Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit


WHOSE CONTRACT? WHOSE AMERICA?
Part One

By Jean Bowdish

Just what is the Republican Party's "Contract With America"? Is
this contract the result of some negotiations? Or is it the big
brass's version of how things should be?

Let's look at some of the "money items" in this so-called
contract offer, starting with the "American Dream Restoration
Act." What is that?

If the Republicans say it's something that's got to be restored,
they're admitting it's something most people don't have. And
their act won't change things.

The Republicans want a $500-per-child tax credit, a repeal of the
marriage penalty tax, and the creation of an "American Dream
Savings Account" for middle-class tax relief. 

Most working people, much less the millions who are not working
full-time, are no longer considered part of the middle class. 

Since 1989 the median annual income for a working family has
dropped by $2,344. According to the last census report, a million
more families fell below the poverty line. About 25 percent of
all children live in poverty.

This means most families need things like Medicaid, Head Start,
school lunches and other entitlement programs--the very programs
targeted by the Gingrich/Helms clan. Add to this the proposed
cuts in education, mass transit, job training and student loans
and it becomes clear the $500-per-child tax credit won't even
come close to improving workers' living conditions.

At that point there will be nothing left to put in the "American
Dream Savings Account." 

SUGAR-COATED TRAP

One of the Republicans' sugar-coated bargaining chips is the
"Senior Citizens Fairness Act." What this act really does is open
the back door for cutting Social Security benefits. 

Today, many people receiving Social Security have to work in
order to have enough money to pay their bills. But the government
puts a limit on how much money you can earn before your Social
Security payments are cut. The Republicans want to raise that
ceiling.

But that means that anyone who can work more will do so, because
Social Security by itself isn't enough to live on. And once the
government sees a greater average income for working seniors, it
will see less of a need for "high" Social Security benefits.

The second part of this act is overtly geared to those who are
better off. The act would find ways, through tax incentives, to
allow older people to keep more of what they have earned over the
years. 

Republicans have never been known to want tax incentives that are
staggered to benefit the lowest earners. Any across-the-board tax
change automatically benefits the highest incomes.

At a 5-percent saving, someone making $100,000 would retain
$5,000; someone earning only $10,000 would keep just $500.

JOBS AND BETTER WAGES? NOT LIKELY

Then there's the "Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act." Sounds
great--more jobs and better wages.

That, of course, is what Clinton promised. And even though
government and business claim the economy is better, it hasn't
improved by creating full-time jobs at decent wages with full
benefits. 

"Small business incentives, capital gains cut and indexation,
neutral cost recovery, risk assessment/cost-benefit analysis,
strengthening the Regulatory Flexibility Act and unfunded mandate
reform to create jobs and raise worker wages," is how the New
York Times describes this act.

What's in there that will create decent jobs? This is just a
re-hash of Reagan's trickle-down theory that never got past the
billionaires' wallets.

Ever since Reaganomics, most jobs that have been created are
either temporary or part-time, no-benefit jobs. This trend has
continued under the Clinton administration.

"Neutral cost recovery," "risk assessment/cost-benefit analysis,"
and "unfunded mandate reform" are catch phrases that do not
equate to increased jobs and benefits. 

"Cost-benefit analysis" has come to mean bigger profits through
increased production with a smaller work force. "Risk assessment"
is obvious: How much can they get away with? 

'COMMON SENSE' FROM REPUBLICANS?

What is this "Common Sense Legal Reform Act?" Workers' common
sense or the bosses'? 

This act includes "reasonable limits on punitive damages." In
other words when corporate negligence or intentional assault is
proven, there will be a low limit on how much money they'll have
to pay in damages.

This could prove to be very important to the tobacco industry,
oil companies, and their ilk. 

Exxon has already been ordered to pay $5 billion in punitive
damages for the Valdez oil spill. That firm will probably want
this act to be retroactive.

One of the most important effects of the Republican's "Contract
With America" is that it sets the stage for a united, mass fight
back movement.


WHOSE CONTRACT? WHOSE AMERICA?
Part Two

By Shelley Ettinger

Of all the sections of the "Contract with  America," the "Taking
Back Our Streets Act" is the only one that's honestly named. It
is designed to assert the ruling class's full ownership and
control of the country and its criminal justice system. 

The act is overtly aimed at heightening repression. It's innately
racist and anti-poor. And it's meant to serve as a substitute for
the only thing that could provide some measure of real justice in
this country--jobs.

The proposal includes things like "truth in sentencing." This
would ensure that prisoners are not released on parole before
their full sentence is served.

It would also revise the crime bill passed earlier this year to
divert even more funds toward hiring police and building prisons.

The right wing portrays all this as a matter of "keeping
dangerous criminals off the streets." In reality, it would keep
the prison population--poor people and a disproportionate number
of Black, Latino and Native people--behind bars for the crime of
being poor and/or people of color. 

USA #1 JAILER

The U.S. leads the world in the number of people in prison as a
proportion of population. There is no justice for the vast
majority of prisoners.

Many have committed no crime at all. A large number of those
behind bars are there because they can't raise bail. People of
color are railroaded by the racist system, from cops to courts. 

Others, driven to desperation by unemployment and poverty, are
hauled in for "crimes" of survival, including crimes associated
with drug use. The same system that drives people to addiction
then offers them prison instead of treatment. Others are caught
up in the violence engendered by a system based on inequity and
exploitation. 

>From the moment of arrest Third-World prisoners face racist
violence at the hands of cops and prison guards. Women, gay and
transgendered prisoners face particularly harsh sexual violence.

Herded in overcrowded prisons, subject to brutal treatment,
without adequate exercise or medical care, all are denied the
constitutional right to freedom from cruel or unusual punishment.

DEATH PENALTY

But there's more to "taking back our streets." The centerpiece is
a little item termed "effective death penalty provisions."

The death penalty has long been a favorite of the right wing. Yet
even bourgeois criminologists admit that the death penalty serves
no purpose from the point of view of law enforcement or crime
deterrence.

That's never been the real point. The death penalty issue is pure
demagoguery. It's a barely veiled appeal to base racism. Wherever
it is in force, statistics show, the death penalty is used
disproportionately against people of color.

According to the the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, as
of January 1994 fully 40 percent of death-row prisoners were
Black, compared to 12 percent of the population at large. Half of
all death-row inmates are people of color.

WHOSE FAMILY?

The Family Reinforcement Act is another old Republican canard,
resuscitated from the early days of the Reagan administration. 
Its purpose is "to reinforce the central role of families in
American society," they say. Whose family?

Not the families of the poor, which will be broken up under the
plans to do away with welfare programs. Not lesbian and gay
families, whose rights the reactionaries would utterly deny. Not
families with working parents desperately seeking affordable
child care.

Not African American, Latino, Asian, Arab or Native families. The
Gingrich crowd would nail the final blows in the coffin of
affirmative action, effectively denying the right to scholarship
funds and education for young people of color, and access to jobs
for their parents.

So what is the point of the Family Reinforcement Act? Some
provisions--like "child support enforcement" and
"elderly-dependent care tax credits"--sound good at first. But a
closer look reveals the real purpose is to relieve the government
of responsibility for providing services for children and the
elderly by shifting the onus onto the individual. Using the
mechanism of tax credits--which somehow never seem to really show
up as real cash in the wallets of working-class people--could
provide a cover for shifting away from a whole range of
government programs like Head Start, WIC, Social Security, etc.

Other aspects of the proposal are also ominous. "Strengthening
parents' rights regarding their children's education"? That would
be fine if Helms et al meant, for example, supporting African
American parents pushing for a true telling of the history of the
slave trade in elementary-school curricula.

But he has rather the opposite idea. In this case "parents'
rights" is akin to the vicious, racist old "states' rights;" both
are actually avenues to resist the  force of progressive national
movements and maintain the sway of reaction.

Term Limits. Well, this one kind of speaks for itself, doesn't
it? The Republicans are hoping term limits--never anything but a
transparent political tactic--will die a quiet death now that
orange-haired Strom Thurmond and their other  stalwarts who've
been in office for a zillion years will be running the show on
Capitol Hill.

                               -30-

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