Excerpts from newspapers that may be of use for our readers. Abbreviations: NYT=New York Times, GW=Guardian Weekly, LAT=Los Angeles Times

Big oil always big gangsters

NYT, 5/29 — To the Editor: Anyone scandalized by Big Oil’s influence within the government should read “Oil!,” by Upton Sinclair, published in 1927. The book is a fictional expose of unscrupulous business and political practices during the early days of oil exploration and production in California.

Drilling technology may have evolved since then, but Sinclair shows that conflicts of interests, regulators in thrall to industry, “rapacious corporate scoundrels...” sweetheart deals, lease
giveaways, bribery, fraud and the like are nothing new. They have permeated the oil industry since before the days of the Teapot Dome affair in the Harding administration.

Sinclair could have written the book yesterday. What is scandalous is not that such practices exist, but that they have been allowed to persist virtually unchanged for a century.

No visas for the exploited

NYT, 5/23 — Our housing industry, our service industry, our gardening, landscape industry, you name it — it’s been dependent for decades on Mexican labor. None of those people qualify for an employment-based visa. So when the hate mongers say, “Why can’t they wait in line? Why can’t they get a visa?”— there aren’t any visas to get! There’s no line to wait in!

Reds in UAW showed the way

NYT, 5/29 — Striking at a vital plant to achieve an auto-industry domino effect was a tactic first used to good effect in the United States by the United Automobile Workers

The U.A.W. has repeatedly held strikes at crucial parts factories to shut down many assembly plants quickly....In going on strike at a China transmission factory, workers here have Honda by the jugular.

Transmission factories are the most expensive auto plants of all to build...The factory here supplies four Honda plants in China, all of which have been shut down.

Automakers tend to put transmission factories only in the most politically stable and strike-free countries, because  a shutdown for even a day is costly. Until now, China was seen as a safe bet.

But...workers here say now they are operating more by consensus. [Still] there has been no sign that the Chinese authorities are ready to let a cohesive group of labor activists emerge to lead a national independent union.

Summer job? Youth at end of line

NYT, 6/1 — This year is shaping up to be even worse than last for the millions of high school and college students looking for summer jobs.

State and local governments, traditionally among the biggest seasonal employers, are knee-deep in the budget woes....Private employers are also reluctant to hire until the economy shows more solid signs of recovery.

Students seeking summer jobs, generally 16 to 24 years old, are at the end of the job line, behind the jobless baby boomers who are competing with new college graduates who, in turn, are trying to elbow out undergraduates and high school students.

With so many people competing for so few jobs, unemployed youth “are the silent victims of the economy...”

Rich nations cause global misery

GW, 5/21 — The wealthy nations are plundering not only their own resources. The environmental disasters caused by the oil industry in Ecuador and Nigeria are not driven by Ecuadorian or Nigerian demand, but by the thirst for oil in richer nations. Deforestation in Indonesia is driven by the rich world’s demand for palm oil and timber, in Brazil by our hunger for timber and animal feed.

So we find that far from cutting emissions since 1990, as the last government claimed, it has increased them. Wealth wrecks the environment.

“...Capitalism has absorbed the greens.” Instead of seeking to protect the natural world...environmentalists now work on “sustaining human civilisation at the comfort level which the world’s rich people feel is their right.”

[But] “the economic system we rely upon cannot be tamed without collapsing, for it relies upon...growth in order to function...”

System has no future for workers

NYT, 5/29 — ...Powerful companies do not have the best interests of the American people in mind when they are closing in on profits that ancient kingdoms could only envy. BP’s profits are counted in the billions annually....You don’t want to know what people will do for that kind of money.

There is nothing new to us about this. Haven’t we just seen how the giant financial firms almost destroyed the American economy? Wasn’t it just a few weeks before the hideous Deepwater Horizon disaster that a devastating mine explosion in West Virginia — at a mine run by a company with its own hideous safety record — killed 29 coal miners and ripped the heart out of yet another hard-working local community?

The idea of relying on the assurances of these corporate predators that they are looking out for the safety of their workers and the health of surrounding communities and the environment is beyond absurd.       

The oil companies and other giant corporations have a stranglehold on American policies and behavior, and are choking off the prospects of a viable social and economic future for working people and their families.

Breaking promise of child care

NYT, 5/24 — When President Clinton signed into the law that changes he declared would end welfare as we know it,”he vowed that those losing government checks would gain enough support to enable their transition to the workplace.

          “We will protect the guarantees of health care, nutrition and child care, all of which are critical to helping families move from welfare to work,” Mr. Clinton pledged in a radio address that year. Now...states are rolling back child care.

          “You can’t expect a family with young children to get on their feet and get jobs without child care.”

          Yet long before the recession assailed state budgets, subsidized child care was not reaching the vast majority of families in need.

          In 2000, only one in seven children whose families met federal eligibility requirements received aid....“For a single mom, it’s a lottery in many states whether she gets child care or not.”

These ‘entrepreneurs’ really jobless

NYT, 6/2 — Last year was fabulous one for entrepreneurs, at least according to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity....So why all this entrepreneurship last year?

          In a word, unemployment. Booted off company payrolls, millions of Americans had no choice but to try selling themselves. Another term for “entrepreneur” is “self-employed.”

          Self-employment among those 55 to 64 rose to nearly two million, 5% higher than in 2008. Among people over 65, the ranks of the self-employed swelled 29%. Many older people who had expected to retire discovered their 401(k)’s had shrunk and their homes were worthless. So they became “entrepreneurs,” too....Most were worse off than they were before.

Fascists can’t be sure of troops!

NYT, 5/24 — After two months in central Bangkok, anti-government Thai protesters known as the res shirts were arriving home to an increasingly hardened, divided and angry society.

          “I think the red shirt movement has gotten stronger....The shooting actually makes the red movement grow. There are still no winners or losers. But more will happen. I don’t know what it will be.”

          The protesters were demanding that the government step down, but their broader call was for what they called fairness and equality.

          On the day Udon Thani burned, Lt. Col. Kositpong Min-ake of the army said, he was unable to stop the protesters without using an unacceptable level of force. “They are not my enemy,” her said. “Whatever the color of their shirt, they are not my enemy.”

Democracy in action

GW, 5/21 — Britain’s largest trade union claimed it was the victim of a “landmark attack” on the right to strike after the high court on Monday blocked 20 days of walkouts by British Airways cabin crew. Mr. Justice McCombe granted the third injunction against a major transport strike in six months.

BP to workers: Shut up and drill

NYT, 5/27 — Workers from the rig...said that hours before the explosion, gases were leaking through the cement....these leaks were the likely cause of the explosion.

          Andrew Gowers, a spokesman for BP, said that there was no industry standard for the casing to be in deepwater wells...

          “BP engineers evaluate various factors for each well to determine the most appropriate casing strategy,” he said.

          BP’s decision was “without a doubt a riskier way to go,”....the chief mechanic testified Wednesday that he witnessed a “skirmish”on the rig between a BP well site leader and crew members.... “Well, this is how it’s going to be,” the BP official said.