Calls for Alberto Gonzales' Resignation Heat Up

Contradicting President Bush's claim that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' actions were 'appropriate,' Republican Sen. John Sununu (NH) this week joined a chorus of members of Congress calling for Gonzales' dismissal.

'I think the president should replace him,' Sununu said. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told reporters that he believed that Gonzales' actions were illegal. Gonzales accepted responsibility for a politically motivated Justice Department policy of firing eight US Attorneys. According to several e-mails between Bush administration officials, the firing policy was based on whether the prosecutors 'exhibited loyalty to the president and attorney general.'

Members of the House Judiciary Committee plan to summon senior Bush adviser Karl Rove and White House Counsel Harriet Miers, both of whom were involved in fielding complaints from the Republican Party apparatus and advising Gonzales about US Attorneys.

US Attorney David Iglesias from New Mexico was fired after Gonzales received a request from the White House to do so. The partisan complaint that prompted the White House request was lodged by the head of New Mexico's Republican Party machine.

Rove and Miers were also involved in replacing a US Attorney from Arkansas with Rove's former aid.

US Attorney Carol Lam from Southern California was fired apparently due to the fact that she launched federal investigations of Republicans, including now convicted Rep. Randy 'Duke' Cunningham (CA) and Rep. Jerry Lewis (CA).

Justice Department and White House insiders discussed firing Lam the same day media reports announced that she intended to open the investigation of Lewis (CA) who was suspected of exchanging influence for contributions.

Immigrant Workers Protest Corporate Abuses

Hundreds of immigrant workers are protesting slavelike conditions at a Pascagoula, Mississippi-based shipyard owned by Signal Corp.

According to a press release on New America Media, Signal recruited hundreds of workers from India last year using the H2B visa program, also known as a 'guest worker' program.

Workers were promised skilled positions at $18 per hour and were forced to pay thousands of dollars to the company's recruiter in order to make the trip. Many sold their homes in order to cover the fee.

But upon arrival, the company paid them half of what was promised, arbitrarily reclassifying their skills, and forced them to pay $35 per day to live in a sparse company-owned labor camp.

When the workers sought to change the situation or get compensation from the company, Signal announced that it would suspend their visas and force them to return to India.

The company used the 'guest worker' immigration provision and the threat of deportation to force the workers to accept these conditions.

It is also likely that the company used the immigrant workers to threaten to replace 'native-born' workers in order to drive down prevailing wages.

According to Bill Chandler of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, thousands of 'guest workers' have been brought in since Katrina, and subjected to this same treatment.

Immigrant rights advocate and veteran labor journalist David Bacon says, 'A union at the company might defend those workers.' But Bacon stressed, eliminating the 'guest worker' program in favor of more permanent status is ideal.

'If workers are going to be able to organize, they need permanent residence visas, and employers have to be prevented from recruiting,' he added.

Communist Party Protests Immigration Raids

In a related story, the Communist Party USA is protesting the recent highly publicized raids on immigrant workers.

On March 6, the Bush administration's Immigration Control Enforcement (ICE) section of the Department of Homeland Security carried out a brutal immigration raid on Michael Bianco, Inc. in New Bedford, Massachusetts, arresting 350 workers.

Similar raids have been carried out in the last few weeks at the Smithfield plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina and Swift plants in Colorado, Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, California, Indiana, Arizona, Illinois and many other places.

At Smithfield and Swift especially, workers' rights advocates believe that the raids took place to prevent workers from organizing unions at those workplaces.

In a statement released this week, the Communist Party called for:

• the rapid legalization of undocumented workers, • replacement of guest worker programs with higher numbers of 'green cards' or permanent visas, • an end to splitting up families with deportations of undocumented family members, • a repeal of employer sanctions, • enforcement of labor laws that protect the right of all workers to organize, • ending the militarization of and violence along the borders, • and passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would reduce barriers to forming or joining unions.

AIDS Leading Killer of Young Black Women

A new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that HIV infection has become the leading cause of death for young African American women between the ages of 25 and 34. Of the 127,150 women currently living with HIV/AIDS in the United States, 64 percent are Black. More than one-fourth of new AIDS patients are women. The rate of new AIDS diagnosis for Black women was approximately 24 times the rate for white women, and 4 times the rate for Latinas.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration, displaying an ideological commitment to far right traditional values, is refusing to increase funding for the Ryan White Care Act, which helps needy AIDS patients cover medical expenses, but is increasing funding for its dubious abstinence policies that have not proven effective in preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS.

Critics of abstinence programs point out that they often rely on religious indoctrination to convince young people to promise to avoid sex until marriage, but rarely provide education about scientifically proven prevention methods such as condom use.

A large portion of young people who made abstinence promises go on to engage in sexual activity before marriage. But because they have not learned about or have been discouraged from using condoms, they are more likely to have unprotected sex and to be at risk for exposure to sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS.

Look for these and other stories at PoliticalAffairs.net.