who stated, "Democrats, Republicans,
step up to the plate, get it done." Likewise, John McCain urged
Congress "to put partisanship behind them and vote a plan to
rescue the credit markets and the economy."

So, why this defeat,
when all the media pundits had predicted the victory of the bailout
plan?

David Sirota wrote
in his blog on Campaign for America's Future (Sept. 29) that,
"the fear of being thrown out of office is forcing our
politicians to at least consider what the public
wants."

Sirota
continued,

"Polls
overwhelmingly show a public that sees voting for this bill as an act
of economic treason whereby the bipartisan Washington elite robs
taxpayer cash to give their campaign contributors a trillion-dollar
gift.

"As just two of
many examples, Bloomberg News' poll shows 'decisive' opposition to the
bailout proposal, and Rasmussen reports that their surveys show 'the
more voters learn about the proposed $700 billion federal bailout plan
for the U.S. economy, the more they don't like it.' ... Any sitting
officeholder that votes for this -- whether a Democrat or a Republican
-- should expect to get crushed under a wave of [Left and Right]
populist-themed attacks from their opponents."

Pressures Will Mount to Approve
the Corporate Bailout on Thursday

Republicans who voted against the
consensus plan -- the largest voting bloc against the plan -- blamed
the Democrats for amending the bailout package with language calling
for too much government intervention. Some called this
"socialism." One Republican Congressman invoked the
Bolshevik Party and its takeover of the "free-market"
economy.

The crisis in the
political summits, and corporate boardrooms, is reaching the boiling
point.

The bankers and
financial institutions have now warned that they will not sit back and
permit a deal to fall through their fingers. The Chamber of Commerce
and Business Roundtable immediately activated their lobbying of House
Republicans and Democrats. They are hoping that the stock market
"scare" today will prompt all members of Congress who voted
against the bailout to re-think their vote.

At this writing,
many analysts predict that some modifications will be made to the plan
defeated today -- to appease the House Republicans. But given the
"fragile nature of the compromise," one economist quoted on
ABC TV stated, it is not likely that the changes will be that
significant. Less Congressional oversight and fewer restrictions on
the "golden parachutes" of the CEOs of the financial
institutions are expected. Also possible is an apology by Pelosi for
statements made prior to the vote that were considered "too
partisan" and "too inflammatory" by 12 Republicans, who
claimed that these statements prompted them to vote against the
bill.

But all this only
underscores one fundamental question facing working people across the
country who have opposed any corporate welfare plan: They and their
representatives in the House will be pressured -- blackmailed is more
like it -- by the Wall Street speculators and told they must accept
what is unacceptable to them.

We can expect a
major push for "national unity" with the Wall Street thiefs
in the coming days. We will be told to put all partisan concerns aside
in the interest of the economy and the nation. Every argument
imaginable will be brought out to drive the American people to accept
this corporate welfare plan. What is good for Wall Street is what's
good for Main Street, we will hear again and again.

This, of course, is
one BIG LIE.

More than ever,
working people, with the trade unions in the lead, need to mobilize
massively to put a definitive stop to this corporate bailout ... and
to demand a Workers' Recovery Plan that bails out America's working
people and the oppressed.

Putting forward an
alternative plan is, in fact, becoming a burning necessity. We will be
told by all the corporate-owned media that There Is No Alternative to
their corporate heist. But there is an alternative -- one that bails
out working people and the economy, not the speculators who got us
into the mess we're in today.

An Emergency Plan
to Bail Out Working People and the Economy

What would such a
plan look like? Here are five essential components which the editorial
board ofThe Organizer newspaper submits for the widest
discussion among unionists and activists:

1) Nationalize the Federal Reserve and Establish a Federally Owned,
Public Banking System

This is necessary to
make credit available for small businesses, homeowners, manufacturing
operations, renewable energy and infrastructure
investments.

This
(re)nationalization should begin with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, so
that the government, through these two institutions, can stop all
foreclosures.

Only through a
State-run Emergency Board will the real economy be able to get back on
its feet, removed from its addiction to war and
speculation.

The "free market"
is what has created the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. The
people who created this mess should not be allowed to continue to run
the financial system.

2) End all Funding
for the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Slash the Military
Budget

All the funds that
have been allocated to the U.S. wars and occupations around the world,
and all the military bases needed to sustain these wars, must be
re-oriented post-haste toward meeting human needs -- by funding public
education, libraries, hospitals, roads, public housing, Reconstruction
for the Gulf Coast, social services and more.

3) Moratorium on All
Home Foreclosures, Utility Shut-Offs and Evictions

A genuine plan to
protect homeowners could include the following points:

- enact a
foreclosure moratorium now, before the next phase of ARM interest-rate
increases take effect;

- refinance
mortgages into 30- and 40-year loans at reasonable rates of interest
-- but at the current market value of their homes, not the inflated
prices of the boom;

4) Massive National Reconstruction Public Works Program

A WPA-type program
is needed urgently to rebuild the nation's schools, hospitals and
crumbling infrastructure and to put millions of people back to work,
with a living (prevailing) wage and with the unfettered right to join
a union and to wield their collective strength, including through
strike action (for which the repeal of Taft-Hartley is essential), to
press for better wages and working conditions

5) Sliding Scales of
Wages to Keep Up with Inflation

This will be needed
to enable working people to offset the rising cost of living produced
by the "stagflation" that has already reared its ugly head
and is bound to increase in the coming weeks and months.

Not One Taxpayers' Dollar For the
Wall Street Speculators!

Any plan that calls
for using taxpayers' dollars to pay back the speculators must be
stopped. Every dollar that goes to a speculator is one dollar less
that could go to rebuilding the economy and putting millions of people
back to work through a mass public works program. These speculators
gambled and they lost. They are parasites. They are not needed. Their
profits should be confiscated. There should be no pandering to them in
the name of "helping Wall Street." Bailing them out isnot necessary to stave off the financial crisis. On the contrary,
it will only deepen the problem.

For our part, we in
the editorial board ofThe Organizer newspaper pledge to do
everything in our power to help build the most powerful labor-led
fightback movement to stop this corporate assault. What's at stake is
the fate of millions of working people at home and
abroad.

----


      
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/peace-discuss/attachments/20080930/766a2734/attachment-0001.htm