Due to Years of Austerity, Cuts to Public Health Care, And An Anti-Science and Profiteering President, The United States Now Leads the World In Coronavirus Cases and Deaths in the World! And Now the Total Caronavirs Deaths in the United States are Over 20% of the Total Death in the Entire World!
Capitalism Does Not, and Never Has, Worked for the Masses! In Its Death Agony, Capitalism Is Traveling About The World Like The Four Horsemen of the The Apocalypse, Spreading War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. The very future of Humanity Is Now At stake!
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 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, that the 99% Will Rule, Not the Few!
On April 21, The Intercept published a video that featured footage provided by Lillian Udell, who works at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, the busiest emergency department in New York City, even before the coronavirus pandemic. Two of Udell’s colleagues spoke about Freda Ocran, a 50-year-old former head nurse at Jacobi Medical Center’s psychiatric unit, who died of coronavirus at Lincoln on March 28. “If we had the government behind us, to provide us the resources that we need, I think Ms. Ocran would probably still be alive,” one nurse says in the video, followed by footage from a CBS segment on Ocran. Like many New York City hospitals, Lincoln faced ventilator shortages as the coronavirus pandemic peaked, and health care workers were asked to reuse protective equipment like masks. — A New York City Hospital Is Investigating A Nurse For Sharing Video Footage With The Intercept
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 Reublicrats 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.
Once Again, Congress Will Let Wall Street Pillage Main Street Over the last decade, Congress’s approval ratings have hovered around the mid-teens or low 20s, reflecting the reality that our representatives in Washington, D.C., serve the needs of big donors while throwing an occasional rhetorical bone to the “essential” workers who actually make the country function. Congress’s handling of the current crisis of the pandemic is unlikely to improve its ratings. Working Americans are facing an unprecedented disaster. Before the virus hit, half of them lived paycheck to paycheck and didn’t have $400 saved for an emergency. Now they have been ordered to stay home. Many have no income while their rents, utility bills, student loans, and credit card debts are accruing. By Leonard C. Goodman
‘Criminal Negligence’: Trump Officials Ignored Company’s Offer to Make 7 Million N95 Masks Per Month in Early Days of Pandemic Federal scientist Rick Bright described his communications with Presige Ameritech in his whistleblower report regarding the administration’s response to the Covid-19 crisis. byJulia ConleyCongress Members Who Invest in Real Estate Got a Tax Break in the Stimulus Bill Congress slipped a provision into the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill that will save wealthy real estate investors billions in taxes. Some lawmakers stand to profit from the legislation meant to weather the impact of the coronavirus pandemic that has killed tens of thousands and left tens of millions out of work. Members of Congress invest more cash in real estate than any other industry. That’s been the case every year since 2008, the first year OpenSecrets began tracking lawmakers’ personal finances. By Karl Evers-HillstromBillionaires Are Social Distancing in Super Yachts as Tens of Millions Lose Jobs Everyday, it becomes clearer: the COVID-19 pandemic is hitting poor, working, and marginalized communities the hardest. Millions of workers – especially low-wage retail, food service, hospitality, and care workers – have faced the terrible choice daily between going to work and risking their health, or staying home and risking their paychecks. Many other workers don’t even have that choice, with around 30 million people in the US filing for unemployment in the past six weeks. By Gin Armstrong & Derek Seidman
Austerity Contributed to Coronavirus Pandemic!: Why The U.S. Government Stopped Funding A Research Project On Bats And Coronaviruses The U.S. government has suddenly terminated funding for a years-long research project in China that many experts say is vital to preventing the next major coronavirus outbreak. The project was run by a U.S. nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance. For more than a decade, the group has been sending teams to China to trap bats, collect samples of their blood, saliva and feces, and then check those samples for new coronaviruses that could spark the next global pandemic. The idea is to identify locations that need to be monitored, come up with strategies to prevent spillover of the virus into human populations and get a jump on creating vaccines and treatments. Already the project has identified hundreds of coronaviruses, including one very similar to the virus behind the current outbreak. But since early this month, U.S. officials have been working to raise suspicions about a key collaborator on the project: the Wuhan Institute of Virology, located in the city where the outbreak began. U.S. intelligence officials are investigating whether the coronavirus escaped from the Wuhan Institute through some sort of contamination accident. As noted in an NPR story published last week, many scientists have discounted that theory as nearly impossible.
3.5 Billion People May Face ‘Unlivable’ Heat in 50 YearsEvery degree of global warming will push a billion people out of the human survival zone How dangerous is global warming? By 2070, up to 30% of the world’s population could face temperatures that are literally unlivable. By Ian AngusAs the Earth Dies… The earth is dying and capitalism is to blame. Facing this, one can opt for hope, as Marxist ecosocialists do, or one can succumb to pessimism fed by dark thoughts on human nature and the intractable, deadly persistence of our economic system of exploitation. Human nature has a destructive and murderous side, while capitalism, expressing that side with its endless growth, endless greed, blights the planet like cancer. Yet Marxist ecosocialists do not let this drag them down to despair. They talk about fixing what humanity has wrought, about drastically cutting carbon emissions, about mitigating the sixth mass extinction, about decreasing plastics and other environmental toxins and doing so while providing for the necessities of life, including, as John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark write in their newly published “The Robbery of Nature,” “love, family, community, meaningful work, education, cultural life, access to the natural environment and the free and equal development of every person.” By Eve Ottenberg
For Profit Food Production — Less Profit Means More Wasted Food As Millions Go Hungry!
A pile of zucchini and squash is seen after it was discarded by a farmer on April 1, 2020 in Florida City, Florida. Many South Florida farmers are saying that the coronavirus pandemic has caused them to have to throw crops away due to less demand for produce in stores and restaurants. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Potentially Fatal Bouts Of Heat and Humidity on the Rise, Study Finds Scientists identify thousands of extreme events, suggesting stark warnings about global heating are already coming to pass Intolerable bouts of extreme humidity and heat which could threaten human survival are on the rise across the world, suggesting that worst-case scenario warnings about the consequences of global heating are already occurring, a new study has revealed. By Nina Lakhani
Civil Rights/ Black Liberation:
Black People Are Being Arrested at Higher Rates for Social Distancing Violations On April 17 in Toledo, Ohio, a 19-year-old black man was arrested for violating the state stay-at-home order. In court filings, police say he took a bus from Detroit to Toledo “without a valid reason.” Six young black men were arrested in Toledo last Saturday while hanging out on a front lawn; police allege they were “seen standing within 6 feet of each other.” In Cincinnati, a black man was charged with violating stay-at-home orders after he was shot in the ankle on April 7; according to a police affidavit, he was talking to a friend in the street when he was shot and was “clearly not engaged in essential activities.” By Joshua Kaplan & Benjamin HardyLet’s Imagine a Post-Pandemic Era With Less Policing and No New Jails uring this crisis, we can learn from the people who have been imagining and creating new ways of being in community. By Amanda AlexanderLabor:
Economy:
Fed Report Shows Magical Thinking on Safety of Wall Street’s Banks The chart above from the November 2019 Federal Reserve report on the condition of the biggest banks in the U.S. shows that almost half were rated unsatisfactory. There have not been any reports since that November report until the latest one from the Fed which was released last week and dated May 2020. The new report carries this headline: “The banking industry came into 2020 in a healthy financial position.” This is part of the Fed’s strategy to lay its abysmal failure to supervise the mega Wall Street banks at the door of the coronavirus pandemic. By Pam Martens and Russ MartensMeet the Fed’s Global Plunge Protection Team The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied 455 points by the closing bell on Friday. It seemed sadistic to average folks. One hour before the stock market opened, the Bureau of Labor Statistics had reported the worst U.S. unemployment figure since the Great Depression (14.7 percent) along with the staggering loss of 20.5 million jobs in just the month of April. Within the first half hour of trading, the Dow was up more than 300 points. It then added to those gains in afternoon trading. None of the explanations offered by mainstream media to explain the incongruous stock trading were accurate. It was not because the stock market had anticipated worse or that the market was rallying because it thought the worst of the economic fallout was behind us. It was because the one emergency funding facility that the Federal Reserve has quietly ramped up more than any other, its Foreign Central Bank Liquidity Swap Lines, was working its magic on Friday. Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Lifting the Lockdown: Boris Gives a Green Light to the Bosses Last night’s speech by the Prime Minister has left everyone confused. But the main message was loud and clear: workers are expected to put themselves on the line for the bosses’ profits. The unions must fight for workers’ control. When Boris’ bluster and spin is cast aside, what is left? A green light for big business to call their workers back to work so that their profits can begin flowing again. Workers are being cast into the meat grinder in the interests of the bosses’ profits. By Ben Curry
Health, Science, 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 ‘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 to be, a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let the People Vote on Healthcare!
‘The Next Crisis’: Up to 43 Million Americans Could Lose Health Insurance Due to Pandemic, Study Shows “The American healthcare financing system was not built to withstand the combined impact of a pandemic and a recession.” By Julia ConleyChildren in US and UK Dying From Syndrome Linked to COVID-19 As governments around the world force workers back on the job and students back into classrooms, new concerns have arisen about the potential effects of COVID-19 on children. Doctors in Europe and the US have identified an emerging condition associated with the disease known as Pediatric Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome, which primarily affects children. This coincides with an uptick in diagnoses of the ultra-rare Kawasaki’s Disease in areas hardest hit by the pandemic. By Jacob Crosse
A Late-Breaking Bulletin From PBS: “For Many Americans, Health Insurance is Tied to a Job” I would like to nominate the “Public” Broadcasting System’s (“P”BS) “NewsHour” and its economics reporter Paul Solomon for the 2020 Piss Down Our Backs and Tell Us Its Raining Prize in broadcast journalism. Last Thursday, “P”BS “NewsHour” viewers got to see the show’s longtime economics correspondent (Paul Solomon) give a chilling account of how newly unemployed people are disastrously losing their health insurance in the middle of a pandemic. By Paul Street
List of Countries by Military Expenditures 
The Trump Administration’s “Monstrous Idea”: Direct Payments in Exchange for Cuts to Social Security Benefits “Donald Trump and his administration will stop at nothing to cut Social Security.” byJake Johnson
Congress Members Who Invest in Real Estate Got a Tax Break in the Stimulus Bill Congress slipped a provision into the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill that will save wealthy real estate investors billions in taxes. Some lawmakers stand to profit from the legislation meant to weather the impact of the coronavirus pandemic that has killed tens of thousands and left tens of millions out of work. Members of Congress invest more cash in real estate than any other industry. That’s been the case every year since 2008, the first year OpenSecrets began tracking lawmakers’ personal finances. By Karl Evers-Hillstrom 
Billionaires Are Social Distancing in Super Yachts as Tens of Millions Lose Jobs Everyday, it becomes clearer: the COVID-19 pandemic is hitting poor, working, and marginalized communities the hardest. Millions of workers – especially low-wage retail, food service, hospitality, and care workers – have faced the terrible choice daily between going to work and risking their health, or staying home and risking their paychecks. Many other workers don’t even have that choice, with around 30 million people in the US filing for unemployment in the past six weeks. By Gin Armstrong & Derek Seidman
As the Earth Dies… The earth is dying and capitalism is to blame. Facing this, one can opt for hope, as Marxist ecosocialists do, or one can succumb to pessimism fed by dark thoughts on human nature and the intractable, deadly persistence of our economic system of exploitation. Human nature has a destructive and murderous side, while capitalism, expressing that side with its endless growth, endless greed, blights the planet like cancer. Yet Marxist ecosocialists do not let this drag them down to despair. They talk about fixing what humanity has wrought, about drastically cutting carbon emissions, about mitigating the sixth mass extinction, about decreasing plastics and other environmental toxins and doing so while providing for the necessities of life, including, as John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark write in their newly published “The Robbery of Nature,” “love, family, community, meaningful work, education, cultural life, access to the natural environment and the free and equal development of every person.” By Eve Ottenberg
Labor:
