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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!
Images of the Day:
Mike Luckovich: Lying in State
Quotes 0f the Day:
Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages. We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange. Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune: here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. In their uninterrupted crusade against the producing masses, they were, however, bound not only to invest the executive with continually increased powers of repression, but at the same time to divest their own parliamentary stronghold – the National Assembly – one by one, of all The Paris Commune 19 its own means of defense against the Executive. The Executive, in the person of Louis Bonaparte, turned them out. The natural offspring of the “Party of Order” republic was the Second Empire. The empire, with the coup d’état for its birth certificate, universal suffrage for its sanction, and the sword for its sceptre, professed to rest upon the peasantry, the large mass of producers not directly involved in the struggle of capital and labor. It professed to save the working class by breaking down parliamentarism, and, with it, the undisguised subserviency of government to the propertied classes. It professed to save the propertied classes by upholding their economic supremacy over the working class; and, finally, it professed to unite all classes by reviving for all the chimera of national glory.
Videos of the Day:
United States:
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
Attack on Capitol Affirms Trumpism Will Live On After Trump Leaves White House The mob violence at the Capitol was reminiscent of the thugs that roamed the streets of Germany in the 1930s. The storming of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., by a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters, Trump’s condemnation of Vice President Mike Pence for refusing to intervene in the election process, and the attempt by a number of Republican politicians to promote conspiracy theories and dangerous propaganda in order to invalidate President-elect Joe Biden’s election provided yet another example that we no longer live in the shadow of authoritarianism and have tipped over into the abyss. Under Trump’s rule, lies, ignorance, encouragement of white supremacy and thirst for violence has taken on a more lethal direction. Within the last few years, it has moved from violence waged against immigrants, Black and Brown people, and the poor to the violence of a right-wing mob attacking the police, rampaging through the Capitol and occupying the House and Senate chambers. Trump not only advertised a call for a demonstration among his supporters, he also brought to the event a history of encouraging his supporters to express themselves through violence. By Henry A. Giroux
The United States Has Entered a Frightening Weimar Era The violent storming of the Capitol by pro-Trump extremists underlines the face of crises to come. By mid-February 2021, American deaths from COVID-19 may well surpass the country’s 405,400 deaths during the Second World War. By around mid-May, more Americans will have died from the virus than during the Civil War, which killed 655,000, and the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, when 675,000 are estimated to have perished.Yet America’s largely self-inflicted COVID-19 disaster may be eclipsed by the country’s political unraveling, which has proceeded with warp speed in the last few weeks, with the once celebrated American way of succession in power via the ballot box dealt a body blow by a large sector of the electorate that has marched in lock step with their leader in refusing to accept the results of the presidential elections. By Walden Bello
Austerity, Democrats and the State “I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.” – Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski The cynical D.C. farce around $600 versus $2,000 ‘stimulus’ checks 1) ties in American history back to the pre-Revolutionary practice of delivering the least that will prevent the burning down of key government buildings, 2) serves as cover for the delivery of exponentially larger sums to connected insiders, and 3) illuminates the key impediments to recovering a government that functions for any but the oligarchs. What will be represented by officialdom in coming months as the natural challenges of managing a complex, multilayered and resource-strapped empire, will in fact be the purposeful ordering of political economy according to the late-capitalist ideology of neoliberalism. By Rob Urie
Environment:
Record Number of Billion-Dollar Disasters Struck U.S. in 2020 An extraordinary year for extreme weather and climate events in the United States. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say that in 2020 the U.S. experienced a record-smashing 22 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters that killed at least 262 people and injured scores more:
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1 wildfire event (Western wildfires focused across California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington);
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1 drought and heatwave event (summer/fall across Western and Central U.S.);
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3 tornado outbreaks (including the Nashville tornado and Easter outbreak);
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7 tropical cyclones (Hanna, Isaias, Laura, Sally, Delta, Zeta and Eta); and
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10 severe weather events (including the Midwest derecho and Texas hail storms)
Damages from these disasters exceeded $1 billion each and totaled approximately $95 billion for all 22 events.
Dangerously Hotter Cities Await 2100’s Residents In the concrete jungle, the most dramatic high-rise could be the mercury. Urban dwellers should expect much hotter cities. Tomorrow’s metropolises will feel the heat: by the close of the century, assuming that nations act on vows to drastically reduce fossil fuel use, hotter cities − on average almost 2°C warmer than today − will be home to billions of people. And if humans go on − as is the case now − tipping ever-greater levels of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, then Paris and Philadelphia, Shanghai and São Paulo, Lagos and London, Beijing and Baghdad could see an average rise of 4.4°C. By Tim Radford
Climate Emergency Persists as 2020 Ties for Earth’s Hottest Year on Record “It took over 200 years for [atmospheric CO2] levels to increase by 25%, but now just over 30 years later we are approaching a 50% increase.” By Andrea Germanos
Climate Emergency Persists as 2020 Ties for Earth’s Hottest Year on Record “It took over 200 years for [atmospheric CO2] levels to increase by 25%, but now just over 30 years later we are approaching a 50% increase.” By Andrea Germanos 
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Labor:
In the last 6 decades, in the United States, beginning with Presidents Kennedy’s “tax reform” have been the largest transference of wealth From the Poor, the Working class, and the Middle class, to the rich, the 1%, in the history of the world! This has been done through ‘normal exploitation’ of the working class, and through Austerity Programs (Cutting the social wages of the working class.), through Government Lies and Statistics, Usury, and with the full Compliance, Silence, and/Support of the United States Trade Union Bureaucracy! Life has exposed that that there is not a dimes bit of difference between the Republic and Democrat Parties! The problem, in today’s world, there is no political leadership opposing this betrayal! This betrayal of the working class has led to a vacuum in leadership that Trump has Exploited!
On a positive note, in the states, were the $15 minimum wage propositions on the ballot, those propositions won, even though Trump won the vote for President. There is a base to build a political opposition the Republicracts/Trumpism in opposition to austerity! This was olso proven by the support to Bernie Sanders,who gave lips ervice opposition to austerity,while being in inthe Democratic pro-susterity party
Since the 1998-1999 Crash, The Has Been Prosperity For the 1%! And the Working Class Has Been in a State of Economic Depression! 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 December 2020, the labor force participation rate consistently fell from 65.7 to 61.5 percent. —Paul Craig Roberts, The Diminishing American Economy (Updated)
Shadow Government Statistics Alternate Unemployment Chart 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 Statisticss Alternate Unemployment is 26.3%
Economy:
I agree with the following quote.:
. . . Hudson argued that Marx had a vision that capitalism will eventually create the objective conditions for a transition to socialism. Instead, in the last 50 years finance capital has blocked that vision with a form of ‘neo-feudalism’ represented by monopolies extracting ‘rents’ and bankers extracting interest and capital gains. And now the main enemy of workers was not the capitalist owners of industrial companies, but rentier capitalists who exploit us through mortgages, loan rates, housing rents etc. And now it was rising debt that was the cause of capitalist crises and not the falling rate of profit of productive capital. This was where David Harvey and Hyman Minsky had taken us forward from Marx. I disagree. This classic financialisation’ thesis by Hudson has many holes, in my opinion. First, modern capitalism can hardly be described as ‘neo-feudalism’ because feudalism was never a mode of production based on monopoly rents or usury. Under feudalism, the surplus created by the surfs and peasants was appropriated by landed aristocracy directly from the produce of the land. Commercial and financial activity was an adjunct, not the dominant activity of feudalism. Yes, the classical economists opposed the landlords and monopolies and supported industrial capitalism, but the whole point of the Marxist critique was to reveal the new form of exploitation under the capitalist mode of production, namely the exploitation of labour power for profit by capitalists (industrial capitalists). Indeed, Marx’s Capital has a subtitle: A critique of political economy; and back in 1842, Engels wrote a piece entitled An outline of a critique of political economy. Both attacked the position of classical political economy because it backed markets and the exploitation of workers for profit in industry. At no time did Marx or Engels suggest that ‘industrial capitalism’ could move smoothly to socialism without first ending the contradiction between labour and capital through class struggle. The idea of a seamless progression to socialism was that of the later revisionists like Eduard Bernstein. Yet Hudson seemed to suggest that the gains that workers made in public services, wages and welfare in the ‘golden age’ after WW2 were made possible because it was in the interests of the ‘progressive’ industrial capitalists. Tell that to the workers who had to fight hard for these gains! These gains were only possible because the industrial capitalists were forced to concede them by labour action; and they were able to do so only because profitability of capital was relatively high. But when profitability started to fall in the 1970s, ushering in the era of ‘neo-liberalism’, that was when there was a reversal of those gains and the relative rise of financial capital. Indeed, the idea that we can divide capitalism into progressive industrial capitalism and reactionary monopoly financial capitalism is not only not the Marxist view, it is also empirically invalid. There is a very high integration between financial and industrial functions in modern capitalist companies – they are not separate. And most important, the industrial surplus value-creating function is still the largest section of capital by any measure. — ASSA 2021: Part Two – The Radical Answers
After Coddling Trump for Four Years, WSJ Editorial Board Joins Other Newspapers in Calling for Trump to Leave Office Immediately The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board, which has coddled Trump for his entire four years in office, now apparently realizes that its own credibility is being called into question. So it is now calling for Trump to resign, writing as follows yesterday: “In concise summary, on Wednesday the leader of the executive branch incited a crowd to march on the legislative branch. The express goal was to demand that Congress and Vice President Mike Pence reject electors from enough states to deny Mr. Biden an Electoral College victory. When some in the crowd turned violent and occupied the Capitol, the President caviled and declined for far too long to call them off. When he did speak, he hedged his plea with election complaint. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Even If Assange’s Death isn’t the Goal of the US and UK, Everything They’re Doing Makes It More Likely The perversity of Judge Baraitser’s decision keeps Assange locked up in Belmarsh, a high-security prison in London that is Britain’s version of a super-max jail. Her refusal to free him, or put him in house arrest with a GPS monitoring tag, flagrantly contradicts the expert assessments she concurred with during Monday’s extradition decision: that Assange is at high risk of suicide. Those expert evaluations are based on his current state – caused by his incarceration in Belmarsh. By Jonathan Cook
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
The COVID-19 Pandemic Shows the Dangers of For-Profit Housing A recently published article in The Atlantic titled The Pandemic Disproved Urban Progressives’ Theory About Gentrification begins with a celebratory cheer for the performance of supply and demand during the COVID-19 pandemic. As white-collar workers have left expensive urban cores in droves, apartments have emptied and rents have fallen, just as your average economist would predict. Since March 2020, median rents in San Francisco have fallen by 25 percent, for example, and rents in Seattle, Boston, New York and Washington, D.C., have all decreased by more than 15 percent. Therefore, according to the author, we see the folly of the “simplistic analysis” of the left that dismisses the idea that building more housing will meaningfully lower rents and slow gentrification. This all sounds great, but there’s an immediate problem: these lower rents do nothing to help the tens of millions of people in the U.S. who are facing eviction. The author has nothing to say about this incredibly concerning crisis; it is simply not mention and does not seem to influence his analysis whatsoever. Yet learning from this sobering reality is crucial. By Jacob Woocher
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!
