OK, maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration. But I keep saying it and I will say it again - NEO-LIBERALISM IS DEAD! Dead! Dead! Dead! Now one of it’s main ideologues, it’s key architects, is practically admitting so. Check out this video clip of Alan Greenspan’s testimony before The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last Thursday (warning, you may want to just listen to the audio, Alan Greenspan and Henry Waxman are quite possibly the two ugliest men alive - actually alive might be questinable in Greenspan's case)… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55-A1-D3MR0 Here is the New York Times report on the hearing… http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/business/economy/24panel.html?_r=1&oref=slogin Oh, I only wish Milton Friedman was still alive so he could similarly grovel before the American people and the world.

The McCain campaign is reaching the heights of desperation. With the economy in free fall, the result of the neo-liberal economic agenda promoted by McCain and company for the last 30 years, they are grasping at straws to find one more avenue through which to bamboozle the American working class into giving them one more chance. Perhaps the ugliest attempt at this yet is their attack on ACORN. Who is ACORN? Well, according to the mainstream media, it seems as if they are an organization established to commit vote fraud on behalf on Democrats in general and Barack Obama in particular. The accusations have quieted some in the past few days (replaced by the even more ridiculous “Joe the Plumber” campaign), but it was all the press was talking about last week. I have a personal connection with ACORN as I worked in the Summer of 1990 as an organizer with Local 880 of SEIU. Local 880 was established by ACORN organizers who wanted a vehicle by which to empower the home health care work...

Perhaps the most nauseating aspect of last Thursday’s debate between Vice-Presidential candidates Joe Biden and Sarah Palin was Palin’s repeated assertion that unlike Biden, she was “one of us,” just an average “middle class” American living on “main street.” I think I found Palin’s “folksy” everyman rhetoric especially disturbing after the most conservative elements of the Republican party spent the whole week spinning pseudo-populist sophistry in regards to their opposition to the Paulson/Bush Wall Street bailout plan. Only in America can the elite, the ruling class, in the midst of a crisis of their own making, turn around and present themselves as working class heroes combating greed and corruption on Wall Street and in Washington. The wolf is so well practiced at slipping on the sheep’s clothing in a hurry, it seems no one questions that bushy tail protruding from the back. Of course after 8 years of listening to an oil man from Texas tell us that he is “one of us” I guess it is a...

www.whatnowtoons.com Wow, what a difference a few weeks can make. Less than a month ago, every mainstream mass media outlet, U.S. politician, economic analyst, and probably the majority of average citizens would still have been singing the praises of the unfettered free market. Regulation was still a dirty word and privatization was still equated with efficiency and prosperity. Granted, the sand had already begun to shift under this ideological edifice of 30+ years. The sub-prime mortgage crisis and the bursting of the housing bubble had seriously shaken the confidence of some in the system. I had mentioned repeatedly on Labor Express Radio over the Summer the glaring contrast between the soaring gas prices we experienced here in the laissez-faire fuel market of the U.S. as compared to the low and stable prices maintained by the state oil company of our neighbor to the south. But none of that seemed to really change the mainstream belief in this country that free markets solve all prob...

Info on financial crisis Here are some links on articles and resources about the financial crisis now upon us. Check back here tomorrow for a much more complete report… From National Jobs With Justice, ACT NOW – CONGRESS VOTES TOMORROW!!!... Tell Congress it's time to STEP UP! (Save The Economy, Pronto & Undo Profiteering) Over the past 30 years, conservatives successfully gutted regulation and preached 'smaller government' while millions of Americans lost good jobs and Wall Street and corporate America made record profits. Wall Street invented new, more complicated ways to make money off other people’s money Now that the party’s over, Bush & Co. want to plunder the rest of us to pay the bill for Wall Street’s greedy rampage. Tell Congress: Stop the Bail-out; Pass a recovery plan instead. Now that they’ve made so much money, they say that the huge Wall Street firms, paying grotesque salaries, are "too big to fail," so a q...

Ten days ago, 27,000 workers for the aircraft manufacture Boeing, who are members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) went out strike in three states – Washington, Oregon, and Kansas. Boeing, one of the world’s largest aircraft manufacturers, a company that has been tremendously profitable in recent years, has pushed concessions on its workforce in the past few contracts. In 2005, Boeing workers halted some of these concessions with a month long strike. But the workers have gone without a pay raise for 4 years, and entry level wages for new hires haven’t been raised since 1992. Outsourcing has reduced the amount of union jobs at Boeing, as the company has continued to shift more and more of its production to non-union sub-contractors, some locally, some around the globe. Preventing further outsourcing and protecting job security is a key issue for the union. In contract negotiations this Summer, the company once again asked for further concession...

As I stated on last night’s Labor Express Radio program, I hoped to have an announcement about an action at Boeing HQ in Chicago this week, in supporting of the 27,000 Boeing workers, members of the IAM (The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers) who are out on strike now. From conversations I had today with labor activist in Chicago, it appears there will be an action Friday, but noe details have been released as of yet. As soon as they are I will post them here. In about an hour there should be another post with more info on the Boeing strike and a link to an audio interview with IAM spokesperson Connie Kelliher.