During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and The Iron Heel.
The Capitalist Austerity Program = It’s Become the Race to the Botom! The Pauperization of the 99%!
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!
Although the Confederates were not tried and convicted of that crime, treason certainly describes their behavior. The Constitution says that “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them.” That is exactly what the Confederates did. They were U.S. citizens who took up arms against their government. These were individuals who killed American soldiers. They sought to destroy the United States, as it stood, through violence. Haley said others in South Carolina consider the emblem part “of history, of heritage and of ancestry.” That is a history and a heritage flowing from ancestors who took up arms against this nation — a country today’s Confederate supporters say they love. Apparently they see no conflict in both loving their nation and honoring people who sought to destroy it. — The Confederate Flag Isn’t Just Offensive. It’s Treasonous.
All talk to the effect that historical conditions have not yet “ripened” for socialism is the product of ignorance or conscious deception. The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only “ripened”; they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind. The turn is now to the proletariat, i.e., chiefly to its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership. — Leon Trotsky. The Death Agony of Capitalism
and the Tasks of the Fourth International
At his time, in history, the mis-leaderships of the 99% are in partnership with the 1% Against the 99% In the article below, Nader does not understand the current crisis of leadership! — Roland Sheppard
Wall Street Bank Bailouts Continue: There’s Nothing Normal About the Fed Pumping Hundreds of Billions Weekly to Unnamed Banks on Wall Street: “Somebody’s Got a Problem” — Wall Street on Parade
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.
‘Money Is Not Speech and Corporations Are Not People’: Sanders Unveils Plan to Get Corporate Money Out of Politics “You can’t take on a corrupt system if you take its money.” Holding up the small-donor campaign model his campaign has revolutionized as proof alternatives exist, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday unveiled an ambitious new plan to get “corporate money out of politics.” The Sanders plan aims to end the corrupting influence of dark money by dramatically curbing the ability of corporations to dominate giving to political parties, replacing the Federal Election Commission with a new enforcement agency, establishing public funding for all federal elections, and pushing for a Constitutional Amendment that makes clear that “money is not speech and corporations are not people.” By Jon Queally
There has never been more access to food—domestic and imported—yet hunger is an ongoing problem everywhere. In the U.S. alone, 5 millionchildren go to bed hungry and 20% of community college students are experiencing “food insecurity.”
Never have there been more communications technologies, yet it is harder to get through to people personally than fifty years ago.
Never have people been able to use their right to free speech so unencumbered, yet a torrent of lies are now spread so freely and are often unchallenged.
Never have there been higher corporate profits, yet staggering amounts of poverty and near poverty remain along with stagnant wages.
Never have there been more medicines to alleviate pain, yet far too many of these pain killers have caused massive fatalities and addictions.
Never has there been more liquid corporate capital piled up, yet corporate investment is proportionately lower than before. Instead, CEO’s have burned over 7 trillion dollars in unproductive stock buybacks in the past decade.
Never have there been more exercise outlets, exercise machines and apps, yet obesity is still rampant.
Never have there been more tax breaks for big businesses, yet big businesses use so little of the windfalls for productive investments, good jobs and shoring up pensions.
Never has there been more free access to information, yet so little retained knowledge.
Never have there been more impressive muckraking film documentaries and books that expose corporate and government crimes, yet this media attention produces less impact and reform.
Never have there been more ongoing impeachable offenses and statutory violations by a president, yet the opposing Party in Congress have been reluctant to move on the many articles of impeachment. Remember how fast the unified House of Republicans moved to impeach Bill Clinton in 1998 for perjury and obstruction of justice?
Never have there been more trainers, sports physicians, protective equipment and guards for professional athletes, yet there are far more injuries and days lost by players than was the case sixty years ago. Now there are helmets, gloves, pads, cushioned walls, better shoes etc. Why?
Never has there been more to read, yet there are so few readers reading. Historically, we have gone from illiteracy to literacy to aliteracy!
Never before has technology made it so easy for heads of government to meet, yet fewer international treaties are made. (Eg. Cyber, water, environment, consumer, labor etc.)
Never has there been such an outrageous corporate crime wave, yet law enforcement budgets have decreased! The more big CEO’s are paid, the worse is their management. (Eg. The big banks twelve years ago, General Electric for years.)
Never before have there been so many wrongful injuries, yet the court budgets are becoming tighter and the law of torts is being restricted. Without the defense of and use of our civil justice system, wrongful injury cases cannot go to court with a trial by jury.
Never before has there been more corporate fraud, yet agencies tasked with bringing this fraud to justice have smaller budgets and more limitations. The budget of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is a third of one day’s worth of health care billing fraud, which is estimated this year to be $350 billion, according to Harvard’s national expert on the subject, Professor Malcolm Sparrow. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has been straitjacketed by the evil corporate crime abettor Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House Chief of Staff for corrupt Donald.
Never has the drug industry accumulated more profits and government subsidies, yet so many patients cannot begin to afford lifesaving medicines.
Never have the under-taxed super-rich been so rich, yet on average give a smaller proportion of their money to “good works.” Actually, middle and lower income people give more proportionallythan do the ultra-wealthy.
Trump Administration to Small Farmers: Stop Whining, Your Demise is Inevitable By telling all those small farmers at the town hall that there was no guarantee that small farms would survive, and saying, “In America, the big get bigger and the small go out,” Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue was parroting Nixon’s ag secretary Earl Butz, who coined the phrase “get big or get out.” By doubling down on that mantra, which led to the farm crisis we are in today, Perdue was effectively slapping farmers in the face and letting them know that any idea of a fair price was not part of his brand of failed farm policy. By Jim GoodmanLawless Trump-Canada Connections Canada recently seized and sold $30 million worth of Iranian properties in Ottawa and Toronto, a gross hypocrisy explains Yves Engler in light of oversights of more flagrant US and Israel terror victims. But the behaviour of Canada Foreign Affairs in joining the lawless US war of sanctions, embargos and military threats against Iran goes deeper than hypocrisy. By John Mcmurtry
Why is the Army Still Honoring Confederate Generals? In the south in the years before the Civil War, it would have been difficult to find a more zealous advocate for slavery than Henry Lewis Benning. He was a firebrand from Georgia and an early advocate of Southern secession. As his public stature rose, Benning became an increasingly ardent voice for the creation of a pro-slavery Southern republic. He helped draft Georgia’s ordinance of secession, which took the state out of the Union just before the Civil War. By James RisenBig Brother Is Here in California: How a Tech Firm Helped Power One of the Largest Workplace Raids in ICE History On the morning of August 7, 2019, more than 600 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents descended on seven chicken processing plants in rural Mississippi. The raids proceeded with steely efficiency: ICE agents told workers to form lines, then began placing people under arrest. They knew who their targets were. By the end of the day, the agents had detained more than 680 people, in the largest ICE raid in over a decade, and possibly the largest raid ever to take place in a single state. In the chaos of the raids, how did ICE agents know exactly who to arrest? The feds needed to know more than just their targets’ names: They also needed to know exactly what their targets looked like, as well as details like which cars they drove and when they would arrive for their shifts. In short, the massive operation was the result of a years-long investigation. Now, new documents reveal that the secretive data firm, Palantir Technologies, provided software used in that investigation. The connection between Palantir’s technology and the raid, first discovered by the immigrant activist organization Mijente, reveals the growing role of Silicon Valley in the federal government’s deportation machine, even as tech companies deny their involvement.
The headquarters of big data analytics company Palantir located in the Silicon Valley town of Palo Alto, California, as seen on August 25, 2016.
Environment:
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Labor:
There Has Been No Recovery for the Working Class! Due to the Labor Buresucacy’s Government Brokered Partnership With the Capitalist Class! Austerity’s = Labors’ ‘Race to the Bottom’:
ShadowGovernment Statistics Flash Update No. 10 September 2019 Labor Data, Money Supply, August Trade Deficit In contrast, the September 2019 ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment Estimate, including long-term displaced/discouraged workers not counted by the BLS was 20.9% in September. Graphs 3 and 4 plot the usual measures of Labor Market Stress, the Participation Rate and the Employment to Population Ratio. As seen here for a number of years, the headline levels of employment stress (particularly Graph 4) are consistent with a deep recession, and with the high levels of unemployment reflected in Graph 5 of the inverted ShadowStats alternate unemployment measure, as opposed to going in the wrong direction in later years (post-Great Recession and those defined out of the headline labor force) for Graph 6 of the inverted headline U.3 unemployment rate. See the detailed discussion in Section 4 of Commentary No. 983-B. Record Low Headline U.3 Versus the ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment, and Employment Stresses Signaling Ongoing Recession. The 50-year low 3.52% September U.3 unemployment rate suggested a booming economy, yet Labor–Market Stress levels (Employment-Population Ratio and the Participation Rate) still ran massively counter to the historically low headline U.3 unemployment rate, continuing at levels already consistent with an ongoing recession (see Graphs 3 to 6). Slave Labor: The Prison Industrial Complex has Seized Our Borders!: The US Border Security Industry Could Be Worth $740 Billion by 2023 Over the course of a few days in early 2019, Selene Saavedra-Roman went from starting her dream job as a flight attendant to scrubbing toilets in a dreary Texas detention center. “I knew not to argue or talk back — refusing to obey the guards’ commands would end up hurting us greatly,” she recalled in her testimony last week at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on immigrant detention. Saavedra-Roman, who was born in Peru and came to the U.S. 24 years ago at the age of 4, was in the process of applying for legal residency. But she was detained at the airport in Houston, Texas, after flying in from Mexico. Recalling the trauma of being locked up with other migrant women in desolate squalor, she testified, “If you volunteered for the work program [in the migrant jail], you would be compensated $1 an hour,” though it was understood that refusing to “volunteer” could jeopardize their immigration cases. By Michelle ChenEconomy:
Fed Says It Will Offer $310 Billion More in Term Loans to Wall Street as Over 68,000 Job Cuts Planned at Mega Banks One or more U.S. or foreign banks that are primary dealers to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is in need of longer-term loans that they are unable to get anywhere else – at least at an affordable rate of interest. That’s the only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from the Fed’s announcement on Friday that it is extending its money pumping program to Wall Street until at least November 4 and will be offering an additional $310 billion cumulatively in term loans (most for 14-days at a time) as well as offering at least $75 billion daily in overnight loans. BY Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Counting the Dead Through the Fog of War in Afghanistan During one week in late September, U.S.-led forces killed at least 70 civilians in two incidents in Afghanistan. A U.S. drone strike on September 19th killed at least 30 farmers harvesting pine nuts in Nangarhar province. Then on September 23rd, at least 40 civilians, including women and children, were reported killed in a combined U.S.-Afghan attack on a village in Taliban-controlled territory in southern Helmand province. By Nicolas J S Davies
Iraq is in RevoltIraq is poised at a turning point in its modern history as its people wait to see if the government curfew and close down of the internet will end the ongoing demonstrations. . . . It turned out that the government had managed to turn a small demonstration of 3,000 people in Tahrir Square, who had been protesting for three months against official corruption, a lack of jobs and poor services, into a major incident. The protesters had tried to cross the Jumhuriya Bridge which leads in the direction of the green zone, the site of the parliament, the prime minister’s office and other official buildings. The riot police, who have a bad reputation in Iraq, opened fire with rubber bullets, stun grenades, and, eventually, live rounds. Soon a video was flashing around social media of the protesters, mostly under 20, being attacked by the police and hosed with hot water. By Patrick Cockburn
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!
Education is a Neglected Casualty of Wars and Displacements One of the neglected consequences of the recent wars and civilian conflicts in many parts of the world is their effect on people’s education, particularly children’s education. Because of the close connection between education and health, these events have had a severe effect on people’s health –particularly on children- and on the countries’ development. By Cesar Chelala
Lawless Trump-Canada Connections Canada recently seized and sold $30 million worth of Iranian properties in Ottawa and Toronto, a gross hypocrisy explains Yves Engler in light of oversights of more flagrant US and Israel terror victims. But the behaviour of Canada Foreign Affairs in joining the lawless US war of sanctions, embargos and military threats against Iran goes deeper than hypocrisy. By John Mcmurtry
Big Brother Is Here in California: How a Tech Firm Helped Power One of the Largest Workplace Raids in ICE History On the morning of August 7, 2019, more than 600 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents descended on seven chicken processing plants in rural Mississippi. The raids proceeded with steely efficiency: ICE agents told workers to form lines, then began placing people under arrest. They knew who their targets were. By the end of the day, the agents had detained more than 680 people, in the largest ICE raid in over a decade, and possibly the largest raid ever to take place in a single state. In the chaos of the raids, how did ICE agents know exactly who to arrest? The feds needed to know more than just their targets’ names: They also needed to know exactly what their targets looked like, as well as details like which cars they drove and when they would arrive for their shifts. In short, the massive operation was the result of a years-long investigation. Now, new documents reveal that the secretive data firm, Palantir Technologies, provided software used in that investigation. The connection between Palantir’s technology and the raid, first discovered by the immigrant activist organization Mijente, reveals the growing role of Silicon Valley in the federal government’s deportation machine, even as tech companies deny their involvement.
Slave Labor: The Prison Industrial Complex has Seized Our Borders!: 
Economy:
