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. Socialism Means True Democracy — The 99% Will Rule! — Not the Few!
Images of the Day:
We Want a Future for Our Kids!Signe Wilkinson:Political Cartoon: Sackler Neighborhood Drug Dealers The Sackler family, overseers of oxycontin-pushing Purdue Pharma, are thought to be America’s 19th-richest family according to Forbes Magazine. As their empire is going down in shame, they are apparently busy making sure that if they are still billionaires so they don’t have to step over opioid users shooting up on the sidewalks in front of their homes. At this point, it’s hard to imagine how much money it would take to repair the lives opioid addiction has ruined. The Sackler’s last billion or two would at least help. Quotes of the Day:
The Egyptians had pyramids. The Romans had roads, aqueducts, and coliseums. The medieval Europeans had castles and cathedrals. These days, America’s pyramids, aqueducts, and cathedrals are those warplanes, among other deadly weapons programs, including a $1.7 trillion one to “modernize” the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Unlike the massive projects of ancient history, which still endure and in some fashion represent the triumph of the human spirit, America’s massive spending on military weaponry has been for totems of power that will prove either ephemeral or make our very existence ephemeral, while casting a long shadow over our moment, thanks to the sheer extravagance and colossal waste they embody. — America’s Biggest Investment is Nothing But a Waste
Oligarch: A member of an oligarchy, a power structure where control resides in a small number of people.
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! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich.
Believe Absolutely Nothing the US Government and Media Say About…AnythingIn any alliance with corporate oppression and militarism, Black America squanders reservoirs of respect among the Earth’s peoples. We betray ourselves and become Black Gringos. “The epic struggle for Black self-determination is inseparable from the struggle for peace and a livable planet.”There was a time, not so long ago, when most Black Americans of all classes were highly skeptical of every word that emanated from the mouths of white folks in power in the United States. A substantial body of Black opinion believed nothing at all that appeared in the corporate media – which, back then, we simply called the “white press.” It was a wise and healthy skepticism, learned over generations of enduring a constant stream of lies and slander against Black people from politicians and mass media of the two governing parties. These organs and mouthpieces of rich white people’s power were no more to be trusted, as Malcolm X counseled, than “foxes” (Democrats) and “wolves” (Republicans). The logic of the collective Black domestic experience extended to international affairs, as well. We empathized with the “colored” peoples of the world under attack by the U.S. government and media. If white politicians and press lied about us, we knew they were probably lying about their foreign non-white victims, as well. And we were right. By Glen Ford, BAR executive editor Trump ‘Promise’ to Foreign Leader Sparked Whistleblower Complaint“This may take impeachment in a totally new direction,” said John Dean, who served as White House counsel to President Richard Nixon The formal whistleblower complaint by a U.S. official that Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire has refused to turn over to Congress was reportedly sparked by an alarming “promise” President Donald Trump made to a foreign leader in recent weeks. The Washington Post, citing two anonymous former U.S. officials familiar with the matter, reported late Wednesday that Trump’s promise “was regarded as so troubling that it prompted an official in the U.S. intelligence community to file a formal whistleblower complaint with the inspector general for the intelligence community.” By Jake Johnson
The government keeps changing the Cost of Living for Senior workers on social security. Cheating retired workers by 5% if you used how it ‘figured’ the social security increased in 1990 and 8% in 1980. Our ‘labor leaders have remained silent in their duty to their partners. The graphs below demonstrate the 1% government’s sleight of hand.
Shadow Government Statistics Alternate Inflation Charts 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.
American Plutocrats Are Taking Food Off Families’ Tables While the Trumpistas are presently plowing a multibillion-dollar subsidy into big grain farms, they’re using a tangle of federal red tape to deny a meager level of food assistance to millions of poor families. To qualify for food aid, federal rules say that a family of three should have an income under $27,000 a year. But with rents, utilities, health care, and even food prices constantly rising, millions of Americans can’t make ends meet on such a low income.
The Xenophobia Behind Corporate Media’s Use of ‘Oligarch’ States as an “oligarchy.” That is the judgment of former President Jimmy Carter, of peer-reviewed academic studies, and even opinion pieces in our most prestigious media (e.g., Washington Post, 4/8/14; New Yorker, 4/18/14). Indeed, Paul Krugman has been saying it in the New York Times (11/3/11, 5/15/15, 7/15/19) for years. Just three men hold more wealth than the bottom 50% of the country combined, and the richest people in society use their money to influence media, society and the government. By Alan MacLeoEnvironment:
Naomi Klein: We Have Far Less Time Than We Think Canadian author, social activist and filmmaker Naomi Klein is done with “tinkering and denial” as solutions to climate change. As she explains in her new book, “On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal,” America, and the world, is way past the point where a single policy, or even market-based solutions, can cut carbon emissions, increase production of renewable energy, repair broken ecosystems and generally prevent the kinds of climate catastrophe that will hurt the earth and the humans on it. “We’re all alive at the last possible moment,” Klein writes, “when changing course can mean saving lives on a truly unimaginable scale.” By Ilana Novick
We are Getting Slimed!: Algae BloomsSlimy Lakes and Dead Dogs: Climate Crisis Has Brought the Season of Toxic AlgaeWarming water and pollution are contributing to a variety of harmful bacteria that can wreak havoc on aquatic environments from New York City to coastal California, a poison-producing living slime is overtaking waterways and shorelines, killing pets, ravaging tourism markets and making its way into local drinking water. So far this year, algae has been implicated in dog deaths and illness in California, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas. In August, toxic algae overtook Lake Erie, growing to 620 sq miles. These biotoxic blooms can last anywhere from a few weeks to over a year. By Susie CagleOnly Labour will give the people a final say on BrexitBoris Johnson and the Conservatives are threatening to drive our country over a no-deal cliff edge in six weeks’ time. He has no mandate for that and is opposed by a majority of the public. Since he became prime minister in July, Johnson has been defeated on every vote he has put to parliament. Now his undemocratic manoeuvrings and his decision to close down parliament and avoid accountability are being challenged in the supreme court. Johnson’s visit to Luxembourg on Mondaywas a further humiliation. The prime minister went to Europe with no plan and no proposals, and did his best to hide from scrutiny while he was there. By Jeremy CorbynBurning Amazonia, Denying Climate Change, Devastating Syria, Starving Yemen, and Ignoring KashmirArguably, even before the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, there was a widespread sense that a state-centric form of world order was morally and functionally deficient in certain fundamental respects. Political actors were indifferent to the outbreaks of war, disease, and famine outside of their sovereign territory absent serious extraterritorial reverberations. At the same time lesser states were vulnerable to the manipulations and territorial/imperial ambitions of leading states that generated colonialism, interventions, and sustained an exploitative Europeanization of world order. By Richard FalkCivil Rights/Black Liberation:
Labor:
The worker who becomes a policeman, in the service of the capitalist state, is a bourgeois cop, not a worker. Of late years, these policemen have had to do much more fighting with revolutionary workers than with Nazi students. Such training does not fail to leave its effects. And above all: every policeman knows that though governments may change, the police remain.— Leon Trotsky, What Next?
Rols of the Police — Protect GM Scabs: Breaking: Striking GM Workers Arrested in Spring Hill, Tennessee for Blocking Scab TruckAt least five GM workers were arrested on the picket line this morning in Spring Hill, Tennessee for attempting to block a car-hauling truck from leaving the plant with new GM vehicles, presumably built before the strike started. Eyewitness video posted to Facebook shows two pickets, one male and one female, being cuffed by police on the picket line, while several other workers stand in front of a stopped semi-truck at the entrance to GM’s Spring Hill Assembly plant near Nashville. The male was later identified to the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter as Tim Standard, president of UAW Local 1853. The incident in Tennessee is only the latest indication that police are intervening more aggressively against pickets to open up traffic into the plants. A reader of the Autoworker Newsletter provided photographs of police vehicles parked near the picket line at Warren Tech Center in suburban Detroit. The police were preventing pickets from blocking the entrances, the reader said. Both hourly GM workers and Aramark maintenance workers are on strike at the location. By Tom Hall
Police parked outside Warren Technical Center near Detroit
Meanwhile, Fred Meyer grocery store employees who have voted to authorize a strike, face similar problems. Grocery workers are grossly underpaid in general, forcing many full-time workers to rely on food stamps, according to United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 555, which represents the Fred Meyer grocery employees. Some members of Local 555 experience homelessness. Fred Meyer is part of Kroger Company, the largest supermarket chain in the country. — Oregon State University Employees Vote to Authorize a Strike Amid Heated Moment
An Energized Moment for Labor Meanwhile, 80,000 employees of Kaiser Permanente — an insurance and health care provider — including 4,500 workers in Oregon and Southwest Washington, are poised to go on strike on October 14 in what would be the largest U.S. strike since 1997. Workers represented by a coalition of unions argue that the company has deprioritized employee pay and the quality of care patients receive in favor of higher executive pay. They also cite concerns about job security — a common issue among union workers nationwide as the economy continues to shift toward part-time work. With a spectrum of demands ranging from gender pay equity to tuition hikes, a fairer distribution of revenue, the pending strikes in Oregon represent concerns that students and workers across the country are grappling with. One tenth of 1 percent of wealthy Americans own more wealth than the bottom 80 percent combined, and with attacks on collective bargaining being waged across the country, longstanding labor tensions in the U.S. appear to have reached a boiling point. Major strikes are brewing around the country. The Chicago Teachers Union has set a strike authorization vote for September 26 over wage issues and the city’s refusal to guarantee the presence of a nurse and librarian in every school. The union is also demanding more social workers in the city’s schools, but so far, the city’s newly elected mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has refused to budge. Meanwhile, 50,000 employees of General Motors (GM) went on strike Sunday night after declaring that GM employees had “helped rebuild General Motors when they were near extinction” and should be rewarded with high wages, better health care plans and greater job security. U.S. workers are faced with a grim future unless they can successfully leverage their labor power and revitalize the labor movement. Could the current wave of strikes and tough negotiations fuel a reinvigorated era of labor organizing, or even lead to a general strike over issues like climate justice or health care? Only time will tell, but for now, the iron is hot and workers in Oregon are ready to strike.
Oregon State University Employees Vote to Authorize a Strike Amid Heated Moment Over 95 percent of 5,000 classified workers at Oregon’s seven public universities voted to authorize a strike this week. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) local 503 announced the strike vote’s results Tuesday night and warned that if negotiations with university officials don’t yield “a fair agreement that respects workers” a strike will commence on Monday, September 30, at 7 am. Classified staff at Oregon’s public universities provide services like counseling, health care and library services and also provide clerical and technical support to students, faculty and administrators. As Oregon State University (OSU) graduate student Nick Fisher told Truthout this week, “Everything is going to fall apart if we don’t have our classified workers.” By Kelly HayesEconomy:
Explaining the Coming Crisis ff Capitalism Business news headlines recently bemoaned the incidence of “bond yield inversions” in a series of countries as the supposed harbinger of doom and destruction. Many working-class people were left scratching their heads about what on earth this all means. 10 years after the “Great Recession”, many could be forgiven for thinking that we have been living in permanent recession and things can’t get any worse. The reality is that, while things have not been good in most countries, things can also get far, far, worse. In this article, we will explain why. By Alex GrantCentral Bankers’ Desperate Grab for PowerCentral bankers are out of ammunition. Mark Carney, the soon-to-be-retiring head of the Bank of England, admitted as much in a speech at the annual meeting of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyo., in August. “In the longer-term,” he said, “we need to change the game.” The same point was made by Philipp Hildebrand, former head of the Swiss National Bank, in a recentinterview with Bloomberg. “Really, there is little if any ammunition left,” he said. “More of the same in terms of monetary policy is unlikely to be an appropriate response if we get into a recession or sharp downturn.” “More of the same” means further lowering interest rates, the central bankers’ stock tool for maintaining their targeted inflation rate in a downturn. Bargain-basem
ent interest rates are supposed to stimulate the economy by encouraging borrowers to borrow (since rates are so low) and savers to spend (since they aren’t making any interest on their deposits and may have to pay to store them). At the moment, over $15 trillion in bonds are trading globally at negative interest rates, yet this radical maneuver has not been shown to measurably improve economic performance. In fact, new research shows that negative interest rates from central banks, rather than increasing spending, stopping deflation and stimulating the economy as they were expected to do, may be having the opposite effects. They are being blamed for squeezing banks, punishing savers, keeping dying companies on life support and fueling a pontially unsustainable surge in asset prices. By Ellen Brown
At Press Conference, Fed Chair Powell Refuses to Answer Whether Wall Street Banks Are Too Big to Manage Following a lack of liquidity on Wall Street, which necessitated the Federal Reserve having to provide $53 billion on Tuesday and another $75 billion on Wednesday to normalize overnight lending in the repo market, the Chairman of the Fed, Jerome (Jay) Powell held his press conference at 2:30 p.m. yesterday. The press gathering followed both a one-quarter point cut in the Fed Funds rate by the Fed yesterday as well as the first intervention by the Fed in the overnight lending market since the financial crash. (The Fed had to intervene again this morning, making another $75 billion in repo loans available.) By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
The United States’ Never-ending Nuclear War In Iraq:
The Sunday Times Online, February 19, 2006, reported on a shocking scientific study authored by British scientists Dr. Chris Busby and Saoirse Morgan: “Did the use of Uranium weapons in Gulf War 2 result in contamination of Europe? Evidence from the measurements of the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), Aldermaston, Berkshire, UK”. The highest levels of depleted uranium ever measured in the atmosphere in Britain, were transported on air currents from the Middle East and Central Asia; of special significance were those from the Tora Bora bombing in Afghanistan in 2001, and the “Shock & Awe” bombing during Gulf War II in Iraq in 2003. Out of concern for the public, the official British government air monitoring facility, known as the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), at Aldermaston was established years ago, to measure radioactive emissions from British nuclear power plants and atomic weapons facilities. — Leuren Moret, The Queen’s Death Star Depleted Uranium Measured in British Atmosphere from Battlefields in the Middle East
Iraqi Kids Test Positive for Depleted Uranium Remnants Near Former US Air Base For the first time, independent researchers have found that the bodies of Iraqi children born with congenital disabilities, such as heart disease and malformed limbs, near a former United States air base in southern Iraq are contaminated with high levels of radioactive heavy metals associated with toxic depleted uranium pollution leftover from the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. The findings appear to bolster claims made by Iraqi doctors who observed high rates of congenital disabilities in babies born in areas that experienced heavy fighting during the bloody first year of the most recent Iraq war. By Mike LudwigHealth, 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!
Signe Wilkinson:Political Cartoon: Sackler Neighborhood Drug Dealers The Sackler family, overseers of oxycontin-pushing Purdue Pharma, are thought to be America’s 19th-richest family according to Forbes Magazine. As their empire is going down in shame, they are apparently busy making sure that if they are still billionaires so they don’t have to step over opioid users shooting up on the sidewalks in front of their homes. At this point, it’s hard to imagine how much money it would take to repair the lives opioid addiction has ruined. The Sackler’s last billion or two would at least help.
Quotes of the Day:
Environment:
Slimy Lakes and Dead Dogs: Climate Crisis Has Brought the Season of Toxic AlgaeWarming water and pollution are contributing to a variety of harmful bacteria that can wreak havoc on aquatic environments from New York City to coastal California, a poison-producing living slime is overtaking waterways and shorelines, killing pets, ravaging tourism markets and making its way into local drinking water. So far this year, algae has been implicated in dog deaths and illness in California, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas. In August, toxic algae overtook Lake Erie, growing to 620 sq miles. These biotoxic blooms can last anywhere from a few weeks to over a year. By Susie Cagle
Only Labour will give the people a final say on BrexitBoris Johnson and the Conservatives are threatening to drive our country over a no-deal cliff edge in six weeks’ time. He has no mandate for that and is opposed by a majority of the public. Since he became prime minister in July, Johnson has been defeated on every vote he has put to parliament. Now his undemocratic manoeuvrings and his decision to close down parliament and avoid accountability are being challenged in the supreme court. Johnson’s visit to Luxembourg on Mondaywas a further humiliation. The prime minister went to Europe with no plan and no proposals, and did his best to hide from scrutiny while he was there. By Jeremy Corbyn
Burning Amazonia, Denying Climate Change, Devastating Syria, Starving Yemen, and Ignoring KashmirArguably, even before the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, there was a widespread sense that a state-centric form of world order was morally and functionally deficient in certain fundamental respects. Political actors were indifferent to the outbreaks of war, disease, and famine outside of their sovereign territory absent serious extraterritorial reverberations. At the same time lesser states were vulnerable to the manipulations and territorial/imperial ambitions of leading states that generated colonialism, interventions, and sustained an exploitative Europeanization of world order. By Richard Falk
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Economy:
Health, Education, and Welfare: