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During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three-Point Political Program: 1, Austerity,2 Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and 3. The Iron Heel
Always Remember: That Obama That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember, That he Established, in writing, the United States Capitalist Austerity Program. — The Race to the Bottom/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 , thet the 99% Will Rule, Not the Few!
Images of the Day:
Quotes of the Day:
The most effective way to limit ocean acidification is to act on climate change, implementing solutions to dramatically reduce the use of fossil fuels. If we dramatically cut our global warming emissions, and we limit future warming, we can significantly reduce the harm to marine ecosystems. — CO2 and Ocean Acidification: Causes, Impacts, Solutions
Videos of the Day:
Students Say the Cost of Underfunding Schools Is Too High 200 Baltimore students and their allies ask why there’s always money to fund police and the military, but never any for public schools.
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.
The Disaster of Utopian Engineering Karl Popper in “The Open Society and Its Enemies” warned against utopian engineering, massive social transformations led by those who believe they found a revealed truth. These utopian engineers carry out the wholesale destruction of systems, institutions and social and cultural structures in a vain effort to achieve their vision. In the process, they dismantle the self-correcting mechanisms of incremental and piecemeal reform that are impediments to that vision. History is replete with disastrous utopians — the Jacobins, the Marxists, the fascists and now, in our own age, the globalists, or neoliberal imperialists. The ideology of neoliberalism, which makes no economic sense and requires a willful ignorance of social and economic history, is the latest iteration of utopian projects. It posits that human society achieves its apex when individual entrepreneurial actions are free from government constraints. Society and culture should be dictated by the primacy of property rights, open trade — which sends manufacturing jobs to sweatshops in China and the global south and permits the flow of money across borders — and unfettered global markets. Labor and product markets should be deregulated and freed from government oversight. Global financiers should be given control of the economies of nation-states. The role of the state should be reduced to ensuring the quality and integrity of money, along with internal and external security, and to privatizing control of land, water, public utilities, education and government services such as intelligence and often the military, prisons, health care and the management of natural resources. Neoliberalism turns capitalism into a religious idol. By Chris Hedges
Environment:
‘This Is History’: Big Ten University Students Unanimously Pass Resolution Calling On Schools to Divest From Fossil Fuels The Association of Big Ten Students, which passed the resolution, represents more than 500,000 students and 5.7 million living alumni. Student body presidents of the Big Ten universities are calling on their schools to divest from the fossil fuel industry after a resolution was passed unanimously at the Association of Big Ten Students winter meeting. By Julia Conley,
The Pacific Ocean is so Acidic That It’s Dissolving Dungeness Crabs’ Shells The Pacific Ocean is becoming more acidic, and the cash-crabs that live in its coastal waters are some of its first inhabitants to feel its effects.The Dungeness crab is vital to commercial fisheries in the Pacific Northwest, but lower pH levels in its habitat are dissolving parts of its shell and damaging its sensory organs, a new study found. Their injuries could impact coastal economies and forebode the obstacles in a changing sea. And while the results aren’t unexpected, the study’s authors said the damage to the crabs is premature: The acidity wasn’t predicted to damage the crabs this quickly.”If the crabs are affected already, we really need to make sure we pay much more attention to various components of the food chain before it is too late,” said study lead author Nina Bednarsek, a senior scientist with the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project. By Scottie Andrew
How The Environmental Lawyer Who Won A Massive Judgment Against Chevron Lost Everything “He has effectively been convicted of bribery by the finding of a single judge in a case in which bribery wasn’t even the charge.” Last August, during the second-hottest year on record, while the fires in the Amazon rainforest were raging, the ice sheet in Greenland was melting, and Greta Thunberg was being greeted by adoring crowds across the U.S., something else happened that was of great relevance to the climate movement: An attorney who has been battling Chevron for more than a decade over environmental devastation in South America was put on house arrest.Few news outlets covered the detention of Steven Donziger, who won a multibillion-dollar judgment in Ecuador against Chevron over the massive contamination in the Lago Agrio region and has been fighting on behalf of Indigenous people and farmers there for more than 25 years. So on August 6, Donziger left a Lower Manhattan courthouse unnoticed and boarded the 1 train home with an electronic monitoring device newly affixed to his ankle. Save for the occasional meeting with his lawyer or other court-sanctioned appointment, he has remained there ever since. “I’m like a corporate political prisoner,” By Sharon Lerner
Black Liberation/ Civil Rights:
Labor:
Economy:
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2020: A Year of Deepening Economic, Fiscal and Financial-Market Turmoil, Despite a Headline Booming Economy and Stock Market
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The Fed Continues to Prop the Banks and the Financial Markets,
But Not the Consumer, Who Ultimately Drives Sustainable Economic Activity
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Expected January FOMC: Continued Boosts to Banking-System Liquidity, but No Rate Cut for Liquidity-Strapped Consumers, Who Were
Hit by the Overly Aggressive Fed Rate Hikes in 2017-2018
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Fourth-Quarter 2019 Numbers Showed Quarterly Contractions in Real Earnings and Real Retail Sales, Including Full-Year Declines in Real New Orders for Durable Goods, Manufacturing and Freight Activity
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There Is a Fair Shot at Weaker Than Expected Fourth-Quarter GDP, Despite FOMC Claims of Sustainable Moderate Economic Growth in Place
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The U.S. Economy, Federal Government and the Federal Reserve System Still Have Not Recovered from the 2007-2008 Banking Collapse and Bailout
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Harsh Reality Remains That the Fed Stunted U.S. Economic and Fiscal Potential, With Its Handling of the Banking System Collapse and Bailout of 2007-2008
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Extremes of Fiscal and FOMC Imbalances Threaten Massive Systemic Instabilities, Ranging from the Economic and Financial-Market Plunges, to Surging Domestic Inflation
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Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) Does Not Work: Headline Inflation Can Be Masked, But the Price of Gold Remains the Canary in the Coal Mine
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Both Average Hourly and Weekly Real Earnings Tanked for All Payroll Employees in Fourth Quarter 2019, and That Was on Top of Slowing Payroll Growth. Fourth-quarter annualized real average weekly earnings dropped by 0.52% (-0.52%) for all employees, and by 0.55% (-0.55%) for production and nonsupervisory employees. The issue was inflation rising at a faster pace than minimally positive nominal earnings growth. Such also reflected slowing annual payroll growth (see Flash Update No. 18).
Shadow Government Statistics Real Average Weekly Earnings – Production and Nonsupervisory Employees Deflated by CPI-W versus ShadowStats-Alternate (1990-Base) 1965 to December 2019, Seasonally-Adjusted [ShadowStats, BLS] 
New Report Reveals Goldman Sachs’ Crime Wave Under Last Three CEOs (Who Got Obscenely Rich in the Process) Yesterday, the nonprofit Wall Street watchdog, Better Markets, released an in-depth and scathing analysis of the past 20 years at Goldman Sachs. A bold headline summed it up as follows: “$874 Billion in Bailouts, 36 Major Legal Actions,
$9.8 Billion in Fines and Settlements with Billions More Coming.”One key takeaway from this crime spree, write the authors, is this: “Goldman Sachs has amazed a RAP sheet showing that the financial crash of 2008 did little if anything to slow the pace of illegal activity that was well underway in the years leading up to the crash. Goldman Sachs was heavily engaged in illegal activity before the crash; they reached new heights of lawlessness in connection with the crash; and they continued to violate the law in the post-crash era….” By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Chinese masses caught between disease & dictatorship The Coronavirus outbreak in China is critical. According to official figures, there are 5,997 confirmed cases across the country so far, with the vast majority of them in Wuhan: the provincial capital of Hubei Province. However, nine other provinces have reported over 100 confirmed cases, most of which are in the industrial provinces of Zhejiang and Guangdong. The disease has spread beyond China’s borders, from Thailand to its south, to Australia and the USA. The CCP regime has decreed drastic measures to contain the developing outbreak. Aside from Wuhan, 13 other cities in Hubei have been declared under lockdown, covering over 35 million people. The so-called “People’s Liberation Army” has been deployed into Wuhan. The CCP’s highest body, the Politburo Standing Committee, formed a sub-committee to directly supervise the containment of the disease.
Education, Health, Science, 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 ‘governn’, 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 Dumb Have We Become? Chinese Students Are 4 Grade Levels Ahead Of US Students In Math How in the world is America supposed to remain “the greatest country on Earth” when other nations are absolutely running circles around us when it comes to education? As you will see below, one survey found that 15-year-old students in China are almost four full grade levels ahead of 15-year-old students in the United States in mathematics. This is one of the most damning indictments of our education system that I have ever come across, and it is yet another clear indication that what we are doing is simply not working. Our children are not being given the tools that they need to compete in our modern society, and we have only ourselves to blame. By Tyler Durden
Shadow Government Statistics Bullet Edition No. 19-A