In the hands of a pathological madman

November 14

GUEST: Tom Midgley, long time activist and former president of the Alliance@IBM workers' group, talks about how IBM has dealt with its workers over the past several decades, putting profits over the interests of its American employees.

IBM cuts nearly 700 jobs in Dutchess County

We have all seen the shift from workers being valued to corporate kleptocracy. There was a time when IBM employees felt proud of their company and secure in their plans for healthcare and retirement. In the late 1970s all that changed. Those at the top abandoned their previous "responsibility" to their employees and went for the money. Slashing tens of thousands of jobs during the 1990s soon morphed into sending work overseas. A decade later, foreign IT workers were being given guest visas to work at half the wages here in America.

All this was facilitated by loosening governmental regulations. Congress and the President didn't have to be fooled by the likes of Bill Gates making the bogus case for cheap foreign IT workers. Our elected officials were already on the payroll of Big Tech.

The biggest rewards for destroying US jobs, however, went to the very people who planned the transition. The salaries of IBM CEOs skyrocketed, starting with Louis V. Gerstner, who according to The New York Times, "received $4.8 million in salary and bonus, plus stock options and other incentive pay with a current value of more than $13 million." And that was his first year.

Workers' lives get desperate and CEO's make out like the bandits they have become. Will this type of income disparity eventually bring down our democracy? The fact that our country is now in the hands of a pathological madman should answer that question.  

Only path to survival?

November 7

GUEST: Rick Ufford-Chase, peace activist and Moderator of the 216th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, and Susan Smith, a Muslim member of Jewish Voice for Peace, talk about the November 12 International Symposium on Migration and Border Solidarity at the at the Westchester Ethical Culture Society in White Plains, NY.

International Sanctuary Principles Statement

Must we rethink everything to support the concept that all humans deserve a chance to live? Rick and Susan ask us to put away our old way of thinking and consider all people to be our brothers and sisters.

In the coming years, the surge of refugees will only get stronger, until millions are roaming the earth asking to simply survive. The US with our endless and fruitless wars abroad is part of the problem. We have never dared leave the model of military spending after World War II, and have poured our trillions of dollars into Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. No one knows how many wars our country is fighting now, the state of mind of characters in George Orwell's 1984.

And then there is climate change, with floods and fires that make larger and larger areas of our world simply unlivable. Like the weapons industry, the petroleum corporations are driving this mass exodus from lands that once supported hundreds of millions.

Will the earth become a killing field. What will be our part in the die-off of our species? In the die-off of all species?

Rethinking our human experience may emerge as the only path to survival.