The Michigan Socialist -- Vol. 1, No. 3

[MSchreader]

For the HTML of the issue:
www.michigansocialist.net/news

For the PDF of the issue:
www.michigansocialist.net/news/tms200309.pdf

Martin

[MSchreader]

1. Kick

:kick:

[MSchreader]

4. Kick again

:kick:

[MSchreader]

5. Last time -- I swear!

:kick:

[kentuck]

2. Here's a taste:

<snip>
ACCORDING TO conventional wisdom, workers who are lucky enough to have a job at any given moment should be grateful to their employers for "giving" them one.

In exchange for their labor, the owning class "pays" them a certain salary. Of course, socialists have always questioned the meaningfulness of this terminology.

Value is produced by those who, well, work. General Motors gets the money that goes into both wages and profits from selling cars. Those cars are manufactured by workers.

A study done in 1995 estimated that for every dollar paid to American workers by manufacturing companies, the latter took in about $5.39 in profits.

(And that's the ratio for workers with "good jobs" in union shops. Imagine the ratio everywhere else!)

So, in a much more meaningful sense, the workers who manufacture the cars sold by General Motors could be said to pay their bosses the bulk of what they earn by manufacturing and selling cars.

As Socialists, the core of our political perspective is that executives and stockholders are worthless employees who provide no useful service in exchange for the generous income they are paid by the working class.

As such, they should be fired.
....more

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It always helps to give a little sample from the link, I have found. And Martin always has interesting stuff...

[MSchreader]

3. Ben always writes provocative stuff

He's the one who compared the Benton Harbor rebellion to an uprising by Shias in Iraq in the last issue. He makes my job as editor pretty easy.

Martin

[davsand]

6. Creepy stuff about the Feds taking over the Detroit Police Dept.

I wasn't sure it could get much worse than what was said about the Detroit PD, but I was wrong. AshKKKroft and his minions being handed control of the Police Dept is just creepy as all get out. I'd seriously think about getting out of there until we get rid of the Bush Junta and the evil AshKKKroft.

Come to think of it, however, I doubt that any of us are safe with those people in charge...

Oh--BTW, any new developments on Kwame Kilpatrick the Detroit Mayor?

Laura

[ScreamingMeemie]

7. Funny how that seems to have faded off the pages of our newspapers

I think they now have bigger fish to fry with the popular senator Sander Levin. Try as they might, they can't get him to go away. I love him.

I think it was an attempted railroad of Kilpatrick. My jury is still out on him as Mayor.

Major problem in Detroit? The school district. Parent's should have control over who's on the board, and there are way to many charter schools. There is a big protest in Lansing today.

[MSchreader]

9. It was a railroad

Check out the Special Report from us (me, actually), in the "Michigan" section of the website.

Martin

[MSchreader]

8. Other than the fact that we saved his skin?

Not really. But a whole new fight is brewing now, which will pit us against the Kilpatrick administration. Gov. Granholm struck a slimy deal with the Dan Sikkema (Repuke Speaker of the Michigan State House): Detroit gets its right to vote for a (now toothless) School Board; in exchange, Detroit residents will have to pay for 15 new private charter schools in the City -- and contribute to upwards of 135 more throughout the rest of the state.

I call it: "Granholm's Poll Tax".

Martin

[JanMichael]

10. Interesting.

Why the charter school fiasco?

[ScreamingMeemie]

11. The Detroit Public School System has been allowed to become a

joke. Enter Edison Charter Schools (I think around 10 years ago now) and it has snowballed from there. It seems as if there is one on every corner. These parents need a choice.

[JanMichael]

13. I thought Edison was the cure not the disease?

So what choices are left? Public failed, Private failed, is there a catagory that I'm unfamiliar with?

Surely not turning over the infrastructure, money, to religious (or others, it matters little to me) groups with little oversite?

[MSchreader]

14. TRADITIONAL public failed

Detroit used to have an interesting experiment in community control of public education. In the early 1970s, a federal consent decree established Local School/Community Organizations as the basis for running schools.

The LSCOs were made up of parents, teachers and school workers, and they had authority to run each school, in cooperation with other LSCOs in the district. They were responsible for everything from hiring to supply requisitioning. It was a working (stress WORKING) example of the benefits of community control -- and it was as close to real democratic control of public education as has even been seen in the U.S. (I consider it a model for democratic control of education under socialism.)

But, in the 1980s, the state (and eventually the city) government began dismantling the LSCOs (I went to the last All-District SCO Congress in 1995). The public schools began to deteriorate about the same time. Coincidence? I think not.

Since then, the schools have went to shite -- thanks to the meddling of the capitalist politicians and their paymasters. Now there's very little left of the progressive work the LSCO system accomplished. The one thing I will say about Coleman Young is that he did fight to protect the LSCOs from the claws of the Outstaters.

His successors, on the other hand, have been whores for Outstate Repukes from the beginning.

Martin

[MSchreader]

12. "Bipartisanship"

Which usually means: Dems kiss GOP ass; GOP kicks everyone else's ass.

Martin