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	<title>World Socialist Party (US) &#187; News</title>
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		<title>World Socialist Party (US)</title>
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	<itunes:author>World Socialist Party (US)</itunes:author>
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		<item>
		<title>Old Fraud, New Face</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2012/04/old-fraud-new-face/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2012/04/old-fraud-new-face/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 21 Apr 2012 02:03:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>FN Brill</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Elections]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[USA]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=2558</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Many people imagine that a country run on the lines of the American republic is a democratic state, that the institutions of America are democratic institutions, that the spirit of such a state is the democratic spirit, and that the philosophy of such a state – the “Rights of Man” is the democratic philosophy. All of which ideas are wrong. The common meaning of the term “democracy”, a form of society in which supreme power is lodged in the hands of the people – is correct enough as far as it goes, and is sufficient in all that it implies. But it implies something very different from the American republic and its institutions. On November 6, Americans will go to the polls to decide who gets to be blamed for all the country’s problems for the next four years. Politicians supply demons. They supply a singular address for evil upon which you can blame everything. Where the economy is a mess, where people’s mortgages are underwater, it is much easier to find one single person or group of people to blame for all their problems than it is to analyze the extremely complex subject of, for instance, mortgage-backed Wall Street [...]


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		<title>Crisis Over? Not For The Unions!</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2012/04/crisis-over-not-for-the-unions/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2012/04/crisis-over-not-for-the-unions/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 12 Apr 2012 06:31:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SPGB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Crisis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=2555</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When European Central Bank president Mario Draghi recently told German tabloid Bild &#8221;The worst is over,&#8221; he was talking about government budgets and European banks’ balance sheets. It is a completely different story for workers through-out Europe who are finding their trade union rights undermined, their wages squeezed, their retirement age raised and their pensions cut while the employers are granted more and increasing power. 27 European Union members are implementing austerity measures to the tune of about 450 billion euros. Such austerity measures have been portrayed as a necessary part of bringing national debts under control and making European businesses competitive, but they go beyond what is needed to overcome the debt crisis, the unions say. It’s a reversal from the late 1940s when European nations emerging from six years of war laid the foundations of the continent’s social model of the Welfare State by introducing mechanisms to ensure poorer members of society weren’t left behind as they rebuilt their economies. France brought in state pensions in 1946, the U.K. set up its free-to-use National Health Service in 1948 and West Germany guaranteed unions a third of the seats on company boards in 1952. ECB&#8217;s Mario Draghi in a Feb. 23 interview with [...]


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		<item>
		<title>The New &#8220;Socialist&#8221;</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2012/03/the-new-socialist/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2012/03/the-new-socialist/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Mar 2012 04:33:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SPGB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Carribean]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=2552</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The recent visit of the Pope to Cuba has again focussed upon the island and the economic and political changes it is under-going. Ahead of his visit, Pope Benedict had suggested Cuba&#8217;s &#8220;Marxist&#8221; structure &#8221;no longer corresponds to reality&#8221; and called for the adoption of a &#8221;new model&#8221;. Pope Benedict XVI has urged Cubans to build an &#8221;open and renewed society&#8221;. His prayers at the island&#8217;s holiest site included a plea for &#8221;those deprived of freedom.&#8221; but Cuba is not Poland, where the catholic church was an important influence upon the opposition to the state-capitalist regime. Although around 60% of Cubans are baptised as Catholics, only 5% are practising. Santería, an Afro-Cuban religion, has more adherents. Under Raúl Castro, Cuba has begun the journey from state-capitalism towards a more free-market capitalism. What Fidel Castro and Che Guevara called “socialism” did not correspond to Marx’s “first phase of communist society” that many erroneously associate with the term since it was based on the state, not the common, ownership and control of the means of production, the majority remaining propertyless and having to sell their working skills to live. As the state was controlled by the leaders of a minority vanguard party, these leaders became in effect the employers [...]


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		<title>Water Wars</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2012/03/water-wars/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2012/03/water-wars/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 25 Mar 2012 02:57:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>FN Brill</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=2547</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Water has always been an issue in the American west. For 90 years, Nevada and six other south-western states have shared the waters of the once-mighty Colorado river, according to an established formula. It became clear, however, that the allocations of water decided in 1922 were overly optimistic about the projected rivers flows of the Colorado. Nevada, which for years has been drawing more water from its Lake Mead reservoir than has been flowing in, could be at serious risk of going dry in 20 years. Las Vegas needed a Plan B. &#8221;When you have got a community of 2 million people and it is 90% reliant on the Colorado river you have to have a contingency plan,&#8221; Pat Mulroy, the manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority said. Las Vegas, where the population had been doubling every decade until the most recent recession, planners had an idea. They want to tap into groundwater and pump up to 300bn litres of water a year out of valleys in eastern Nevada and transport it 300 miles south to the thirsty metropolis of casinos and golf courses. Opponents of the pipeline say draining the desert of groundwater would destroy the livelihoods of the cattle [...]


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		<title>Concierge Medicine</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2012/03/concierge-medicine/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2012/03/concierge-medicine/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 19 Mar 2012 08:13:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SPGB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=2518</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Money may not buy happiness, but it can pay for you to avoid the hassle of a doctors or hospital waiting room. Well-off executives and their families increasingly are paying tens of thousands of dollars a year for high-end medical services. &#8221;Wealthy people want to have a little exclusivity and want better service than they can get at their normal health-care facility, and they&#8217;re willing to pay for it,&#8221; said Rick Flynn, principal and head of the Family Office Group with Rothstein Kass, a Roseland, New Jersey-based accounting and consulting firm. Concierge medicine, a doctor on a retainer, in other words, the ability to have access to their physicians anywhere, anytime is on the rise in America. 64 percent of all doctors believe that concierge medicine has the best chance of financial success today. In addition to concierge medicine, the wealthy have a variety of plush options to choose from when it comes to their health care. Some hospitals are competing for wealthy clients by offering perks like butlers, fancy beds, beautiful views, and fine food. Some of New York-Presbyterian&#8217;s luxury hospital rooms can cost patients $1,000 to $1,500 per day. Guardian 24/7 is a company that installs emergency rooms in homes, [...]


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		<title>What&#8217;s Being Rich?</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2012/03/whats-being-rich/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2012/03/whats-being-rich/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 16 Mar 2012 22:21:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SPGB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Class]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[USA]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=2513</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Fiscal Times published an article arguing that a family with an income of $250,000 per year is not really rich. When taxes, housing costs, college costs for children and so on are accounted for, even those with an income five times the median family income are just barely getting by, it said. Later the Fiscal Times reported that a study recently found that a middle class family needs at least $150,000 of income just to cover the basics. Subsequently, The New York Times published an article sympathizing with the plight of those making only $250,000. They are certainly not poor, but neither are they rich in any meaningful sense of the term, it said. Gallup Poll asked people how much money they would need to consider themselves rich. The answers were surprisingly varied. Some 18 percent of people would need less than $60,000 per year of income; 12 percent said between $60,000 and $99,999; 23 percent said between $100,000 and $150,000; 18 percent said between $150,001 and $299,999; 11 percent said $1 million; and 4 percent said more than $1 million. The median income, the exact middle of the distribution of responses, was $150,000. Women, the elderly, non-college graduates, [...]


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		<title>ACTA of Desperation</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2012/03/acta-of-desperation/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2012/03/acta-of-desperation/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 16 Mar 2012 01:28:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SPGB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Music]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tech]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=2508</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One of the more memorable jokes in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was the one about the supercomputer which, on being asked the meaning of life, supplied the answer ‘42’. One of capitalism’s most profound illogicalities is its constant need to render unquantifiable things – like knowledge &#8211; in monetary terms so that its beancounters can do their sums properly. It’s the same joke, only accountants don’t get the laughs. NASA is pulling out of its agreement with the European Space Agency over the planned ExoMars Rover programme, citing lack of funds. It has already ceased supplying the International Space Station. Given that the ISS is the most expensive thing ever to have been built by human beings, this seems rather like spoiling the spaceship for a ha’porth of tar, but there’s a slump on and the purse-strings are being pulled tight. Science is worth the money, says Barack Obama’s budget, as long as it’s somebody else’s money. The price of knowledge is being addressed in a different way by the recent signing by 22 countries of ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which is the latest international attempt to establish base-line rules for protecting intellectual property rights (IPR). [...]


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		<item>
		<title>Letter from Zambia</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2012/03/letter-from-zambia/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2012/03/letter-from-zambia/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 13 Mar 2012 23:18:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>FN Brill</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Africa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=2500</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What started as a new political revolution in Zambia has proved to be a mere political hullabaloo. There can be nothing new under capitalism – except half meal political and economic reforms that in all respects only help to undermine working-class political and class solidarity. In every part of the world the workers have the class franchise to elect a political party into power. It is the inability by the workers to use their class franchise to utilise their political consciousness as a weapon for socialism. The election of Michael Sata of the Peoples Front (PF) as President is what is dubbed a new dawn in Zambian politics. Reading through the newspaper headlines one may easily notice the absence of political criticism today. The PF has been a pro-poor people’s budget – in the sense that the government has reduced pay as you earn income tax below those earning K2 million. The reduction of income tax comes at a time when the government is contemplating enacting a minimum wage for those earning below K2 million. The political strength of the PF government will be judged by the workers and unemployed youth, who massively voted for it during the 2011 general [...]


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		<item>
		<title>Kenyan Nurses Strike</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2012/03/kenyan-nurses-strike/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2012/03/kenyan-nurses-strike/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 12 Mar 2012 23:15:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>FN Brill</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Africa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Labor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=2497</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Kenya&#8217;s public hospitals face a potentially devastating health worker shortage after the government fired 25,000 striking nurses. Luke K&#8217;Odambo, chairman of the National Nurses Association of Kenya, said that the sacking did &#8221;not make sense in any way&#8221;, and that it was not possible to dismiss such a large part of the workforce. &#8220;We are ignoring the sacking threat.&#8221; Alex Orina, spokesman of the 40,000-strong Kenya Health Professionals Society, said. &#8221;These are cat-and-mouse games, you cannot sack an entire workforce. It is a ploy to get us to rush back to work, but our strike continues until our demands are met,&#8221; . The nurses went on strike on March 1 to protest the government&#8217;s failure to implement a salary increase agreed last year, when they also stopped work to press for improved services in Kenya&#8217;s mostly ill-equipped public hospitals. On average, a health worker earns about 25,000 shillings ($300) a month in salary and allowances, and this amount was likely to double if their demand for higher allowances were met. Private hospitals and clinics, where richer families send their sick, have opened as usual because their nurses are not members of the strikers&#8217; union. In public hospitals patients pay as little as one [...]


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		<title>US Wages Down</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2012/03/2492/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2012/03/2492/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 07 Mar 2012 06:42:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Suzy</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Class]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[USA]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=2492</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Young workers see pay shrink in United States. The Economic Policy Institute think tank found that the average inflation-adjusted hourly wage for male college graduates aged 23 to 29 dropped 11% over the past decade to $21.68 in 2011. For female college graduates of the same age, the average wage is down 7.6% to $18.80. For the entire working population, average hourly wages have risen modestly over the past 10 years. But that is partly because many of the lowest-paid workers have lost their jobs and are no longer included in the average.&#8221;People who normally make below-average wages are not working,&#8221; said Bart Hobijn, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. &#8221;That raises the average wage.&#8221; For men with only high school degrees, aged 19 to 25, the average wage is down 10% from a decade ago to $11.68. For women in the same category, the average has declined 9.2% to $9.92 Downward pressure on wages is likely to persist as long as unemployment remains high. In recessions, employers rarely cut wages for their long-standing workers, though they often impose wage freezes or grant below inflation-rate ones. No related posts.


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