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The US Capitalist Class is Divided Over When — Not If, to Apply: The Iron Heel!
Extreme Fires and Floods — We Are at the Global Waming ‘Tipping Point’ If It’s Not Here, Its Near!
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!
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:
At its most basic, after all, the ideal of democracy rests on the notion that we all come out ahead when people can get together and freely discuss and debate the common problems they face. But in deeply unequal societies people don’t share common problems. They live in separate worlds. In one world, the world of the vast majority, people struggle day in and day out for economic security. In the other world, the universe of the awesomely affluent, deep pockets face an entirely different set of challenges — and their wealth ensures that their challenges get priority attention. We end up with a broken democracy that afflicts the afflicted and comforts the comfortable, that lets working people die in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley and cuts taxes for the chemical industry movers and shakers whose plants keep spewing chemical killers. We end up with a society that lets the fortunes of billionaires soar while truly essential workers can never be sure whether this will be the day they catch Covid. We end up with legions of desperate people that demagogues can demonize. ˜ — The Real Threat to Democracy: Concentrated Wealth
Trump at the Public Trough — $70,00o So He Looked Pretty For TV!: Amid the numerous revelations from The New York Times’s reporting on President Donald Trump’s tax returns is the fact that he spent around $70,000 on hair styling appointments, writing those costs off as business expenses for his work on “The Apprentice.” — AOC Skewers Trump for Seeking Tax Write-Offs for $70,000 in Hair Styling Costs
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!
Are the Democrates taking any action opposing Trump’s coup?!: The Rolling Constitutional-Fascist Coup in the World’s Most Dangerous Nation “We Want to Get Rid of the Ballots” We are in the middle of a rolling authoritarian and even fascist coup that is working with and through the United States Constitution to no small degree. To be sure, Trump is doing everything in his considerable power to undermine a “normal” bourgeois-constitutional election. He’s working to sabotage mail delivery in an election that will depend on mail-in ballots thanks to the pandemic Trump has fanned. He’s deploying armed right-wing “poll watchers” to intimidate minority and other Biden voters. He’s encouraging terrorist street actions and intimidation by white “tough guys” (bikers, militia members, cops, and soldiers) before, during, and after the election. His party will mess with voting sites and access in majority Democratic jurisdictions. By Paul Street
Playing King The latest Trump attempt to screw the country’s democratic principles surfaced Wednesday when he whined to reporters again, and again without evidence, that mail-in voting is corrupt and would mean a “rigged” election. With that fairy tale as a background excuse, he refused to abide by election results and won’t transfer power if he loses. By Richard C. Gross
Tax Returns Show Trump Looting Treasury to Stave Off His Own Financial Disaster The great white whale of Trump-era journalism was finally harpooned and boated on Sunday night — Tax returns, ho! — and the resulting product is a thunderclap of venality and greed astride a form of grasping self-interest unseen in the White House since the epic corruption of Warren Harding. In 2018, The New York Times published an exhaustive report on the myriad ways the Trump family, going back to patriarch Fred Trump, used a variety of tax dodges to hide the family fortune. This latest Times report lays out what Donald Trump has done with that fortune, up to and including the years he has been in office. Vt William Rivers Pitt
President Is a ‘Walking Scam,’ Says AOC as Records Show Trump Paid Just $750 in Federal Income Taxes in Both 2016 and 2017 “He contributed less to funding our communities than waitresses and undocumented immigrants,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “There’s so much in these tax returns that are not just about Trump, but about how the rich have different rules.” — Michael Linden, Groundwork Collaborative By “There’s so much in these tax returns that are not just about Trump, but about how the rich have different rules.” “In 2016 and ’17, I paid thousands of dollars a year in taxes as a bartender. Trump paid $750,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted late Sunday in response to the bombshell New York Times report on the president’s tax records. “He contributed less to funding our communities than waitresses and undocumented immigrants. Donald Trump has never cared for our country more than he cares for himself. A walking scam.” By Jake Johnson
The ‘Law and Order’ President: Trump’s Taxes Show Chronic Losses And Years Of Tax Avoidance Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750. He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.As the president wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million. By Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig and Mike McIntire
Trump Appoints Pair of Climate Science Deniers to NOAA While Climate-Fueled Fires and Storms Rage The White House has made a pair of controversial appointments to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), positioning within the climate science agency two individuals who consistently misrepresent and disagree with the scientific consensus on various issues concerning climate change and who have notable ties with conservative think tanks that disseminate climate science denial. By Dana Drugmand and Ben Jervey
1.8 Billion Tons More Greenhouse Gases Will Be Released, Thanks to Trump When President Donald Trump visited California on September 14 and dismissed the state Secretary of Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot’s plea to recognize the role of climate change in the midst of the Golden State’s worst and most dangerous recorded fire season to date, he gaslighted the tens of millions of West Coast residents suffering through the ordeal. While Trump declared that the weather will just “start getting cooler” and that science is irrelevant to the wildfires, millions were struggling to breathe through the toxic smoke that gave Portland the week-long distinction of having the most hazardous air on the planet, with pollution levels in Seattle and San Francisco close behind. Whole towns in California and Oregon have been destroyed by the wildfires. By Karen Charman
Environment:
The Lying 1% Hypocrites!: Big Business’s Undisclosed Climate Crisis Plans The Public Needs Clear Information About How Businesses Are Contributing to Greenhouse Gas Emissions, And How They Are Managing Climate Risks. Internally Companies know the U.S. economy’s large exposure to climate threats. Regulators can make them show their cards. As the climate crisis intensifies, U.S. environmental policy has moved dangerously backward, with nearly 70 environmental rules reversed during this administration, and 30 more reversals in process. This intransigent, head-in-the-sand approach will not alter the reality of climate change, nor the risks and opportunities it presents the economy. The private sector understands this. Many large businesses and their investors, recognizing the urgency of the threat, are already attempting to protect their assets and investments from climate risks. As some continue to publicly question the science, they are shifting their capital to prepare for a future low-carbon economy. They know that a significant percentage of the U.S. equity market, as much as 93 percent by one estimate, is already exposed to harms from climate change, with this year’s intensified fire and hurricane seasons offering a devastating preview of more to come. By Allison Herren Lee
Texas Residents Warned of Tap Water Tainted With Brain-Eating Microbe Texas officials have warned residents of some communities near Houston to stop using tap water because it might be tainted with a deadly brain-eating microbe. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality warned the Brazosport Water Authority late on Friday of the potential contamination of its water supply by Naegleria fowleri. The commission issued an advisory warning people not to use tap water for any reason except to flush toilets in Lake Jackson, Freeport, Angleton, Brazoria, Richwood, Oyster Creek, Clute and Rosenberg. Those communities are home to about 120,000 people. Also affected are the Dow Chemical works in Freeport, which has 4,200 employees, and the Clemens and Wayne Scott state prison units, which have 2,345 inmates and 655 employees.
What Does Equitable Climate Policy Actually Look Like? We must drastically and equitably reduce emissions and transform our economy before the window of opportunity closes.ack in March, when the pandemic had just planted its roots in the U.S., President Donald Trump directed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to do something devastating: The agency was to indefinitely and cruelly suspend environmental rule enforcement. The EPA complied, and for just under half a year, it provided over 3,000 waivers that granted facilities clemency from state-level environmental rule compliance. By Sharon Zhang
(Industrial) Farmers Are Plagued by Debt and Climate Crisis. Trump Has Made Things Worse. At a campaign rally at an airport in Wisconsin on September 17, President Trump announced a second round of COVID-related relief payments for farmers under the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP 2). For the first time, producers of commodities, including wine grapes, goats and hemp, have become eligible for payments, which are expected to total $13 billion. But many farmers say stopgap payments like this are a far cry from what they need to navigate intersecting crises, including the corporate consolidation of farms and the climate crisis, which have shaken the foundations of the brittle farm economy. Only farmers who derive 75 percent of their total income from farming are eligible for CFAP 2 assistance. Yet most farmers rely on off-farm jobs to supplement on-farm income, according to the family farm advocacy network Farm Aid. In 2018, median on-farm net income was actually negative: -$1,735.
Agribusiness Is Trying to Greenwash Its Dirty Waste as “Renewable Energy” Over the past months, while communities have been struggling to meet basic needs like water and health care, bad-acting corporations like Tyson and Smithfield fight (or quietly settle) class-action lawsuits over their refusal to protect their workers during a global pandemic. They’ve also been leading a quiet campaign to dupe Americans into accepting their carefully crafted narrative of being “good stewards of the planet.” Supporting this false narrative is a new polluting partner in crime: the emerging biogas industry. By Wenonah Hauter
Absent Collective Action, WHO Warns Global Covid-19 Deaths Could Surpass Two Million Before Vaccine Is Ready “The real question is: Are we prepared, collectively, to do what it takes to avoid that number?” If world leaders don’t act to slow the spread of Covid-19, the global death toll from the virus could top two million before a successful vaccine is circulated, the World Health Organization warned Friday.”It’s certainly unimaginable, but it’s not impossible,” Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s health emergencies program, said at a press briefing. By Lisa Newcomb
Civil Rights/Black Liberation!
Big Lies About Blacks From Bigot Boy During President Trump’s appearance on a nationally televised Town Hall forum held recently at the U.S. Constitution Center in Philadelphia, he engaged in the ‘Big Lie’ – that propaganda technique linked with Hitler’s Nazi regime. Trump spun Big Lies of varying size on topics ranging from health care to racial hatred throughout that Q-&-A session broadcast from the specialized museum located two blocks from historic Independence Hall where America’s Declaration of Independence and its Constitution were both adopted. One of the more repugnant pieces of propaganda oozed by self-declared white nationalist Trump during that Town Hall was Trump’s declaration that he’s “done more” for Black Americans than any U.S. President. Remember, just a dozen days before that Town Hall declaration Trump executed yet another despicable act against Blacks. This time Trump undermined efforts within the federal government to mitigate prejudice that too frequently impedes progress by Blacks. Trump banned training programs devised to reduce racist practices within federal agencies. Those anti-racism programs, Trump’s administration inaccurately asserted, perpetrate “anti-American propaganda.” By Linn Washington Jr.
Labor:
The Swedish Miners’ Strike – 50 Years On 50 years ago, Swedish miners at the state-owned company LKAB went on a mighty wildcat strike. This cut right through the propaganda about Sweden as a country of polite class collaboration. The miners inspired workers up and down the country to take up the struggle for better working conditions, in a wave of spontaneous strikes that spread like wildfire. This is the story of the great
Economy:
Ending the Pandemic Slump – A Return to Keynes? The latest Trade and Development report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the economic research agency to help ‘developing countries’, is a must read. Not only is it packed with data and statistics about trends and developments in global production, trade and investment, but this 2020 issue takes a very radical position on how to get the world economy out of what the IMF calls the ‘lockdown’ slump. As UNCTAD eloquently says: “The world economy is experiencing a deep recession amid a still-unchecked pandemic. Now is the time to hammer out a plan for global recovery, one that can credibly return even the most vulnerable countries to a stronger position than they were before. The status quo ante, is a goal not worth the name. And the task is urgent, for right now, history is repeating itself, this time with a disturbing mix of both tragedy and farce.” By Michael Roberts
World:
The Guardian’s Deceit-Riddled New Statement Betrays Both Julian Assange and Journalism In my recent post on the current hearings at the Old Bailey over Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States, where he would almost certainly be locked away for the rest of his life for the crime of doing journalism, I made two main criticisms of the Guardian. A decade ago, remember, the newspaper worked closely in collaboration with Assange and Wikileaks to publish the Iraq and Afghan war diaries, which are now the grounds on which the US is basing its case to lock Assange behind bars in a super-max jail. By Jonathan Cook
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
‘Everything He Says Is False’: CDC Director Overheard on Airplane Condemning Trump Covid Adviser’s Misinformation Dr. Scott Atlas, a Trump adviser with no expertise in infectious diseases, “has been spreading misinformation for a long time,” said one epidemiologist. During a phone conversation on a commercial airplane late last week overheard by an NBC News reporter, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention slammed one of the White House’s top Covid-19 advisers for providing President Donald Trump and the U.S. public with misleading information about the deadly pandemic. “Everything he says is false,” CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield told a colleague while on a flight from Atlanta to Washington, D.C. on Friday, NBC News reported Monday morning. Redfield, a Trump appointee, later acknowledged to NBC that he was referring to Dr. Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist with no expertise in infectious diseases or epidemiology. By Jake Johnson
Birth Control Is Harder to Get During COVID. Over-the-Counter Access Is Crucial. We need over-the-counter birth control that is accessible to people of all ages, affordable and covered by insurance. We need over-the-counter birth control that is accessible to people of all ages, affordable and covered by insurance. n what was her final dissent, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg fiercely advocated for workers to have their birth control covered by insurance regardless of their employers’ beliefs. In the decision, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic to uphold the Trump administration’s rules that allow companies to deny insurance coverage of birth control to employees. By Kelly Blanchard
Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, Under the Banner Headline: “There Is No Peace”
Quotes 0f the Day: