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Avoiding Taxes Worldwide

What do Apple, Microsoft, Starbucks, Fiat and many other corporations have in common? They all know how to dodge paying their taxes or at most pay very little taxes. One way they do this is to have their headquarters in very low tax nations, such as Ireland. This is about to change. The European Union’s (EU) 28 states agreed in October to share details of tax deals they reached with big companies to make sure they are fair to other countries. The EU has already ordered Starbucks and Fiat to pay millions in back taxes. Italy is making Apple pay $350 million in back taxes. The other way to avoid paying taxes is by using Bermuda as a tax haven. Microsoft stores billions in an entity named R.I. Holdings. It is a law firm in Hamilton, Bermuda, a UK territory that charges no corporate taxes. Microsoft has places like this to hide its money so it does not have to pay taxes around the world. This is just some of the ways large corporations and their stock holders and chief executive officers (

To Fix U.S., We Should Stay Out of Other Countries

Could the USA’s corporate capitalist system survive without wars? Probably not and terrorism is good for business. Terrorism will most likely never be defeated because it keeps profits high for the military industrial complex. The Paris attacks occurred on a Friday, when the Stock Market opened on Monday defense industry stocks, like Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop, Grumman, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Booz Allen Hamilton soared in anticipation of the coming weapons sales and security contracts. There will never be an elected person who wants to stabilize the world and have no wars or unrest. They will not get corporate backing for their elections if they went against these corporate giants. Since 9/11, five countries have disintegrated as nations: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. The destruction of these countries were the result of direct American interventions. The fifth, Syria, came from a flood of U.S. arms to the so-called moderate rebels. The forth, Yemen,

Unions Should Hold Off On Endorsements

What has the Democratic party and the last two Democratic presidents done for labor? Bill Clinton promised labor law reform, but when elected he wasn’t at all interested. However, he did give labor North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the union presidents were furious, but with some schmoozing and attending White House galas they soon forgot unions were thrown under the bus and all the money they donated. Then along came Barak Obama, who promised the Employee Free Choice Act, also called card check, and it never happened. Both he and Clinton had control of Congress at the beginnings of their administrations, but now it looks like Obama will give us the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), instead. This trade agreement is even worse than NAFTA. NAFTA and TPP are perfect examples of why labor needs to hold their endorsements until there is a solid commitment from the presidential candidate. Hillary Clinton is an extension of Bill, a corporatist and beholden to Wall Street and big

Russian Truck Drivers Strike

Truck drivers and owners should take a look at how Russian truck drivers are protesting a new crippling tax per kilometer. The Caucasus drivers are striking a road tax, dubbed “Plato,” on trucks weighing more than 12 tons are charged more for each kilometer of federal highway they drive. There are more than 2 million trucks registered in Russia. The 1.5-ruble tax is to be doubled in March to 3-rubles-6 kopecks per kilometer. If truckers refuse to pay the tax, entrepreneurs are fined 40,000 rubles ($634.43 U.S. dollars), and companies 450,000 rubles or $7,109.38 in U.S. currency. If a driver makes 40 to 50 rubles per trip, and the trip tax would be 15,ooo rubles, how are the truckers supposed to support themselves? Adding insult to injury, the collection system has been turned over to a private company by the son of a close associate of President Vladimir Putin. The Russian truckers converged on Moscow crippling the beltway in what they called the “snail,” driving slowly tying up traff

From Savagery to Capitalism

In the fight to defeat lifestyle and wage inequality, we must understand how we got here by understanding the history of humans and how they have been controlled. First, it was just savagery, which lasted more than a million years. Then barbarism came along and lasted five thousand years. And then it was slaves where we belonged to the master for life, followed by the feudal serfdom or tenant, who were also likely bound for life to the lord and his land. From there we went to capitalism, which is only 450 years old. In this time the industrial age was launched around the start of the 19th century, which brought large numbers of new wage slaves from the countryside to the cities and factories creating capitalist captains of industry and later masters of entire countries and their continents as their riches increased, riches that included wage slaves. Their riches also came from using our Commons to get ahead and using the wealth accumulated from our Commons and our labor swelled their r

Is Trump the Silver Shirts' Leader

Will Donald Trump be the leader the right wing GOP has been waiting for to lead toady’s version of the America’s Silver Shirts? Silver shirts was based on Nazi Germany’s Brown Shirts. Trump has already gotten the support of the White Supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan and all the closeted angry racists of the GOP party. Remember, people laughed at Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini and said the two would never come to power. We all know the horror and terror they wreaked upon the world. If the U.S. doesn’t wake up this country could very well see the same thing happen here. The Silver Shirts were America’s answer to the Brown Shirts, same kind of ideology, same kind of entitlement over others and same kind of twisted propaganda that unsuspecting people fell for. There could be small revolutions fighting against terrorism—in all its forms, ethnic-type of discrimination, or even the young, disenchanted low-wage college people who have huge debts but low-wage jobs. The young who bought int

Taxes Not Austerity

The world’s ills are driven by greed and the never ending lust for power over the proletarians by the oligarchies, who hide and hoard their cash so they don’t have to pay their fair share of taxes. When the government cannot meet their expectations of payments they then demand austerity measures thereby placing the deficit burden on the workers, who did not cause the problem. Governments provide so many loopholes and tax breaks for the wealthy, which ends up shorting all of us, but the people at the bottom pay the greatest price. Most of the wealthy people today got that way not by hard work, but by their DNA, they inherited the wealth. Their lack of a work ethic means they lack the guilt or awareness that their greed hurts most of the population when the austerity measures are implemented. The wealthy invest in banks, which the countries like Portugal and Greece have had to keep their Eurozone partners and creditors happy by taking from the poor to make the rich richer. When the money

South Korea's Fight

When labor and unions are diminished, inequality goes up. Just look at South Korea. They are facing the same thing as the U.S. where the 1 percent are getting richer each day while what’s left of their middle class is growing poorer by the day. This is a very rich country that could be the poster child for how the capitalist system should work to the betterment of all, but instead greed has taken over and the wage slaves have had to go to the streets. At this time, South Korea is in the same fight as us with the need for a living wage, healthcare, pension, free education, the right to form a union, free assembly and free speech. The people, led by unions, including the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, are accusing the government of passing policies that weakens democracy, changes labor laws to benefit the corporations/wealthy and rewrites the country’s history to a conservative bent. Han Sang-gyun is calling for a general strike against "labor conditions that only fattens ca

The Fight Against Inequality

The fight for $15 to $18 an hour and the eradication of wage and lifestyle inequality will need education, ideology and tactics. The duty of the militant minority is to promote class-consciousness and solidarity among the wage slaves fostering in them a revolutionary spirit to fight for what is their civil rights. This can be accomplished in two ways: education in theory and education in class warfare. In this way, the wage slaves will become conscious of their power as one, and will learn the class nature of the capitalist state, which will gain them greater insight into the nature of the class struggle. The old International Workers of the World (IWW) believed such an education as essential before the class war could be won. The IWW organized propaganda leagues and industrial education clubs for the purpose of education (think mobile phones today). We could send out brief messages, such as sit down and watch your pay go up, emancipation, educating, and organization. This should be th

We Must Be Prepared to Win the War

Why do wins and gains for the wage slaves turn into losses? To understand this one only has to look back to the old International Workers of the World (IWW) and the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and countries like Ukraine and the Arab Spring. The old IWW used the soapbox approach on street corners to arouse exploited workers to a spectacular and sudden fight for free speech, higher wages. And for ten years they had wins, but then failed to hold their membership. Just like the IWW, OWS also had wins in getting the 99 percent fired up over wages, Wall Street greed and they had cell phones all over the U.S. to motivate people, but again OWS failed to hold the people together. Even countries like Ukraine who fought a hell of a fight and changed its government, and now it is in trouble as it careens toward a civil war. The Arab Spring, which again changed its government, but now are in trouble. Why is it these groups didn’t plan or ever think about what they will do when or if they win, like put

To Save The World & Ourselves

To save the world from itself there needs to be less greed, which would lessen wage and life inequality. Less greed would curtail climate change, which would save our farming land and farmers of the world. As the rains leave a region, the people leave the land and travel to cities and other countries looking for relief. This is what happened to a lot of the Syrian people. Then we need to expose and understand the ideology of radical religion and how it controls the masses and who benefits from it and why it works. When refugees have moved to another country, many times those refugees are segregated to a specific area and not given opportunities to assimilate by being hired for jobs or other ways to better their lives. The young people become discouraged and are more susceptible to the allure of fanatical groups, like Daesh, to feel like their lives matter. Unfortunately, these groups use these young idealists as fodder for their machine. Their lives are not valued by these groups any

Patriotic Millionaires Get It

It’s the young people of the world who will save us from the corporate world of the money people. Just look at the historic election of Burma. Then look at the young people of the U.S. who are backing Bernie Sanders for president, which will start a revolution. The young have figured out how to organize for power, how to get it, and to use it to end economic inequality and to believe that a broadly engaged electorate in which power is reactively equally distributed. The people with the power and money find themselves in a dilemma: we want them to share their money with people who have less money or power but they don’t want to despite knowing it would benefit the common good. This is where the ideology part ways, but the young wage slaves who have all but lost hope have now found some leaders in our world who understand their needs. Bernie Sanders’ efforts to build a broad national coalition can reverse our march toward increasing inequality and concentration of power among the elites.

Karl Rover is Going After the Wage Slaves

Wage slaves who have the illusion that their problems can be solved through electing reformist politicians must remember that the nature of capitalism is not to allow mass needs preference over corporate profits. Demands for services change in social conditions will be vigorously opposed by the ruling class—Koch brothers, Wall Street and all the others. The capitalist-designed electoral system is used to corrupt elected representatives of both parties. Even my hero President Franklin Roosevelt, who purported to assure labor the right to organize trade unions and to bargain collectively with bosses, but it was a hollow promise. In the practice he continued to use the deferral government as a strikebreaker agency, simply using subtler methods than previously used for such purposes. The year 1934 was a hard fought year for labor, but they won while even taking on the National Guard in Toledo, Ohio. May 1934, labor fought the Guard with bare fists and rocks in the 6,000 Auto-lite strike an

Coming Together One Country At A Time

In California there is hope for the $15 an hour minimum wage because we are seeing two unions fight for this new amount for minimum wage. One is the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and it wants $15 by 2020. The other union is United Health Care Workers West wants to raise the wage by $1 an hour every year until it hits $15 an hour by 2021 and the SEIU’s state council is prepared to spend $20 million to $30 million on the campaign. This all sound good and productive, but why would these unions invest so much money to start such a low amount for the minimum wage? This slow walking of the minimum wage will do nothing more than bump workers off the assistance programs that allows them to work and eat or seek medical care without going broke? The Teamsters have a word for unions that cater to corporations’ interest and it is “business unionist.” The minimum wage has not kept up with inflation, had it kept up minimum wage would be about $24 an hour, so these low increases will

U.S. Silver Shirts Were Like Brownshirts

Clashes between capitalists and labor here in the U.S. and worldwide and intensification of the class struggle will cause the ruling class to parliamentary start turning away from democracy and go to fascism to hold onto power to protect the very rich. Then there is the fight for leadership of the movement needed for the final assault on the working class. Just look at the anti-labor people who are wanting to be the president of the United States in 2016. They are bought and paid for and the money people who are backing them are the leaders of a terrorist movement to destroy union and labor here and worldwide. There are the Koch brothers, the National Chamber of Commerce, and the local chambers and the Manufacturers Association, and as the wage slaves gain ground in their fight for $15 and the right to join a union. The capitalist fascists will stop at nothing to break the movement of the workers and our future workers. In fact, during 1937-1938, they used vigilantes, Jersey City use

Canadian Train Employees Framed

Will the framed Quebec, Canadian rail workers be Canada’s Haymarket Martyrs? At this time the Canadians government rail bosses are responsible for the 2013 derailment that killed 47 people, but the rail bosses are tying to throw the workers under the train. The workers are controller Richard Labrie, company manager Jean DeMeitre, and train engineer Thomas Harding, who all face charges as the bosses try to shift blame unto the these workers. Harding and Labrie are both Local 1976 Unite Steelworkers union members. They each face 47 counts of criminal negligence causing the 47 deaths. Conviction could result in life imprisonment. Minor former company official DeMaitre faces the same charges. This is to divert attention from the federal court in Quebec, they have approved the rail company to run trains with a crew of one. For safety reasons, there should be a four-person crew. Also, the rail companies have refused to replaced rusted out culverts under the tracks--as a cost saving measu

This Election Is Important

In this election, labor needs to get it right on whom to support. Labor supported Bill Clinton, whose chief of staff was Rahm Emanuel. Clinton opened the flood gates for union jobs to be shipped out of the country with the passage of North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA, and Emanuel, who is mayor of Chicago, is still union bashing. He would be back if Hillary Clinton is elected. Look at what labor spent on President Obama’s election in hopes of getting the Employee Free Choice Act, which went nowhere. It was shoved aside for healthcare. Clinton’s NAFTA is now about to get Obama’s version in the form of Trans Pacific Partnership or TPP, which is NAFTA on steroids, labor says. Labor needs people elected who will support labor’s fight for $15, free education, sick leave, family leave, single payer healthcare, the right to form a union, climate change, Black Lives Matter, immigration reform, lifestyle and income inequality and payment for Corporate use of our Commons. In order for

Poking the Dog

The GOP anti-union and anti-worker agenda is going to destroy their party, and if it keeps up it will destroy the capitalist system, which may not be so bad. If so, all will not be good for the way the money people are attacking us like a nice dog is in a pen, and people keep poking sticks through the pen at the dog. Eventually, the dog will become very mean and if given a chance, the dog will try to exact revenge. So, let’s us look at what the stick poking has been lately attacking unions, attacks on minimum wage; the jailing of people in prisons for profit; debtors prisons of low-wage people not being able to pay fines or post bond; plea bargaining away poor people’s rights to a good defense; and traffic fines and the loss of driver’s licenses, which the toilers cannot get to their low-wage jobs and be able to earn enough money to pay off their fines. Then there is the Black Lives Matter born out of the treatment by law enforcement, some of these officers are very bad and are gettin

Teachable Moments

A teachable moment occurred for a future young toiler by her grandmother as they were leaving a unionized grocery recently. A man was collecting signatures for an initiative to be placed on the upcoming ballot. He confronted the grandmother, asking her if she was registered to vote and if she would sign his petition. It was a perfect example of cognitive dissonance as the grandmother, a strong Democrat and pro-union advocate, stared at the petition before her and asked the man three times what he was collecting signatures for despite having it spelled out before her. Cognitive dissonance is when we’re confronted with conflicting information, attitudes or beliefs and the brain rebels at the new data. The man was collecting signatures to “decrease” the minimum wage. Her first response, forgetting her 8-year-old granddaughter was by her side was, “What the f*#k? Hell no, I won’t sign your petition, you ignorant a$$hole,” before grabbing the young girl’s hand to walk away. The granddaught

Silicon Valley Uprising

Labor is winning in Silicon Valley. It is a California uprising of low wage workers in the midst of some of the highest paid workers who make $112,610 annually. In contrast, the support workers were making minimum wage to the highest of $13 to $14 an hour. When these workers asked for a union to better their lives, companies like Apple, with a worth of $1 trillion, Google, valued at $383 billion, Facebook, valued at $250 billion, brought in anti-union law firm Jackson Lewis, a notorious union busting firm that uses every trick in the anti-union playbook to scare and intimidate the wage slaves. They pull workers aside and hold long captive meetings preaching the pitfalls of unions. These companies use the Walmart playbook by calling the wage slaves “associates” and tell the workers they are better off directly talking with Walmart management than using a union. Of course, they don’t tell the worker that is the company disagrees that the company fire them on the spot. The first stirring

John Maynard Keynes' Prediction

All wage slaves should check out the prediction made by John Maynard Keynes in 1928. He predicted that by the year 2028 technology would replace all work and no one would need to worry about making money. We still are not there, but there is only 13 years to go and technology at this time is proving Keynes right about technology replacing workers of all medial and even higher knowledge workers, which is why college degrees no longer demand higher wages. Their wages have remained flat during the last years. At this time most new jobs are low paying. We are now in a model of mass production by many for mass consumption by many. But this model of unlimited production by a handful for consumption by the few able to afford it will kill the capitalist system and is the reason that the ratio of employees to customers is already dropping to mind-boggling lows. Low paying personal service sector of the economy will just not support the system we are used to. There has to be an infusion of cash

Power of the People

The power of the people and the common since of some of the money people have finally came together on the positive effect of a minimum wage hike to lessen wage inequality, and the positive effective of pumping cash into the economy from the spenders. Fifteen dollars an hour is the goal at this time, and Los Angeles is set to become the largest city in America to adopt the new minimum wage following the lead of Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland, and there is a movement in New York City. Some states have set new minimum wages, such as Kentucky, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and California. The governors of these states appear to understand that slave wages hurt their economies, nine are Democrats, one is an Independent (former Republican) and six are Republican. The minimum wage is lower than the $15 an hour, but at least it is a start. The wage slaves just need

Fire & Safety

Climate change is here in the name of a drought and heat, which has provided the tools for extreme fires. In California, fires have already cost many lives, injuries and hundreds of millions of dollars so far. The final tally is still to be determined. So far, in California six civilians and two firefighters have died, and many were injured. In the Lake County alone, 1,958 structures were lost, 93 damaged and 2,953 structures threatened, displacing almost 3,000 people without homes, and the fire season is not even over. Also, wildland fires are now worldwide so climate change does not only involve us, here in the U.S., but its impacting people worldwide, especially New Zealand, Spain, Indonesia and Singapore so far. We, in the U.S., have the most problem facing firefighters in what we call wild land-urban interface, which is homes built in or very close to the forests. At this time there are about 10 million homes built in fire-prone rural areas an addition to the 6 million built in 1

The Pressure Is Paying Off

Has the world’s 99 percent finally figured out that they need to vote for and support people who will stand by and fight for the good life they deserve? People like Jeremy Corbyn, Britain’s newly elected Labor Leader is a socialist, and Canada’s liberal candidate, Justin Trudeau, promises to work for the toilers. Now, we have a leader in the U.S. who is running for president, Bernie Sanders, an avowed socialist, wants big money out of politics, universal healthcare, free public universities, expanded Social Security and a job’s program for youth, plus a living wage beginning at $15 an hour. There is a global movement going on at this time and the toilers are electing popular leaders in countries like Greece, Spain, Ireland, Turkey, Israel and Britain. These people are anti-austerity people and they rally thousands when they speak out for the dispossessed, challenge moribund elites, they are vilified as populists, deluded and dangerous, but they are winning elections. This movement is a

The Backlash Begins Against Inequality

As income inequality becomes more known across the world, people are responding, tired of the disparity and not being adequately compensated for their work. Income inequality is greater now than it was in the “Roaring ‘20s” and though we went through a recession, the rich keep getting richer while the poor keep getting poorer. As Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders surges in the polls, the British just elected its version of Sanders when it elected Jeremy Corbyn as the Labor Party’s leader in a landslide victory, by almost 60 percent of the votes. Shocked by the outcome, Prime Minister Cameron resorted to fear and intimidation when he tweeted: “The Labour Party is now a threat to our national security, our economic security and your family’s security.” It’s interesting how the U.S. and Britain’s conservative leaders tanked their economies by falsely leading their countries into war with Iraq followed by deep recessions, and the wage slaves paid dearly for their poor voting decisions. T

Theocracy Will Destroy Our Democracy

The fight to keep a democracy from turning into a theocracy has to start with the people who have the money and want a theocracy to further control the masses. Jerry Falwell Liberty University donated $639,520.749 to a political action committee, America Family Association’s Donald Wildmon donated $17,955.438, Pat Robertson’s Christian Regent University $487,152.266, Beverly and Tim LaHaye’s Concerned Women for America gave $15,062.805, Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council gave $14,255, 533, James Dobson’s Focus on the Family donated $92,316,686, Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition gave $3, 375, 131, Jay Sekulow’s American Center for Law and Justice donated $57,731,904, Tim LaHaye’s Council for National Policy gave $2,169,909, Ed Meese’s Alliance Defending Freedom gave $47,687, 860. These people want to control your life. They are anti-union. They want religious school vouchers, which degrade the public school system, and religion taught in public schools. They are against gay

Unions in Hands of U.S. Supreme Court

Unions in California could be lost if the U.S. Supreme Court rules against dues-paying-union members. Ironically, the victims’ best hope in the Court is Justice Antonin Scalia. Often the Court’s leading conservative, but in a 1991 case, Scalia wrote that because public sector unions have a legal duty to represent all employees. It’s reasonable to expect all workers to share the costs. The case before the Supreme Court is Friedrichs v. Wilford and pits the anti-labor, union hating GOP against union groups in an attempt to water down the unions’ power at the bargaining table, and ultimately the political process. The case was brought by California public school teachers, represented by the Center for Individual Rights, who claim their First Amendment rights are being violated paying the union dues, hence unions typically support Democratic candidates, candidates who are more likely to support the workers over the corporations. The goal of backers of this lawsuit is to end the mandatory

What's to Come of Labor Day?

This Labor Day, Sept. 7, 2015, labor is coming back in many ways and it is scaring the anti-union people who then start anti-union rhetoric saying things like labor unions are dying, but this is not true. In fact, my Waste Management company in Shasta County just joined a union. The home healthcare workers are making head way on overtime and wages. The $15 to $18 an hour minimum wage fights are making headway every day in city after city across the nation. We now have President Obama signing executive orders for government contract workers to get paid sick leave that includes family. Then there’s the fight to pay interns who are currently not being paid for the work they do, which makes them company slaves. Interns are beginning to understand that they are being taken advantage of by companies making money off the backs of unpaid workers. Then there is the fight for benefits and full-time work for adjunct professors at colleges who are again being taken advantage of; but the fight for

The Kurds Are Best Hope Against ISIS

Why did the U.S. back the Turkish government to up the war on the Kurds? Was it just to save jet fuel by having a base in Turkey? If so then money is more important than Kurdish lives and when the Kurdish fighters are the only ground troops who are kicking the asses of the ISIS fighters. The Kurdish people have been divided into four places and they have been fighting this injustice for the last 100 years and the Kurds have never given up. The air strikes that we use to fight ISIS have to be coordinated by someone on the ground, which at this time is the Kurds. There needs to be a payoff for the only ground troops who are fighting and winning against ISIS. The Kurds would have had their own country except for what the U.K. did after World War I. The UK at the end of WWI denied the Kurds a homeland which turned the Kurds into nomads, but they have never given up on a homeland for there are 30 million oppressed nationality who struggle to survive in Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. To ma

Billionaire Sees Handwriting on Wall

The world’s Stock Market is taking big hits, which kills 401Ks usually owned by the little people and pension plans. One of the main reasons for this is the inequality on the part of the spenders of the capitalist system, which we and most of the world use. The capitalist system we us is where the profits from corporations go to just a few people at the top while none goes to the wage slaves who make the profits in the first place. The few at the top take their profits and hide them overseas or loan the profits to the toilers, who then have to pay top interest rates on the loans, which means more money out of the pockets out of the toilers need to just survive. The problem is the toilers are out of money to pay back the loans and this is what is going to kill the capitalist system worldwide, and the top 1 percent know this or should. The way out of this is 1) Raise the minimum wage to $15 to $24 an hour; and 2) have workers on corporation boards, with votes on how profits are spen

Stop Indebtedness

Low wages and debt go together to make the 1 percent very, very rich. To begin with, the rich pay the wage slaves very little, which then promotes the toilers to use debt to survive. Case in point, with no extra cash for repairs and a broken washing machine, for example, the cost to repair the machine is a one-time large cost that seems greater than buying a new machine for a low monthly payment. This way, the 1 percent makes more money in two ways and makes the toilers actual wage slaves. This enslavement starts very early with school debt so that young workers start out in debt with an average of $31,000 to $100,000 and higher depending on the field of study, which, without a very good paying job, leaves them as wage slaves for many years. We are nearing the end of economic/industrial growth, primarily, but not only for ecological reasons. When growth stalls, lending opportunities disappear. Since money is essentially lent for existence, debt levels increase faster than the supply

Wall Street Sucking Cities Dry

Instead of cities blaming unions and their union pensions for cities going broke, the cities should take a lesson from unions on how to negotiate with Wall Street who are the ones who, with their financial fees, are sucking U.S. cities dry. In 2014, the labor unions found that Los Angeles city had spent twice as much on bank fees in 2013 as it had on street repairs, which resulted in a campaign slogan: “Invest in our streets not Wall Street.” It was a call to the big banks and Wall Street, thugs who gamble with our pension money and are not willing to help on fees charged, which keeps going up. This is where the cities should take a page from the labor movement and bargain collectively on interest rates and other financial deals. This needs to be done now because during the last 20 to 30 years banking industry has shifted its profits schemes to now rely heavily on fees—the money charged for creating loans and packaging them into securities, selling them and servicing them. They charge

Strike Breaking Companies

An old tactic is resurfacing that union workers and workers who want unions should know that there is a well-funded, concerted effort to break unions and stop work places from becoming unionized. These companies hire busloads of scabs who will replace all types of workers like steelworkers, all types of construction workers, bus drivers, medical nurses, and fast food workers. Sometimes it is started by hiring temporary or cutting hours in the case of the Pennsylvania steelworkers at Harrison where negotiations with Allegheny Technologies Inc. (ATI) where 2,450 workers contract expired and ATI wants to slash healthcare for active, retired and future workers, institute 12-hour shifts, cut pensions for current and future workers, reduce wages and overtime pay and to contract out more work. When the contract expired at midnight on June 30th, ATI brought in three busloads of scabs from Storm Engineering, a strike breaking outfit. This is the old Andrew Carnegie way of strike breaking tact

Spending Feeds Capitalist System

If the capitalist system is dependent on 67.5 percent spending, which is provided by the habits of the proletarians then shouldn’t the proletarians have jobs or a hybrid system of work in which they are paid a living wage of $15 to $18 an hour minimum or a temporary job or some payment for non-labor to put money in the spenders’ pockets. The money hoarders do not want to invest in factories, they want to invest in bonds, stocks or extend credit line loaning money to countries that cannot repay or student loans. So what needs to be done is to tax the cash hoarders so governments worldwide can start rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure worldwide. Here in the U.S. we need to rebuild our bridges, highways, water mains, sewers, electrical grids, railroads, schools, waterways, fiber optics, clean energy and all the jobs that would be created if we invested in these areas. If the government focused on these areas, then it would create opportunities for investors to be able to maintain or s

Is Bernie the Answer?

Has the proletarian class finally found a leader? Could Bernie Sanders be the next Eugene Debs or Franklin Roosevelt? At this time, it looks like he very well could the person that the 99 percent were waiting for. He is not only saying the right things, but he has lived these principles, and he has always advocated for these things his entire life even when some thought he what he was saying was crazy. In fact, when he was younger he started every day by saying his ideas are not crazy, and it seems to be he is right if the numbers gathering to see him are any indication. Single payer healthcare for everyone, a living wage, jobs for all, a good retirement, pensions, taxing the rich and removing the Social Security cap where the rich do not pay into the program. These are the things that resonate with the young, the unions, and the old—and these not crazy, especially since people are awakening to the fact that system is stacked against them courtesy of the rich and GOP. Bernie Sanders

Water Wars Here

Water is one of the most vital Commons, but who should own it? Who should control it? Who should be responsible for the care of it? I know who should not be involved in any of these questions and it is private stock holders of corporations who want to profit and will or are destroying the water of the world. Water is one of the Commons of the people, but as a whole it is an essential of life not only for drinking but for health and sanitation and to grow our food. Water is more important than gold or oil because without it you die. So why are cities and governments selling or privatizing our water, and do they even have the right to sell our Commons without a vote even? The essentials of life—water, clean air, healthcare, unadulterated food, housing—should be a civil right and one politician should not have the power to take it away from people. All of these things should have oversight by the people as a whole and not by just a few greedy, very rich corporations. This is what will h