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During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and The Iron Heel.
Always Remember That Obamba Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature, Started the United States Capitalist Austerity Program — The Race to the Botom or 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!
Images of the Day:
Due to the threat to Capitalism’s Drive Towards Environment Genocide, The slogan from the Manifesto of the Communist Party, Workers of the World, Unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!” We should edit it, to read, but your lives and chains! — Roland Sheppard
“PG&E donated millions to California politicians after it was convicted in 2016 of 6 federal felonies connected to the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion that killed 8 people,” reported ABC10 as part of the ABC10 Originals project FIRE – POWER – MONEY, a documentary series that breaks down California’s wildfire crisis into its core elements.“Newsom, a Democrat, received more than $200,000 from the federal offender. The Republican and Democratic parties of California each took more than $500,000,” ABC10 said.It is not against the law for a convicted felon to donate campaign money, nor is it for the politician to accept it. Ninety-eight legislators, the majority of sitting State Senators and Assemblymembers, received more than $548,005 from PG&E in the last election cycle, according to ABC10. — Dan Bacher, Pg&E’s Outlandish Lobbying In California
Videos Of the Day:
Can Land Value Tax Give Baltimore’s Neighborhoods Back To Their Residents? Joshua Vincent of the Center for the Study of Economics talks about how a land value tax could give Baltimore residents relief from the wealth extraction that absentee landlords perpetrate.
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! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich.
Why We Need to Protect Government Scientists From Political Retaliation Though it seems like an eternity ago, it was only last month that President Trump presented a doctored hurricane forecast to back up his previous tweets that Alabama would likely be hit by Hurricane Dorian — a claim that National Weather Service’s (NWS) Birmingham office pointed out was inaccurate — an incident later labeled “Sharpiegate.” Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney reportedly asked Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to have the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) publicly disavow forecasters’ position that Alabama was not at risk. In response, Ross reportedly threatened to fire senior NOAA officials if they did not rescind prior agency statements about the storm that contradicted the president’s. Condemnation of the episode came immediately from current NWS and NOAA employees, former NOAA administrators, business people, and political leaders, while public commentators highlighted the pure absurdity of it all. It would be funny if it wasn’t so deadly serious. By Rudy Mehrbani and Martha Kinsella 
The Enemy Within Our democracy is not in peril—we do not live in a democracy. The image of our democracy is in peril. The deep state—the generals, bankers, corporatists, lobbyists, intelligence chiefs, government bureaucrats and technocrats—is intent on salvaging the brand. It is hard to trumpet yourself as the world’s guardian of freedom and liberty with Donald Trump blathering on incoherently about himself, inciting racist violence, insulting our traditional allies along with the courts, the press and Congress, tweeting misspelled inanities and impulsively denouncing or sabotaging bipartisan domestic and foreign policy. But Trump’s most unforgivable sin in the eyes of the deep state is his criticism of the empire’s endless wars, even though he lacks the intellectual and organizational skills to oversee a disengagement. Chris Hedges
‘Fighting for Democracy’ in Afghanistan:A CIA-Backed Militia Targeted Clinics In Afghanistan, Killing Medical Workers And Civilians On the night of March 8, 2019, four staffers at a Swedish-run health clinic in Afghanistan’s Wardak Province ate together, talked around a thermos of tea, and bedded down for the night in the guard’s room. They were awakened some time later by the thump of helicopter rotors followed by distant explosions echoing from farther up the Tangi Valley. The sounds were not unusual in Wardak, where for 20 years there has been little respite from war, and the four went back to sleep. The men were jolted awake again sometime after midnight. The main gate to the clinic, which was next to the guard’s room, had been blown in, and the staff heard hurried footsteps in the ruined entryway. The intruders ran past the guard’s room and into the clinic’s main building. . . . Seconds later, the door to the guard’s room crashed open. The soldiers who burst in wore night-vision goggles and told the clinic staffers to face the wall. They bound the men, covered their heads with hoods, and led them to a room that one of the workers, who The Intercept is identifying only as Hashmatullah for his safety, believed was the clinic’s pharmacy. Hashmatullah couldn’t see, but he guessed that there were five or six soldiers in the room. “You’re here to serve the Taliban,” the soldiers alleged. They spoke in Dari and Pashto, Afghanistan’s two main languages, but the detainees also heard English. By Andrew Quilty
Environment:
‘Not Our Mission’: Private Fire Crews Protect The Insured, Not The Public Agencies hired to protect assets look like first responders but, if a fire puts them in danger, they can become a liability Insurers of houses, timber and agriculture have contracted with private firefighting agencies for decades. But now, thanks to longer, more devastating fire seasons, the business is booming. While some wealthy communities and individuals have contracted their own private firefighting services to defend mansions on hilltops from flying embers, the majority of these agencies work on behalf of insurance companies. And as fire risk extends to more homes in California’s flammable brushland and forest, these crews are becoming a fixture in middle class neighborhoods. It is something of a return to a pre-American civil war model of pay-for-play firefighting, before the government employed first responders. By Susie Cagle and Vivian Ho
Pg&E’s Outlandish Lobbying In California The Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), again in the spotlight of the national and international news media because of its shutoffs of electricity to millions of Californians as fires now rage throughout the state, spent $876,445 on lobbying from January 1 to June 30 of his year. The $876,445 was effectively spent, since in July the California Legislature passed AB 1054, described by Food & Water Watch as a “far reaching bailout for investor owned utilities.” Governor Gavin Newsom, in spite of many environmental and public interest groups urging him not to do so, signed the bill. By Dan Bacher
Environmental Justice Activists Arrested Amid Growing Concerns Over Louisiana’s Cancer Alley Pollution when two activists were detained in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on October 30, the last day of a two-week protest against environmental racism in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. By Julie Dermansky 
Horses and Humans Images of thoroughbreds stumbling, becoming maimed and collapsing ignited outrage in the wake of record numbers of horse racing deaths in 2018 and 2019. One thousand racehorses were injured on the track and subsequently euthanized in 2018 in the United States alone. Alarm about the high death toll has centered on the hazardous weather conditions in which horses are made to run as well as the sport’s ubiquitous use of “performance enhancing” drugs. Amphetamines, caffeine and anabolic steroids hype them up while anti-inflammatory and anti-bleeding medications deaden maimed horses’ pain so that they can be raced in spite of their injuries. By Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
If the Cops Make the Victim a Criminal and Themselves the Victim, According to the Supreme Court Police are Permitted to Use Deadly Force: Police Killed Atatiana Jefferson, Then Implied She Was Responsible for Her Death At 2:30 am on October 12, Atatiana Koquice Jefferson was shot and killed in her own home by an officer with the Fort Worth Police Department. Officer Aaron Dean, responding to a call placed by a neighbor to investigate an open front door, searched the exterior of Jefferson’s home before approaching her bedroom window. Upon seeing a figure moving inside the room, the officer shot into the window, killing Jefferson while she was babysitting her nephew. Less than 24 hours later, the Fort Worth Police Department released a video of the shooting. It took 13 months and a lawsuit for the video of Laquan McDonald’s killing to be released to the public. Why was the video of Jefferson released so quickly? The video footage evidences a common pattern followed in the aftermath of police killings of Black people in the U.S. According to the Supreme Court case Graham v Connor, officers are permitted to use deadly force when they believe their lives are in legitimate danger. Their lives don’t have to actually be in danger; officers simply need to have an “objectively reasonable” belief that this is the case. Thus, when officers are caught pulling the trigger on those who appear innocent, law enforcement agencies — and those who uncritically support them — carefully weave a story together to make the killing the inevitable, defensible outcome of a situation rife with threat. By William Lopez
Fbi And San Francisco Police Have Been Lying About Scope Of Joint Counterterrorism Investigations, Document Suggests SAN FRANCISCO police officers working on an FBI counterterrorism task force were routinely given low-level assignments that would invite violations of local San Francisco law and policy, according to an internal FBI legal analysis obtained by The Intercept. The FBI’s San Francisco office has long assured the public that its relationship to the city’s police officers could be trusted, especially when it came to officers assigned to the bureau’s secretive counterterrorism teams. In January, for example, John F. Bennett, the special agent in charge of the office, wrote to Mayor London Breed to correct the “inaccurate information promulgated” by the media concerning its Joint Terrorism Task Force, or JTTF, which the San Francisco Police Department chose to remove its officers from more than two years ago. By Ryan Devereaux
Labor:
Economy:
Trump, China, and the coming crisis In August, the expected yield for ten-year Treasury notes fell below the yield for two-year notes for the first time since 2007, with the 30-year bond yield also reaching a new low. The “yield curve” tracks the yield to investors who purchase shares in government debt to be paid back over various time horizons. The national debt accrues as the US Treasury sells Treasury securities in exchange for cash used to finance the government.These securities encounter the forces of supply and demand, and the lower long-term yields indicate that investors are moving their money into lower-risk long-term Treasury notes rather than gamble on the stock market, where they anticipate significant longer-term disruptions in the economy—in other words, they anticipate a recession. Yield curve inversion has been a predictor of every significant recession since 1950, indicating that a new downturn is likely in the next few years. By Leroy James
As the Fed Throws Hundreds of Billions a Week at Wall Street Banks for Liquidity, JPMorgan’s IIF Can Afford to Buy El Paso Electric David Dayen of American Prospect has a must-read article. The headline and subhead read: “JPMorgan Gets Back Into the Electricity Business: An El Paso, Texas, electric utility is being purchased by an investment fund with deep, undisclosed ties to the big bank.” Dayen is not buying into the idea that it’s an investment fund at JPMorgan that’s buying El Paso Electric, a publicly traded electric utility, but that the deal is simply being “laundered through an allegedly independent investment fund,” due to the fact that “48 executives of the investment fund are actually paid employees of JPMorgan….” Why wouldn’t JPMorgan Chase want to admit that it plans to make an outright purchase of an electric utility company serving 429,000 customers in Texas and New Mexico? For starters, the bank has been charged, and admitted to, three criminal felony counts within the past five years and is currently under a criminal probe for running a criminal enterprise out of its precious metals desk. And then there is their prior history ripping off electric customers. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
A Worldwide Revolution Is Underway Puerto Rico. Hong Kong. Ecuador. Haiti. Lebanon. Iraq. And now, Chile. People are rising up around the world against austerity and corruption, defying police forces unleashed to suppress them. Many of these mass movements share a fierce critique of capitalism. In Santiago, Chile, more than 1 million people flooded the streets last weekend, and mass protests continue. There, the brutal Pinochet dictatorship from 1973-1990, during which thousands of progressive activists and leaders were tortured, disappeared and murdered, was followed by decades of neoliberal policies, with rampant privatization, union busting, stagnant wages and increased costs for education, health care, transportation and other services. Chile, among the richest countries in South America, is also one of the most unequal. At least 20 people have been killed during recent protests there, further angering and emboldening the crowds. By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan
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!
How Deep Sleep May Help The Brain Clear Alzheimer’s Toxins The brain waves generated during deep sleep appear to trigger a cleaning system in the brain that protects it against Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. Electrical signals known as slow waves appear just before a pulse of fluid washes through the brain, presumably removing toxins associated with Alzheimer’s, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science. The finding could help explain a puzzling link between sleep and Alzheimer’s, says Laura Lewis, an author of the study and an assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at Boston University. By Jon Hamilton
Quotes of the Day: