Due to Years of Austerity, Cuts to Public Health Care, And An Anti-Science and Profiteering President, The United States Now Leads the World In Coronavirus Cases and Deaths in the World!
Always Remember: That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember, That he Established, in writing, the United States Capitalist Austerity Program. — The Race to the Bottom/Pauperization of the 99%!
Democracy?: As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%, Only the 1% Voted For Austerity! The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1% Who, Profit From Austerity!! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.! Socialism Means True Democracy, that the 99% Will Rule, Not the Few!
After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. I am strongly of the opinion that the great majority of people will always find these are the moving impulses of our life. But it is only those who do not understand our people, who believe that our national life is entirely absorbed by material motives. We make no concealment of the fact that we want wealth, but there are many other things that we want much more. We want peace and honor, and that charity which is so strong an element of all civilization. The chief ideal of the American people is idealism. — Calvin Coolidge
The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Reublicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War! Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich. Rax the Rich! — They Can Afford To Pay!
Another 1% Bailout!: Covid-19 Relief Draft Bill Provides $100 Billion “Double-Dip” Tax Deduction For the Wealthy No stimulus checks, but big tax giveaways for well-connected business owners. A draft of coronavirus relief legislation, circulated by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, eschews direct payments to average Americans but contains an unusually generous handout to the very wealthy. The draft legislation, the Bipartisan Emergency COVID Relief Act of 2020, was released this week as part of a package of two major bills to confront the ongoing crisis. By Lee FangWill Biden’s America Stop Creating Terrorists? The new Biden administration needs to take a truly fresh look at the whole range of destructive policies the United States has pursued around the world for decades, and the insidious role the CIA has played in so many of them. Joe Biden will take command of the White House at a time when the American public is more concerned about battling coronavirus than fighting overseas wars. But America’s wars rage on regardless, and the militarized counterterrorism policy Biden has supported in the past—based on airstrikes, special operations and the use of proxy forces—is precisely what keeps these conflicts raging. By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. DaviesDon’t Fawn Over Biden. Fight Neoliberalism. “Under Biden, we are expected to surrender our political will out of sheer gratitude,” says Truthout’s Kelly Hayes. It’s easy to forget in the fog of Trumpism that mass privatization, the dismantling of this country’s social safety net, escalating corporate welfare and the mass expansion of prisons are all bipartisan projects. Kelly Hayes talks about the neoliberal policies we can expect from the Biden administration and how we can fight them. by Kelly Hayes
A Return?! — No A Continuation of 1% Rule!: Biden’s Cabinet: a Return to Ruling Class Politics Insane people who study playing Russian roulette with a well-lubricated and seasoned six-shooter understand that the odds on survival are far greater than the expected 83.3 percent, that is, five out of six. That’s because the single loaded bullet chamber is heavier than the empty chambers and is more likely, after a firm spin, to settle at the bottom, away from the striking pin at the top of the firing mechanism. In essence, you can cheat your fate a bit if you choose to engage.Not so with engaging in the periodic electoral games orchestrated by the twin parties of U.S. capitalism. There the result is always 100 percent fatal. All chambers are fully loaded in advance by the ruling rich. Without exception, human needs are subordinated to capitalist profits. Capitalism’s Horses of the ApocalypseCapitalism’s never-ending imperialist oil and resource wars and sanctions kill millions. Its COVID-19 pandemic now kills 3,000 Americans daily. Its global warming climate crisis threatens near-term mass extinction and daily catastrophes. Its repeated and deepening economic depression cycles render increasing tens and hundreds of millions jobless and hopeless. Its systemic racism relegates countless more to poverty, police brutality and mass incarceration, and its sexism and homophobia subject women and LGBTQI+ people to the lowest rungs of the job market and to discrimination and violence. With this in mind, let’s have a look at what the “lesser evil” Democrats have in store for working people. By Jeff Mackler
Environment:
America’s Last Wilderness is About to Go to the Highest Bidder for Oil Drilling Language is everything.Those who argue for oil drilling in the Arctic national wildlife refuge, a place of stunning wild beauty in far north-east Alaska, seldom call it what it is – a refuge.Instead, they reduce it to an acronym: ANWR. They talk about “opening it up”, as if it is closed. It’s not. It is public land. They talk about “exploring” for oil because that is what we do. We find stuff, dig it up, process it, sell it, then burn it or eventually throw it away. They talk about drilling in an “environmentally safe” manner without mentioning the hundreds of oil spills in Prudhoe Bay and along the Trans-Alaska Oil pipeline, including a 267,000-gallon spill that went undetected for days. By Kim Heacox
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist: Freedom Rider: Master Biden Speaks The civil rights groups’ rather basic requests for voting rights protections and the need for federal intervention to address police brutality were minimized and dismissed by the president-elect.
Editors, The Black Agenda Review: Racial Capitalism, Black Liberation, and South Africa The phrase racial capitalism first emerged in the context of the anti-Apartheid and southern African liberation struggles in the 1970s.
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence: Imagine: The Town Crier’s Cabinet Selections Cut plastic cuffs from imaginations— Dream larger in dire situations… IMAGINE every cook governing— every governor cooking up people\
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor: The Planet’s Problem from Hell: Samantha Power As head of USAID, Power will be in perfect position to wield foreign aid as a cudgel for beating foreign heads of state till they bow to US empire, writes Ann Garrison.
Selamawit D. Terrefe: On Afropessimism by Frank B. Wilderson III Afro-pessimism theorizes slavery as a social relation which distinguishes Blackness as a paradigmatic position antithetical to humans.
Too Black: The Myth of the Perfect Victim The denial of Black humanity is essential to the order of racial capitalism, and dictates that Blacks deserve whatever treatment they get.
Chris Wright Could Unions Have Liberated Dixie from Racist Rule? The right-wing leadership of the CIO refused to seriously confront white supremacy in the South. “The demand to abolish the police needs to be sharpened.”
Recovery For the 1% — No Recovery For the Working Class!
Since June 2009 Americans have lived in the false reality of a recovering economy. Various fake news and manipulated statistics have been used to create this false impression. However, indicators that really count have not supported the false picture and were ignored. For example, it is normal in a recovering or expanding economy for the labor force participation rate to rise as people enter the workforce to take advantage of the job opportunities. During the decade of the long recovery, from June 2009 through May 2019, the labor force participation rate consistently fell from 65.7 to 61.5 percent. —Paul Craig Roberts, The Diminishing American Economy(Updated
FRED Labor Force Participation Rate is 61.5 %Shadow Government Alternate Unemployment Charts The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers. The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment. November 2020 Shadow Government Stastistics Alternate Unemployment is 26.3%
Shadow Government Statistics Alternate Inflation Charts The CPI chart on the home page reflects our estimate of inflation for today as if it were calculated the same way it was in 1990. The CPI on the Alternate Data Series tab here reflects the CPI as if it were calculated using the methodologies in place in 1980. In general terms, methodological shifts in government reporting have depressed reported inflation, moving the concept of the CPI away from being a measure of the cost of living needed to maintain a constant standard of living.Shadow Government Staistics ts Economic Commentary, Issue No. 1453 Money Supply, CPI, Labor Numbers, Revised GDP, Trade Deficit, Construction
Four Million Unemployed People Are Missing from the Headline Labor Force
Pandemic-Disrupted U.3 Unemployment Effectively Was 9.0% in November 2020, Not the Headlined 6.7%
November Unemployment and Payrolls Confirmed Stalled, L-Shaped, Non-Recovering Economic Activity
For the Second Straight Month, Payrolls Declined Year-to-Year by 6.0% (-6.0%)
For the Second Straight Month, Payrolls Declined Year-to-Year by 6.0% (-6.0%)
Unprecedented in 40-Plus Years of Weekly Monetary Reporting: Money Supply M1 Jumped by 14.1% in the Last Two Weeks, in a Post-Election / COVID-19 Flight to Cash, From M2 to M1
Unprecedented in 40-Plus Years of Weekly Monetary Reporting: Money Supply M1 Jumped by 14.1% in the Last Two Weeks, in a Post-Election / COVID-19 Flight to Cash, From M2 to M1
Unprecedented in 40-Plus Years of Weekly Monetary Reporting: Money Supply M1 Jumped by 14.1% in the Last Two Weeks, in a Post-Election / COVID-19 Flight to Cash, From M2 to M1
A Weak Dollar Is Highly Inflationary for the United States and Bullish for Gold
Collapsed Oil Prices Still Suppressed November CPI and PPI Annual Inflation; Yet, Oil Prices Suddenly Are Surging Anew
Holding Physical Gold Protects the Purchasing Power of Dollar Assets, Irrespective of Any Near-Term Volatility in, or Manipulation of, Gold Prices
World:
Fish Wars and Brexit Warring over fish in the twenty-first century might seem an unlikely proposition. But the deployment of four Royal Navy ships to deter European fishing vessels from encroaching on British waters in the event of a no-deal Brexit has tongues wagging. The prospects of a trade pact between the EU and UK by the end of this month are becoming cold and remote. This much has been admitted by the UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and his EU counterpart, Ursula von der Leyen. A key contention between the parties is the issue of fishing. Access to British waters by European nations is a long affair that prompted the late diplomat Sir Con O’Neill to remark that, “The question of fisheries was economic peanuts, but political dynamite.” Eight European member states who fish in British waters are demanding that Britain, despite Brexit, maintain the status quo on fishing arrangements.Non-UK boats have certainly been very happy to avail themselves of waters within the UK’s 200-nautical mile economic zone. Between 2012 and 2014, it was estimated that 58% of fish and shellfish landed from the UK’s Exclusive Economic Zone were caught by non-UK boats. This comprised 650,000 tonnes of fish and shellfish worth £408 million each year. UK fishing boats, in contrast, landed 90,000 tonnes of fish and shellfish, worth £103 million.By Binoy KampmarkBritain: One Year After the Election – Boris’ Government of Crisis Boris Johnson’s government has now been in power for one year. But it is already being engulfed by turmoil and splits, as the crisis of capitalism takes its toll. We need a militant opposition that will fight to kick the Tories out.
Education, Health, Science, and Welfare:
The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who pass universal healthcare for themselves, but cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers to be, a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let the People Vote on Healthcare
‘On the Verge of Global Vaccine Apartheid’: Rich Countries Hoard Supplies as Poorest Left Out “Unless something changes dramatically, billions of people around the world will not receive a safe and effective vaccine for Covid-19 for years to come.” Months after more than 150 the U.S. is one of a few wealthy countries that have not pledged to support COVAX. countries joined the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility, or COVAX, with the aim of ensuring rich countries finance vaccine distribution to poor nations in order to bring an end to the coronavirus pandemic, global public health officials fear that the push for international solidarity “has mostly been lost” as the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe has claimed a vast majority of the available vaccines. Under the Trump administration, as Common Dreams has reported, By Julia Conley,
Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, Under the Banner Headline: “There Is No Peace”
During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three-Point Political Program: 1.Austerity,2. Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and 3. The Iron Heel! For Decades, Blacks Have Been Subjected to The Iron Heel! Currently, the US Capitalist Class is Divided Over When — Not If, to Apply It to Everyone!
Quotes 0f the Day:
Will Biden’s America Stop Creating Terrorists? The new Biden administration needs to take a truly fresh look at the whole range of destructive policies the United States has pursued around the world for decades, and the insidious role the CIA has played in so many of them. Joe Biden will take command of the White House at a time when the American public is more concerned about battling coronavirus than fighting overseas wars. But America’s wars rage on regardless, and the militarized counterterrorism policy Biden has supported in the past—based on airstrikes, special operations and the use of proxy forces—is precisely what keeps these conflicts raging. By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies
Don’t Fawn Over Biden. Fight Neoliberalism. “Under Biden, we are expected to surrender our political will out of sheer gratitude,” says Truthout’s Kelly Hayes. It’s easy to forget in the fog of Trumpism that mass privatization, the dismantling of this country’s social safety net, escalating corporate welfare and the mass expansion of prisons are all bipartisan projects. Kelly Hayes talks about the neoliberal policies we can expect from the Biden administration and how we can fight them. by Kelly Hayes
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist: Freedom Rider: Master Biden Speaks The civil rights groups’ rather basic requests for voting rights protections and the need for federal intervention to address police brutality were minimized and dismissed by the president-elect.
Shadow Government Alternate Unemployment Charts The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers. The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment. November 2020 Shadow Government Stastistics Alternate Unemployment is 26.3%
Shadow Government Statistics Alternate Inflation Charts The CPI chart on the home page reflects our estimate of inflation for today as if it were calculated the same way it was in 1990. The CPI on the Alternate Data Series tab here reflects the CPI as if it were calculated using the methodologies in place in 1980. In general terms, methodological shifts in government reporting have depressed reported inflation, moving the concept of the CPI away from being a measure of the cost of living needed to maintain a constant standard of living.
Shadow Government Staistics ts Economic Commentary, Issue No. 1453 Money Supply, CPI, Labor Numbers, Revised GDP, Trade Deficit, Construction
Britain: One Year After the Election – Boris’ Government of Crisis Boris Johnson’s government has now been in power for one year. But it is already being engulfed by turmoil and splits, as the crisis of capitalism takes its toll. We need a militant opposition that will fight to kick the Tories out.