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Democracy?: As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99% — Only the 1% Voted For Austerity — The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just Those Who Profit From Austerity! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico
Image of the Day:
Defying Union Leadership, West Virginia Teachers Return to the Picket Lines Striking teacher Jay O’Neal says the rank and file rejected a deal struck between union leaders and governor Jim Justice because it lacked concrete action on skyrocketing healthcare costs
Western Media Distorts Escalating Syrian War Intense bombing by the Syrian government, in alliance with Russia, has killed large numbers of civilians in Eastern Ghouta, which the Syrian government has besieged for years. But differing media accounts make it hard to decipher what’s really happening, says Col. Larry Wilkerson
Quotes of the Day:
Jenny Santilli, a Spanish teacher protesting at the Capitol on Wednesday, said many teachers would have rejected the deal had union leaders put it up for a vote. Santilli was upset that the health care issue remained in play, and that state workers would have to settle for smaller pay increases than educators. — The West Virginia Teacher Strike Not Over Yet
When I first wrote All They Will Call You Will Be ‘Refugees’, for the San Francisco Bay View, right after the catastrophe of Katrina on September 2, 2005, I stated that “What is needed is a massive public works project, to rebuild this city—the birthplace of Jazz—to employ the people who have been disposed by Katrina and to rebuild this city from the ashes of the old!” I quoted Glen Ford of the Black Commentator radio station’s audio commentary on September 2, 2005, “Will the ‘New’ New Orleans be Black?” he expressed the problems and the process quite well: One of the premiere Black cities in the nation faces catastrophe. There is no doubt in my mind that New Orleans will one day rise again from its below sea level foundations. The question is, will the new New Orleans remain the two-thirds Black city it was before the levees crumbled? Some would say it is unseemly to speak of politics and race in the presence of a massive calamity that has destroyed the lives and prospects of so many people from all backgrounds. But I beg to differ. As we have witnessed, over and over again, the rich and powerful are very quick to reward themselves as soon as disaster presents the opportunity. Remember that within days of 9/11, the Bush regime executed a multibillion dollar bailout for the airline industry. By the time you hear this commentary, they may have already used the New Orleans disaster to bail out the insurance industry—one of the richest businesses on the planet. But what of the people of New Orleans, 67 percent of whom are Black? New Orleans is a poor city. Twenty-eight percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Well over half are renters, and the median value of homes occupied by owners is only $87,000. From the early days of the flood, it was clear that much of the city’s housing stock would be irredeemably damaged. The insurance industry may get a windfall of federal relief, but the minority of New Orleans home owners will get very little—even if they are insured. The renting majority may get nothing. If the catastrophe in New Orleans reaches the apocalyptic dimensions towards which it appears to be headed, there will be massive displacement of the Black and poor. Poor people cannot afford to hang around on the fringes of a city until the powers-that-be come up with a plan to accommodate them back to the jurisdiction. And we all know that the prevailing model for urban development is to get rid of poor people. The disaster provides an opportunity to deploy this model in New Orleans on a citywide scale, under the guise of rebuilding the city and its infrastructure. In place of the jobs that have been washed away, there could be alternative employment through a huge, federally funded rebuilding effort. But this is George Bush’s federal government. Does anyone believe that the Bush men would mandate that priority employment go to the pre-flood, mostly Black population of the city. And the Black mayor of New Orleans is a Democrat in name only, a rich businessman, no friend of the poor. What we may see in the coming months is a massive displacement of Black New Orleans, to the four corners of the nation. The question that we must pose, repeatedly and in the strongest terms, is: Through whose vision, and in whose interest, will New Orleans rise again ? For Radio BC, I’m Glen Ford.” — The Ethnic Cleansing of New Orleans 2008: A Requiem
U.S.:
West Virginia’s Teachers Are Not Satisfied Despite the governor’s offer to raise their salaries, the state’s educators remain on strike, saying that the real problems remain unaddressed.Teachers in West Virginia stressed to me on Tuesday that the salary issue pales in comparison to the key problem that prompted the walk-out: the rising costs associated with the state’s health-insurance system, the Public Employees Insurance Agency, typically referred to by its acronym PEIA. “[People] see us out here and think it’s money—they think it’s only about the pay raise. It is so not about the pay raise,” Annette Jordan, a teacher at Hedgesville High in Berkeley County, told me as she picketed in front of the school’s campus along Route 9. Holding a sign that read, “I’d take a bullet for YOUR child but PEIA WON’T cover it,” she explained that because of structural changes to the health-insurance system, her family’s monthly premiums would more than double starting July 1. An agreement hasn’t yet been reached on PEIA; Justice said on Tuesday that he’s going to appoint a task force to “try to look for solutions and a permanent fix” for the health-insurance system. Jordan and others also pointed to what they described as a wholesale attack on the teaching profession—through legislation proposing to lower qualifications and to eliminate seniority protections—in explaining the reasons for the statewide walk-out. In part because of how little West Virginia pays its teachers—$45,622 on average in 2016, making it 48th in the country for educator salaries—districts have had to lower the hiring bar to fill vacancies. A sizable percentage of the instructors who’ve been hired for full-time teaching positions lack conventional certification and training: Close to four in 10 instructors teaching math courses for students in grades 7 through 11, for example, are not fully certified. Meanwhile, teachers haven’t had a statewide salary raise since 2014. West Virginia has in recent years grappled with a budget deficit and a weak economy that Justice and policymakers have said hamper their ability to increase teachers’ pay and to fully fund PEIA. But critics argue that politicians’ resistance to taxing coal, natural gas, and manufacturing corporations is to blame for the lack of funds. By Alia Wong
The Fig Leaf is off — The Real Function of the Police is to Protect the 1%, Their Property and Their wealthy — Not the Saftey of the 99% is now exposed! (I did not notice this news item last summer. R.S.): Supreme Court Ruling: Police Have No Duty to Protect the General Public However, did you know that the government, and specifically law enforcement, does not have any duty to protect the general public? Based on the headline and this information, you might assume this is a new, landmark decision. However, it has long been the court’s stance that, essentially, the American people are responsible for taking case of their own personal safety. 
From Boss Tweed to Boss Daly to Now: The ‘Fix in In’: Want to Address the Greatest Foreign Threat to US Democracy? Fix Voting Machines As the Russia investigation dominates headlines, the real threat to US democracy — voting machines vulnerable to hacking from domestic and foreign sources — is falling by the wayside. Moreover, the Republican Party has consistently downplayed the problem and rejected any attempts to deal with the cybersecurity issue, focusing instead on unfounded threats of voter fraud. By John Knefel
Experts for the People—Shut Out by the Mass Media Ever wonder how the television, radio and newspaper people select whom they are going to interview or get quotes from when they are reporting the news or producing a feature? I do. What I’ve learned is that they go to guests that are connected with the established powers—such as think tanks in Washington, D.C. that work on “the military-industrial complex” policy (to borrow President Eisenhower’s words) and somehow lean toward more warmongering (e.g. NPR and the U.S.-Iran relationship) or backing more weapon systems (such as a new nuclear bomb arsenal and more F-35s and aircraft carriers). by Ralph Nader
Environment:
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis
Civil Rights/ Black Liberation:
The Great, Bloody Black Dispersal from the Cities “The grand plan is to reverse the demography of the Seventies by forcing Blacks out of the central cities and into suburbs and small towns, rendering Black people incapable of ever again launching a national movement headquartered in the urban centers.” The urban saga of the 1950s, 60s and early 70s was white flight from the cities, fueled by massive public and private investment in the invention of suburbia. In the 21st century, the racial dynamic has been purposely reversed, as the window closes on Black majority cities—and on dreams of concentrated, Black urban political power. The rapidly unfolding dispersal of Blacks from the cities, like the white invasion of the surrounding hinterlands in the previous era, is the result of deliberate state policies, dictated by finance capital. But, this time, the demographic makeover has been effectuated and politically finessed with the active collaboration of a Black misleadership class that, paradoxically, owes its existence to the concentration of Black populations during the Sixties and Seventies. By Glen Ford, BAR executive editor
ASS By Raymond Nat Turner BAR poet-in-residence
Is this an AR-15 gun story?
Or, a repeating rifle history:
Winchester Model 1873,
“the gun you could load on
Sunday and shoot all week long,
“The Gun that Won the West?” Read More
Labor:
West Virginia Teachers Win Pay Raise After Four-Day Walkout, But Say Fight Far From Over Educators will get a five percent pay raise, but the governor announced no long-term solution to fund the state’s public employees’ healthcare program Many of the thousands of West Virginia teachers who participated in a historic strike that kept every public school in the state closed for four days over the past week say that their fight for fair compensation is not over yet—despite a deal that was reached Tuesday evening that Governor Jim Justice says will give educators a five percent raise this year.By Julia Conley 
Economy:
6% ‘Trickles Down 94% Trickles Up: Analysis: Major Corporations Have Spent Just 6% of Tax Cut Windfall on Workers. Guess Where the Other 94% Went. “You mean corporations aren’t using the bulk of their tax cuts to create jobs and boost workers’ wages like Trump promised? Weird…” “Major corporations are planning to spend more than 30 times what they are putting in the wallets of employees on buying back their own stock.” —Rick Wartzman and William Lazonick by Jake Johnson
Citigroup’s Loan to Kushner: The Devil Is in the Details of Citi’s Sordid History Last evening, the front page digital edition of the New York Times dropped another bombshell in what increasingly feels like a badly scripted daily soap opera that could perhaps be called “As the White House Turns” or “Days of Our Messed Up Lives.”The Times report focused on big loans that were made to Jared Kushner’s family business by two financial firms after he met at the White House with executives from those firms. There was a $184 million loan from private equity firm Apollo. There was also a $325 million loan by mega Wall Street bank Citigroup shortly after a visit by Citigroup’s CEO Michael Corbat to Kushner’s office at the White House in the spring of 2017. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Fight women’s oppression, fight capitalism! International Marxist Tendency statement, March 8 All over the world the oppression of women is on the agenda. Today – International Women’s Day – a strike has been called in several countries; and in many more, demonstrations, marches and meetings are taking place. In the last few years we have seen huge movements for women’s rights, such as when Trump was inaugurated; in Poland against stricter abortion laws; the movement opposing violence against women in Argentina and Mexico; amongst others. We have also seen defeats of the reactionary ideas of the Catholic Church in Ireland on the question of same sex marriage. These are all signs of a general radicalisation in society. Workers, and especially the youth, are beginning to move to change their lives and taking action against any form of oppression or discrimination. All over the world the oppression of women is on the agenda. Today – International Women’s Day – a strike has been called in several countries; and in many more, demonstrations, marches and meetings are taking place. In the last few years we have seen huge movements for women’s rights, such as when Trump was inaugurated; in Poland against stricter abortion laws; the movement opposing violence against women in Argentina and Mexico; amongst others. We have also seen defeats of the reactionary ideas of the Catholic Church in Ireland on the question of same sex marriage. These are all signs of a general radicalisation in society. Workers, and especially the youth, are beginning to move to change their lives and taking action against any form of oppression or discrimination.
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
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.
Videos of the Day: