Daily News Digest January 17, 2022
‘Supreme’ Court: Corporate Profits —Not Workplace Safety For 84 Million Workers! — Workers be Damned!: The Supreme Court has struck down the Biden administration’s requirement that workers at large private companies get vaccinated against COVID-19 or be tested weekly. The court’s conservative majority ruled the Occupational Safety and Health Administration overstepped its authority when it ordered the mandate, affecting some 84 million private sector employees. In a dissenting opinion, Justices Breyer, Kagan and Sotomayor wrote, “Today, we are not wise. In the face of a still-raging pandemic, this Court tells the agency charged with protecting worker safety that it may not do so in all the workplaces needed.” — Supreme Court Strikes Down Vaccination-or-Test Mandate for 84 Million U.S. Workers
Humanity Will Not be Covid Free, Until the Vaccines are Free For the Whole World!
Images of the Day:
Supreme Court Halts COVID-19 Vaccine Rule for US Businesses
Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Ws Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 5 Years Ago and Did Nothing!: Under Capitalism — Human Lives Don’t Matter Capitalism Does Not, and Never Has, Worked for the Masses! In Its Death Agony, Capitalism Is Traveling About The World Like The Four Horsemen of the The Apocalypse, Spreading Racism, War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. The future of Humanity Is Now At stake!
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”, is Still True for Today’s World!
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!
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!
Quotes of the Day:
The Supreme Court has ‘Overstepped Their Legal Authority!’: The three liberal bloc dissenters argued that the majority had overstepped their legal authority in imposing the stay on the OSHA rule. The majority imposes “a limit found no place in the governing statute,” the dissenting opinion stated. In a second ruling, the Court decided to allow the enforcement of vaccine rules for health care workers who are employed at facilities that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined with liberal bloc justices to reach that decision. — Biden Decries Supreme Court Ruling That Blocks Vaccine Rules for Workers
In 1966 King confided to his staff: You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism. There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. — Martin Luther King Was A Democratic Socialist
“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own Government, I can not be Silent.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Martin Luther King Speaks! Beyond Vietnam (Full)
The gigantic 2022 defense bill—passed with overwhelming support from both parties—provides a detailed blueprint for surrounding China with a potentially suffocating network of U.S. bases, military forces, and increasingly militarized partner states. — The Very Dangerous New Cold War in Asia That Nobody Should Want
Videos of the Day:
Martin Luther King Speech Stanford UniversityApril 14, 1967: The Other America
On Contact: Climate Fortresses On the show, Chris Hedges discusses the building of climate fortresses with the author and journalist, Todd Miller. Industrialized nations, among them the world’s largest polluters, are compounding one human-made crisis with another one. Rather than investing in technologies to end our dependence on fossil fuels, they are spending billions to construct climate fortresses ringed by border walls. There are already more than 63 border walls, manned by tens of thousands of guards. These nations, including the United States, are investing in technologies and equipment including robots, drones, surveillance cameras, iris recognition software, weapons, acoustic detection devices, and ready-to-eat meals to blockade and criminalize those fleeing war and the worsening climate emergency that is triggering famines, droughts, wildfires and declining crop yields. More than 44,000 people (a vast undercount, according to researchers of the International Organization on Migration) have died crossing borders between 2014 and 2020, in both the world’s deserts and seas. And tens of thousands of others are incarcerated in a global network of more than 2,000 detention centers, while companies in the border industry anticipate more profitable contracts with the intensifying climate crisis. For four decades, with virtually no public debate, a handful of large corporations such as Northrop Grumman, Elbit Systems, General Atomics, and Deloitte have driven up immigration enforcement budgets in the United States behind closed doors and beyond public scrutiny.
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. Tax the Rich! — They Can Afford to Pay!
Biden’s Failure to Provide At-Home Covid Tests Looks Extra Ridiculous Arriving From the U.K. After two years without being able to travel home from London, England to Los Angeles, Cali. to see my family, I finally arrived in a chaotic U.S. in time for the holidays amid the Omicron wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Although I’d been preparing for a difficult return thanks to the new variant, I had been eager to see my family now that I’m finally vaccinated against Covid-19 and that my partner, who holds a British passport, was able to visit alongside me after more than a year of travel restrictions barring Europeans. What I hadn’t been expecting, however, was to find family and friends desperately trying to procure rapid antigen tests as many of them developed Covid symptoms and wanted to protect their loved ones and community over the holidays. y.
The U.S. Ignored Public Housing. This is What Happened. Public Integrity has been trying to get information from HUD about the construction backlog for nearly two years. More than a decade ago, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated Congress needed to spend $26 billion on construction projects for the nation’s stock of aging public housing developments. Now, after years of failing to address the problem, the backlog of unfunded capital projects has ballooned to an estimated $80 billion. These types of projects include repairing damaged roofs, replacing broken heating and air conditioning systems and reconstructing aging sewage lines — projects that directly affect the health and safety of the 1.2 million families living in public housing units across the country. Public housing developments are a key part of the safety net for a nation that has long been in the grip of an affordable housing crisis. In February 2020, the Center for Public Integrity filed a Freedom of Information Act request with HUD for information about the long list of projects that are still waiting for funding and about the ones that have been completed.
Rural America Is Facing an Invisible Eviction Crisis Statistically speaking, not much is known about evictions that are occurring outside the nation’s urban areas during the COVID-19 pandemic. There is no national system that monitors eviction cases in real time. The largest set of publicly available data is gathered by Princeton’s Eviction Lab, which is tracking cases in six states and 31 cities. Data in those urban areas show mixed trends. In places with few tenant protections, the number of cases is going up, according to the Eviction Lab. But tenants’ lawyers in the country’s less populated regions say they’re also handling more cases now that the federal moratorium on evictions has expired. States like West Virginia, South Dakota, Delaware and Arkansas have been slow to dole out rental assistance from the federal government — money that’s meant to be a levy holding back a flood of evictions. Nationwide, only about 34% of the $45 billion Congress sent to states and cities for rental assistance had been distributed by Oct. 31, according to data from the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:
Civil rights/Black Liberation:
Martin Luther King’s Last Speech, April 3, 1968, I’ve Been to The Mountaintop: . . Now about injunctions: We have an injunction and we’re going into court tomorrow morning to fight this illegal, unconstitutional injunction. All we say to America is, “Be true to what you said on paper.” If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, MAYBE I COULD UNDERSTAND SOME OF THESE ILLEGAL INJUNCTIONS. Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they HAVEN’T committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for RIGHTS. And so just as I say, WE AREN’T GOING TO LET ANY DOGS OR WATER HOSES TURN US AROUND, we aren’t going to let any injunction turn us around. — Roland Sheppard, The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights Movement
Martin Luther King’s Last Speech, April 3, 1968, I’ve Been to The Mountaintop: . . Now about injunctions: We have an injunction and we’re going into court tomorrow morning to fight this illegal, unconstitutional injunction. All we say to America is, “Be true to what you said on paper.” If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, MAYBE I COULD UNDERSTAND SOME OF THESE ILLEGAL INJUNCTIONS. Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they HAVEN’T committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for RIGHTS. And so just as I say, WE AREN’T GOING TO LET ANY DOGS OR WATER HOSES TURN US AROUND, we aren’t going to let any injunction turn us around. — Roland Sheppard, The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights Movement
To Honor MLK’s Birthday, Senate Must Override Jim Crow Filibuster As we mark what would have been Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 93rd birthday, now is the time to demand that the U.S. Senate override the Jim Crow filibuster and pass meaningful voting rights legislation. The filibuster has long been used to derail civil rights legislation in the Senate, and now is no different.
Labor:
I am not disappointed by the decision! — I am outraged! I agree with the Sypreme Court Minority. The court has no authority to decide on work rules, worker safety, and health!: Milk Toast Response of the AFL-CIO!: AFK-CIO: Court’s OSHA Decision Harmful to Working People. Statement from AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler on the Supreme Court’s ruling to stay enforcement of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA’s) employer vaccine or testing emergency rule: bn While we are disappointed by the decision, the court’s majority clearly acknowledged OSHA’s authority to protect workers who face heightened risks of contracting COVID-19 in the workplace. OSHA’s responsibility to provide safe working conditions remains firmly in place. While infections and hospitalizations surge, we again urge the Biden administration to require employers to provide protections beyond vaccines. OSHA must uphold the emergency COVID-19 standard for health care workers and issue an emergency standard to ensure all at-risk workers are provided layers of protections against COVID-19 transmission at work like improved ventilation, distancing, masking and paid leave. We will not beat this pandemic until we stop the spread of the virus at work. Contact: Carolyn Bobb 202- 637-5018
Economy:
Food-Price Inflation Hits Poorest the Hardest This lethal combination of more expensive food and lower incomes is fueling catastrophic increases in hunger and malnutrition . Food-price inflation has more complex causes than other price increases, and addressing it effectively requires a different set of strategies. But rich-country governments are not sufficiently discussing them, and the world’s poor are continuing to suffer as a result.
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.
Economist Michael Hudson Says the Fed “Broke the Law” with its Repo Loans to Wall Street Trading Houses Even within economic circles, there is a growing nervousness that the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States – with the power to electronically create money out of thin air, bail out insolvent Wall Street megabanks, balloon its balance sheet to $8.8 trillion without one elected person on its Board while the U.S. taxpayer is on the hook for 98 percent of that, and allow its Dallas Fed Bank President to make directional bets on the market by trading in and out of million dollar S&P 500 futures during a declared national emergency – has carved out a no-law zone around itself. The latest ruckus stems from the Fed’s release on December 30 of the names of the 23 Wall Street trading houses and the billions they borrowed under its cumulative $11.23 trillion emergency repo loan facility that the Fed launched on September 17, 2019 – four months before the first case of COVID-19 was reported in the United States by the CDC on January 20, 2020. (The $11.23 trillion figure represents the cumulative amounts borrowed from September 17, 2019 to the conclusion of the program on July 2, 2020. The Fed has thus far released the names of the banks and amounts borrowed for the last 14 days of September 2019 and the final quarter of 2019.)
World:
Massive Labor Uprising Expected in South Korea on January 15 Workers, farmers and the urban poor, battered by the pandemic, are demanding labor protections and structural reforms. On January 15, a coalition of workers across South Korea—rural farmers, the urban poor and laborers—will gather in downtown Seoul for a National All-People’s Mobilization, in a protest expected to reach large numbers. Since October, workers have mobilized to demand better conditions, broader labor protections and policies, and structural reforms ahead of the forthcoming presidential and local elections of 2022 (in March and June respectively).
Education, Health, 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 they 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
Roaming Charges: Republic of the Tormented If your country (Unlike Cuba) isn’t willing to rapidly vaccinate the global population, then it doesn’t have much moral or epidemiological standing to demonize the unvaccinated within its own borders, since the virus doesn’t recognize & isn’t impeded by borders or border walls. The virus doesn’t care why you are unvaccinated, whether it’s for reasons of politics, religion, fear, ignorance, poverty or governmental neglect. It is likely to infect you and be passed on by you to others, across rivers, oceans, borders and border walls. And the longer it circulates, the more it has a chance to mutate and resist the defenses against it. As long as some are vulnerable, we all are.
“We can’t safely care for our patients if we are sick ourselves.”: At White House Vigil, Nurses Decry ‘Unacceptable’ Pandemic Response “Nurses are enraged that, for our government and our employers, it’s all about what’s good for business, not what’s good for public health.” Nurses dismayed by the federal government’s floundering pandemic response capped off a day of strikes and demonstrations Thursday with a candlelight vigil outside the White House, where healthcare workers gathered to commemorate colleagues who have lost their lives to Covid-19.
Vaccines, RFK Jr. and The Science of Misinformation. Are anti-vaccine propagandists really being censored? That’s the claim RFK Jr. and his raucous admirers make as they point out the lawyer-turned anti-vaccine crusader was kicked off of Instagram and has yet to appear on MSNBC or snag a seat on a late night show. But last I checked his latest anti-Fauci book has thus far sold over 500,000 copies. Censorship sells, I guess. That’s the claim RFK Jr. and his raucous admirers make as they point out the lawyer-turned anti-vaccine crusader was kicked off of Instagram and has yet to appear on MSNBC or snag a seat on a late night show. But last I checked his latest anti-Fauci book has thus far sold over 500,000 copies. Censorship sells, I guess. While RFK Jr. may be blacklisted from MSNBC and other outlets (news flash, so are we), he recently dropped in on the Jimmy Dore comedy hour to cook up a stew of gibberish, with a dash of falsehoods that went unchallenged by Dore, who appears to be more than happy to cash in on all of this anti-vax paranoia. “If you get that vaccine you are 500% more likely to die of a heart attack” six months post-vaccination, RFK flatly told Dore, who smirked and nodded in agreement. RFK Jr. was dishing out his usual dose of panic, but this brand of vaccine hysteria, which is entombed in the depths of RFK Jr.’s silly The Real Anthony Fauci, markets very, very well to the Jimmy Dore demographic.