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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 The 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:
“It is often the case that police shootings, incidents where law enforcement officers pull the trigger on civilians, are left out of the conversation on gun violence. But a police officer shooting a civilian counts as gun violence. Every time an officer uses a gun against an innocent or an unarmed person contributes to the culture of gun violence in this country.” — Journalist Celisa Calacal
The White House Lies Like a Rug: AMY GOODMAN: What about what Sarah Sanders (White House Press Secretary) said? ARI BERMAN: Well, there’s two unbelievable lies that she told. The first lie that she told is that the citizenship question has been asked every census since 1965. In fact, it hasn’t been asked since 1950, when America was a segregated Jim Crow society. So it hasn’t been asked for nearly 70 years. Secondly, she said it was removed in 2010, which is completely untrue. AMY GOODMAN: So, you’re talking about, it was—it wasn’t asked during Reagan years, during Bush years. ARI BERMAN: No, it hasn’t been asked since 1950. The question was removed in 1950. AMY GOODMAN: In fact, they competed, Reagan and Bush—right?—to see who was more pro-immigrant. ARI BERMAN: Exactly. And it’s never been used, obviously, when we’ve had a president who’s as outspoken on immigration as—anti-immigration as Donald Trump. The second thing is, this is totally unnecessary to enforce the Voting Rights Act, that a question about citizenship has not been asked since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. And it’s really hilarious to hear the Trump administration say that they’re suddenly concerned about enforcing the Voting Rights Act. This is an administration that is clearly hostile to voting rights, that hasn’t filed a single suit to enforce the Voting Rights Act, that has actually backed away from opposing laws, like Texas’s voter ID law, that courts have found violate the Voting Rights Act. So you have an administration that is clearly hostile to the Voting Rights Act turning around and saying we need this data to enforce the Voting Rights Act. It’s an obvious ruse to try to get this data for other purposes. — Journalist Ari Berman: If Trump Is Allowed to Rig the Census, Then All of U.S. Democracy Is Rigged
Videos of the Day:
Economic Update – Capitalism Breeds Inequality Since 1980, the income of the top .001 percent went up by six hundred percent, but the bottom fifty percent saw no income increase at all, says economist Richard D. Wolff
Cambridge Analytica Is Not Alone: i360 and Data Trust Disastrous for Democracy. Cambridge Analytica, owned by Robert Mercer, is in the news, but other companies — like the Koch Brothers’ i360 and Karl Rove’s Data Trust — are far more dangerous, says investigative reporter Greg Palast
U.S.
Trump ia a Reprsentation of Capitalism in its Epoch of Decay: Trump as Symptom of a Deeper Disease: An Assessment After One Year The election of Donald Trump represents a new low point in the ongoing degradation of US democracy. He says and does things that even Ronald Reagan would have balked at. It would be easy to see his election as a kind of a coup pulled off at a time when Americans were feeling especially vulnerable to ISIS and a low-wage economy. After all, he got the votes of only about 25% of the eligible electorate. In addition, many of these voters were just venting anger about the other non-option. Doubtless, there is truth to both these explanations. by Robert Kosuth
Enough is Enough: Police Violence Plagues America “It is often the case that police shootings, incidents where law enforcement officers pull the trigger on civilians, are left out of the conversation on gun violence. But a police officer shooting a civilian counts as gun violence. Every time an officer uses a gun against an innocent or an unarmed person contributes to the culture of gun violence in this country.” — Journalist Celisa Calacal Enough is enough. by John W. Whitehead
World trade: Trump sets his eyes on China After placing hefty tariffs on solar panels, washing machines, steel and aluminium, Trump now is picking a fight with China. His latest proposals target $60bn worth of Chinese exports, and threaten a trade war between two of the largest economies in the world.Trump likes to play a game of chicken when negotiating. He brings everything to the brink of a serious conflict, before backing off and signing a deal. He did it with Russia over Syria (in private) and he did it with North Korea. The latest, major diplomatic spat was over steel and aluminium tariffs. After threatening major US allies with tariffs, he pulled back, at least for the moment. The EU has now offered to join Trump in a joint effort against China. By Niklas Albin Svensson 
Top DOJ Civil Rights Lawyer Resigns So She Can Battle DOJ’s Attack on Civil Rights “You are seeing a brain drain out of the DOJ that is not normal, and it is a reflection of how aberrant this attorney general has been, with not only reversal of positions but targeting of communities.” By Jessica Corbett
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Civil Rights/ Black Liberation:
The US Has Military Bases in 80 Countries. All of Them Must Close. US bases are wreaking havoc to the health and well-being of communities across the world. On the weekend of Martin Luther King Day, Baltimore University fittingly hosted more than 200 activists in the peace, environment, and social-justice movements to launch a timely new initiative, the Coalition Against US Foreign Military Bases. Ajamu Baraka, Green Party vice-presidential candidate and co-founder of the Black Alliance for Peace, opened the meeting reminding us that Reverend King, in his historic anti-war speech more than 50 years ago at Riverside Church in New York, called the government of the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” adding that “the war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit,” while warning that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” Taking on the very nature of capitalism, King further insisted that: We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. By Alice Slater 
Building Movement Politics Means Fighting Democrats “In the absence of a renewed, grassroots street offensive against the armed occupation of Black communities, there will be no relief from the daily slaughter.”Cops “have the right to shoot us, they get away with it every day,” said a despairing Dawnya Walker, one of 300 community residents that descended on Sacramento, California’s city hall to protest the police killing of Stephon Clark in his grandmother’s backyard . The numbers show that Walker is correct: U.S. police enjoy near-absolute impunity to gun down young Black males without any reasonable fear of punishment. Eight years of a Black, Democratic president in the Oval Office made not the slightest dent in that American reality, despite the re-emergence in 2014 of an incipient social justice movement under the heading of Black Lives Matter. The youthful insurgency lost momentum — waylaid by the inexorable pull of Democratic Party politics and corporate philanthropy — long before Donald Trump entered the White House and installed a pure Dixiecrat as attorney general. Trumpian malevolence cast an orange chill across Black America. “It has been a long time since any victim was given as much attention as Stephon Clark,” writes Margaret Kimberley, in the current of issue of BAR. By Glen Ford, BAR executive editor
Marching for the Democrats: Another Farce on Washington? “The opportunism of the Democrats made these students and their pain easy targets.”“They called in [Roy] Wilkins; they called in [A. Philip] Randolph; they called in these national Negro leaders that you respect and told them, ‘Call it off.’ Kennedy said, ‘Look, you all are letting this thing go too far.’ And Old Tom said, ‘Boss, I can’t stop it, because I didn’t start it.’… And that old shrewd fox, he said, ‘If you all aren’t in it, I’ll put you in it. I’ll put you at the head of it.’… (Malcolm X on the 1963 “Farce on Washington”) By Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
Labor:
Oklahoma’s Striking Teachers Refuse to Back Down After a ‘Decade of Neglect’ They’ve already earned a pay raise, and their work isn’t finished. eachers in Oklahoma applauded the state Senate’s passage of a $447 million bill to fund educators’ first raise in a decade by raising taxes on oil and gas production as well as cigarettes and fuel—but warned that the plan is not enough to keep them from striking. By Julia Conley
Economy:
Shadow Government Statistics
Was Robert Mercer’s Vast Operation to Put Trump in the White House Just About Tax Avoidance? While Robert Mercer was donating $25 million to Republican campaigns in the 2016 election cycle and building a vast network of social media projects like Cambridge Analytica to digitally target voters “inner demons,” James Simons, the founder of the hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies, where Mercer made his billions, was working the other side of the street. Simons pumped $27 million into the coffers of Democratic candidates and related campaign committees. Included in that amount from Simons was $11 million that went into Priorities USA, a SuperPac supporting Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for the presidency. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
For a Republican Anti-Repression Front in Catalonia and the Spanish state! Down with the 1978 regime! Lucha de Clases (section of the International Marxist Tendency in the Spanish state) opposes the arrest of Carles Puigdemont in Germany and demands his immediate release. We also demand the release of five Catalan independence leaders arrested on Friday, including the last candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat, Jordi Turull; along with all Catalan political prisoners. Original statement in Spanish here.
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.
Quotes of the Day:
Environment: