[act-ma] 4/14 - Fight the Right: Come Out Against Sarah Palin & the "Tea Party"

[Bail Out the People Movement - Boston]

*Wednesday, April 14 -- 9:30 am*

*Boston Common Bandstand*

*Come Out Against Sarah Palin and the "Tea Party"

**Fightback Against Racism, Sexism, Anti-LGBT & Anti-Immigrant Bigotry*
 
/*Demand:*/

    * *Healthcare, Jobs, Education, and Housing are a RIGHT!*
    * *Defend the Rights of ALL Immigrants!*
    * *Money for Jobs, Housing, Healthcare, and Education NOT for War
      and Prisons!*
    * *Stop Union Busting!*
    * *Bail Out the People NOT the Banks and Wall St.!*


On Wednesday, April 14 Sarah Palin and the so-called "Tea Party Express" 
has announced that they will hold a rally at the Boston Common Bandstand 
starting at 10:00 am.  This is the same group of ultra-right wing, 
neo-fascist racists that have tried to exploit the current economic 
crisis by using the most vile racist tactics to attack Obama, unions, 
immigration, healthcare, and the environment.  While the demagogues, 
including Fox News and many others, that are in control of this group 
may try and hide behind populist slogans it should be clear to all that 
their true goal is to further the political and economic program of Wall 
St., big oil, the wealthy, and the corporations and they will stop at 
nothing in order to do so.  Let's be clear, there is nothing grassroots 
about any of the "Tea Party" factions, they are all funded by the same 
racist ultra-right organizations such as Freedomworks and Americans for 
Prosperity.  

We can not stand by and allow Sarah Palin and the "Tea Party" to gather 
and try to use racism to divide us with out a response. History has 
shown that only through organizing and mobilizing a strong, anti-racist, 
pro-working-class counterattack against both the economic crisis and 
racist division will we be able to successfully defeat these right-wing, 
neo-fascist organizations and their supporters once and for all.

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*The health care law, racism and fighting the right*
By Fred Goldstein

With 30 million unemployed or underemployed, the failure of the 
just-signed health care law to meet the needs and expectations of the 
population, plus its giveaway to the health care industry, is bound to 
add to the frustration and alienation of the workers.

President Barack Obama's signature was hardly dry when the health 
insurance industry announced its intention to get out of the new legal 
requirement to cover children with pre-existing conditions.

The industry came up with a twisted interpretation of the law that 
clearly violates its intent, as understood by everyone who promoted it 
and everyone who heard about it.

According to the March 29 New York Times, "The authors of the law say 
they meant to ban all forms of discrimination against children with 
pre-existing conditions like asthma, diabetes, birth defects, orthopedic 
problems, leukemia, cystic fibrosis and sickle cell disease. The goal, 
they say, was to provide those youngsters with access to insurance and 
to a full range of benefits once they are in a health plan.

"To insurance companies, the language of the law is not so clear.

"Insurers agree that if they provide insurance for a child, they must 
cover pre-existing conditions. But, they say, the law does not require 
them to write insurance for the child and it does not guarantee the 
'availability of coverage' for all until 2014."

The insurers claim that "if a company sells insurance, it will have to 
cover pre-existing conditions for children covered by the policy. But it 
does not have to sell to somebody with a pre-existing condition. And the 
insurer could increase premiums to cover the additional cost."

*Aetna tells it like it is*

This is what comes of a law leaving the private profit-making corporate 
vultures in charge of health care. They immediately reneged on their 
promises and humiliated the Obama administration.

The Democratic Party leadership had done their bidding. It gave them 
hundreds of billions of dollars in concessions --- particularly the 
onerous mandate forcing 16 million people to buy insurance starting in 
2014. And then these parasites turned around and stabbed the Democrats 
in the back.

A similarly ominous warning was contained in a March 25 Business Week 
interview that Charlie Rose conducted with Ron Williams. Williams is CEO 
of Aetna, which insures 36 million people.

Rose asked Williams if insurance premiums will go up. "The answer is 
yes, and some of the things that will drive those premiums are 
significant additional taxes the industry will ultimately have to pay in 
the first year." Clearly, the health care bill is not going to stop the 
companies from gouging profits.

Rose recited to Williams the line that President Obama has been 
repeating over and over again --- that if you have a policy you like, it 
won't change. Williams said that was not true. The industry might make 
you take a higher-priced policy, forcing workers to pay for unwanted 
benefits.

This kind of obstructionism, right out in the open during the first week 
of the new law, gives a taste of what is in store for the workers and 
the middle class. Dr. Claudia Chaufan of the California Physicians for a 
National Health Program wrote in the Sacramento Bee on March 26: "This 
'historic bill,' instead of eliminating the root of our health care 
woes, further enriches and entrenches a profit-driven health insurance 
industry that makes money when it succeeds in not paying medical bills."
*
What backers of health care law don't say*

The progressive benefits of the law come at the price of excluding 
undocumented workers, further curtailing women's reproductive rights and 
leaving the profiteers in charge. Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of 
National Nurses United, AFL-CIO, gave some examples in the Huffington 
Post of March 24:

. Insurance premiums will continue to climb, as a federal rate insurance 
authority was dropped from the bill.

. Insurers remain in control of what they offer and what will be a 
covered service.

. There are no meaningful restrictions on claims' denials that insurers 
don't want to pay, and the "internal review process" remains in the 
hands of the insurers.

. Companies can more than double charges to employees who fail 
"wellness" programs because they have diabetes, high blood pressure, 
high cholesterol readings or other medical conditions.

. Insurers can sell policies "across state lines," exempting patient 
protections passed in other states. Insurers will likely set up in the 
least-regulated states.

. Insurers can charge three times more based on age, plus more for 
certain conditions, and continue to use marketing techniques to 
cherry-pick healthier, less costly enrollees.

. Insurers can continue to rescind policies and drop coverage for "fraud 
or intentional misrepresentation" --- the main pretext insurance 
companies now use.

. Health benefits will be taxed for the first time, with a 40 percent 
tax on plans whose value exceeds $10,200 for individuals or $27,500 for 
families, starting in 2018.

*Media love to cover Tea Party*

The failure of the law to meet the people's needs and expectations, 
combined with mass unemployment and economic attacks from every 
direction, will further fuel economic and social tensions. This widens 
the political opening for the ultra-right.

The right wing is using the alienation created by the economic crisis to 
foment racism and fascist ideology. It is denouncing the health care 
bill from the right and using the jobs crisis demagogically against the 
Obama administration. And the fascist elements around the Tea Party have 
been given unlimited publicity by the capitalist press.

This publicity is provided as "news." But the news coverage by the big 
business press is highly selective in favor of the right wing. They can 
play something up or they can bury it.

For example, there was a demonstration of more than 200,000 immigrants 
in Washington, D.C., on March 21 demanding justice for 12 million 
undocumented workers. It got a bare mention and was quickly dropped. 
Thousands of anti-war demonstrators in Washington on March 20 were 
almost completely censored. And more than a hundred demonstrations by 
the labor movement against the banks is hardly news at all.

The corporate media continue to publicize the Tea Party, sometimes in 
the guise of criticism, but it gives them publicity nonetheless. This in 
spite of the fact that a racist, homophobic Tea Party mob spit and 
hurled racist epithets at John Lewis and other Black legislators at the 
Capitol building. The mob then hurled homophobic insults at openly gay 
Congressperson Barney Frank.

The press eggs on the Tea Party fascists, knowing that at their 
convention in February Tom Tancredo made a racist speech to a standing 
ovation. He railed against immigrant workers and all oppressed people, 
denouncing them for electing a "socialist president."

*Time to fight the right*

Sarah Palin, another star at that poorly attended convention, is now on 
a Tea-Party-sponsored tour, whipping up the right wing and pleasing the 
fascist elements with her map of offices of Democratic Party 
legislators, accompanied by the slogan "reload."

The Tea Party and fascist elements who gather around it are hardly a 
consolidated movement with a fixed ideology and program. This movement 
is financed by right-wing billionaires behind the Scaife and Koch 
foundations. It was aided by the insurance companies and other corporate 
interests at various times in the struggle against the health care bill 
and environmental legislation.

To be sure, fascism is hardly on the horizon. The dominant threat to the 
working class is still the capitalist state, the police, the FBI, 
Homeland Security and ICE, the courts, etc. And the struggle for jobs 
and to push back the economic crisis must be directed at the capitalist 
government.

But there is growing political erosion in the morale of the workers, the 
oppressed and the political movement because the racist, sexist, 
anti-immigrant and homophobic conglomeration of rightists and fascists 
has gone unopposed. This is dangerous to solidarity and to the fighting 
spirit.

While carrying on the struggle against the economic crisis, it is 
necessary to intervene and block the seemingly unobstructed progress of 
the ultra-right, which thrives on getting the spotlight from the 
capitalist media. Without militant opposition, these right-wing riffraff 
are made to look 10 feet tall.

Sarah Palin is scheduled to speak at a Tea Party rally in Boston on 
April 14. The Bail Out the People Movement is mobilizing to bring forces 
together to oppose this rally. This is an important step. It is time to 
fight the right --- with militant, class struggle methods.

Goldstein is author of the book /"Low-Wage Capitalism,"/ a Marxist 
analysis of globalization and its effects on the U.S. working class. He 
has written numerous articles and speaks on the present economic crisis. 
For more information visit www.lowwagecapitalism.com 
<http://www.lowwagecapitalism.com>.
-- 
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*Bail Out The People Movement
Boston*
617-522-6626
bopmboston at gmail.com <mailto:bopmboston at gmail.com>
http://bopm-boston.blogspot.com

*National Office*
212-633-6646
bailoutpeople at safewebmail.com <mailto:bailoutpeople at safewebmail.com>
http://www.BailOutPeople.org

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