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During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: 1. Austerity, 2. Scapegoating Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal Immigrants’ for Unemployment, and 3. The Iron Heel.
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 Who Profit From Austerity! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico
Many reporters and politicians point out flaws and lies, that Trump made in his ‘La La Land’ depiction of the United State last night, about civil rights, immigration, the environment, permanent war for permanent peace, and global warming etc.. But on the economy, he repeated the lies that the 1% Democrats and the Republican duopoly have said over the years.
“Oxfam found that 82% of the global wealth produced last year went to the richest 1% of the world’s population. In other words, four out of every five dollars of wealth created in 2017 went into the pockets of the 1%. While a new billionaire was created every other day, the 3.7 billion people making up the poorest half of the world’s population saw no increase in their wealth last year. “The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system,” said Winnie Byanyima, the Executive Director of Oxfam. “The people who make our clothes, assemble our phones and grow our food are being exploited to ensure a steady supply of cheap goods, and swell the profits of corporations and billionaire investors.” Oxfam reported that the 42 richest people now own as much wealth the poorest half of the world’s population. Since 2010, billionaire wealth has risen annually by 13%, a rate six time higher than that of average workers.
“Oxfam found that 82% of the global wealth produced last year went to the richest 1% of the world’s population. In other words, four out of every five dollars of wealth created in 2017 went into the pockets of the 1%.
“While a new billionaire was created every other day, the 3.7 billion people making up the poorest half of the world’s population saw no increase in their wealth last year.
“The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system,” said Winnie Byanyima, the Executive Director of Oxfam. “The people who make our clothes, assemble our phones and grow our food are being exploited to ensure a steady supply of cheap goods, and swell the profits of corporations and billionaire investors.” report, Reward Work, Not Wealth, reveals how the global economy empowers the richest 1% while hundreds of millions of people struggle to survive.
“Oxfam found that 82% of the global wealth produced last year went to the richest 1% of the world’s population. In other words, four out of every five dollars of wealth created in 2017 went into the pockets of the 1%.
“While a new billionaire was created every other day, the 3.7 billion people making up the poorest half of the world’s population saw no increase in their wealth last year.
“The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system,” said Winnie Byanyima, the Executive Director of Oxfam. “The people who make our clothes, assemble our phones and grow our food are being exploited to ensure a steady supply of cheap goods, and swell the profits of corporations and billionaire investors.
“Oxfam reported that the 42 richest people now own as much wealth the poorest half of the world’s population.
“Since 2010, billionaire wealth has risen annually by 13%, a rate six time higher than that of average workers.
“Key factors contributing to this concentration of wealth, Oxfam found, are erosion of workers’ rights, corporate influence in political and labor policy-making, rewarding inherited wealth, tax evasion, and cutting costs to maximize profits for company owners.
“A perfect storm is driving up the bargaining power of those at the top while driving down the bargaining power of those at the bottom,” Paul O’Brien, Oxfam America’s Vice President for Policy and Campaigns, explained. “If such inequality remains unaddressed, it will trap people in poverty and further fracture our society.”
The following graphs by Shadow Government Statistics graphically demonstrates the extent of the lies.
Shadow Government Statistics demonstrates that real wages have been falling since since the 1972 wage price freeze!:
Shadow Government Statistics: Real Average Weekly Earnings, Production and Nonsupervisory Employees, 1965-to-Date
“Figures Don’t Lie —But Liars Can ‘Figure’
Trump Stated at the Davos Conference: “America is roaring back and now is the time to invest in the future of America,”(He made similar ‘mistatements’ last night:
Shadow Government Statistics Corrected” Real GDP Index (2000 – 2017), First-Estimate of Fourth-Quarter 2017 Shown in the first graph of each set (Graphs 1 and 3) of official Headline Real GDP, GDP activity has been reported above pre-2007 recession levels—fully recovered and in economic expansion—since third- quarter 2011, and headline GDP has shown sustained growth since (growth pauses or interruptions for second-half 2012 and first-quarter 2014 excepted). Adjusted for GDP inflation (the implicit price deflator or IPD), the first estimate of fourth-quarter 2017 GDP currently stands 15.2% above its pre-recession peak estimate of fourth-quarter 2007. Again, no other major economic indicators show recovery or expansion close to the GDP’s. None of the series covered in this section or in No. 859 has shown a significant recovery to pre-recession highs, let alone formal economic expansion. In contrast, the “corrected” GDP version, in the second graph of each set (Graphs 3 and 4), shows the first-estimate of fourth-quarter 2017 GDP activity still to be down by 6.4% (-6.4%) from its pre-recession peak of first-quarter 2006. 
Image of the Day:
Quote of the Day:
The State of the Union: . . . The state of our union is politically polarized, controlled by forces beyond the purview of the average American, and rapidly moving the nation away from its freedom foundation. Over the past year, Americans have found themselves repeatedly subjected to egregious civil liberties violations, invasive surveillance, political correctness, erosions of free speech, strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, government spying, the criminalization of lawful activities, warmongering, etc. The predators of the police state have wreaked havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives. The government has not listened to the citizenry, refused to abide by the Constitution, and treated the citizenry as the source of funding and little else. Police officers shot unarmed citizens and their household pets. Government agents—including local police—remain armed to the teeth and act like soldiers on a battlefield. Bloated government agencies continue to fleece taxpayers. Government technicians spy on our emails and phone calls. And government contractors make a killing by waging endless wars abroad.Consequently, the state of our nation has become more bureaucratic, more debt-ridden, more violent, more militarized, more fascist, more lawless, more invasive, more corrupt, more untrustworthy, more mired in war, and more unresponsive to the wishes and needs of the electorate. The policies of the American police state have continued unabated.
The Executive Branch: All of the imperial powers amassed by Barack Obama and George W. Bush—to kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which he might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and courts with executive orders and signing statements, to direct the military to operate beyond the reach of the law, to act as a dictator and a tyrant, above the law and beyond any real accountability—were inherited by Donald Trump. Trump has these powers because every successive occupant of the Oval Office has been allowed to expand the reach and power of the presidency through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements that can be activated by any sitting president. Those of us who saw this eventuality coming have been warning for years about the growing danger of the Executive Branch with its presidential toolbox of terror that could be used—and abused—by future presidents. The groundwork, we warned, was being laid for a new kind of government where it won’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty, whether you’re a threat to the nation or even if you’re a citizen. What will matter is what the president—or whoever happens to be occupying the Oval Office at the time—thinks. And if he or she thinks you’re a threat to the nation and should be locked up, then you’ll be locked up with no access to the protections our Constitution provides. In effect, you will disappear. . . — The True State of the Union: A House Divided, Enslaved & Mired in the Mistakes of the Past
Videos of the Day:
Trump’s Economic Nationalism: Who’s It Good For? Is a roaring stock market and big tax cuts good for working people?; Paul Jay joined by Robert Pollin, Stephanie Kelton, and James Henry
Trump’s SOTU Calls for More Spending on Nuclear Weapons and Galvanizes Extremism Max Blumenthal, Phyllis Bennis, and Norman Solomon discuss President Trump’s State of the Union. Rather than deliver a serious address, they say Trump offered a simplistic narrative designed to galvanize extremism
U.S.:
Intersectionality is a Hole to Bury Capitalism In Recently Bruce Dixon wrote a column for Black Agenda Report that targets intersectionality and Afro-pessimism as two philosophical orientations that are to the detriment of the American “Left” (if such a thing actually exists at this moment). I wanted to try to develop a response here based around a notion that I call class-based intersectionality, a praxis that can and should articulate a rebuttal to both Dixon and neoliberal identity politics. by Andrew Stewart
Trump Officials Are Exploring Mass Arrests of US Mayors While some dismiss the Trump administration’s threat to arrest and prosecute elected mayors and governors of sanctuary cities and states as “theater,” the very fact of the US government contemplating such an action is a chilling reminder of the state of the union today. History tells us that threats from autocrats, no matter how absurd they may sound, should always be taken seriously. By Ron Fein
Environment:
Trump SOTU Didn’t Mention Climate Crisis Once. Sadly, Neither Did Democratic Response By contrast, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) explicitly highlighted the climate crisis in his reply to the president’s speech, slamming Trump for calling climate change “a hoax” Despite the fact that President Donald Trump used his first State of the Union address Tuesday night to celebrate “beautiful, clean coal” and further his war on the environment, the Democratic Party’s official rebuttal to Trump’s speech—delivered by Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-Mass.)—didn’t once mention the climate crisis or how Trump’s policies threaten to dangerously accelerate its already horrific consequences. By Jake Johnson 
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Civil Rights/ Black Liberation:
The United States is the world’s leader in incarceration. There are 2.2 million people in the nation’s prisons and jails—a 500% increase over the last 40 years. Changes in law and policy, not changes in crime rates, explain most of this increase. The results are overcrowding in prisons and fiscal burdens on states, despite increasing evidence that large-scale incarceration is not an effective means of achieving public safety.
Hugh Masekela: No Room for Compromise “Up to the very end he was critical of the way in which the top leadership of the African National Congress had capitulated before international capital.”It was less than a year ago on March 15, 2017 when I sat down with Hugh in Sandton to talk about his support and participation in the second Kwame Nkrumah Cultural and Intellectual Festival. I had contacted Hugh through our mutual cultural worker friends to request that he participate in the Festival that was scheduled for June 25, 2017. In the communication, Hugh had expressed an interest in coming to the public lecture that I was scheduled to deliver on March 14 at the University of Johannesburg. Before the lecture he had sent his regrets that he could not come to the lecture but dispatched Rapelang Leeuw to collect me so that he could discuss his contribution to this festival. By Horace G. Campbell
Jackson Rising: At Last, a Real Strategic Plan “When the bubble bursts we will need a network of worker cooperatives and people’s assemblies to sustain us.”“Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality…. — Malcolm X Jackson Rising is the most important book I have read in a long time. Organizers are going to love it. If you wonder what democracy might look like in our time — here it is. By Richard Moser
Labor:
Economy: 
The Man From Sullivan & Cromwell — Under Trump’s SEC, Wall Street Secrecy Expands as Enforcement Shrinks Since winning Senate approval as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission in May, Clayton had talked tough about protecting small investors. But he had already given Wall Street any number of gifts, from easing up on enforcement of major firms to easing the rules for companies seeking to go public. In (his) remarks last July at the elite Economic Club of New York, Clayton had acknowledged how “burdensome” some disclosures are to generate and openly invited companies to request exemptions. “I … assure you that SEC staff is placing a high priority on responding with timely guidance,” he said. There was bonhomie in the air, then, when Clayton stepped on stage. Clayton and Tim Scheve, the Wall Street executive charged with interviewing him on that October day, were fast friends. Only minutes into their chat, the two were chortling that they had landed on the same side of a bitter regulatory controversy: whether all financial advisers must serve a client’s best interests. The Department of Labor had spent years fighting to require this “fiduciary standard” for advisers overseeing retirement accounts, but the SEC had authority to create its own rules. The adoption of less onerous SEC rules could have ripple effects on the Labor Department’s strict ones. By Susan Antilla and Gary Rivlin
Stocks Dive as Treasury Yields Set Off Alarm Bells The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yield touched 2.7 percent on Monday and as of 8:16 a.m. this morning it has returned to that level. The sharp rise in Treasury yields produced a 177 point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average yesterday. As of 10:07 a.m. this morning, the Dow had lost an additional 334 points. Many market watchers see even more dangerous headwinds for the stock market if the 10-year Treasury reaches a 3 percent yield. (See our analysis: Rising Treasury Yields Pose Risk for Those Over-Weighted in Stocks.) By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Spanish regime uses all means at its disposal to prevent Catalan president from being sworn in When the Catalan government declared a republic, the Spanish regime answered by sacking it, dismissing the Catalan Parliament and calling fresh elections on 21 December. That election was another defeat for the Spanish regime as it delivered, again, a pro-independence majority. Unable and unwilling to respect the democratic will of the Catalan people, the Spanish regime is now using all means at its disposal to prevent Carles Puigdemont from being elected as Catalan president. In the process it is revealing the profoundly undemocratic nature of the regime that was established in 1978. By Jorge Martin 
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
