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<font face="Arial"><big><big><b><font color="#990000">Wednesday, April
14 – 9:30 am</font></b></big></big><br>
<br>
<big><big><b>Boston Common Bandstand</b></big></big><br>
<br>
<b><big><big><big><font color="#990000">Come Out Against Sarah
Palin and the “Tea Party”<small><small><br>
<br>
</small></small></font></big></big></big></b><b><big><big><big><font
color="#990000"><font color="#000000">Fightback Against Racism,
Sexism, Anti-LGBT & Anti-Immigrant Bigotry</font></font></big></big></big></b><br>
<br>
<i><big><b>Demand:</b></big></i><br>
</font>
<ul>
<li><font color="#990000"><big><big><b><font face="Arial">Healthcare,
Jobs, Education, and Housing are a RIGHT!</font></b></big></big></font></li>
<li><font color="#990000"><big><big><b><font face="Arial">Defend the
Rights of ALL Immigrants!</font></b></big></big></font></li>
<li><font color="#990000"><big><big><b><font face="Arial">Money for
Jobs, Housing, Healthcare, and Education NOT for War and Prisons!</font></b></big></big></font></li>
<li><font color="#990000"><big><big><b><font face="Arial">Stop Union
Busting!</font></b></big></big></font></li>
<li><font color="#990000"><big><big><b><font face="Arial">Bail Out
the People NOT the Banks and Wall St.!</font></b></big></big></font></li>
</ul>
<font face="Arial"><br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
</font>
<hr size="2" width="100%"><font face="Arial"><big><big><b><font
color="#990000">The health care law, racism and fighting the right</font></b></big></big><br>
By Fred Goldstein<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
“To insurance companies, the language of the law is not so clear.<br>
<br>
“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.”<br>
<br>
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.”<br>
<br>
<b>Aetna tells it like it is</b><br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.”<br>
<b><br>
What backers of health care law don’t say</b><br>
<br>
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:<br>
<br>
• Insurance premiums will continue to climb, as a federal rate
insurance authority was dropped from the bill.<br>
<br>
• Insurers remain in control of what they offer and what will be a
covered service.<br>
<br>
• 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.<br>
<br>
• 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.<br>
<br>
• Insurers can sell policies “across state lines,” exempting patient
protections passed in other states. Insurers will likely set up in the
least-regulated states.<br>
<br>
• 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.<br>
<br>
• Insurers can continue to rescind policies and drop coverage for
“fraud or intentional misrepresentation” — the main pretext insurance
companies now use.<br>
<br>
• 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.<br>
<br>
<b>Media love to cover Tea Party</b><br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.”<br>
<br>
<b>Time to fight the right</b><br>
<br>
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.”<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<small>Goldstein is author of the book <i>“Low-Wage Capitalism,”</i> 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 <a
href="http://www.lowwagecapitalism.com">www.lowwagecapitalism.com</a>.</small><br>
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<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
<hr><font face="arial" size="2"><br>
<b>Bail Out The People Movement<br>
Boston</b><br>
617-522-6626<br>
<a href="mailto:bopmboston@gmail.com">bopmboston@gmail.com</a><br>
<a href="http://bopm-boston.blogspot.com">http://bopm-boston.blogspot.com</a><br>
</font>
<p><font face="arial" size="2"><b>National Office</b><br>
212-633-6646<br>
<a href="mailto:bailoutpeople@safewebmail.com">bailoutpeople@safewebmail.com</a>
<br>
<a href="http://www.BailOutPeople.org">http://www.BailOutPeople.org</a>
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