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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!
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 Republicans, traditionally the employers’ party, had long tried to counter the Democratic Party’s appeal to workers as the traditional employees’ party. Republicans dared not use economic issues, and so they used religion, regionalism, and racism. They could pry portions of the working class away from the Democratic Party by appealing to such noneconomic concerns among workers. Their prime targets included evangelical Christian and other religious fundamentalists portrayed as victims of secularists, the South’s and other regions’ sense of unfair treatment by Washington and coastal elites, and white supremacists portrayed as threatened by rising Black and Brown populations including immigrants. — How Biden Could Pave the Way For the Next Trump
Behind America’s poorer and more inequitable health outcomes lie inadequate access to quality care and unacceptable differences in resources and health conditions related to income, race, and location. In his contribution, Senior Fellow Stuart M. Butler pinpoints the key problems plaguing our misguided approach: resources are misallocated, the health care infrastructure in many communities is inadequate, and financial support for health coverage is disjointed and inefficient. He recommends a three-pronged strategy to provide adequate, affordable, and accessible care to all U.S. residents, including creating an effective “grassroots” population health system (including expanding health clinics and other local access points, as well as addressing coverage gaps in states that have not expanded Medicaid), reforming the tax treatment of employment-based coverage to create universal insurance subsidies (toward an arrangement Butler calls “Medicare Advantage for All”), and using program flexibility—including a waiver process—and state innovation to create a truly national health system with appropriate state variation. — Blueprints to Advance Racial Justice and Worker Mobility
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!
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87 million. 87 million workers will lose federally mandated COVID sick leaveat the end of December unless Congress acts to extend the law.
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50 million. 50 million people are now facing hunger at least once a month, including 1 in 4 children. The rate of adults who sometimes or often do not have enough to eat is double in Black and Latino homes, according to the Associated Press.
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30 million. 30 million people are facing evictionas of December 31, 2020 when the current Centers for Disease Control moratorium on evictions ends. There has been a 70% increase in the number of people paying their rent by credit card.
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16 million. 16 million unemployed workers have already lost or will lose their federal unemployment benefits by December 26, 2020. 4.4 million people have already exhausted their federal benefits and another 12 million people stand to lose their unemployment benefits by December 26, 2020 unless Congress passes new laws, according to the Century Foundation. More
Biden’s Victory Was Hardly a Win for “Democracy.” It Was Another Win for the 1%. Biden’s campaign became the first ever to raise over $1 billion in donations, much of it from super PACs and dark money. In light of a newly elected Biden administration, many have proclaimed that a triumph of democracy has taken place. But was Joe Biden’s win really a victory for democracy? The evidence suggests otherwise, by a wide margin. The 2020 election was the most expensive election on record, with Democrats outspending Republicans in both congressional and federal contests. Spending was just shy of $14 billion in total, an unprecedented record and double the amount of 2016. In fact, the Biden campaign broke monthly and online campaign funding contributions of all time — boosted in large part by Wall Street donors. Biden’s campaign, in fact, became the first ever to raise over $1 billion in campaign donations. Donald Trump, on the other hand, finished second in total campaign contributions by a presidential candidate, beating out Obama’s 2008 record-shattering numbers. In fact, this characterizes the overall trends. By Rajko Kolundzic
How Biden Could Pave the Way For the Next Trump Since the 1970s, U.S. real wages have largely stagnated. After a century of real wages rising every decade, that stagnation changed the lives of the U.S. working class in traumatic ways. Likewise, since the 1970s, labor productivity grew steadily, aided sequentially by computers, robots, and artificial intelligence. The combination of stagnant real wages and rising productivity lowered labor’s share of national income in favor of capital’s. Profits consequently soared and took the stock markets with them. Income and wealth were redistributed sharply upward. By Richard D. Wolff
Does the Chicken Price Fixing Scandal Surprise Anyone? The modern chicken industry is among the most egregious in the world. Worker abuse, animal abuse, abuse of small farmers, pollution of waterways, contaminated food products and financial wrongdoing regularly appear in the news. Big fines have no effect on an industry in which one company can make as much as $41 billion a year. Yes billion. The landscape is getting worse because the food behemoths are increasingly privatized. The USDA continues to allow chicken producers and meat producers in general to essentially self-police, a phenomenon which began with the institution of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point or HACCP. Why let humane or hygiene considerations slow down profits? It should surprise no one that government meat inspectors can be ignored or ridiculed at these privatized slaughter plants…when they don’t unabashedly switch loyalties. By Martha Rosenberg
Environment:
We’ll Get To See A Super-Rare Planetary Alignment For The First Time In 800 Years “On the evening of closest approach on Dec 21 they will look like a double planet, separated by only 1/5th the diameter of the full moon,” said Hartigan, a professor of physics and astronomy.
Earth’s Magnetic North Pole Continues Drifting, Crosses Prime Meridian Earth’s magnetic north pole, which has been wandering faster than expected in recent years, has now crossed the prime meridian. The team of researchers that maintain the World Magnetic Model (WMM) has updated it and released it a year ahead of schedule due to the speed with which the pole is moving. The newly updated model shows the magnetic north pole moving away from Canada and toward Siberia. The magnetic north pole is the point on the Earth that compasses designate as true north. It is the result of geological processes deep within the planet—molten iron flow creates a magnetic field with poles near the geographic North and South Poles. But unlike the geographic poles, the magnetic poles can move—and the magnetic north pole has been moving faster in recent years, which made necessary the early update of the WMM.
“I Told You So. You Damned Fools”: 75 Years of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Leafing – or in this case scrolling through – the commemorative issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists after 75 years of publication is a tingling exercise of existence. The subject matter pushes you to the edge. You threaten to fall off. Death is promised; extinction contemplated. Nuclear holocaust. Your sanity is called into question. The Bulletin’s own Doomsday Clock pointing to potential nuclear Armageddon continues to guarantee a permanent state of terrifying insecurity. By Binoy Kampmark
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Blueprints to Advance Racial Justice and Worker Mobility The unequal impacts of covid-19 and its antecedents Launched today, the first series of Blueprints addresses both the acute and chronic problems facing our nation’s vulnerable workers and communities of color. Through November 2020, the U.S. economy had regained about 12 million of the 22 million jobs it shed in the initial months of the pandemic. But its slowing rate of recovery in recent months foreshadows difficult times ahead for many workers, including a growing number facing permanent displacement from their jobs. The pandemic has had pronounced impacts on lower-wage workers, who represent disproportionate shares of the workforce in heavily affected industries such as food services, personal services, travel and tourism, and retail. The Census Bureau reports that 55% of households earning less than $50,000 annually have experienced a loss of employment since March, compared to only 38% of households earning at least $100,000. By Alan Berube and Camille Busette
Labor:
Economy:
Mission Creep or Creepy Mission: The New York Fed’s Trading Desk Has Ballooned to $6.59 Trillion Today from $576 Billion in 2008 Few Americans are aware that the central bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve, has its own trading desk in New York that interacts every business day with the trading desks of the giant Wall Street banks. When Americans think of massive trading operations, names like JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, UBS and Citigroup come to mind. But if we measure trading desks by the value of their portfolio holdings, these global banks are pikers compared to the Fed’s trading desk, operated by one of its 12 private regional banks, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (New York Fed). By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
India: Countrywide Lockdown By Farmers – Towards an Indefinite General Strike! Farmers in India observed a national lockdown on 8 December – also called a Bharat Bandh – a day ahead of the scheduled sixth round of talks with the government, with five million taking part across 20,000 locations. Farmers blocked major roads from 11am to 3pm, predominantly in the agricultural states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. All commercial centres were closed. Protestors blocked railway tracks in West Bengal, Bihar and Odisha. Many shops and commercial areas were also closed in Delhi in solidarity with the striking farmers. Despite a massive blockade of Delhi’s main highways, farmers are still receiving solidarity from the people living there. By Arsalan Ghani
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 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
Coronavirus and COVID-19: Younger Adults Are at Risk, Too At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, reports indicated that the disease was mostly affecting older adults, and that young people were more likely to have milder cases of the disease. But according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), over the summer, in the United States, people under age 30 accounted for more than 20% of COVID-19 cases and were seen as more likely to transmit the virus than others. This trend has continued into the fall. Reviewed By Lisa Lockerd Maragakis, M.D., M.P.H.
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!
We Are All at Risk for COVID-19!: Nearly 30% of US Coronavirus Cases Have Been Among People 20-44 Years Old, The CDC Says — Showing That Young People are Getting Sick, Too
Quotes 0f the Day: