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!
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!
What’s the matter with Donald Trump and the Republican Party that they are making such a hash of stealing an election? Why are they making such a mockery of our finest political tradition? Have they no sense of history? In 2000, even the hopelessly inept George W. Bush (“Is our children learning?”) figured out how, after 18,000 residents in Palm Beach county mistakenly cast their votes for Patrick Buchanan, the Supreme Court could deny an accurate recount of the errantly dimpled chads (“for the sake of our democracy…”) and grant him the presidency, as if part of an inheritance.
In 2020, what does Trump have to offer Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Arizona in order to overrule the popular vote in those states and send electors for Trump to Washington? The answer is: not much. For one thing, for all his spin, Trump doesn’t “do deals.” He runs scams, in which he alone is the winner. Actually, the Republicans in Pennsylvania might be happier with the current results, in which, after getting rid of Trump, they get a conservative Supreme Court, a Republican majority in the Senate, and a corporatist, pro-fracking president who grew up in Scranton. The so-called Compromise of 1877 worked because each side had something that the other wanted (Republicans wanted the presidency and the Democrats wanted the South), but in 2020 all Trump has to trade is bluster and unpaid legal bills, and nobody seems to want either. — The Lost Art of the Steal
A great deal of energy was expended recently to influence who would be the next president of the criminal enterprise that is the United States of America. The nation’s criminality was established historically by its extermination of indigenous populations inconvenient to its imperial goals and its enslavement of Africans expressly imported into the country under hideous conditions for the further ease and enrichment of the already wealthy. Although these were crimes initiated long before the formal constitution of the U.S., when the slave trade was belatedly outlawed in 1808, slaves were bred in the Upper South and driven in chains across the country or shipped down the Mississippi to be sold in the Deep South. There, they joined their brothers and sisters in an industrialized system of enforced labor cruelly driven by the whip. The expansion of cotton across the south required the removal of Indian tribes who lived on the land the plantation owners wished to cultivate. Their forced removal included documented acts of genocide. The nation’s criminality continues into the present, most egregiously but not exclusively, by its refusal to make adequate reparations for these historical acts of inhumanity; by its acceptance of the violently racist policing of minority populations; by its ongoing program of mass incarceration of non-white men and boys; by its deportation of so called ‘illegals’ and by its frequent refusal to give asylum to those fleeing dire political, economic, and environmental conditions south of the border for which the U.S. is primarily responsible. Government sanctioned domestic executions, extra-judicial drone hits on foreign subjects, which may on occasion also kill American citizens, and numerous instances of psychological and physical torture inflicted on its perceived enemies, domestic and foreign, further impugn the probity of the state. A federally sanctioned health care system that is leveraged for corporate profit rather than human need represents a systematic attack on the well-being of large sections of the civilian population, and thus can be considered a crime against humanity. All the while, the nation’s nuclear-armed war machine, embedded in its planetary network of military bases, pursues declared and undeclared wars, creating a global backdrop to the nation’s domestic offenses. — The Nation’s New Crime Boss
Roger Hallam in discussion with Peter Carter, M.D. | Extinction Rebellion UK We’re looking at Billions of People not being able to Survive’ | Peter Carter, Expert IPCC Reviewer Join Roger Hallam as he discusses with Peter Carter, M.D. the science and ethics with regards to climate emergency for all of us struggling to understand what’s actually going on, what needs to happen and what we need to do. Every month now records and disasters are happening and we don’t have the time to sit around and pretend it’s all going to go away – because it’s not and Peter’s mission now is to spread the full terrible truth about the extreme risks and magnitude of the global climate and ocean disruption emergency.
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!
Dear Joe Biden: Are You Kidding Me? For years, I’ve been trying to impart a simple concept that Superman is not coming. Dare I say, I had hopes that this new administration would usher in the dawning of a new day. As picks for President-elect Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team were announced, I felt concerned and disheartened about a chemical industry insider being on the list. Are you kidding me? Michael McCabe, a former employee of Biden and a former deputy Environmental Protection Agency administrator, later jumped ship to work as a consultant on communication strategy for DuPont during a time when the chemical company was looking to fight regulations of their star chemical perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) also known as C8. The toxic manmade chemical is used in everything from waterproof clothes, stain-resistant textiles and food packaging to non-stick pans. The compound has been linked to lowered fertility, cancer and liver damage. The Guardian reported this week that Harvard school of public health professor Philippe Grandjean, who studies environmental health, warns that PFAS chemicals, of which PFOA is one, might reduce the efficacy of a Covid-19 vaccine. By Erin Brockovich
American Exceptionalism? We’re exceptional all right. Let us count the ways. We’re the only country in the entire industrialized world that… By David Stansfield
Does not mandate paid leave for mothers of new-borns
Does not mandate paid vacations for workers
does not mandate paid sick leave for workers
Does not provide universal healthcare (for those that do, see list below)
Has fewer unionized workers than anyone else (10.7% of workforce)
spends the most on education and gets the worst results (especially in math)
Has a larger achievement gap between rich and poor children than anyone else (gap between children from rich/poor 40% larger among children born in 2001 than those born 25 years earlier)
Exports more weapons than anyone else (30% of world’s arms)
has tested more nuclear weapons than anyone else (over 1,000, more than rest of world put together)
Imprisons more people than anyone else (2.3 million)
Swigs down more sugar-sweetened soft drinks per day than anyone else (U.S. youth consume 143 calories from SSBs and U.S. adults consume 145 calories from SSBs per day)
Has more obesity than anyone else (65.7% of American adults are obese, and 17% of American children; 63% of teenage girls become overweight by age 11)
Spends more on health care and gets less in return than anyone else ($3.2 trillion; 17% of GDP)
Charges more for prescription drugs than anyone else (between 3 and 10 times more)
Pays doctors more than anyone else (roughly double)
Charges more for health care in general than anyone else (incalculable)
Has more babies die the day they are born than anyone else (11,300 each year)
Has shorter life expectancy than anyone else (78.8 years vs. 82+ years for most other developed countries)
Creates more multi-billionaires than anyone else (585 billionaires: 25% of rest of world put together)
Has more homeless people than anyone else (over half a million Americans sleep in the streets)
Has more mental illness than anyone else (20% of adult Americans suffer this; only 41% get care)
Has more drug and/or addiction rates than anyone else (21.5 million American adults)
Has more teenage births than anyone else (4 million in 2016)
has less social mobility than almost anyone else (most European countries out-ranked the U.S. in terms of earning more than parents)
Has higher divorce rates than anyone else (3.6 per year per 1,000 inhabitants)
Has more illiteracy than anyone else (32 million Americans can’t read or write)
Spends more on its military than anyone else (nearly a trillion dollars)
Has 300 million guns (more than rest of world put together)
Had 22,000 gun suicides in 2016 (more than rest of world put together)
Had 11,760 gun homicides in 2016 (more than rest of world put together)
Averages one mass shooting – 4 or more people – per day
Still has the death penalty (in 25 states as of 2020)
And finally, here are the 122 countries that do have some form of universal healthcare: (Left out 34. Has most coronavirus cases, and 35. Most Coronavirus deaths! — (R.S.)
Washington Post Publishes Names and Details of 1,400 Civilians Killed in US-Led Bombings of ISIS The Post report relies heavily on figures from the airstrike watchdog Airwars—without stating the group’s actual casualty numbers. The Washington Post on Wednesday published an extraordinary interactive report that names hundreds of civilians killed by coalition airstrikes during the U.S.-led war against the so-called Islamic State. The report, which contains harrowing survivor testimonies, draws upon data from the U.S. military and the U.K.-based journalistic monitor group Airwars to name each victim, as well as when and where they were killed. The paper mentions “thousands” of civilian casualties since President Barack Obama launched the war against ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria in 2014, but focuses only on the approximately 1,400 deaths acknowledged by both the Pentagon and Airwars. The Washington Post on Wednesday published an extraordinary interactive report that names hundreds of civilians killed by coalition airstrikes during the U.S.-led war against the so-called Islamic State. The report, which contains harrowing survivor testimonies, draws upon data from the U.S. military and the U.K.-based journalistic monitor group Airwars to name each victim, as well as when and where they were killed. The paper mentions “thousands” of civilian casualties since President Barack Obama launched the war against ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria in 2014, but focuses only on the approximately 1,400 deaths acknowledged by both the Pentagon and Airwars. By Brett WilkinsEnvironment:
Automakers Show ‘Concerning’ Lack of Engagement on Human Rights and Climate, Analyses Reveal The world’s leading automakers are not doing enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with international climate targets and are failing to address or even report on human rights issues, according to new assessments released by the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA).The assessments include an update to a report launched last year scoring over two dozen automakers on progress towards the low-carbon transition and other measures of climate action, as well as a new analysis on automakers’ human rights disclosures. These assessments or “benchmarks” are developed by the WBA, an independent collaboration of more than 170 global organizations which evaluates corporate performance according to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. By Dana Drugmand
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Labor:
When it Comes to Pay, Most of the First Responder Heroes Are Undervalued and Underpaud!
Most Migrant Famers, Who Provide Our Food, are Forced to Work Piecework by Agribusiness and Piecework is Not Protected by Mnium Wage Laws.
Agriculture First Responders: First responder in agriculture, who produce the food we eat, make below minimum wage, since most migrant farmers are forced by agri-business to work piecework and are paid below minimum wage, because piecework is exempt from minimum wage laws. The more privileged farmworkers, in 2019, who worked for hourly wages made 13.99per hour.
Essential But Undervalued: Millions of Health Care Workers Aren’t Getting the Pay Or Respect They Deserve in the COVID-19 Pandemic Median wages in health care support, service, and direct care jobs were just $13.48 an hour in 2019—well short of a living wage and far lower than the median pay of doctors (over $100 per hour) and nurses ($35.17 per hour). Home health and personal care workers earn even less, with a median hourly wage of only $11.57. The wages are so low that nearly 20% of care workers live in poverty and more than 40% rely on some form of public assistance. These fields are some of the fastest-growing of all occupations, with more than a million new jobs projected by 2028.
Table 1. Demographic profile of workers in the health care and social assistance industry, 2019
Hailed as ‘Heroes’ During Pandemic, Retail Workers Stripped of Hazard Pay While Companies Rake in Massive Profits “While business booms and the pandemic rages, the rich are getting richer—and workers are getting sicker.” Frontline retail workers have been lauded by U.S. corporations as “heroes” this year for keeping operations running during the Covid-19 outbreak, but a new study shows how companies like Dollar General and Walmart—which have made massive profits over recent months—have treated their employees like “sacrificial workers” by stripping hazard pay even as the pandemic soared. The report, released Thursday by Public Citizen, details how most of the top 15 U.S. retail companies have quietly taken away hazard pay from their frontline workers, even as the coronavirus has continued to spread across the country and is now surging in states including Wisconsin, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Average Retail Sales Associate Hourly Pay:$11.19Economy:
Who’s Got the $340 Billion? Mnuchin Demands the Return of Emergency Funds from the Fed, without Explaining What He’s Been Doing with a Missing $340 Billion Yesterday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin stunned markets by demanding in a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell that the Fed return Treasury funds that are backstopping the bulk of its emergency lending programs and wind down these programs by year’s end. Adding further shock, the Fed rebuked the idea with its own statement, saying this: “The Federal Reserve would prefer that the full suite of emergency facilities established during the coronavirus pandemic continue to serve their important role as a backstop for our still-strained and vulnerable economy.” At issue in this newly-emerged war between Treasury and the Fed is $454 billion, $340 billion of which has yet to be accounted for. The process has played out as follows:“ The Federal Reserve would prefer that the full suite of emergency facilities established during the coronavirus pandemic continue to serve their important role as a backstop for our still-strained and vulnerable economy.” By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
One Thing the Pandemic Proves is that Capitalism Opposes Life! By Rejecting WTO Drug Patent Waivers Amid Pandemic, Richest Nations Put Big Pharma Profits Before Health of Billions Rich countries—accused of hoarding future vaccines—are being urged to support a “humanitarian buffer” to innoculate refugees and people in conflict zones. A handful of the world’s wealthiest nations on Friday dug in their heels in their fight against waiving intellectual property rules for Covid-19 vaccines and treatments, putting them even more firmly at odds with global health campaigners struggling to ensure access for people in developing countries, conflict zones, and refugee camps. By Brett Wilkins
Puerto Rico: After 2019 Uprising, A New Socialist Formation and New Political Party, Change the Electoral Game Any attempt to address the electoral issue in Puerto Rico from a socialist perspective must begin by pointing out the limits of the electoral process in the island. It is important to recognize the broad restrictions that the colonial status imposes on the elaboration of a national policy. This limitation is stronger under the federally-appointed Fiscal Control Board, which oversees the fiscal policies of Puerto Rico’s government. While acknowledging these limitations, we must also acknowledge that electoral politics and the electoral process attract considerable attention and that laws affecting the lives of the working-class majority are debated and adopted by the insular legislature. In addition, an important part of the colonial impositions (such as the Fiscal Control Board itself and its austerity measures) are enabled by the parties that have dominated island politics, and have not been challenged in the only representative political space that the existing colonial status allows. Undoubtedly, we cannot be indifferent to the electoral process. Thus, it is a terrain of struggle in which the socialists can intervene, if they deem it opportune, a space through which a considerable part of the population could be reached. In what follows, we explain why Democracia Socialista chose to call for a vote for Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana in the 2020 elections. The current historical context of Puerto Rico is that of a deep economic and structural crisis that began in 2006. This collapse, which represents the crisis of the existing Commonwealth status and its weak economic foundations, has also led to the crisis of the ruling traditional parties, the Partido Popular Democrático (PPD) and the Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP). Although it is true that there are differences between them, they can be described as representatives of the same interests and the same ideology: both parties, since the second half of the 1980s, have internalized and represent the policies of the neoliberal capitalism, that is, policies that privilege the market, privatization, the downsizing of the public structures and the reduction of state intervention in the economy. Change the Electoral Game Any attempt to address the electoral issue in Puerto Rico from a socialist perspective must begin by pointing out the limits of the electoral process in the island. It is important to recognize the broad restrictions that the colonial status imposes on the elaboration of a national policy. This limitation is stronger under the federally-appointed Fiscal Control Board, which oversees the fiscal policies of Puerto Rico’s government. While acknowledging these limitations, we must also acknowledge that electoral politics and the electoral process attract considerable attention and that laws affecting the lives of the working-class majority are debated and adopted by the insular legislature. In addition, an important part of the colonial impositions (such as the Fiscal Control Board itself and its austerity measures) are enabled by the parties that have dominated island politics, and have not been challenged in the only representative political space that the existing colonial status allows. Undoubtedly, we cannot be indifferent to the electoral process. Thus, it is a terrain of struggle in which the socialists can intervene, if they deem it opportune, a space through which a considerable part of the population could be reached. In what follows, we explain why Democracia Socialista chose to call for a vote for Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana in the 2020 elections. The current historical context of Puerto Rico is that of a deep economic and structural crisis that began in 2006. This collapse, which represents the crisis of the existing Commonwealth status and its weak economic foundations, has also led to the crisis of the ruling traditional parties, the Partido Popular Democrático (PPD) and the Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP). Although it is true that there are differences between them, they can be described as representatives of the same interests and the same ideology: both parties, since the second half of the 1980s, have internalized and represent the policies of the neoliberal capitalism, that is, policies that privilege the market, privatization, the downsizing of the public structures and the reduction of state intervention in the economy.
UNISON election: left victory would transform the situation The general secretary election for Britain’s largest trade union is down to the wire. Victory for the left would mark a watershed for the whole British labour movement. All out for Paul Holmes: the class-fighter candidate who will stand up for members and lead a militant union! By Rob Sewell“The People Have Woken Up”: Thai Protests Put Regime ON THE Backfoot A huge protest movement is shaking Thai society to its foundations, forcing the regime onto the backfoot. The youth at the forefront of this movement must reach out to the working class, and fight for an end to the military… By Jack Halinski-FitzpatrickEducation, 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
Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura 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! For Decades, Blacks Have Been Subjected to The Iron Heel! Currently, the US Capitalist Class is Divided Over When — Not If, to Apply It to Everyone!
Quotes 0f the Day:
Environment:
Economy:
Who’s Got the $340 Billion? Mnuchin Demands the Return of Emergency Funds from the Fed, without Explaining What He’s Been Doing with a Missing $340 Billion Yesterday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin stunned markets by demanding in a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell that the Fed return Treasury funds that are backstopping the bulk of its emergency lending programs and wind down these programs by year’s end. Adding further shock, the Fed rebuked the idea with its own statement, saying this: “The Federal Reserve would prefer that the full suite of emergency facilities established during the coronavirus pandemic continue to serve their important role as a backstop for our still-strained and vulnerable economy.” At issue in this newly-emerged war between Treasury and the Fed is $454 billion, $340 billion of which has yet to be accounted for. The process has played out as follows:“ The Federal Reserve would prefer that the full suite of emergency facilities established during the coronavirus pandemic continue to serve their important role as a backstop for our still-strained and vulnerable economy.” By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
“The People Have Woken Up”: Thai Protests Put Regime ON THE Backfoot A huge protest movement is shaking Thai society to its foundations, forcing the regime onto the backfoot. The youth at the forefront of this movement must reach out to the working class, and fight for an end to the military… By Jack Halinski-Fitzpatrick
Education, Health, Science, and Welfare: