UAW President Rory L. Gamble Statement on Federal Stimulus Legislation [feedly]

UAW President Rory L. Gamble Statement on Federal Stimulus Legislation
https://uaw.org/uaw-president-rory-l-gamble-statement-federal-stimulus-legislation/

DETROIT — The legislation unanimously passed in the Senate last night takes important steps for the Nation as we battle the public health and economic crisis stemming from this tragic pandemic.

One of the main things that concerns UAW members is the package fails to provide front line workers with the health and safety protections necessary to keep them from contracting Covid-19. It includes no enforceable workplace standards and does not provide enough resources to frontline workers who are the first line of defense.

Every day this week, the UAW has had to report to members on the deaths of a colleague and friend, and the impact of the illness in all our sectors that have had positive test results.

We are thankful that this stimulus package can help workers, our workplaces, and economy during this crisis. And Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi helped improve this package significantly so that it reaches directly into the hands of those desperately in need of assistance. For these reasons, we urge that this Bill be passed by the House and signed into law quickly.

But we must measure our concern for the economy with the health, safety and well-being of our members, their families and the community. To speed up a return to the workplace too soon without relying on scientific data, CDC guidelines and adequate protections could spike the curve of those infected. Haste in this instance can lead to greater infection, more deaths and a disastrous impact on our economy over the long haul.

We ask the Administration and Congress to enact workplace protections. And we ask all those making policy decisions and in corporate boardrooms to be guided by one simple question: "Would you send your family, your son or daughter, into the workplace and be 100% certain they will be safe?"

The post UAW President Rory L. Gamble Statement on Federal Stimulus Legislation appeared first on UAW.

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Without fast action from Congress, low-wage workers will be ineligible for unemployment benefits during the coronavirus crisis

https://www.epi.org/blog/without-fast-action-from-congress-low-wage-workers-will-be-ineligible-for-unemployment-benefits-during-the-coronavirus-crisis/ 

Brass on anti-Muslim violence in India [feedly]

Brass on anti-Muslim violence in India
http://understandingsociety.blogspot.com/2020/03/brass-on-anti-muslim-violence-in-india.html

The occurrence of anti-Muslim violence, arson, and murder in New Delhi last month is sometimes looked at a simply an unpredictable episode provoked by protest against the citizenship legislation enacted by the BJP and Prime Minister Modi. (See Jeffrey Gettleman and Maria Abi-Habib's New York Times article for a thoughtful and detailed account of the riots in New Delhi; link.) However, Paul Brass demonstrated several decades ago in The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India, that riots and violent episodes like this have a much deeper explanation in Indian politics. His view is that the political ideology of Hindutva (Hindu nationalism) is used by BJP and other extremist parties to advance its own political fortunes. This ideology (and the political program it is designed to support) is a prime cause of continuing violence by Hindu extremists against Muslims and other non-Hindu minorities in India.

Brass asks a handful of crucial and fundamental questions: Do riots serve a function in Indian politics? What are the political interests that are served by intensifying mistrust, fear, and hatred of Muslims by ordinary Hindu workers, farmers, and shopkeepers? How does a framework of divisive discourse contribute to inter-group hatred and conflict? "I intend to show also that a hegemonic discourse exists in Indian society, which I call the communal discourse, which provides a framework for explaining riotous violence." (24). Throughout Brass keeps the actors in mind -- including leaders, organizers, and participants: "It is one of the principal arguments of this book that we cannot understand what happens in riots until we examine in detail the multiplicity of roles and persons involved in them". (29) Here are the central themes of the book:

The whole political order in post-Independence north India and many, if not most of its leading as well as local actors—more markedly so since the death of Nehru—have become implicated in the persistence of Hindu-Muslim riots. These riots have had concrete benefits for particular political organizations as well as larger political uses. (6)

The maintenance of communal tensions, accompanied from time to time by lethal rioting at specific sites, is essential for the maintenance of militant Hindu nationalism, but also has uses for other political parties, organizations, and even the state and central governments. (9)

Brass documents his interpretation through meticulous empirical research, including a review of the demographic and political history of regions of India, a careful timeline of anti-Muslim riots and pogroms since Independence, and extensive interviews with participants, officials, and onlookers in one particularly important city, Aligarh, in Uttar Pradesh (northern India). Brass gives substantial attention to the discourse chosen by Hindu nationalist parties and leaders, and he argues that violent attacks are deliberately encouraged and planned.

Most commonly, the rhetoric is laced with words that encourage its members not to put up any longer with the attacks of the other but to retaliate against their aggression. There are also specific forms of action that are designed to provoke the other community into aggressive action, which is then met with a stronger retaliatory response. (24)

Brass asks the fundamental question:

What interests are served and what power relations are maintained as a consequence of the wide acceptance of the reality of popular communal antagonisms and the inevitability of communal violence? (11)

(We can ask the same question about the rise of nationalist and racist discourse in the United States in the past fifteen years: what interests are served by according legitimacy to the language of white supremacy and racism in our politics?)

Brass rejects the common view that riots in India are "spontaneous" or "responsive to provocation"; instead, he argues that communal Hindu-nationalist riots are systemic and strategic. Violence derives from a discourse of Hindu-Muslim hostility and the legitimization of violence. Given this view that riots and anti-Muslim violence are deliberate political acts in India, Brass offers an analysis of what goes into "making of a riot". He argues that there are three analytically separable phases: preparation / rehearsal; activation / enactment; and explanation / interpretation (15). This view amounts to an interpretation of the politics of Hindu nationalism as an "institutionalized riot system" (15).

When one examines the actual dynamics of riots, one discovers that there are active, knowing subjects and organizations at work engaged in a continuous tending of the fires of communal divisions and animosities, who exercise by a combination of subtle means and confrontational tactics a form of control over the incidence and timing of riots." (31)

This deliberate provocation of violence was evident in the riots in Gujarat in 2002, according to Dexter Filkins in a brilliant piece of journalism on these issues in the New Yorker (link):

The most sinister aspect of the riots was that they appeared to have been largely planned and directed by the R.S.S. Teams of men, armed with clubs, guns, and swords, fanned out across the state's Muslim enclaves, often carrying voter rolls and other official documents that led them to Muslim homes and shops.

Especially important in the question of civil strife and ethnic conflict in any country is the behavior and effectiveness of the police. Do the police work in an even-handed way to suppress violent acts and protect all parties neutrally? And does the justice system investigate and punish the perpetrators of violence? In India the track record is very poor, including in the riots in the early 1990s in Mumbai and in 2002 in Gujarat. Brass writes:

The government of India and the state governments do virtually nothing after a riot to prosecute and convict persons suspected of promoting or participating in riots. Occasionally, but less frequently in recent years, commissions of inquiry are appointed. If the final reports are not too damaging to the government of the day or to the political supporters of that government in the Hindu or Muslim communities, the report may be published More often than not, there is a significant delay before publication. Some reports are never made public. (65)

This pattern was repeated in Delhi during the most recent period of anti-Muslim pogrom. The police stand by while Hindutva thugs attack Muslims, burn homes and shops, and murder the innocent. Conversely, when the police function as representatives of the whole of civil society rather than supporters of a party, they are able to damp down inter-religious killing quickly (as Brass documents in his examination of the period of relative peace in Aligarh between 1978-80 to 1988-90).

Brass is especially rigorous in his development of the case for the deliberate and strategic nature of anti-Muslim bigotry within the politics of Hindu nationalism and its current government. But other experts agree. For example, Ashutosh Varshney described the dynamics of religious conflict in India in very similar terms to those offered by Brass (link):

Organized civic networks, when intercommunal, not only do a better job of withstanding the exogenous communal shocks—like partitions, civil wars, and desecration of holy places; they also constrain local politicians in their strategic behavior. Politicians who seek to polarize Hindu and Muslims for the sake of electoral advantage can tear at the fabric of everyday engagement through the organized might of criminals and gangs. All violent cities in the project showed evidence of a nexus of politicians and criminals. Organized gangs readily disturbed neighborhood peace, often causing migration from communally heterogeneous to communally homogenous neighborhoods, as people moved away in search of physical safety. Without the involvement of organized gangs, large-scale rioting and tens and hundreds of killings are most unlikely, and without the protection afforded by politicians, such criminals cannot escape the clutches of law. Brass has rightly called this arrangement an institutionalized riot system. (378)

A deep look at the anti-Muslim riots in India, and the social and class interests they serve.

Dan Little: Varshney treats these issues in greater detail in his 2002 book, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India.

The greatest impetus to the political use of the politics of hate and the program of Hindu nationalism was the campaign to destroy the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, UP, in 1992. For an informative and factual account of the Babri Mosque episode and its role within the current phase of Hindu nationalism in India, see Abdul Majid, "The Babri Mosque and Hindu Extremists Movements"; link  

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G.M. Suspends Production Indefinitely and Cuts Paychecks: Live Updates [feedly]

G.M. Suspends Production Indefinitely and Cuts Paychecks: Live Updates
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/business/stock-market-rises-coronavirus.html

General Motors said on Thursday it would suspend production at its North American factories indefinitely, lay off 6,500 salaried employees and cut executive pay, signaling that the automaker believes that coronavirus will take a serious toll on its business.

"We are actively monitoring the situation and the possible impact of the crisis on consumer demand," a G.M. spokesman, David Barnas, said. "When we can safely resume production, we will."

G.M. and other automakers shut down their North American plants in the last few days in an effort to prevent the spread of the virus. Most had hoped to restart production next week, but have now scaled back those plans.

Ford Motor aims to restart production at several plants across the United States on April 14, and a plant in Mexico on April 6. Fiat Chrysler said its plants would stay closed until April 14, "dependent upon the various state stay-in-place orders and the readiness of each facility to return to production." Toyota Motor said its North American plants would remain closed until at least April 17.



The United Automobile Workers union has been pushing G.M., Ford and Fiat Chrysler to keep their plants closed.

I
A General Motors assembly plant in Lansing, Mich. The automaker announced emergency measures on Thursday.Credit...Brittany Greeson/The New York Times

"The only guideline in a boardroom should be management asking themselves, 'Would I send my family — my son or my daughter — into the plant and be 100 percent certain they are safe,'" Rory Gamble, the union's president, said in a statement.

To cut costs, G.M. said it was suspending development work on some new models. Senior executives will take a pay cut of 5 percent or 10 percent, and defer 20 percent of their salaries to be paid at a later date. The 6,500 salaried put on furlough will receive 75 percent of their normal pay.

Wall Street shakes off record unemployment claims.

Boeing is up nearly 90 percent this week. American Airlines has jumped almost 50 percent. Carnival Corporation has soared nearly that much as well.

Wall Street has been in rally mode, as investors bid up shares of companies that were set to receive support from Washington's $2 trillion coronavirus aid bill.

With the package advancing through the Senate, the gains continued on Thursday. The S&P 500 climbed 6.2 percent, even after the government reported a staggering jump in unemployment claims by workers.

As it has been all week, investors' focus was on companies likely to get help from the spending plan that passed the Senate on Wednesday night. The House of Representatives and President Trump are expected to approve it.

Boeing rose nearly 14 percent on Thursday because the package specifically sets aside $17 billion for "businesses critical to maintaining national security" — language that was seen as intended at least partly for the aircraft manufacturer and key Pentagon contractor.

Other companies that were hit hard in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak continued to soar. American and Delta Air Lines rose nearly 2 percent. Carnival was up about 14 percent.

The gains on Thursday also spread to Europe, with major benchmarks there reversing their losses to end the day sharply higher. The FTSE 100 in Britain climbed more than 2 percent.



The three-day rally has lifted the S&P 500 by more than 17 percent, its best such run since 1933, according to data from Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst for S&P Dow Jones Indices. Most of those gains came on Tuesday, when stocks rose 9.4 percent, amid growing hope that the large stimulus package would offer support to an economy crippled by the outbreak and efforts to curtail the spread of the virus.



But the economic crisis is perhaps the most daunting since World War II. On Thursday, a government report showed a record rise in weekly applications for unemployment benefits, which jumped to nearly 3.3 million from 282,000 in a week.

Until now, the record occurred in the fall of 1982, when 695,000 Americans applied for benefits in one week. At that point, the United States was more than a year into a recession, and the unemployment rate had passed 10 percent.

The numbers, released by the Labor Department on Thursday, are some of the first hard data on the economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic, which has shut down whole sectors of American life.


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How Much Each State Will Receive From the Coronavirus Relief Fund in the CARES Act [feedly]

How Much Each State Will Receive From the Coronavirus Relief Fund in the CARES Act
https://www.cbpp.org/research/how-much-each-state-will-receive-from-the-coronavirus-relief-fund-in-the-cares-act

The new bipartisan economic stimulus legislation — known as the CARES Act — contains significant new resources to help states address their massive, immediate budget problems due to COVID-19, though states will almost certainly need more aid in coming months.

The centerpiece of the state aid is the $150 billion Coronavirus Relief Fund, which state, tribal, and local governments can use this year to meet costs connected to the virus. Each state will receive at least $1.25 billion — though the District of Columbia will only receive about $500 million — while the most populous states (California and Texas) will receive over $10 billion each, we estimate. (See Table 1.) In most states, a portion of the funding will go to local governments serving populations over 500,000. Tribal governments will receive $8 billion.

The CARES Act also includes $30 billion for elementary and secondary schools and colleges and universities, $25 billion for mass transit systems, $5 billion for community development block grants (30 percent of which will go to state governments), $3.5 billion for child care, and $400 million to prepare for elections, among other funding directed to states.

States and tribes are incurring huge new costs as they seek to contain and treat the coronavirus and respond to the virus-induced spike in joblessness and related human needs. At the same time, they're projecting sharply lower tax revenues due to the widespread collapse of economic activity brought about by the virus' spread and needed containment activities. If they respond to this dire fiscal crisis by laying off state and tribal employees, scaling back government contracts for businesses, and cutting public services and other forms of spending, those actions will make the recession worse. (Tribes are uniquely vulnerable to the downturn since tribal businesses deeply affected by the virus and downturn, such as casinos, often generate vital government revenue for tribes to run programs such as public health and child care.) Given the economy's extremely rapid decline and the extraordinary damage being done to state, tribal, and local budgets, federal policymakers very likely will need to come back and provide more help to states and families affected by the crisis.

TABLE 1
Distribution of Coronavirus Relief Fund, by State
State	Total distribution (millions)
Alabama	$1,901
Alaska	$1,250
Arizona	$2,822
Arkansas	$1,250
California	$15,321
Colorado	$2,233
Connecticut	$1,382
Delaware	$1,250
District of Columbia	$495
Florida	$8,328
Georgia	$4,117
Hawaii	$1,250
Idaho	$1,250
Illinois	$4,914
Indiana	$2,610
Iowa	$1,250
Kansas	$1,250
Kentucky	$1,732
Louisiana	$1,803
Maine	$1,250
Maryland	$2,344
Massachusetts	$2,673
Michigan	$3,873
Minnesota	$2,187
Mississippi	$1,250
Missouri	$2,380
Montana	$1,250
Nebraska	$1,250
Nevada	$1,250
New Hampshire	$1,250
New Jersey	$3,444
New Mexico	$1,250
New York	$7,543
North Carolina	$4,067
North Dakota	$1,250
Ohio	$4,533
Oklahoma	$1,534
Oregon	$1,635
Pennsylvania	$4,964
Puerto Rico	$2,241
Rhode Island	$1,250
South Carolina	$1,996
South Dakota	$1,250
Tennessee	$2,648
Texas	$11,243
Utah	$1,250
Vermont	$1,250
Virginia	$3,310
Washington	$2,953
West Virginia	$1,250
Wisconsin	$2,258
Wyoming	$1,250
Territories*	$263
Tribal governments	$8,000
U.S. TOTAL	$150,000

*Guam, Virgin Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa

Source: CBPP estimates using population data from the U.S. Census Bureau

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Enlighten Radio:LIVE 5:30 -- The End of the Road show -- tonight

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Triple Crisis: Economic Crisis Was Foreshadowed Before the Coronavirus [feedly]

Economic Crisis Was Foreshadowed Before the Coronavirus
http://triplecrisis.com/economic-crisis-was-foreshadowed-before-the-coronavirus/

By Alejandro Nadal

Republished from La Jornada, March 11, 2020, with permission.

It is with great sadness that we announce that Alejandro Nadal, an economist, lawyer, professor at the  Centro de Estudios Económicos (CEE) of the Colegio de México, and a longtime contributor to Triple Crisis blog, passed away on March 17 after a short time with fast-moving cancer. As former D&S co-editor and former Triple Crisis administrator Timothy A. Wise put it, "A great loss for us all, far too young and otherwise healthy and vibrant. Like Frank Ackerman. Tough times, just when we need those clear, critical minds most."  This article was his last for the Mexico City daily newspaper La Jornada, where he was a columnist. It was submitted on March 10 and published on March 11, just six days before he died. Even though he wrote it almost two weeks ago and the news is moving so quickly, it still seems to capture powerfully the current moment and the economic context of the pandemic. The journal Sin Permiso, on whose editorial board Nadal served, has posted an obituary and tribute here, and has made available a pdf compiling some of his articles.  —Eds. 

Cycles and crises in capitalism can happen in an irregular way. This is part of the anomalous movement of an economy that is inherently unstable. The great crisis of 2008 was the result of such processes. And to bring an economy that has fallen into imbalance back to life, you need to inject it with liquidity in good quantities. For example, the monetary easing policy measures implemented by the Federal Reserve were felt before the crisis and their speculative effects began to spread throughout the economy from 2009–2010. Astronomical amounts went into the pension funds and treasury departments of large corporations, where they served to fuel global speculation. But what they did not do was promote investment and employment.

The recovery process has been widely publicized, but the reality is that if by recovery we mean a more or less prolonged period of growth, then that has manifested itself. But, on the other hand, if that growth has been very slow and job creation has been weak, then the recovery can be characterized as a long recession. Even before this major recession broke out, it was clear that quantitative easing schemes in monetary policy were not working to promote the real economy. All they had achieved was to promote share buybacks, carry trades, in which large corporations took speculation to all ends of the earth, in territories where lower yields prevailed.

Faced with this picture of fragility, with a lazy U.S. economy creating poor-quality jobs, a reluctant Europe and the Chinese and Indian economies falling into recession, the specter of a trade war with all its implications, very marked imbalances in the entire world economy and the specter of a global crisis, is becoming clearer.

And in the face of the widespread threat of a recession looming over the world economy, things are getting confused. And the first thing that needs to be clearly observed is the prospect of a crisis that is intensifying. The new coronavirus encourages people to stay home and avoid travel, cutting demand for air travel and hotel services significantly. Production cuts in China and elsewhere have disrupted value chains. This process, in turn, has triggered a steady stream of alarm warnings about how the now infamous virus will affect the rest of the economy.

For the U.S. economy, the longer the pandemic lasts and the more intense the efforts to counteract it—although for the moment the situation remains very uncertain because so many places are affected and so many people have been harmed—the severity of the situation has not been able to be accurately assessed.

For an economy that was already in a state of semi-stagnation, the situation has become very complicated. To begin with, with China everything depends on the speed with which the global epidemic can be brought under control, the prospects for curbing it and the process of massive restrictions and quarantines never before seen. That country is suffering its first economic contraction since 1971 and the consequences will be felt throughout the global economy. If these procedures do not work, recession will be inevitable.

Several analysts predict falls of 2% and even 3% in the world's GDP if the recession is declared and extended further. But let no one be fooled in this context. The tremors that have been predicted have been present for months and the remedies that were supposedly designed to ease the pain have intensified them. The contradictions of capitalism have been felt since the crisis of 2008 and the remedies do not signify that we have overcome these problems. In any case, those most vulnerable to the crisis of the pandemic remain the poorest and most exploited by the capitalist system. Under capitalism, this will continue to be the history and the fate of the exploited of the earth.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version).

Alejandro Nadal was a professor at the Centro de Estudios Económicos (CEE) of the Colegio de México

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