Daily News Digest September 7, 2020

Why I Do Not Celebrate Labor Day But I celebrate May Day!

May Day/ Labor DayMayDayI celebrate May Day, but I don’t celebrate Labor Day — I just observe it. To me, Labor Day means the codification of the labor bureaucracy’s subservience to the capitalist class. That was the original purpose for the United States capitalist class when it made labor day a holiday. It was organized as such in opposition to the Labor Day that was/is celebrated everywhere else in the world — a demonstration class solidarity! — May Day!  May Day was  celebrated, in memory of the martyrs of the Haymarket Massacre in 1886 Chicago and the unending struggle of the world working class for their “unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Daily News Digest Archives

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 Deaths 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!

Under Capitalism — Human Lives Don’t Matter  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  Racism,  War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. The very future of Humanity Is Now At stake! By Roland SheppardLaura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, Under the Banner Headline: “There Is No Peace”

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:

Quotes of the Day:

May Day was thus created by the workingmen themselves, in defiance of the capitalist class and its governments, and up to the present time the working people in many countries are compelled on the First of May to fight for their holiday at the sacrifice of their jobs, liberty, blood, and even life. When the police and cossacks of different countries appear on the scene on May Day it is always for the purpose of clubbing, maiming, arresting, and killing working people; for the police and cossacks recognize that May Day is the drilling day for the Social Revolution. The American Labor Day, on the contrary, was a “gift” which the workers received from their masters, the capitalists, through the capitalist politicians. That first Monday in the month of September was made a legal holiday under the name of Labor Day, at first by the legislature of one state some thirty years ago; the politicians of other states followed the clever example, so that at present Labor Day is a legal holiday all over the country. A vampire, when he settles down upon the body of a sleeping person and sucks its blood, is known to fan his victim with his wings, to soothe the victim’s pain, and to prevent him from waking up and driving the vampire away. So was the Labor Day created by the political agents of thc American capitalists to fan the sleeping giant, the American working class, while the capitalists are sucking its blood. American Labor Day can also be considered as a modern, capitalist version of the ancient custom of the days of serfdom and slavery. In those days the mastens, for recreation and amusement, often-times set aside one day to celebrate the “enthronment of slaves.” —Boris Reinstein, International May Day and American Labor Day

Videos of the Day:

United States:

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. Rax the Rich!  — They Can Afford To Pay!

From the Beginning the US Coronavirus Response Has Been a Fiasco!:  How South Korea Successfully Battled COVID-19 While the U.S. Didn’t

  • The United States is reporting 15 times more confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths than South Korea despite having only about six times the population.
  • Experts say the disparity is due to South Korea ramping up testing more quickly and implementing preventive measures, such as school closures, earlier.
  • South Korea is making tentative plans to reopen some public facilities next week while the United States is expected to keep social distancing mandates in place for at least another month.

The Last Third Party to Win: The Republicans, the Civil War, the “Slave Power,” and The Current Crisis “Third parties can never win” or so you have heard a thousand times. Except — and it’s one huge exception — under historical circumstances much like the conditions we currently face. We are living in a rare historical moment when the deep inner conflicts of the system can no longer be solved, compromised, or even faced by normal political means. The two-party system has only made things worse. In the years before the Civil War, there was an issue that also could not be solved, compromised or avoided: slavery. Slavery was an economic system but it was also a political system that gave special benefits and special powers to the slave-owning class. The radicals of the day had a name for this rigged system: “The Slave Power.” By Richard Moser ‘Trump Is a Fraud, Exhibit One Billion’: Trade Deficit Soars to 12-Year High Despite President’s Promises to Wipe It Out “The unexpectedly large growth in the trade deficit is especially notable given that trade flows have declined overall because of the global Covid-19 crisis.”
—Lori Wallach, Public Citizen “Trump pledged to eliminate the trade deficit and end job outsourcing, but the overall 2020 deficit is on track to be larger than when he took office, and his Labor Department has certified more than 300,000 American jobs were lost to outsourcing

Closure of Border to Refugees Spreads Misery as US Tourists Vacation in Mexico The hypocrisy of the U.S. shutting out refugees while its tourists still travel to Mexico shows this is not about COVID. Over the past few months, conditions for migrants traveling through Mexico have grown worse. With most shelters still closed to new migrants because of the pandemic and the U.S. sending people who reach the border back within hours, many refugees and migrants in Mexico are living on the streets. Indeed tourists from the U.S. — the country with the highest death toll from COVID-19 — are continuing to fly to Mexico to enjoy resort holidays in Cancun and elsewhere. By Tamara Pearson

Who’s Running The Government?   Not ‘Under My Watch’ Claims Trump After Pentagon Push to Destroy Stars and Stripes Happened… Under His Watch The slashing of the newspaper’s funding, noted one journalist, “was proposed earlier this year in Trump’s own budget request to Congress.”  The Pentagon has ordered the closure of the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, which has served U.S. troops, their families, and civilian employees since the Civil War, according to an internal memo obtained by USA Today. The memo, written by Col. Paul Haverstick, Jr., orders the publisher of the Stars and Stripes paper and website to present a plan to shut it down by the end of the month. President Donald Trump responded to growing widespread anger over the news by posting a tweet Friday afternoon promising that the U.S. “will not be cutting funding to Stars and Stripes magazine” under his watch. The veracity of the president’s tweet could not be independently confirmed as of Friday afternoon. Informed observers, like the Washington Post’s Paul Sonne, pointed out that the president included defunding Stars and Stripes in the proposed budget he presented to Congress earlier this year. By Brett Wilkins

Environment:

‘That’s the Way It Is’: Trump’s Dismissal of Hurricane Laura and Climate Crisis Echoes Remarks on COVID-19 Deaths At an August 30 briefing in Orange, Texas, during a visit to tour damage from Hurricane Laura, President Trump answered a question about climate change and hurricanes. Texas has had big storms for a long time, he said, and “that’s the way it is.” The phrase carried echoes of his remarks on COVID-19 — made at a time when the coronavirus had killed over 156,000 and infected over 4.7 million in the U.S. — that the virus’s death toll “is what it is.” In the month since Trump spoke those words to Axios, over 26,600 more people have died in the U.S. from COVID-19, federal numbers show. Each death represents its own specific tragedy for those close by and, for those tasked with responding to the pandemic, each one represents another difficult reminder that the novel virus’s death toll yesterday is not what it is today. Similarly, when it comes to the climate crisis, the questions the world faces aren’t only about what natural hazards like droughts and hurricanes looked like yesterday. Nor are they simply about how those hazards, now worsened by the climate crisis, are affecting us today — as wildfires continue to blaze in California and forecasters keep tabs on tropical storms Nana and Omar. The question President Trump was asked in Texas was about the risks that stronger hurricanes pose to the fossil fuel industry and the ways that climate change is beginning to endanger the oil refineries and petrochemical plants clustered along the U.S. Gulf Coast, that is, the industry responsible for a sizable contribution to the climate emergency itself. . . . The President’s answer was short. “Well, I tell you, you’ve had tremendous storms in Texas for many decades and for many centuries, and that’s the way it is,” he said. “We handle them as they come. All I can do is handle them as they come, and that’s what we do, and nobody has ever done a better job of it.” By Sharon KellyThe Fed Invested Public Money in Fossil Fuel Firms Driving Environmental Racism The Federal Reserve should not be propping up a dying industry with a track record of harming communities of color. In April, the price of oil fell so far so fast that oil futures contracts went negative. Oil prices have recovered somewhat, but not enough to ever return the industry to its prior state. Analysts predict the U.S. has reached peak oil production and will never again “return to the record 13 million barrels of oil per day reached in November 2019.” ExxonMobil, which has been a part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average market index for 92 years, was removed last week and replaced with the software firm Salesforce. But while financial analysts sound the alarm about this dying industry, the Federal Reserve has been buying up the debt of fossil fuel companies through a pandemic emergency program. We the public, together with the Fed, now own over $315 million in bonds of fossil fuel firms, including those with a track record of environmental racism By Alexis Goldstein

Oil Refinerys are  Carcinogenic.

From “Trade Secrets” Cancer and the Environment  (What the Bill Moyers Program Trade Secrets Revealed By Roland Sheppard:

One example is the minority population living “downwind” from the many oil refineries in Contra Costa County in the San Francisco Bay Area. People living near these refineries have very high rates of cancer is .  In EPA terms, this is called a “cancer cluster.” The EPA, in its corporate manner, determined that the high rates of cancer was caused by high rates of smoking in the area and not from the refineries’ carcinogenic pollutions!  However, under the rules of Proposition 65 in California and after several years of litigation, the Gasoline Refining Industry had to post this warning in the February 24, 1999, issue of the San Francisco Chronicle:Civil Rights/ Black Liberarion:

When Black Lives Don’t Matter  There’s Not A Damn Thing Awesome in Kenosha, Wisconsin!    “Blacks have never been free in this country, a country in which, never was it intended that they should be free, and the spectre of so dreadful a freedom—the idea of a license so bloody and abandoned conjures up another, unimaginable country in which no decent, God-fearing white man or woman can live.” — James Baldwin”, No Name in the Street   ”   Don’t talk about race. Or anything that calls attention to you as a Black person, and while you maneuver the terrain that is Kenosha, Wisconsin, please keep even informed opinions to yourself so as to not raises the anger of whites who will punish you—with impunity—because power is wrapped so tightly around their skin that it is one and the same thing, isn’t it? “By  Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD

Labor:

The Working Class Has Been a State of Economic Depression Since 20018!:

Americans have lived in the false reality of a recovering economy.  Various fake news and manipulated statistics have been used to create this false impression.  However, indicators that really count have not supported the false picture and were ignored. For example, it is normal in a recovering or expanding economy for the labor force participation rate to rise as people enter the workforce to take advantage of the job opportunities.  During the decade of the long recovery, from June 2009 through May 2019, the labor force participation rate consistently fell from 65.7 to 62.8 percent. —Paul Craig Roberts, The Diminishing American Economy

August 2020: Civilian labor force participation rate Is 61.2%            The Above Graph Proves The Accuracy of  Shadow Government Statistics.: The  Shadow Government Statistics Alternate Unemployment Rate For August 2020 is 28.0%

Economy:

Ghosts of the Dot.Com Bust in Yesterday’s Tech Rout There were ghosts of the dot.com bust of 2000 to 2002 on every trading screen yesterday.The Nasdaq composite index fell 4.96 percent to close at 11,458.10 but the carnage in many of the underlying stocks was far worse. Notably, 50 stocks in the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 9 percent or more yesterday, including some of this year’s highfliers. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

World:

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 ‘:’, 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 

John Barry: The 1918 ‘Spanish Flu’ Was a U.S. Export, But Don’t Call It the Kansas Virus “The Great Influenza” author gave us a warning 16 years ago that is extremely relevant today: It is always fatal to allow politics to trump science. Don’t say we weren’t warned.  As President Trump’s subversion of science wreaks havoc with American society, the reappearance on bestseller lists of John Barry’s 2004 classic work, “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History,” is a reminder that presidential irrationality is not unprecedented. On this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” Barry joins host Robert Scheer to compare the two pandemics and the United States’ response to each.

America Doesn’t Have a Coherent Strategy for Asymptomatic Testing. It Needs One. While it battles a virus that can spread quickly via silent carriers, the United States has yet to execute a strategy for testing asymptomatic people. This is a problem — and ProPublica health reporter Caroline Chen explains why. By Caroline Chen

Trump Mocks Biden Mask-Wearing Just as New Research Shows Stricter Compliance Could Save 120,000 Lives in US Over Next 4 Months “These are not numbers or statistics but family members, friends, and loved ones.” While a new forecast released by health researchers estimates that a mask-wearing compliance rate of 95% in the U.S. could reduce a projected death toll over the next four months by 120,000 people, President Donald Trump at a campaign event Thursday night continued to undermine the widespread adoption of face coverings by ridiculing Joe Biden’s frequent use of a mask.  By Kenny Stancil

Widespread Use Of Face Masks Could Save Tens Of Thousands Of Lives, Models Project 7/3/2020 More widespread wearing of face masks could prevent tens of thousands of deaths by COVID-19, epidemiologists and mathematicians project. A model from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation shows that near-universal wearing of cloth or homemade masks could prevent between 17,742 and 28,030 deaths across the US before OcBy Huo Jingnan and  Mary Louise Kelly

Eugene V. Debs: Labor Day Greeting

The workingman is the only man in whose presence I take off my hat. As I salute him, I honor myself.      The workingman—and this is the day to write him in capital letters—has given me what I have, made me what I am, and will make me what I hope to be; and I thank him for all, and above all for giving me eyes to see, a heart to feel and a voice to speak for the workingman.   Like the rough hewn stone from which the noble statue is chiseled by the hand of man, the Toiler is the rough—hewn bulk from which the perfect Man is being chiseled by the hand of God.   All the workingmen of the earth are necessary to the whole Workingman—and he alone will survive of all the human race.   Labor Day is a good day to rest the hands and give the brain a chance—to think about what has been, and is, and is yet to be.   The way has been long and weary and full of pain, and many have fallen by the wayside, but the Unconquerable Army of Labor is still on the march and as it rests on its arms today and casts a look ahead, it beholds upon the horizon the first glowing rays of the Social Sunrise.    Courage, comrades! The struggle must be won, for Peace will only come when she comes hand in hand with Freedom.   The right is with the labor movement and the gods of battle are with the Working Class.    The Socialist Party and the Trade Union Movement must be one today in celebration of Labor Day and pledge each other their mutual fidelity and support in every battle, economic and political, until the field is won and the Workingman is free. Forget not the past on Labor Day! Think of Homestead! Think of Latimer! Think of Buffalo! Think of Coeur d’Alene! Think of Croton Dam! Think of Chicago! Think of Virden! Think of Pana! Think of Leadville! Think of Cripple Creek! Think of Victor! Think of Telluride! These are some of the bloody battles fought in the past in the war of the Workers for Industrial Freedom and Social Justice. How many and how fierce and bloody shall be the battles of the future?Comrades, this is the day for Workingmen to think of the Class Struggle ad the Ballot—the day for Labor to clasp the hand of Labor and girdle the globe with the International Revolutionary Solidarity of the Working Class.   We are all one—all workers of all lands and climes. We know not color, nor creed, nor sex in the Labor Movement. We know only that our hearts throb with the same proletarian stroke, that we are keeping step with our class in the march to the goal and that the solidarity of Labor will vanquish slavery and Humanize the World.