Organized labor’s successful mobilization that retook Congress in 2006 is the first step in a multi-year plan to restore primacy of progressive political forces and ideas in the U.S., AFL-CIO Political Director Karen Ackerman says.

The standard argument for the proposition that a capitalist class is at all socially necessary is that this class undertakes productive investment: it thereby causes the development of the productive forces, which is a condition for social progress.

Congress Members of both parties, not to mention the White House, have already forgotten the anti-war and anti-Bush vote of November 7th (the Republicans lost one more seat in a runoff on Wednesday) and are dreaming of big Christmas presents for war profiteers. Since we Americans apparently have no other need for any money, and since we enjoy paying our taxes so much, they're planning to approve another $160 billion in "emergency" (off the books) cash for the war early next year. That's billion with a B. This will be on top of the $70 billion they provided in October. I hate to play Scrooge here, but ain't that a bit much?

Pelted by a perpetual hail of electrons fired through a cathode ray tube, the pixels on my PC monitor feed me a generous intellectual bounty of words and images emanating from virtually infinite points dotting the globe.

Paul Wolfowitz was interrupted four times by a total of five protesters tonight during his invited Leo and Berry Eizenstat Memorial lecture on the World Bank at the Ahavath Achim Synagogue. The title of his speech was “Why Africa Matters to Americans.”

HUZZAH! The old folks are getting a raise in their monthly pittance next year. We are to be eternally grateful that we are allowed to be blessed by the trickle-down that has finally reached us, Compassionate Conservatism at its best. With this Cost Of Living Allowance, their lives will be so much easier.

With polling data indicating that voters are increasingly discontented about the aimlessness, human and financial cost, and endlessness of the war, Republicans have become paranoid about their chances of holding onto power in Congress.

Accomplishing a logic-defying feat, the wealthiest nation in the world has "attained" the highest rate of homelessness amongst developed countries. 3.5 million human beings experience homelessness each year in the United States. Almost a million are homeless every night.

So when you are at your polling place this November 7 thinking about how your Republican congressperson or Senator isn't so bad or crazy like some of those extremists in Washington, ask yourself, can I afford another two years with this person who has blocked real efforts to provide me with affordable health care coverage?

The conduct of the Republican leadership of Congress, in collaboration with the Bush administration, has been disgraceful. They have shown that they will do whatever it takes to pass legislation that benefits the privileged few.

Change Congress on November 7th

Election 2006: Doomsday for the GOP Agenda

In this print edition...

• Election 2006: Doomsday for the GOP Agenda by Joelle Fishman
• Why Charles Barkley Should be President, by Karin S. Coddon
• Health Matters: Thoughts on Universal Health Care, by Phil E. Benjamin
• Current Letters (updated 10-02-06)
• Current Poetry (updated 10-02-06)

Fuel efficiency has not typically been the calling card of pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles (SUVs). Small hybrid gasoline-electrics are all the rage now among commuters looking to save money at the pump, but similar technology has been slower to gain traction in the “light truck” category.

A qualitatively new form of transnational capital has clearly emerged. Its features include enormous new concentrations of finance capital, new forms of transnational monopoly, huge changes in the technology of mass production and manufacturing, a new global division of labor, and increasing poverty and decline for workers of the world in a global race to the bottom.

Despite Bush administration claims that the economy made strong gains this past year, real median household income did not grow and for full-time, year-round individual workers, real income actually declined more than 1%.

Over the last five years, there has been a new concentration of wealth in the hands of the few in the US. Meanwhile, middle and lower-income families have seen their already precarious financial solvency eroded by rising debt and stagnant wages.

Like the dinosaur, "the US economy is mind-bogglingly enormous, two and a half times as big as the next largest economy in the world and almost as large as that of the six other members of the Group of Seven combined.

Five dollars and fifteen cents, the federal minimum wage (FMW), doesn’t buy much these days. With $5.15 you can almost buy two gallons of gas, almost go to the movies, or almost buy two burgers and a soda – at McDonald’s.

A Republican bill that hid a huge, wolfish tax break for the wealthy inside the sheep’s clothing of an increase in the minimum wage crashed and burned in the Senate on Aug. 3.

With the fifth anniversary of the end of the last recession now approaching, both employment and wages should be fully restored to their pre-recession levels and growing in real terms. Instead, both are still below their 2000-2001 peaks, with no sign of any improvement before the business cycle turns down again.

If anyone ever doubted that the Republican Party is the party of the rich, working tirelessly to make themselves richer off the labor of American workers, those doubts were erased as Republicans moved into action in the final days of the Congressional debate over the federal minimum wage.