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submitted from bellaciao.org

6-1-2004

Working people—the vast and overwhelming majority of the population—confront an unprecedented crisis. The government and the State itself have been captured by a tiny oligarchy of the corporate rich. They have hijacked our political process in a class war of the privileged few against the exploited many.

Business Week described this reality in a feature article (December 1, 2003) entitled ''Waking Up From The American Dream'': ''There has been much talk of the Wal-Martization'' of America. But for years, even during the 1990's boom, much of Corporate America had already embraced stratagems to control labor costs—hiring temps and part-timers, fighting unions, dismantling career ladders and outsourcing to lower-paying contractors at home and abroad.''

Under the cover of ''free trade,'' the corporate and banking oligarchy pitted workers against each other in every part of the planet. In Haiti, K-Mart, J. C. Penny, Disney and corporate giants are paying slave-labor wages of 8 cents to 21 cents an hour. Workers in America are pitted against workers in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America in a mad race to the bottom.

Congressional Budget Office data cited by Paul Krugman in his article ''The Death of Horatio Alger'' (New York Times, December 18, 2003), established that between 1973 and 2000 the average real income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers went into free fall as the income of the top one percent of the population rose by 123 percent and income of the top one-hundredth of 1 percent (0.01%) rose 600 percent. From 2000 to 2004 the disparity escalated.

(continued on ''Our Pages'')

-By John Hartmann, johnhartmann@iglou.com

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submitted from bellaciao.org-By John Hartmann, 6-1-2004