Skip to content
During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and 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 1% 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:
Videos of the Day:
Quotes of the Day:
Will Daily News reporters Victoria Bekiempis, Thomas Tracyand Larry Mcshane, who didn’t even bother using modifiers like “alleged” or “according to police,” but simply plastered people’s faces on the front page, labeling them “violent hoodlums” and “unrepentant gangbangers,” be asked to explain why they acted as stenographers for this racist sham? Not likely. Poor black and brown people are, as a matter of course, expendable and unimportant to our media. No one who smeared these people, or called them “gangbangers”—indelibly associating their names and faces with murder and drug-dealing online forever—will be asked to explain, much less account for the harm they caused. Those plastered on the front pages of the Daily News and countless websites are collateral damage, a cost of doing business so careerist reporters and high-status prosecutors-turned-pundits like Bharara can polish their resumes and move on to the next publicity hustle. — Adam H. Johnson, What Media Got Wrong About the ‘Largest Gang Takedown Ever’
Lately, Americans are experiencing an unprecedented volume of top-down lies emanating from the White House and its circle of acolytes like Energy Secretary Rick Perry. This steady drip of obvious misinformation often renders us somewhat deaf to actual situations of public deception. And, so it is that the latest act of deception perpetrated on the people of Nevada by the U.S. Department of Energy is being met with little attention outside of the state of Nevada. Not known for candor even in more transparent times, the DOE is now headed by one of President Trump’s hand-picked lackeys, Rick Perry, whom, you may recall, didn’t even know that this job involved oversight of our country’s nuclear stockpiles when he accepted the job. Like its quasi-independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has long behaved more as a captive instrument of the nuclear industry when it comes to nuclear energy, the DOE seems to enjoy carte blanche to do as it pleases with little regard to human safety and security issues. The people who live in the states in which DOE activities take place are permitted little say in any DOE matter. —Secret Plutonium Shipment
U.S.:
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 Republicrats 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!
Trump’s Bank Appears Willing to Cooperate With Investigation Against HimDeutsche Bank has begun turning over financial records related to President Donald Trump to New York’s attorney general, according to CNN. The bank, which loaned Trump more than $2 billion over two decades, has begun turning over records related to loans it made to the president and his businesses. Last month, New York Attorney General Letitia James issued subpoenas to the bank for records related to loans Trump obtained to build multiple buildings as well as his failed bid to buy the NFL’s Buffalo Bills. By Igor Derysh
Trump Administration Losing 94 Percent of Lawsuits Over Illegal Policy Changes The Trump administration is losing court battles at an unprecedented rate, with many losses coming because officials failed to follow basic rules in changing policy. Federal judges have ruled against the administration at least 63 times since Trump took office, The Washington Post reported. Two-thirds of those cases involved complaints that the administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act, a 1946 law that set procedural requirements that federal agencies must follow when unilaterally changing policies or regulations. By Igor Derysh
A New Socialist Movement Must Oppose Both Capitalism and Imperialism Trump’s “America First” policy is a classic divide-and-conquer strategy of capitalists and imperialists.Author William I. Robinson has been a key contributor to this new body of work, in particular with his books A Theory of Global Capitalism and Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity. His latest collection of essays, Into the Tempest: Essays on the New Global Capitalism, is a provocative and accessible summary of his argument that globalization — which he calls the “master process of our age” — has ushered in a new epoch of capitalism. He contends that this epoch was born out of the global recession the system underwent in the 1970s. Up until then, capitalism was a world economy divided up into hierarchically organized national economies, dominated by great imperial powers like the U.S. To overcome the recession, corporations broke out of that national framework in search of cheap labor, resources and markets. Over the subsequent decades, transnational corporations established a new global system of production, finance and services. In the process, Robinson argues, a new fraction of capital emerged: a transnational capitalist class that is not tied to any particular nation-state. Their corporations run global assembly lines, their boards are made up of executives from many different countries, and they advocate common ideologies and policies of neoliberal globalization.
Environment:
-
Labour’s motion has been bolstered by endorsement of activist Greta Thunberg
-
Acknowledging a full-blown crisis is one of Extinction Rebellion’s core demands
-
Comes after a ten-day London rally which saw over 1,000 protesters arrested
-
They glued themselves to trains, office buildings and Jeremy Corbyn’s house
Jeremy Corbyn is poised to table a motion which will force MPs to vote on whether the UK should be the first country to openly declare an environmental emergency. The Labour leader’s move to put climate change on the Commons agenda comes after Extinction Rebellion’s (XR) eco-activists rallied in London for ten days of disruption which ground much of the capital to a standstill. Bolstered by the endorsement of 16-year-old campaigner Greta Thunberg, the Opposition will trigger a vote on the ‘ecological crisis’ on Wednesday. By Jack Elsom
Fast Arctic melt could cost $70 trillionPolar change, notably the fast Arctic melt, could impose huge costs on world economies. New evidence shows how rapidly the frozen north is changing. The northern reaches of the planet are undergoing very rapid change: the fast Arctic melt means the region is warming at twice the speed of the planetary average. The loss of sea ice and land snow could tip the planet into a new and unprecedented cycle of climatic change and add yet another $70 trillion (£54 tn) to the estimated economic cost of global warming. By Tim Radford
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Environmental Racism:
Carbon monoxide is killing public housing residents, but HUD doesn’t require detectors Residents of a South Carolina public housing complex are demanding answers after two of their neighbors died from the gas. KinTerra Johnson and her three young children had to flee their apartment at 3 a.m. on a cold January night, or else risk losing their lives. Two of their neighbors were already dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. Emergency officials found dangerously high levels of the gas throughout the Allen Benedict Court public housing complex near downtown Columbia, where more than 400 people lived, nearly all African American, including more than 140 children and many elderly residents in frail health. By Suzy Khimm and Laura Strickler
Lies, Damn Lies, and Abortion For a long time, when people would ask me what subjects I covered as a journalist, I would jokingly say, “Criminal justice and reproductive rights — and hoping the two never intersect.” It’s not funny anymore (if it ever really was). Opponents of reproductive rights have become emboldened, pumped up by a reconstituted, decidedly conservative U.S. Supreme Court and the appointment of a fleet of radical judges to the lower benches. Meanwhile, in a race to see who can be first to directly challenge abortion rights before the high court, their proxies in state houses across the country gleefully file legislation that can only be described as draconian. By Jordan Smith
Labor:
Tommorrow is Labor Day: International Workers’ Day! For more information on May Day go to this website.: Holt Labor Library May Day
Bibliography | Web Sites | Archives
May 1, 1886, became historic. On that day thousands of workers in the larger industrial cities poured into the streets, demanding eight hours. About 340,000 took part in demonstrations in Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Baltimore, Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Boston and other places. Of these nearly 200,000 actually went out on strike. About 42,000 won the eight-hour day. Another 150,000 got a shorter day than they had had before. Chicago workers supported the movement most vigorously. To combat labor organization and activity, Chicago employers organized and acted. Pinkerton detectives and special deputies were in evidence. Policemen were swinging billies and breading up knots of workers on street corners.
At the factory gates of McCormick Harvester Co., where a strike meeting was being held on May 3, policemen swung their clubs and then fired into the running strikers….The speaker at the meeting was August Spies, a member of the Central Labor Union, which had supported the May First strike. He was also a member of a militant labor group that was at the time influential in the Chicago Labor movement. Six workers were killed that day and many wounded. Anger ran high through the Chicago labor movement. About 3,000 attended a protest meeting the next day at Haymarket Square….The Chicago press reported the speeches were less “inflammatory” than usual. Mayor Carter H. Harrison who was present testified later that the meeting was “peaceable.” But as it was about to adjourn, policement swooped down and ordered the audience to disperse. Then some unknown person threw a bomb. It exploded, killing a police sergeant and knocking several core to the ground. The police opened fire. At the end of the day, seven policemen and four workers lay dead. At once several Chicago labor leaders were rounded up and thrown in jail. Eight of these finally came to trial–Albert Parsons, August Spies, Louis Lingg, George Engel, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fieldon, Adolph Fischer and Oscar Neebe. The presiding judge helped pick the jury which was strongly anti-labor and hostile to the defendants. The trial lasted 63 days. All of the men were declared guilty of murder. All were given death sentences, except Neebe who got a 15-year prison sentence.
A nationwide defense campaign won wide popular favor…At the last moment, as a result of widespread protests, the Governor of Illinois communted to life imprisonment the sentences of Fieldon and Schwab. It was reported that Lingg “committed suicide” in his cell. On November 11, Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer and George Engel were hanged. On the gallows Spies cried, “There will be a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.” Straightway the defense movement, now led by Albert Parsons’ widow, Lucy Parsons, turned to efforts to have the remaining three men freed. Fieldon, Schwab and Neebe were finally pardoned by Governor Altgeld in 1893. He was fully convinced, he said, of the innocence of all the eight men.
Out of the eight-hour struggle which culminated in the strike of May 1, 1886, and its aftermath, the Haymarket tragedy, came international May Day. In Paris, France, on July 14, 1889, leaders from organized proletarian movements in many countries came together to form once more an international association of workers….At the first congress of the Second International, delegates listened to the story related by the United States representatives, considered a request from the American Federation of Labor for support of their eight-hour fight, and voted to make May 1, 1890, a day for an international eight-hour day demonstration. Demand for the eight-hour day became the main slogan of the international May Day celebrations. At a later congress, the International extended the purpose of the day to include wider labor demands and world peace.
Poland: teachers’ strike betrayed by trade union leaders“From Saturday 27th of April, the ZNP (Teachers’ Union) suspends the national strike. It suspends it, but it does not end it! I shall add: Starting today, we are entering a new, much more important period.” With these words, Sławomir Broniarz, the leader of the ZNP, has bent to the pressures of bourgeois public opinion and put a lid on the cauldron of struggle that has been developing over the past three weeks. For this, the government representatives in the dispute, led by ex-PM Ewa Kopacz, thanked him warmly. Bu Henryk Kozlowski
Farrell Dobbs, Leader of the Teamsters Strike: The Teamster Series (4 volumes) The 1934 truck drivers strikes that built the industrial union movement in Minneapolis and helped pave the way for the CIO, recounted in four volumes by a central leader of that battle. Teamster Rebellion First in the 4-volume set. Traces the development of the class-struggle leadership of the strikes and organizing drives that transformed the Teamsters union in much of the Midwest into a fighting social movement and pointed the road toward independent labor political action.
World:
Protesters in Russia Today Are Younger, Poorer and Further Left than a Decade AgoAnd that might be a bad thing for the Kremlin.Sociologists like Oleg Zhuravlyev of Tyumen University say that there has been a major shift in the composition and attitudes of Russian protesters over the last decade. Compared to 2011-2013, protesters are significantly younger, from poorer groups, and further to the left. By Paul Goble
Economy:
-
Initial First-Quarter 2019 Gdp Estimate Was Not Credible
-
Downturn Has Just Begun; Recession Remains in Play, With FOMC-Generated Financial Stresses Still Diminishing Consumer Activity
-
Consumer Controls 72% of GDP, but Generated Only 22% of GDP Growth
-
Advance First-Quarter Real GDP Gain of 3.17% Topped Consensus Forecasts, Strengthened Against 2.17% in the Fourth-Quarter, Yet the Numbers Were of Unusually Poor Quality
-
Bureau of Economic Analysis Is Hamstrung by Data-Quality Issues Tied to Underlying Government Shutdown Reporting Disruptions and Distortions
-
Only Two Months of the First-Quarter Trade Deficit Were Available, Where Initial Quarterly GDP Estimates Usually Are Based on Three Months
-
That Two-Month Quarterly Trade Deficit Narrowed Sharply, Signaling a Great Recession Style Collapse in Personal Consumption; That Deficit Guess Was the Largest Single Positive Contribution to First-Quarter GDP Growth
-
Positive Impact of the Deficit Narrowing Should Have Been Offset by an Even Greater Decline in Goods Consumption, Which Dropped Sharply, But Not Enough
-
Three Months of Likely Downside Revisions to First-Quarter GDP Follow, Into the July 26th GDP Benchmarking
-
Broad Money Supply Velocity Slowed in First-Quarter 2019, Suggestive of a Slowing Economy
Graph 8: Real U.S. Merchandise Trade Deficit (First-Quarter 1994 to First-Quarter 2019) Real U.S. Merchandise Trade Deficit (Census Basis) Quarterly Deficit at Annual Rate, 1994 to Early-1q2019 (Feb) Seasonally-Adjusted [ShadowStats, Census]
Shadow Government Statistics Alternate Inflation ChartsThe 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.
Health, Education, 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 ‘govern’, 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 the to be, a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let The People Vote on Healthcare!
Gambling With Your Health: Bacterial Contamination on Casino Gaming Chips The casino environment, consisting of employees and customers, can present a risk for exposure to infectious diseases, especially bacterial diseases that are found on casino gaming chips. The purpose of this study was to replicate a study from 2011 to determine bacterial microorganisms on casino chips. A total of 26 chips (13 used actively in a casino and 13 never used from a chip manufacturer) were used for the study. Bacteria and fungi development were found in statistically significant numbers (p < .05). Contamination was found on used versus unused chips based on the location being tested, namely the obverse (the side of the chip bearing the head or principal design), reverse, or edge of the chip—with overall results being statistically significant for the presence of pathogenic contaminants. This study also determined that the chips showed the presence of E. coli at statistically significant levels.
