Daily News Digest October 7, 2020

Daily News Digest Archives

The US Capitalist Class is Divided Over When — Not If, to Apply:  The Iron Heel!

The Trump Administration is Going to Be Pushing/Proiteering Remdesivir When He Gets Out of the Hospital and On the Campaign Trail.:   Trump Has Been Treated With Gilead Sciences Remdesivir In Addition yo Regeneron’s Neutralizing Antibody Cocktail President Donald Trump, who recently tested positive for the coronavirus, has been treated with Gilead Sciences Inc.’s remdesivir in addition to Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s experimental neutralizing antibody cocktail. Gilead’s GILD, -1.81%  remdesivir received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration in May. It is an antiviral therapy that so far has been proven to reduce recovery times in COVID-19 patients who have been hospitalized with severe cases of the disease. It helps stop the spread of the virus in the body. By Jaimy Lee

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!

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:

Bendib: Covid-19 Home to RoostQuotes 0f the Day:

More than half of Earth’s freshwater resources are held by the Antarctic Ice Sheet, which thus represents by far the largest potential source for global sea-level rise under future warming conditions1. Its long-term stability determines the fate of our coastal cities and cultural heritage. Feedbacks between ice, atmosphere, ocean, and the solid Earth give rise to potential nonlinearities in its response to temperature changes. So far, we are lacking a comprehensive stability analysis of the Antarctic Ice Sheet for different amounts of global warming. Here we show that the Antarctic Ice Sheet exhibits a multitude of temperature thresholds beyond which ice loss is irreversible. Consistent with palaeodata2 we find, using the Parallel Ice Sheet Model3,4,5, that at global warming levels around 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, West Antarctica is committed to long-term partial collapse owing to the marine ice-sheet instability. — The Hysteresis of the Antarctic Ice Sheet

Videos of the Day:

What Constitutes Affordable Housing? When we talk about affordable housing, we usually talk about whether someone has a place to live or not. But buried in that discussion is another facet of the housing shortage: whether someone’s rent is just a few dollars away from becoming unaffordable.

Are The World’s National Parks Failing Nature? (Part One) – Podcast

A Still-Contagious, Mask-Less Trump Returns to The White House to Lie About Covid-19

House Dems Pass Climate Bill Boosting Oil Drilling, Lobbied For by Biden Donor In this week’s Climate Crisis News Roundup, House Democrats push bill lobbied for by ex-Goldman Sachs executive, Trump backs “1 trillion trees” and a new study links the 1% to disproportionate climate impacts.

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!

The Virus Is Coming From Inside the White House Asking whether the celebration of Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination was a “super-spreader” event misses the point: Trump’s irresponsibility made this crisis likely. An alarming number of senators, presidential advisers, and Republican grandees who attended the now-infamous White House celebration of Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee have since tested positive for COVID-19, including the president and his wife. At first blush, the day, which featured a Rose Garden ceremony and a smaller, indoor gathering, looked like a super-spreader event. It might have been. By Olga Khaz  and Russell Berman

‘People Have a Right to Be Upset’: White House Failure to Contact Trace Stirs Contempt “This borders on reckless in terms of exposing people, not just in New Jersey, but it looks like for folks around the country, who are now scattered by the way,” said New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. Politicians, public health officials, and commentators are lambasting the White House’s failure to provide adequate contact tracing and guidance for thousands of people whose well-being was jeopardized last week after President Donald Trump traveled to multiple events around the country, at least one of which he participated in even after knowing that he had been exposed to the coronavirus. By Kenny Stancil, staff writer

Against Covid-19, Imperfect Measures Do the Most Good Speed and scale may matter more than absolute effectiveness when it comes to tests, masks, treatments and vaccines. It is a basic instinct of infectious diseases clinicians and researchers to seek and prescribe prophylactics or treatments that are almost guaranteed to benefit the patients who entrust us with their care. With Covid-19, this instinct can be counterproductive. By  Dr. Schiffer  infectious diseases specialist.Environment:

Capitalism – Not ‘Humanity’ – Is Killing the World’s Wildlife The new Living Planet report grimly documents global environmental destruction, but lets the responsible systems and institutions off the hook The latest Living Planet report from the WWF makes for grim reading: a 60% decline in wild animal populations since 1970, collapsing ecosystems, and a distinct possibility that the human species will not be far behind. The report repeatedly stresses that humanity’s consumption is to blame for this mass extinction, and journalists have been quick to amplify the message. The Guardian headline reads “Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations,” while the BBC runs with “Mass wildlife loss caused by human consumption.” by Anna PigottCalifornia Wildfires Spawn First ‘Gigafire’ in Modern History August complex fire expanded beyond 1m acres, elevating it from a mere ‘megafire’ to a new classification: ‘gigafire’ California’s extraordinary year of wildfires has spawned another new milestone – the first “gigafire”, a blaze spanning 1m acres, in modern history. On Monday, the August complex fire in northern California expanded beyond 1m acres, elevating it from a mere “megafire” to a new classification, “gigafire”, never used before in a contemporary setting in the state. At 1.03m acres, the fire is larger than the state of Rhode Island and is raging across seven counties, according to fire agency Cal Fire. An amalgamation of several fires caused when lightning struck dry forests in August, the massive conflagration has been burning for 50 days and is only half-contained. By Oliver MilmanAntarctica’s Ice Loss Could Soon Be Irreversible Global heating means the southern ice will melt. Antarctica’s ice loss could then be permanent, drowning many great cities. The greatest mass of ice on the planet is growing steadily more unstable, and that means Antarctica’s ice loss may before long be inexorable. New studies show that right now, just one degree of warming must mean an eventual sea level rise of 1.3 metres, simply from the flow of melting ice from the continent of Antarctica. By Tim RadfordWelcome to Point Reyes National Cattle Ranch The National Park Service has released its management plan for Agriculture in the Point Reyes National Seashore. That is right—agriculture in a national park system unit. The decision to continue livestock production in Point Reyes National Seashore demonstrates once again why allowing any commercial resource use in our parklands compromises the primary goals of our park system—which is to manage public lands for public values, not private profit. By George WuerthnerCivil Rights/Black Liberation:

Black Agenda Radio for Week of October 5, 2020 With Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford

If Breonna Were White… In an essay titled “Breonna’s Deathbed,” political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal asks if the Louisville cops that killed Breonna Taylor would still be free if they had shot to death a white woman in her bedroom. Abu Jamal noted that Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was killed by police while asleep in his bed, December 4, 1969.

Anti-Blackness Throughout the Americas Anti-Blackness is the common denominator underlying Black people’s high rates of death from poverty, disease and police violence on both continents of the western hemisphere, said Jameelah Imani Morris, an activist-scholar working on her PhD at Stanford University. Like the United States, many nations of Latin America were “established on violence” against Black and indigenous people, said Morris.

Black Is Back Coalition to March on White House For the 12th consecutive year, the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations will march on the White House, November 7, this time under the themes “Black Power Matters,” “Down with Colonialism” and “Black Community Control of the Police.” Coalition chairman Omali Yeshitela said community control of police is “the political demand that speaks directly to the issues” that have propelled unprecedented levels of protest in the United States, this year.

Labor:

Nearly 20,000 US Amazon and Whole Foods workers have been infected with COVID-19 The increase in Amazon’s market capitalization since the start of the year amounts to $34 million for each worker who got sick. On Thursday, the management of Amazon quietly revealed in a blog post that 19,816 employees in the US, including warehouse and Whole Foods workers, have tested positive for COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. By  Tom CarterEconomy:

United States Blew a $4.2 Trillion Debt Bubble – Then 10 Million of Us Lost Our Jobs

The money that you pay for debt service to a bank isn’t spent back into the economy. The bank bond holders are basically the 1% of the economy. They’re rich enough that they’re not going to take all this extra money they get to buy more goods and services. They’ll buy shitty trophy art, Andy Warhol junk. Who is the dumbest economic Nobel Prize winner? [Paul Krugman?] Paul Krugman. That’s right. He was given a Nobel Prize for not understanding what money was. If he would have understood it, that would’ve excluded him from getting the Nobel Prize.— Debt Deflation and the Neofeudal Empire

Well, what my research basically is about is that the debt has grown so rapidly for the private sector, that if you don’t write down the debt, if you insist that all the mortgage debt and credit card debt and student loan debt be paid, then you’re going to have almost a constant depression. It’s called debt deflation. And I described that in “The Bubble and Beyond” and “J is for Junk Economics.”     The problem is that as people owe more and more debt service, they have less and less to spend on goods and services and so they’re not able to buy what they produce, and so employment shrinks and the economy shrinks. And part of the problem is not simply the growth of debt, but what the debt is for, and in the textbooks debt is supposed to be for productive purposes. The myth is that it’s for building factories and means of production and increases everybody’s prosperity, but that’s not what debt’s about. That’s what maybe stock issues are about, but it’s not what debt is about.    80% of debt is issued in the form of mortgages and they’re lent to real estate and the effect of real estate debt – making credit, loosening the credit terms more and more, lending more and more against properties, higher proportions, lower down payment, lower amortization rates – is that property prices are inflated. Housing prices are inflated. Commercial real estate prices are inflated.
So debt is being created for all the wrong things. It’s been decoupled from the economy at large, and it’s being taken on for things that really used to be considered public services like education. Used to be that all economies provided schooling free as a public service because they realized that education is how you increase productivity. But now, more and more, education is just to get a job sort of like a union card. — Debt Deflation and the Neofeudal Empire

FRED: Federal Debt: Total Public Debt as  135.64081% of Gross Domestic ProductFRED: Households and Nonprofit Organizations; Consumer Credit; Liability, Level FRED: Student Loans Owned and Securitized, Outstanding

As 98,000 Businesses Permanently Closed, the Fed and Treasury Have Sat on $340 Billion of Untapped Money from the CARES Act When both parties in Congress came together in March to pass the CARES Act, which was signed into law by President Trump on March 27, the clear intention of the legislation was for the U.S. Treasury to hand over $454 billion of taxpayers’ money to the Federal Reserve. The Fed, in turn, was to leverage the money by 10 times to approximately $4.54 trillion to deploy to keep the economy moving, credit flowing, workers employed and businesses alive until the pandemic had been brought under control. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell made an unprecedented appearance on the Today show on March 26 and explained the plan like this: “In certain circumstances like the present, we do have the ability to essentially use our emergency lending authorities and the only limit on that will be how much backstop we get from the Treasury Department. We’re required to get full security for our loans so that we don’t lose money. So the Treasury puts up money as we estimate what the losses might be…Effectively $1 of loss absorption of backstop from Treasury is enough to support $10 of loans.” By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

World:

In Address on Inequality Amid Pandemic, Pope Calls on Globe to Confront ‘Destructive Effects of Empire of Money’ “Anyone who thinks that the only lesson to be learned was the need to improve what we were already doing, or to refine existing systems and regulations, is denying reality.” In his third encyclical Sunday morning, Pope Francis denounced free market capitalism and the “magic” theory of trickle-down economics, saying the coronavirus pandemic has once and for all disproven the notion that economic policies that are aimed at benefiting the already-rich will benefit low-income people through job creation and investments.  The 45,000 word document, titled “Fratelli Tutti” meaning “Brothers All” or “Brothers and Sisters All,” indicated the pope’s belief that the pandemic has shown that a major overhaul of global economic systems is needed, as the crisis has disproportionately affected the poor in countries including the U.S., Brazil, and the U.K.; revealed the divide between low-income workers all over the world who have had limited access to government aid and professionals who are able to work from home; and caused the “most unequal” recession in modern U.S. history.  By Julia Conley

Bloodsucking billionaires have profited from the pandemic A recent report by Oxfam has shown how the capitalist class has grown ever richer from the coronavirus crisis. Meanwhile, ordinary people are faced with unemployment, poverty, and homelessness. This rotten system must be overthrown.Bloodsucking billionaires  An in-depth report published by Oxfam last month entitled Power, Profits and the Pandemic shows how the capitalist class has lined its pockets throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. During the deepest economic and social crisis of the system’s history – when tens of millions of lives are at risk from a killer virus, 400 million jobs have already been lost, 430 million small businesses are going under and the number of people facing starvation has more than doubled to 265 million – this damning report reveals the true extent to which society’s richest have continued to benefit from super-profits and even used the desperate world situation to their advantage. The scandalous behaviour of these billionaire bosses and multinationals in putting profit before lives is not surprising. We have already covered various aspects of what Oxfam reports in previous articles. Anyone with eyes to see or ears to hear will have felt the chronic inequality further exposed by this crisis.  By Dejan Kukic and Manon PowrieOne Million Deaths A Million Lives Have Officially Been Claimed by the COVID-19 Pandemic. The scale of this tragedy is a direct result of capitalism and its representatives. They have shown a callous disregard for workers, youth and the poor; and their inept attempts to save the system have only created more chaos. A million lives have officially been claimed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The scale of this tragedy is a direct result of capitalism and its representatives. They have shown a callous disregard for workers, youth and the poor; and their inept attempts to save the system have only created more chaos. By  Joe AttardEducation, 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

‘He Won’t Support Medicare for All. He Got Medicare for One’: Trump Touts Disastrous Healthcare System That He’s Trying to Make Even Worse “How many fathers, mothers, grandparents, daughters, and sons would be alive right now if they would have received even a fraction of the care the president received?” As his administration actively works to strip insurance coverage from tens of millions of Americans fortunate enough to still have it, President Donald Trump late Monday once again urged the public not to fear the virus that has killed more than a million people across the globe because the U.S. has the “best” healthcare in the world—neglecting to mention he was provided a level of care that is systematically denied those who are unable to afford it. By Jake Johnson