Illinois budget to cut $6.7 billion from pensions, health care, social services

Kristina Betinis & Alexander Fangmann

The budget unveiled Wednesday by Governor Bruce Rauner of Illinois is an open declaration of class war against the working people of the fifth-largest US state, one of the major centers of the industrial working class, where some of the most important class battles in American history have been fought.

Rauner, the newly elected Republican governor, called for spending cuts totaling $6.7 billion. Nearly half of the cuts will come from the pensions and health benefits of state employees, while the remaining half will hit Medicaid, higher education, transportation and other state services.

The cuts detailed by the governor’s office include:

• $2.2 billion from shifting most state employees to a scaled-back pension plan imposed on new hires in 2011, cutting their future benefits

• $700 million from health benefits for current state employees, to be imposed in upcoming contract talks with the public employee unions

• $1.5 billion from Medicaid by tightening eligibility standards, reducing payments to hospitals and nursing homes by 12 percent, and curtailing so-called “optional” services for adults such as dental care and podiatry

• $387 million from higher education, including $209 million from the University of Illinois

• $127 million from mass transit for the densely populated Chicago metropolitan area

• $167 million by denying Department of Children and Family Services aid to young adults aged 18 to 21

• $600 million from state aid to local governments, devastating the budgets of cities, towns, counties and villages throughout the state

• $82 million from mental health and substance abuse services and services for those with special needs, including adults living with autism and epilepsy

Many of Rauner’s targets are the state’s most vulnerable residents: homeless youth, poor families, the sick, immigrants, the disabled. The Medicaid cut is particularly cruel, since both enrollment and expenditures have doubled between 2000 and 2011, an indication of the enormous social need for health care.

Rauner rejected any tax increases on the wealthy and proposed only a single minor spending increase, about $300 million for elementary and secondary education, which he had promised in his election campaign.

In his address to the state legislature, Rauner called for other longer term attacks on the working class, including significant reductions in workers compensation and unemployment insurance, further pension cuts, tax cuts for business and reduced regulation of businesses.

Far from facing opposition from the Democrats at either the state or federal level, Rauner is taking a leadership role in a bipartisan nationwide assault on the living standards of the working class, who are being bled to further enrich the financial aristocracy.

Representatives of Rauner’s office and state Republicans have met over the last several weeks to discuss the proposed budget with US Senator Dick Durbin, the state’s top Democrat, as well as Michael Madigan and John Cullerton, the Democratic leaders of the Illinois legislature.

After the budget was unveiled, Speaker of the House Madigan emphasized his openness to Rauner’s approach, saying, “There are no non-starter proposals.” Senate President Cullerton expressed his enthusiasm for getting to work with Rauner on the budget after the governor’s State of the State address on February 4.

The attack on state worker pensions builds on the momentum of attacks by local Democratic Party politicians in Stockton, California and Detroit, where flagrantly illegal and unconstitutional attacks on pension benefits have been pushed through using federal bankruptcy laws.

In Illinois the previous Democratic administration of Pat Quinn began the attack on pensions, first splitting state workers in 2011 into two tiers, then enacting a 2013 law that gradually eliminated the differences between Tier 1 and Tier 2.

Last year, a state court ruled that reducing pension benefits was a violation of the state constitution. The Illinois state supreme court is to hear arguments on the case on March 11.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, a Democrat and the daughter of the House speaker, will argue that the 2007-2008 financial collapse so upset the state’s finances that it is justified under the broad grant of “police power” to the states under the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution to override the state constitutional provision protecting public employee pensions, a legal argument that is both preposterous and reactionary.

The day after Rauner’s budget was issued, President Obama visited the south side of Chicago for a photo-op ceremony establishing a US national park honoring Pullman porters, and to give his well-publicized endorsement of Mayor Rahm Emanuel for reelection. Neither Obama nor Emanuel said anything about the devastating attack on jobs, living conditions and social programs just announced in Illinois.

There was good reason for their silence. Obama at the national level and Emanuel in Chicago have carried out equivalent attacks on the social rights of working people. Obama’s budget, issued February 2, calls for record levels of military spending, continued spending freezes and cuts for most federal programs, and a draconian $400 billion cut over ten years in Medicare.

Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, has spearheaded the attack on public education in Chicago, closing 50 public schools and firing thousands of teachers. He has also pushed for pension cuts to Chicago municipal workers, eliminated health care for retirees and slashed mental health and other city services.

Emanuel is personally close to Bruce Rauner, and they come from the same social milieu—the extremely wealthy North Shore—with Emanuel himself having worked as an investment banker after a stint in Congress, just before entering the White House to serve in the Obama administration. Rauner was an adviser to Emanuel in his implementation of school “reforms” which led to the Chicago teachers’ strike in 2012.

German finance minister demands unconditional surrender from Greece

Christoph Dreier

Within the space of a few hours, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) rejected outright written requests by the Greek government on Thursday for an extension of its previous credit agreement with the EU. Schäuble wants to create a precedent for all of Europe by completely humiliating the Syriza government.

“The letter from Athens is not a substantial proposal towards a solution,” declared Schäuble’s spokesman Martin Jäger in Berlin on Thursday, adding that the application took the form of a request for a bridge loan and did not meet the requirements of the program. “The letter does not meet the criteria agreed upon in the Euro group on Monday.”

In fact, Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has made far-reaching concessions in his letter to the head of the euro group of euro zone finance ministers, Jeroen Dijsselbloem. The letter describes the European Union’s (EU) brutal austerity program as “remarkable efforts in economic adjustment” that had to be brought to a “successful conclusion.”

Varoufakis recognized the “financial and administrative terms” of the loan agreement with the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and applied for its six-month extension. The so-called Memorandum is part of this agreement, but is not explicitly mentioned in the letter.

The letter expressly welcomes the monitoring of measures by the institutions of the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Commission and the IMF, i.e. the “troika” which is so deeply hated by the Greek population. Following its election, Syriza had declared it would not work with this body.

Finally, Varoufakis said he was ready to work “closely with our European and international partners” and refrain “from unilateral action that would undermine the fiscal targets, economic recovery and financial stability” of Greece.

The letter’s far-reaching relinquishing of national sovereignty was masked only by a few vague formulations, such as proposing “flexibility in the existing arrangement” and avoiding any direct reference to the “troika” and the “memorandum”.

But for Schäuble, even these concessions by Syriza are not enough. He is demanding unconditional surrender. Already on Tuesday, Schäuble had demanded that Athens explicitly recognize the Memorandum and pledge not to reverse any of the cuts and mass layoffs previously imposed under its terms. Schäuble believes that concessions to Greece will serve to legitimize demands from other European countries—especially Italy and Spain—for a moderation of EU austerity policies.

At this point, as he negotiates the terms of surrender, Varoufakis is not being allowed even the mildest verbal concessions that are desperately needed by Syriza to maintain some small degree of political credibility. The situation confronted by Varoufakis and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras resembles that once faced by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. In 1988, after having already repudiated his organization’s core principles, Arafat was pressured by the US to make still more humiliating concessions to Israel. He asked, “Do you want me to striptease?”

There remains some possibility that Germany may decide to pull back slightly from its ultimatum. Schäuble’s demands on Athens had been unanimously supported by the representatives of the Euro group at its Monday meeting. On Thursday, however, some representatives urged more negotiations with the Greek government.

Germany’s social-democratic Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel criticized his cabinet colleagues, demanding that Varoufakis’ letter “be used as a starting point for negotiations and not publicly rejected out of hand.” At the same time, he agreed with Schäuble “that what was in the letter was insufficient to reach an agreement.”

EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the letter from Athens could pave the way for a “reasonable compromise in the interest of financial stability in the euro area as a whole.” However, he was not prepared to comment further on the proposals.

Italian Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan said Athens’ proposals must be “taken seriously.”

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls called Syriza’s plans “very encouraging” and indicated that a solution could be reached quickly. Schäuble’s own stance was supported by the Finnish and Latvian governments.

Greek government sources said that Tsipras and the German chancellor Angela Merkel spoke on the phone on Thursday for 50 minutes. The telephone conversation took place in a positive atmosphere, German television channel n-tv reported.

On Friday, the euro group is due to meet to discuss the Greek application. A Greek government spokesman announced on Thursday that the finance ministers could “accept or reject” Greece’s request, but no other option was on the table. He said the meeting would show “who wants a solution and who does not.”

But these are words without substance. Even if the euro group engages in further negotiations on Friday, the only issue will be how to phrase the terms of Syriza’s capitulation. Less than four weeks after its election victory, Syriza’s strategy of petty maneuvers with the EU lies in tatters.

Syriza hoped to exploit differences between the European powers and policy differences between Germany and the United States to obtain some political leeway.

In another development, Syriza’s subordination to the ruling elite within Greece was confirmed, with the election of the new President.

The government nominated right-winger Prokopis Pavlopoulos, who received the votes of 233 of the 300 seats in the Greek parliament. This vast majority was not necessary to secure Pavlopoulos’ election; just 151 votes would have been enough in the final round of voting.

The 64-year-old Pavlopoulos sits on ND’s central committee. He has repeatedly held high state and government posts, including most recently that of Minister of the Interior from 2004 to 2009.

In this latter position, Pavlopoulos in 2008 sent in police to brutally attack protesters after the police shooting of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos. Hundreds of people were arrested in the ensuing police crackdown.

Pavlopoulos’ election has already sparked off conflicts inside Syriza. European MP Manolis Glezos described the election as blatant disregard for the will of the people. One member of parliament refused to vote for Pavlopoulos. The adoption of a deal with the EU on the terms demanded by Schäuble could rapidly provoke a major government crisis.

Obama’s terror summit: An exercise in hypocrisy, falsification and self-delusion

Bill Van Auken

President Barack Obama, on both Wednesday and Thursday, addressed sessions of a summit on “countering violent extremism” convened in Washington and attended by representatives of 65 countries.

While repeatedly insisting on the need to talk “squarely and honestly” about “root causes” of terrorism, the American president’s remarks amounted to a string of barely coherent banalities—including quotations from a Valentine’s Day card from a 12-year-old—all aimed at covering up the incontrovertible causal connection between terrorism and the chain of catastrophes unleashed by US wars of aggression over the past decade.

The three-day talk shop involved no decisions, commitments or changes in policy. Threadbare rhetoric about religious inclusion was joined with laughable tips on how to recognize a young person being swung to “radical extremism” that seemed to have been cribbed from a Drug Enforcement Administration brochure on warning signs that your child may be using marijuana.

To the extent that the gathering had a discernible purpose, it was to bolster propaganda justifications for continuing war abroad and police state measures at home.

Obama vowed that the US would remain “unwavering in our fight against terrorist organizations,” outlining plans to continue and expand US military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria and beyond.

He argued that the crusade against “violent extremism” was to be waged not just against “terrorists who are killing innocent people,” but also at the “ideologies, the infrastructure of extremists—the propagandists, recruiters, the funders who radicalize and recruit or incite people to violence,” a category so broad and ill-defined as to potentially include virtually anyone who condemns the supposedly “moderate” policies of US imperialism.

The contradictions underlying the propaganda exercise were beyond glaring. Obama proclaimed in his speech that the struggle against terrorism required “more democracy” and “security forces and police that respect human rights and treat people with dignity.” Yet Washington counts as its closest allies in this struggle the tyrannical monarchy in Saudi Arabia and the military-controlled regime that rules Egypt, infamous for their repression, beheadings and mass killings.

Obama absurdly attempted to present terrorism as the product of “twisted ideologies” of groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS along with mistaken “ideas,” “notions,” and “strains of thought” among broader sections of the Muslim world.

“The notion that the West is at war with Islam is an ugly lie,” Obama insisted in his remarks. Indeed, Washington is an equal opportunity aggressor. It is preparing even bigger wars against non-Muslims from Eastern Europe to East Asia.

This “notion” may have arisen from the fact that the populations residing in countries containing some of the world’s greatest energy reserves as well as pipeline routes for their extraction happen to be majority Muslim, and therefore have borne the tragic brunt of Washington’s drive to militarily assert hegemony over these lands.

The struggle against terrorism, Obama stated, requires confronting the fact that too many people “buy into the notion that the Muslim world has suffered historical grievances—sometimes that’s accurate—... buy into the the belief that so many of the ills in the Middle East flow from a history of colonialism or conspiracy ...”

Historical grievances? Who does Obama think he’s kidding? Millions throughout the Arab world do not have to harken back to French and British colonialists in pith helmets when it comes to grievances. In recent decades, US imperialism has laid waste to one predominantly Muslim country after another.

It thrust Afghanistan into never-ending carnage that has killed millions since the US-sponsored mujahideen war of the 1980s. In Iraq, it carried out an illegal war of aggression that claimed over a million lives. In Libya it backed a war for regime change that left the society in ruins and ravaged by armed conflict between rival militias. And in Syria, it has stoked a civil war that has killed nearly 200,000 and turned millions into refugees.

In Iraq, Libya and Syria, Washington has carried out interventions to overthrow secular Arab regimes, acting as the catalyst for the growth of Islamist forces like Al Qaeda and ISIS. In the last two countries, it actually armed and supported these elements, using them as proxy forces.

If the top officials in the Bush and Obama administration had been paid agents of Osama bin Laden, they could not have done a better job at promoting the rise of those ostensibly targeted by the US-sponsored summit against “violent extremism.”

All of the hypocrisy, deceit and self-delusion on display at this week’s summit could not mask the fact that the policies pursued by Washington over more than a decade have resulted in a debacle.

In the wake of the Soviet Union’s dissolution, US imperialism embarked on a series of escalating interventions based on the conception that it could use its military superiority to offset its economic decline. The end result has been havoc and destruction.

This extends now to Ukraine which has been plunged into a civil war that has torn the country in two as its economy implodes and its army disintegrates, and which threatens to draw the US and nuclear-armed Russia into military confrontation. Washington’s fostering of a fascist-led coup to effect regime change in Kiev, portrayed as a master stroke a year ago, has only produced another disaster.

In any functioning democracy, there would be consequences for global catastrophes on the order of those produced by the last two US administrations. They would not only be the subject of public debate and congressional hearings, but the cause of forced resignations and criminal prosecutions.

In the US, there is nothing. There is no mechanism for any criticism of a government that only continues lying to the public and lying to itself. No one takes responsibility, and no one is held accountable.

With next year’s presidential campaign taking shape, the front-runners are Republican Jeb Bush, whose brother oversaw the criminal war in Iraq, and Democrat Hillary Clinton, who as secretary of state hailed the savage lynch-mob murder of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi by an Islamist militia, declaring amid gales of laughter, “We came, we saw, he died.” There could be no clearer measure of the sclerotic character of the US political system.

Responsibility extends beyond the White House, Congress and the two major parties to the media, whose “terrorism experts” continuously churn out lies and drivel justifying US militarism, and to academia, which remains either directly complicit or silent.

That every section of the US ruling establishment is deeply implicated in these crimes and catastrophes is symptomatic of profound economic, social and political crises gripping a capitalist system that is fully subordinated to the enrichment of a tiny minority engaged in financial parasitism at the expense of working people, the vast majority of the population.

With no progressive solution to these crises, the American ruling class is driven toward even more bloody military adventures, posing the increasing threat of the ultimate act of “violent extremism,” a Third World War.

Australian Interest in the Indian Ocean: Domestic Motivations

Stephen Westcott

Australia has been edging closer to embracing the Indian Ocean region for several years and finally openly declared in the 2013 Defence White Paper that it considered the Indian Ocean to be a key interest of the country. The international compulsions behind Australia’s new focus, from the rise of India to the concern over China’s recent posturing to the securing of its neighbouring sea lanes from criminal activities, are all relatively well known. Less widely discussed are Australia’s domestic factors that have led to this relatively new policy approach. This dearth of analysis naturally beggars the question: what, if any, are the domestic motivations behind Australia’s relatively new interest in the Indian Ocean?

The answer to this question rests first and foremost on the growing concern about the state and nature of the Australian economy. Though services such as education are an increasing part of the Australian economy, Australia still predominately relies upon its export of primary resources, especially mineral resources and agricultural products. Indeed, Australia managed by and large to avoid the worst of the Global Financial Crisis in primarily due to its strong export growth to Asia and in particular the People’s Republic of China. According to figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics quoted by Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia’s exports to China in 2013 broke approximately US$94 billion, which amounts to nearly a third of Australia’s total exports. Indeed, this figure is effectively double the second highest export partner, Japan, and certainly dwarfs Australian-Indian trade which reaches approximately US$46 billion and US$10 billion respectively. The sheer volume of Australia-China bilateral trade, which is only expected to grow following the reaching of a free trade agreement in November 2014, has caused consternation amongst a few Australians who worry the country is becoming too dependent on the Asian giant.

Even with such worries aside, the degree to which the Australian economy is linked to China’s has made it particularly susceptible to any shifts. With the Chinese economy now definitely slowing, there has been concern from industry groups in Australia that the country could dip into a recession owing to a subsequent decline in the country’s exports. With decreasing demand from other traditional trading partners in Asia and Europe, Australian diplomats have naturally begun to look around for other markets for export in order to mitigate the impact of any economic slowdown and ensure that Australia does not, as the current Trade Minister articulated, “have all our eggs in one basket.” With two of the BRICS countries, India and South Africa, and several other key growing economies, such as Indonesia, having a presence in Indian Ocean, it is a natural for Australia to take more of an interest to events off its western shores. 

Of course the growing interest has not been completely driven by economic concerns. The fact that there have been three prominent Defence and/or Foreign Ministers over the past seven years from the Indian Ocean facing Western Australia has certainly helped as they have sought to raise the state’s profile by highlighting the importance of the Indian Ocean at the national level as well as hosting international summits in Perth. More influential has been the increasing concern within Australian society over the potential impact of asylum-seekers, who largely originate from the Indian Ocean. A 2014 poll conducted by an influential Australian think-tank, the Lowy Institute, found that approximately 75 per cent of Australians consider asylum-seekers, especially those that arrive via boat, to be a threat to the stability of the country and believe they should be discouraged, if not actively repulsed. Even though the extent to which asylum-seekers attempting to reach Australia realistically constitute a threat is contentious, these perceptions have been highly influential on recent Australian domestic politics. As Indian Ocean littoral countries are typically where these asylum-seekers come from, Australia has inevitably taken greater interest and sought ways to improve stability in the region, if only to address the flow of refugees at the source.  

Part of the shift also has to do with Australia’s perception of itself as a ‘middle power’ that should have a significant interest and engagement with its neighbourhood. Indeed, this is a near universal belief within the Australian polity that the only real debate has been over whether the country is stronger than a middle power and how best to exercise this power. In essence, Australia’s strong self-conception of itself as a middle power has led it to pursue policies that seek to contribute, as a ‘good international citizen’, to the security of the international community and to be a source of diplomatic influence. This has manifested most visibly with Australia’s maintenance and utilisation of a relatively small but highly effective defence force. The ADF is utilised by Australia not only as a deterrent against encroachment on its interests, but also frequently for expeditionary missions alongside the US and also on of its own initiative within its neighbourhood, as Australia did in 1999 in Timor Leste and in 2003 in the Solomon Islands. The recent interest that Australia has shown in the Indian Ocean clearly has the imprint of its middle power mentality, and it will clearly attempt to ‘punch above its weight’ as it enters the region in earnest.

Sri Lankan foreign minister visits US to strengthen ties

Sanjaya Jayasekera

Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera’s three-day trip to the US last week highlighted the rapid shift in relations between the two countries since President Mithripala Sirisena took office in Colombo, after defeating Mahinda Rajapakse in the January 8 presidential election.

Hostile to Rajapakse’s close ties with China, the Obama administration supported Sirisena’s installation. His entire campaign, which involved his defection from Rajapakse’s cabinet and the gathering of several parties, including the pro-US United National Party (UNP), around his presidential candidacy, was a US regime-change operation aimed at shifting Colombo’s foreign policy away from Beijing and toward Washington.

Sirisena’s government is steadily tilting Sri Lankan policy in line with the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia”—aimed at undermining China and encircling it militarily in preparation for war. Following the Sri Lankan election, the US has speedily moved to integrate Colombo into the “pivot.” The Obama administration sent its Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Nisha Biswal to Sri Lanka early this month.

Samaraweera’s visit sought to forge closer ties with Washington. He met with US Secretary of State John Kerry and other senior officials. During a joint press briefing before their meeting on February 12, Kerry hailed Sri Lanka’s “historic election in which there has been really a vote for change, a vote to move Sri Lanka in a new direction.”

Samaraweera responded: “We also hope to revive and strengthen the very strong bonds we have had with the United States for several decades, but of course … the relations have been somewhat strained given the last few years.”

In effect, Samaraweera pledged that the Sirisena government will make a definitive break from Rajapakse’s orientation to China. He added: “And my job I feel is to ensure that we put back our relations to an irreversible state of excellence in the coming months… For us, for the new administration, the United States of America, is not a threat but a great opportunity.”

Later, addressing the National Press Club in Washington, Samaraweera stated: “I have come with the message that we want to broaden and strengthen these ties and I have discussed with Secretary Kerry about the way forward.” The fact that Samaraweera was invited to speak at the Press Club underlines the importance that the US political establishment has given to the change of government in Sri Lanka.

On the first date of his visit, February 11, Samaraweera addressed a large gathering at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a key US think tank. He said his government wished for “our relations with the United States to be as comprehensive as possible, encompassing a multitude of areas of cooperation.” Samaraweera signaled the Sirisena government’s readiness to fully embrace the US strategic agenda in the Indo-Pacific region.

A major aim of Samaraweera’s US visit was to secure Washington’s assistance to delay a UN report on Sri Lanka. In recent years, the Obama administration sponsored a series of United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolutions over the war crimes committed by the Rajapakse government and the military during its onslaught against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). These resolutions sought to pressure Rajapake’s government to fully line up with Washington’s anti-China “pivot.”

The UN report is the product of an international inquiry, established in line with a US-sponsored resolution last March. It was scheduled to be tabled at the UNHRC session next month. Sirisena’s government requested a delay, citing Colombo’s readiness to launch a “domestic inquiry” into war crimes allegations.

During his Carnegie Endowment speech, Samaraweera said: “Unlike the previous government, we are not in a state of denial, saying that such violations have not happened…We believe such violations have happened. We are ready to ensure that those who have violated human rights in Sri Lanka will be brought to justice.”

However, Sirisena himself is directly complicit in the war crimes. Not only was he a central figure in Rajapakse’s cabinet, he was acting Defence Minister at times during the final weeks of the war against the LTTE, when tens of thousands of Tamils were killed.

Noting the new government’s foreign policy realignment, sections of the US ruling elite are advocating concessions to Colombo over the war crimes issue. These calls highlight the fact that the raising of the “human rights” issues by the US never had anything to do with concerns about the victims of such violations, or basic democratic rights, but was based on its geo-strategic interests.

In a “counseling article” to the Brookings Institute, former US ambassador to Colombo Teresita Schaffer called on the US State Department to “lower its voice” on human rights in Sri Lanka, citing the change of the government. ANew York Times editorial last week declared: “Sirisena has moved swiftly to usher in a new chapter of hope for Sri Lanka.” It backed a delay in the release of the UN report, while stating that the postponement should be “brief.”

On February 16, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, duly recommended delaying the report’s release from March to September. Such a postponement rests on clear political calculations. For its part, the Sirisena government wants to preserve what Samaraweera termed a “rainbow coalition” and head off any chauvinist campaign in support of Rajapakse’s comeback in the general elections to be called in late April.

The Sirisena government’s rapid change of policy toward the US includes building better relations with US allies and strategic partners. Samaraweera’s first foreign trip was to India. En route to the US he met with British Foreign Office Minister Hugo Swire in London. Swire also visited Colombo at the end of January. Sirisena this week conducted a three-day visit to India—his first trip abroad as president.

Sri Lanka is being more closely integrated into Washington’s war preparations, which include controlling major sea routes that can cut off China’s essential supplies of energy and raw materials from Africa and the Middle East. These developments are a warning to the working class and the oppressed masses throughout South Asia and the world of the growing danger of war.

Finance capital pushes for Australian economic “restructuring”

Nick Beams

The ongoing turmoil in Australia’s governing Liberal-National Coalition, which ten days ago saw about 40 percent of the Liberal Party’s federal MPs vote to end Tony Abbott’s prime ministership, was sparked by mass opposition to the currently-stalled spending cuts in the government’s budget brought down last May.

Two recent statements by corporate analysts, however, make clear that for the dominant sections of finance capital, the political impasse goes far beyond the government’s budgetary measures. They are seeking nothing less than a restructuring of the Australian economy, including a drastic reduction in real wages, in order to make it “internationally competitive.”

In a research note issued on Monday, JP Morgan analyst Stephen Walters said Australia was “sliding down the precipice,” due to “glacial” reform efforts.

The next day, former Treasury official and now chief economist at the Edinburgh-based global asset manager Standard Life Investments, Jeremy Lawson, told an investment seminar that Australia needed a recession to focus political minds on the growing imbalances in the economy.

In his research note, Walters pointed to a “recession-like” weakness in domestic demand as investment in the mining industry fell away without any replacement. “We knew for some time a plunge of mining investment was fast approaching,” he said. “The economy is now sliding down a precipice pretty much as expected, as the sector moves from expansion to production.” Investment in areas outside of resources had been “slow to appear.”

Walters outlined what he considered to be the main problems holding back investment spending. These included “chronic reform inertia”—with the regressive goods and services tax, introduced in 2000, being the last major and enduring change—as well as lack of spending on infrastructure.

But Walters’s main focus was on wage levels and working conditions. “Australia now has, on key measures, more rigid labour markets than many competitors and punishingly high penalty rates,” he said, adding that “Australia’s minimum wage is double that in the US.” In 2013, he noted, average weekly earnings were 70 percent above the global mean.

Picking up on this theme, Business Spectator columnist Alan Kohler wrote that while the “circus in Canberra” was no doubt a factor in reduced investor confidence, “for most people the real problem is the cost of doing business in Australia.”

“In a globalised world, and open economy, you don’t have to look much further than wage levels that are 70 percent above the global mean to discover why businesses aren’t feeling that great and are not investing,” Kohler wrote.

During his seminar presentation, Lawson recalled the experiences of the 1980s when the Hawke Labor government invoked the worsening economic climate—summed up in Treasurer Paul Keating’s phrase in 1986 that Australia was in danger of becoming a banana republic. Labor pushed through major economic restructuring, including the privatisation of major state-owned enterprises and the “restructuring” of wage rates and working conditions.

“If you look at Australia’s history, major reform episodes, tended to follow crises,” Lawson said. “It’s when you have that next recession, when unemployment is not 6.5 percent but 8 or 9 or 10 percent, you’ll really concentrate minds.”

In other words, only when wide sections of the population are subjected to economic devastation will governments be able to impose the agenda being demanded by finance capital.

Lawson made clear the critical questions went far beyond the budget and said the government had decided to tackle the wrong problems. “It has invested in a lot of capital in some unpopular things that actually aren’t going to be the critical determinants of whether Australia’s potential growth rate and productivity growth ends up being lifted,” he said.

The “critical determinants” are those outlined by Maurice Newman, the head of the Abbott government’s Business Advisory Council, shortly after the government took office. Under conditions of falling national income, due to the sharp downturn in commodity prices, Newman said the Australian minimum wage was far higher than the UK, Canada and New Zealand and more than double US levels, in a system “dogged by rigidities.”

The demands of finance are finding their reflection in the manoeuvring over the Liberal leadership. Amid growing criticism of Abbott’s government in business circles, leadership rival and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull made an appearance on the “Q&A” television program on Monday night to outline his agenda, albeit somewhat guardedly because publicly, at least, he is still professing loyalty to Abbott.

In speeches over the past few years Turnbull, who has the closest connections with corporate finance and banking, has emphasised that economic globalisation signifies major changes for the Australian economy. On “Q&A,” he placed the conflict over the budget in that context.

“Everything we do has to be designed to ensure that our prosperity is secure, and that is by being more productive, more innovative, smarter, faster, leaner,” he told the audience. “That is what this budget repair thing is all about.”

These are the same free-market “buzz words” employed during the “restructuring” carried out under the Hawke and Keating governments, which resulted in the redistribution of wealth up the income scale, the closure of large sections of industry and the growth of financial parasitism. Now in worsening global economic conditions, finance is demanding that this program be intensified.

With around a quarter of the last budget’s measures still blocked in the Senate and amid growing concerns in ruling circles about the viability of the present parliamentary system for carrying through major economic changes, Turnbull indicated that he was looking for collaboration with the Labor Party in carrying out his program.

Both sides of politics, he said in the “Q&A” discussion, agreed on the need for changes in government revenue-raising and spending measures. The Liberals should put forward their proposals while Labor set out its alternative and then there should be a discussion. A third set of measures would emerge, possibly better than the two original plans.

The Labor Party has, for electoral reasons, opposed some of the more egregious measures in the May budget, while signing off on cuts worth billions of dollars in funding to the states. It is now increasingly making clear its readiness to carry through the demands of the corporate elites.

Writing in today’s Australian Financial Review, shadow treasurer Chris Bowen said the Liberals had not been “honest” either about the economic problems or their solution. Instead, they engaged in “Santa Claus economics,” with Treasurer Joe Hockey suggesting that the return of a Liberal government would boost business confidence and profits. Abbott’s government had not been serious about “ending the age of entitlement” when at the same time it was promoting a paid parental leave scheme.

The Labor Party has yet to announce specific measures but Bowen wrote that it acknowledged economic growth was not enough to return to a budget surplus—a clear indication that it is aligning itself with the demands of finance for major cuts and “restructuring.”

Study shows inequality much higher in Germany than previously estimated

Denis Krassnin

The distribution of wealth in modern society resembles an inverted pyramid. The higher up the pyramid, the fewer the people who share in total wealth. The top layer of society conceals its fortunes, and official figures are hard to come by, making it difficult to say precisely how rich they are. A new study by the trade union-run Hans Böckler Foundation aims to illuminate this “great statistical uncertainty.”

What the researchers at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) discovered, on the basis of an approximation of peak assets, far surpasses previous assumptions about social inequality in Germany—even though the reevaluation, in the words of the author, is “fraught with uncertainty.” Unfortunately, researchers could only draw on data that was three years old.

According to the study, the richest 10 percent possess over 63 to 74 percent of the total wealth of private households, which amounts to 8.6 to 9.3 billion Euros in the estimation of researchers. That means approximately 400,000 households possess more wealth than the remaining 3.5 million. Earlier data had indicated a share of only 60 percent.

In the case of the super-rich, the authors had to make even stronger corrections to earlier figures. The wealthiest one percent possesses not just 18 percent of total wealth as previously believed, but 31 to 34 percent—almost twice as much. The richest tenth of one percent control three times as much wealth as previously thought—instead of five percent, between 14 and 16 percent. These approximately 80,000 people are wealthier than the poorest half of the German population, roughly 40 million people.

The previous methods used to determine the distribution of wealth demonstrate severe weaknesses. The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), established by the same institute in 1983, surveyed the wealth of thousands of representative households. It would be highly unlikely, according to the authors of the latest DIW study, that a millionaire or even a billionaire would participate in such a poll conducted by telephone. On the basis of the SOEP data, at most, the wealthiest households, with tens of millions of euros, were included in the calculations. The results were distorted.

In order to incorporate the super-rich into the calculations of the distribution of wealth, researchers used, among other things, the richest persons list ofForbes magazine, which includes only individuals with assets of more than one billion dollars

Their wealth and numbers have sharply increased in the last year. Despite, or thanks to, the financial crisis, the number of billionaires in Germany climbed from 34 in the year 2002 to 55 in 2012. The collective wealth of this tiny layer amounted to 130 billion euros in 2003, and grew to as much as 230 billion by 2013.

These figures are so high, that they themselves raise concerns among the defenders and beneficiaries of such vast inequality. As the charity organization Oxfam reported in mid-January, the top one percent of the world’s population will have more wealth next year than the remaining 99 percent. The S üddeutsche Zeitung wrote of the “explosive force of social inequity.”

The ongoing concentration of wealth at the top of society is observed not only in Germany, but throughout the world. The magnitude of social inequality is ever more sharply expressed on a global scale.

In 2010, approximately 380 billionaires possessed exactly as much wealth as the poorest half of humanity. In the course of only three years, this number sank to 92 billionaires. One year later, just 80 billionaires possessed more wealth than three and a half billion people.

“The growth of social inequality,” the World Socialist Web Site wrote following the publication of the Oxfam report, “is the consequence of policies enacted by the ruling class in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. … Governments responded to the collapse of asset values and the insolvency of major banks by pumping some $12 trillion into the financial markets by means of bank bailouts, near-zero interest rates, and central bank money-printing (Quantitative Easing).”

The richest layer in Germany controls far more wealth than previously known. To return to the initial image of this article: no pyramid can stand on its peak for long without toppling over—or being overthrown from the bottom.

Right-wing nationalists regain Croatian presidency

Paul Mitchell

Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) was inaugurated as president on February 15. Her surprise, wafer-thin victory over Ivo Josipović—who is allied to the ruling Social Democratic Party (SDP)—makes it likely that the HDZ will win the general election later this year.

Just four years ago, in 2011, the SDP won a landslide victory over the HDZ, but since then it has pursued anti-working class policies, imposed austerity measures and cut public spendingdriving the country into a seventh year of recession. (See: EU imposes harsh austerity on Croatia, its newest member)

The employment rate is among the EU’s lowest and unemployment is around 18 percent and among young people (excluding students) is close to 50 percent. A growing number are at risk of poverty and social exclusion, which already affects almost one third of the population. Wages continue to decline, with over half of employees receiving less than 5,000 kunas (€650) a month.

In the first round of the presidential election in December, Grabar-Kitarović received 37.2 percent of the vote, narrowly losing to Josipović’s 38.5 percent. Ivan Vilibor Sinćić from the anti-eviction Human Wall movement polled 16.4 percent and Milan Kujundžić from Alliance for Croatia, a coalition of extreme nationalist and fascistic parties 6.3 percent.

Because none of the candidates won more than 50 percent of the vote, a run-off election was held on January 11, in which Grabar-Kitarović scraped in with 50.7 percent of the vote.

The turnout for the first round was just 47.1 percent, an indication of the disconnect between the working population and the two main political parties that have alternated power over the last two decades. There is little to choose between them, with both espousing Croatian nationalism and an unwavering commitment to austerity.

The main role of the president is in the field of foreign affairs and as head of the armed forces, but Grabar-Kitarović made clear she was going to intervene in domestic matters. “We have come a long way but we have to completely change our current economic paradigm,” she declared. “We must overcome party interests and implement changes that cannot be postponed. We must stop living off the money we’re borrowing from future generations.”

Grabar-Kitarovic promised to continue the legacy of the late President Franjo Tudjman, who founded the HDZ in 1989. The party’s extreme nationalism helped to hasten the fragmentation of Yugoslavia and its collapse into years of bloody civil war. Despite the perilous implications of Tudjman’s demands for secession from the Yugoslav Federation, the US, Germany, Britain and France saw the independence of Croatia as best serving their own interests following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. There was no further value in upholding the unity of Yugoslavia, which, since the split between Stalin and Tito, had performed a valuable function as a buffer against a Soviet thrust into the Mediterranean. With the demise of the USSR, the Western powers regarded Yugoslavia’s old, centralised state structure as an obstacle to the privatisation of state-owned industry and the penetration of Western capital.

They considered Tudjman an ally in breaking open these structures and limiting Serbian [and hence Russian] influence in the Balkans. Thus Slobodan Milosevic was cast as the sole villain and Serbia was categorised as a “rogue state”, while Tudjman, despite his authoritarianism and racist opinions, was portrayed in the most favourable light.

Since then the West has continued to see Croatia as a bulwark against Russia in the Western Balkans, hastened its integrating into NATO and the EU (it joined in July 2013 as the 28th member state) and cultivated its politicians.

After graduating from Los Alamos High School in New Mexico in 1986 Grabar-Kitarović returned to Yugoslavia to complete a degree at Zagreb University. In 1993, she became an adviser, and then senior adviser, to then Deputy Foreign Minister Ivo Sanader, who assumed leadership of the HDZ following Tudjman’s death in 2000. Grabar-Kitarović became Sanader’s protégé, but has had to distance herself from him more recently. Last year, he was sentenced to a nine-year jail sentence after being convicted for embezzling millions of kunas whilst in office. The charges against Sanader threw the HDZ into crisis and contributed to it losing power to the SDP in 2011. (See: Croatia’s ruling party in crisis).

From 1995 to 1997, Grabar-Kitarović served as head of North American relations in the Croatian Foreign Minister. After a spell at the Croatian embassy in Canada, she attended George Washington University as a Fulbright scholar in 2002–2003, then Harvard University and the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

In 2003 she became an HDZ member of the Croatian parliament, Minister of European integration, and then Foreign Minister from 2005 to 2008--overseeing Croatia’s entry into NATO. In 2008 she stood next to US President George W. Bush as he signed the accession documents at the White House.

US cables from that period released by Wikileaks show the very close relationship between Grabar-Kitarović and US officials. One, for example, from 2007 reports a meeting with Undersecretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns who “then turned to domestic issues that Croatia should address… FM [Foreign Minister] Grabar-Kitarovic responded that Croatia is aware of these problems and is working to resolve them.”

That Grabar-Kitarović was seen as a valuable asset and conduit for US policy was demonstrated in her appointment as Croatia’s Ambassador to the US from 2008 to 2011 and then as Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy at NATO until 2014.

Her call to change Croatia’s “current economic paradigm” chimes with the demands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Commission. In November the IMF warned, “Reform fatigue is a risk, especially in view of approaching presidential and parliamentary elections.” It called for “steadfast fiscal consolidation” (i.e., more austerity) and “significant additional reforms.”

The measures demanded included implementing the second phase of the labour law reform, reviewing the wage-setting system and streamlining public wage bonuses, improving the effectiveness and transparency of the social protection system (i.e., cut benefits), reducing access to early retirement, taking forward retirement age reform (i.e., reduce pensions), reforming the health sector, restructuring the local government system and state-owned enterprises and reducing their role in the economy.

Last year, Independent Croatian Unions President Kresimir Sever warned, “What those in power should be afraid of are spontaneous unrest and going out in the streets. While it is organised by the unions, they are under surveillance.”

This was a plea to the ruling elite not to forget the vital role the trade unions were performing in stifling popular opposition. With Grabar-Kitarović’s election, Sever said “he expects even better cooperation” with her than he had with Josipović and that “we will find in her a strong champion for workers’ rights, for decent wages and decent working conditions.”

The election campaign has heated up with both the SDP and HDZ trying to outdo each other in stoking up Croat nationalism, seizing on the provocative statements of Serb nationalist Vojislav Seselj following his release from The Hague on the grounds of terminal ill health.

The SDP government is attempting to reduce support for the Human Wall movement by introducing an “emergency” debt-relief initiative named “Fresh Start” this month. Many Croatians—an estimated 317,000 household and businesses—have had their bank accounts blocked and are unable to get credit. However, the proposals will only apply to around 60,000 people, with an income of less than 1,250 kuna (€160) a month and debt of less than 35,000 kuna (€4,500).

White House outlines policy for deepening intervention in Central America

Mathew Brennan

In the FY 2016 budget proposal presented to Congress earlier this month, the White House included a request for tripling US aid to Central America to $1 billion. The funding would be channeled through the Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle, which was formed last November in Washington at a conference convened by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). It will be directed primarily toward the governments of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

The Obama administration’s budget proposal was followed by a campaign on its behalf in the New York Times—by both the newspaper’s editorial board and Vice President Joseph Biden, who is overseeing the initiative. Both made the case that the Central American aid, coupled with an increase in the budget for the Department of Homeland Security, would promote the White House’s purported goals of “comprehensive immigration reform” and “stemming systemic violence” in the region.

The Times’s editorials were quick to point to the approximately 70,000 unaccompanied children who fled to the United States last year, largely from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. These child refugees, and the violence and poverty rampant in the regions they were fleeing, are the supposed impetus to, as Biden cynically put it, Washington’s drive to “stem the dangerous surge in migration.” Or as the Times’s editorial board dishonestly framed the issue, the increase in aid will “meaningfully tackle the root causes of instability that over the decades have led to thousands of people to embark on dangerous journeys to the United States searching for a better life.”

However, as is the case with US foreign policy everywhere else in the world, there is a political chasm between the public statements of the White House and the real aims of US imperialism.

On the one hand, there is a massive social crisis in Central America. Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador account for the world’s first, fifth, and sixth highest murder rates, respectively.

According to the World Bank, at least 60 percent of Hondurans, 54 percent of Guatemalans, and 35 percent of El Salvadorans live below the official poverty line. Nearly a third of the Honduran population and a quarter of the Guatemalan population live on less than two dollars a day. At least 30 percent of the Honduran population is officially unemployed, the highest rate in all of Latin America.

Gang and state violence are rampant in all three countries. According to a 2013 United Nations report, over 60 percent of the unaccompanied children who were interviewed by their representatives while being held in US immigration detention centers cited violence by gangs, drug cartels and state security forces, and fear of being recruited into gangs, as their reasons for fleeing.

On the other hand, there is the source of this enormous instability, delicately described by the Times as the “root causes,” which are overwhelming bound up with decades of brutal US imperialism-directed “dirty wars” against the populations of all three countries.

A CIA-orchestrated coup in 1954 against the, the democratically elected Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz began more than four decades of carnage in the region. Arbenz’s government was overthrown by CIA-organized military forces in 1954, at the behest of the United Fruit Company, which adamantly opposed a limited land reform. That country’s dirty war continued until 1996. Guatemalan security forces, trained and directed by the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies, systematically suppressed and terrorized the working class and peasantry, killing more than 200,000 Guatemalans during this genocidal period.

In El Salvador, Washington funneled at least $6 billion in aid to support and arm military juntas that terrorized workers and peasants over the last quarter of the twentieth century. These juntas employed “death squads” as a form of counter-insurgency against the FLMN guerrilla group. At least 75,000 people were murdered by the military in the peak years of repression, between 1980 and 1992, when a peace accord was signed and the FMLN transformed itself into a bourgeois party.

More recently in Honduras, the democratically elected government of President Manuel Zelaya was overthrown by US-backed military forces in 2008, after it turned to Venezuela for cheap oil and loans. In her book Hard Choices, then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton admits that she ensured Zelaya would not return to office after he was kidnapped and flown out of the country by the Honduran military. Since 2008, under a government controlled heavily by the coup leaders, the murder rate has increased by over 50 percent, several opposition political leaders have been assassinated, and gang membership has increased to more than 65,000 by some estimates.

There is also the larger historical context of US “aid” to Central America. Historically, this money has been funneled through state agencies such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Agency for International Development (USAID) and the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD)—which all provided economic and political support for the repressive military dictatorships. William Blum points out in his bookKilling Hope that “(t)hese organizations with their reassuring names all contributed to a program to greatly expand the size of Guatemala’s national police force and develop it into a professionalized body skilled at counteracting urban disorder…with officers sent for training in Washington…and Los Fresnos, Texas.”

When Joseph Biden speaks of “confronting the interlocking security, governance, and economic challenges” in Central America through the Alliance for Prosperity, this is the sort of “interlocking” partnerships he has in mind.

The White House budget proposal is in line with similar US-led initiatives such as Plan Colombia and the Merida Initiative in Mexico.

Taken together, these aid initiatives, while cloaked in rhetoric about “fostering democracy” and “combating narco-trafficking,” have been overwhelmingly used as a wedge to open up new markets for US investment, exploit cheap labor and crush emerging opposition movements to US-backed right-wing governments.

The new initiative is also driven by challenges confronting US imperialism in the region: the encroachment of economic rivals, on the one hand, and the threat of social upheavals within the working class, on the other. China as well as Russia have made significant trade deals and capital investments across Latin America over the last 15 years. China increased trade in the region by 1,200 percent between 2000 and 2009, and has plans to build a $50 billion canal in Nicaragua in 2019 that will dwarf the Panama Canal.

Internally, the bourgeoisie is overseeing virtually unprecedented levels of social inequality, wage stagnation, and an assault on democratic rights across the board. Social unrest related to these developments is already on display among the working class throughout the region—most recently in the mass protests over the disappeared students in Mexico.

Partnerships such as the proposed Alliance for Prosperity, with its emphasis on the increased militarization of the southern borders of the US and Mexico, are at their heart a preparation by the US ruling class to repress social upheavals and scapegoat immigrants for the inherent crisis of global capitalism.

Alabama judge asks courts to defy order granting same-sex marriage licenses

Eric London

Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore is ordering probate judges in his state to ignore a US federal court order allowing gay and lesbian Alabamians to exercise their right to marry.

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore

Judge Moore’s maneuver is in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which states: “No state shall … deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The Fourteenth Amendment gives the federal government power to prohibit states from carrying out actions that violate these basic rights.

Moore’s action flouts a February 12 ruling by US District Court Judge Callie V.S. Granade ordering Mobile County Probate Judge Don Davis to begin allowing same-sex marriages in the state’s largest county. Davis had previously failed to abide by an earlier court order.

Judge Granade’s ruling was the latest in a lawsuit filed by four homosexual couples who were denied marriage licenses under the Alabama state constitution’s ban on same-sex marriage. One of the plaintiffs, whose partner faces serious health issues, is unable to enforce a medical power of attorney document because of the couple’s non-married status.

In late January, Judge Granade granted the plaintiff couples’ motion for a preliminary injunction against the state law. In effect, Judge Granade’s decision prohibited Alabama from enforcing its marriage ban on the grounds that it denied the plaintiffs’ fundamental right to marriage.

Judge Granade ordered a stay on her own decision, which expired on February 9. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of the United States denied the Alabama Attorney General’s request to extend the stay, and probate judges in many Alabama counties began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples the same day the stay expired.

Judge Moore, however, sought to block the federal court’s decision and ordered probate judges to continue to refuse marriage licenses. Although most probate judges are issuing marriage licenses, a substantial minority of counties are following Judge Moore’s orders and refusing to abide by the District Court’s decision.

In refusing to abide by the federal district court ruling, Moore invoked the “states’ rights” arguments that were traditionally utilized by southern states in opposing desegregation and other civil rights legislation. “It’s my duty to speak up when I see the jurisdiction of our courts being intruded by unlawful federal authority,” Moore declared.

This argument was supported by US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who filed a dissent in the Supreme Court’s decision not to intervene in the case. The decision, Thomas wrote, “represents yet another example of this court’s increasingly cavalier attitude toward the states.”

The basic conclusion that flows from Judge Moore’s pseudo-legal rationale is that the states have the right to ignore the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses, which were ratified alongside the amendment banning slavery (Thirteenth) and the amendment granting former slaves the right to vote (Fifteenth).

The three amendments are together known as the “Civil War Amendments,” because they codified the egalitarian outcome of the war between the union and the slaveocracy. In this sense, Judge Moore is repudiating a fundamental legal product of the defeat of the confederacy: that the federal government can prevent the states from violating the democratic rights of the people.

The actions of Moore in relation to gay marriage are also a continuation of his efforts to integrate religion and the state, a direct violation of the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution.

“It seems as if the foundations of our nation are becoming rotten, and Christians seem to act as if they think that God does not see what they do in politics,” Judge Moore said in 2012, arguing for what amounts to a theocratic conception of the state. He has often complained of the “moral decay” of American society, noting that gay marriage would lead to the “ultimate destruction” of the country and that homosexuality is an “inherent evil.”

Judge Moore has been on the forefront of religious assaults on the separation of church and state. In 2003, he made a name for himself when he disobeyed a federal court order requiring the removal of a monument to the biblical ten commandments on the steps of the state judicial building. At the time, Moore denounced jurists who believe “obedience of a court order [is] superior to all other concerns, even the suppression of belief in the sovereignty of god.”

Moore is no small-town magistrate—he is the most powerful judge in the state who won election with significant political and financial backing from the state’s political establishment. His efforts to create a controversy over the gay marriage issue serve both to whip-up homophobic sentiment in Alabama and to elevate his own profile to national prominence.

That someone like Judge Moore occupies the highest judicial position in an American state is an indictment of the entire American ruling class. Increasingly detached from its democratic traditions, the political establishment elevates the political progeny of southern segregationists to occupy leading positions in the most impoverished regions of the country.

While President Barack Obama issued mild criticisms of Moore’s actions, they have largely been left to stand. This is in line with the continuous efforts of the White House to accommodate the anti-democratic actions of the religious right, as the administration has carried out a wholesale attack on every other democratic principle.

Most recently, Obama’s pandering to right wing religious elements found expression in his decision to exclude non-profit religious organizations from the requirement that employers provide contraceptives to their workers, following a campaign by religious fundamentalists denouncing the provision as a “war on religion.”

Obama’s climb-down was followed by two reactionary rulings by the US Supreme Court, undermining the Establishment Clause. In particular, the Court ruled last year that in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby that contraceptive provisions of the Affordable Care Act violated the “religious liberty” of “Christian corporations.”

As a concession to those supporting the measure, the Obama administration did not raise the Establishment Clause in the defense of the contraception mandate.