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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!
Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Was Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat 4 Years Ago and Did Nothing!
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!
Images of the Day:
The Capitalist and Their Politicians Are Constantly Urging to ‘Honor First Responders’, But Refuse to Honor the Cuban Medical Brigades Who Are First Responders the the World! — RolandSheppard
Videos of the Day:
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.
You know, Judy, the American response has been deeply disappointing. In almost every way, our response has been far less effective than every other major country in the world. It’s baffling, actually. We have, in the CDC, arguably the best public health agency in the world. All of us thought that the CDC was going to — was prepared and was going to help fight this virus. The federal response has been a fiasco. — Ashish Jha, Harvard Global Health Institute (3/12/20)
As COVID Deaths Pass 151,000, Trump Says “Not Sure I Could have Done Any More” During an interview with a local television station in North Carolina on Monday evening, President Donald Trump suggested he was one of the most successful chief executives this country has ever seen. By Chris Walker
The Arrogance of Capitalists and Capirtalism: ‘We Will Coup Whoever We Want’: Elon Musk and the Overthrow of Democracy in Bolivia On July 24, 2020, Tesla’s Elon Musk wrote on Twitter that a second U.S. “government stimulus package is not in the best interests of the people.” Someone responded to Musk soon after, “You know what wasn’t in the best interest of people? The U.S. government organizing a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia so you could obtain the lithium there.” Musk then wrote: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” By Vijay Prashad – Alejandro Bejarano
Killing Democracy in America The phrase “thinking about the unthinkable” has always been associated with the unthinkable cataclysm of a nuclear war, and rightly so. Lately, though, I’ve been pondering another kind of unthinkable scenario, nearly as nightmarish (at least for a democracy) as a thermonuclear Armageddon, but one that’s been rolling out in far slower motion: that America’s war on terror never ends because it’s far more convenient for America’s leaders to keep it going — until, that is, it tears apart anything we ever imagined as democracy. By William Astore
Environment:
Northern California Esselen Tribe Regains Ancestral Land After 250 Years The tribe purchased the 1,200 acre ranch near Big Sur as part of a $4.5m deal and will use it for educational and cultural purposes Two-hundred and fifty years after they were stripped of their ancestral homeland, the Esselen tribe of northern California is landless no more. This week, the Esselen tribe finalized the purchase of a 1,200-acre ranch near Big Sur, along California’s north central coast, as part of a $4.5m acquisition that involved the state and an Oregon-based environmental group. The deal will conserve old-growth redwoods and endangered wildlife such as the California condor and red-legged frog, as well as protect the Little Sur River, an important spawning stream for the imperiled steelhead trout. Tribal leaders say they’ll use the land for educational and cultural purposes, building a sweat lodge and traditional village in view of Pico Blanco peak, the center of the tribe’s origin story. By Mario Koran
Trump’s War on the Environment and Its Inhabitants Trump’s climate denial has made the United States an environmental “pariah state” in a global community committed to addressing the problem of climate change. Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris accord made the United States the only nation in the world to reject the climate accord. The two original outliers—Syria and Nicaragua—have joined, and Nicaragua stayed out initially because the agreement didn’t go far enough. Trump has undermined the rich legacy of the Obama administration in the environmental field, which included getting the world’s other major polluters—particularly China and India—to agree to reduce their emissions. By Melvin Goodman
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
There is no democracy in the United States! — Just democracy for the 1%! When the order in the United States is economic and social inequality. The slogan ‘Law and Order’ means the maintenance of that order— Rich 1% First and the poorest of the 99% last!. Real democracy means that we all share the wealth equally! —Roland Sheppard
National Teacher Union Supports Strikes Over Reopening Plans One of the nation’s largest teachers unions is authorizing its members to strike if their schools plan to reopen without proper safety measures in the middle of the global pandemic.The American Federation of Teachers, which represents 1.7 million school employees, issued a resolution on Tuesday saying it will support any local chapter that decides to strike over reopening plans. By Collin Binkley
Annual Federal Minimum Wage Rates, 1955-2015 Data in current dollars and constant 1996 dollars (It is Still $7.25 (In 2020 or $4.40 in 1996.)
Economy:
Instead of the government reflecting the interests of industry and the people in the form of rising wages to produce a rising circular flow and demand for industrial products, a positive feedback between industrial production and labor, you had the financial rentier sector – what I call the FIRE sector, Finance, Insurance and Real Estate – hijack the economy and bring about the permanent depression that we’re in now. This is my main point: We are in a permanent depression. There can be no recovery without wiping out the debt overhead (euphemized as “wealth”). As long as you leave the 1% with the lion’s share of wealth (creditor claims) and property ownership, the economy cannot recover. Without realizing that, there cannot be a class consciousness regarding today’s world. Marx talked about the class consciousness of labor vis-a-vis its employers. That took place within the production and consumption sector. But today’s class consciousness of wage earners has to see that industrial companies have been turned into financial companies. They’ve been financialized. A relevant class consciousness must realize that it’s up to socialists to do what industrial capitalism failed to do – namely, to free society from the rentier sector, from the landlord class, the monopolists and financial creditor class. Without freeing society from them, you’re going to have a neofeudal economy. As Rosa Luxemburg said, it’s either socialism or barbarism. Barbarism is a permanent depression. All the classical economists warned against the landlord class, banks and the monopolists continuing to run society into the ground. —Trump’s “Bank and Landlord Relief” Bill
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Soaring Gold and Silver Prices, and a Weakening U.S. Dollar Increasingly Foreshadow Potential Hyperinflation and Systemic Instabilities
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Reporting of Deepest-Ever GDP Decline Looms on July 30th Annualized 49.1% (-49.1%) Quarterly Plunge in Household Survey Employed Was Consistent With a Real Second-Quarter 2020 GDP Annualized Collapse of 50% (-50%) and Year-to-Year Drop of 16.1% (-16.1%)
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Potential Third-Quarter 2020 GDP Annualized 20% Rebound Still Would Be Down 12.7% (-12.7%) Year-to-Year, Rivaling Great Depression Depths and Post-World War II Readjustment
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Economic Recovery Will Be Protracted
U.S. GDP Number Tomorrow Expected to Be Worst on Record The very reliable GDPNow forecasting model provided by researchers at the Atlanta Fed was just updated this morning and currently predicts that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the United States contracted by a jaw-dropping -32.1 percent on a seasonally-adjusted, annualized rate in the second quarter. The public will get the official number from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) at the U.S. Department of Commerce at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow morning. It’s expected that the second quarter GDP number will be the largest decline since quarterly GDP records began being compiled by the BEA in 1947. It is also expected that the number will be exponentially worse than any quarter during the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Cuba’s Nobel Nomination and Baldwin’s Call to “Begin Again” When an event is unexplained, it can’t be repeated. Cuba’s astonishing internationalism, the “good news” of the pandemic, is talked about (outside Cuba) as if a miracle, without cause. Support grows for the Nobel Prize nomination but the justification for the Henry Reeve Brigade, established in 2005, is left out. The explanation is ideas. It is urgent according to Eddie Glaude in a new book on James Baldwin.[1] Well, he doesn’t exactly say that. But for Baldwin, “what kind of human beings we aspire to be” is most important and the explanation for Cuba’s success is precisely that. In Zona Roja, Enrique Ubieta Gómez says Cuban medical workers – fighting Ebola in 2014 — know about existence: We exist interdependently. Ubieta describes Cuban internationalism as an “inescapable ethic”. Once you’ve lived it, you cannot not live it. By Susan Babbitt
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 to be, a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let the People Vote on Healthcare
‘Not One More Pandemic Relief Dollar for the Pentagon’: Groups Slam GOP Effort to Use Covid-19 Funds for Weapons of War “Make no mistake: the Senate GOP is choosing to let people die in order to line the pockets of weapons manufacturer CEOs.” More than 70 progressive anti-war groups are calling on members of Congress to stop the Senate GOP from cramming another $30 billion in Pentagon funding into the next Covid-19 relief bill and instead focus their attention on providing desperately needed financial aid to frontline workers and the unemployed. By Jake Johnson
Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, Under the Banner Headline: “There Is No Peace”
Quotes of the Day:
A Story That Shows The Depth Of Police Corruption And Brutality
United States:
If We Don’t Want Armed Feds Occupying Our Cities, We Must Hit the Streets Continuing the protests is the only way to resist Trump’s attempt to establish martial law in Democratic cities. By Shane Burley
Labor:
Shadow Government Staistics Flash Commentary No. 1443
