Skip to content
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:
However, the final decade of Beethoven’s life from the 1820s saw a revival in the European economy as the capitalist mode of production spread and industry began to replace a mostly rural Germany and Austria. Indeed, there was the first capitalist economic slump in 1825; and later, the first signs of proletarian struggle which eventually led to the overthrow of the restored Bourbon monarchy in France in 1830 and the 1832 Reform Act in England, allowing better-off adult males the right for the vote for the first time. And in 1824 Beethoven delivered his final masterpiece before his death in 1827. Beethoven had long been considering the idea of a choral symphony and took as his text the German poet Schiller’s Ode to Joy, which he had known since 1792 and was originally published in 1785 taken from a drinking song for German republicans. In fact, Schiller had originally considered calling the song an Ode to Freedom (Freiheit), but because of the enormous pressure of reactionary forces, he changed the word to Joy (Freude). Those words of Schiller became the centrepiece of the 9th symphony (which is used by the European Union as its anthem now). The ninth symphony has been called The Marseillaise of Humanity. Beethoven revives the sound of revolutionary optimism. It is the voice of a man who refuses to admit defeat, whose head remains unbowed in adversity. — Beethoven: Revolutionary Times
If the facts hold true, Trump and his people attempted, and at least partially accomplished, a form of targeted genocide against the people, and particularly marginalized people, using COVID-19 as the vehicle for policy. Capitalism demanded the nation not shut down and the workers keep working, even in the teeth of a lethal pandemic. Lacking a vaccine for all those months, the only viable solution that satisfied “the markets” was to let the virus burn through the population — particularly disabled, elderly, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, low-income, houseless and incarcerated populations — unchecked. Did Trump Deliberately Pursue Genocide via His “Herd Immunity” Strategy?
Trees It’s the Christmas season, and because real pine trees can be cumbersome and high maintenance, many families use . While artificial trees seem like an easy and sustainable alternative, the materials they are made out of can pose health risks. Like many consumer products, artificial trees are often made with a type of plastic called polyvinyl chloride (PVC). PVC releases gases into the air that can cause dizziness and irritation to the eyes, nose, and lungs. PVC is often treated with plasticizers to make it flexible, and the most common plasticizers are a class of chemicals call phthalates. Phthalates shed off of the plastic products they’re used in, released as gases into the air and dust onto surfaces. Exposure to phthalates in these forms is associated with diabetes, obesity, and reproductive disorders. It is particularly dangerous for the development of children’s brains and may cause permanent cognitive impairment, autistic. — Toxic Tuesdays— Artificial Christmas
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!
Confronting and Ending the US Blockade Against Cuba U.S. news reports rarely touch upon the U.S. economic blockade against Cuba. The blockade destroys people’s lives and threatens the island’s economy and Cuba’s economic development. Damning evidence appears in the Cuba’s Foreign Ministry’s most recent report on adverse effects. Its authors refer to “the longest-lasting trade embargo in modern history.” How long is long? It’s been in place for 60 years. If from there you go back only five 60-year chunks of time, you might have greeted the Puritans arriving in Boston. Meanwhile, “Cuba bashing is like ordering pizza; … cheap and easy and everyone likes you for it.” – in the words of Cuba analyst and lawyer José Pertierra. By W. T. Whitney
After He Has Appointed a Corporate Cabinet: Survey Shows Americans—Regardless of Partisan Affiliation—Don’t Want Biden to Appoint a Corporate Cabinet “People across party lines want an administration that is run by people who care about the public interest—not by corporate executives, lobbyists, and consultants.”By Brett Wilkins
Hunger in America: Covid-19 and the Nightmare of Food Insecurity As autumn fades and winter looms, the dire predictions public-health experts made about Covid-19 have, unfortunately, proven all-too-accurate. On October 27th, 74,379 people were infected in the United States; less than a month and a half later, on December 9th, that number had soared to 218,677, while the 2020 total has just surpassed 15 million, a number no other country, not even India, which has a population three times that of the U.S., has surpassed. By Rajan Menon
70 Years Ago President Kennedy Started The Tax Cuts for the 1% and Tax Increases to the 99%: Sit atudy of 50 Years of Tax Cuts For Rich Confirms ‘Trickle Down’ Theory Is an Absolute Sham “Major tax cuts for the rich since the 1980s have increased income inequality, with all the problems that brings, without any offsetting gains in economic performance.” By Kenny Stancil
Environment:
In ‘Landmark’ Moment, London Coroner Lists Air Pollution as a Cause of Young Girl’s Death London Mayor Sadiq Khan said the coroner’s report must mark “a turning point so that other families do not have to suffer the same heartbreak.” By Julia Conley
The New Derivatives Market in California Water: Disaster Natural Resources Capitalism at Work I read that the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (now the CME Group) had opened up a futures market in California water (Nasdaq Veles California Water Index [NQH2O]) last week.One can imagine derivative tranches composed of portions of irrigation-district allotments of riparian water, some private well water, water from the odd ephemeral creek, pre-1914 rights water, added to a slice or two of federal bureau water and some of that State Water Project water that has remained, as some say, “notional.” Of course, we here in the San Joaquin Valley, which without millions of acre feet of irrigation water would dry up in a dusty cough in one season, are familiar with the derivative-market deal from our experience with real estate-mortgage tranches, derivatives described by Warren Buffett 20 years ago as “weapons of mass destruction.” By Bill Hatch
Ecosocialism: A Vital Synthesis The capitalist system, driven at its core by the maximization of profit, regardless of social and ecological costs, is incompatible with a just and sustainable future. Ecosocialism offers a radical alternative that puts social and ecological well-being first. Attuned to the links between the exploitation of labor and the exploitation of the environment, ecosocialism stands against both reformist “market ecology” and “productivist socialism.” By embracing a new model of robustly democratic planning, society can take control of the means of production and its own destiny. Shorter work hours and a focus on authentic needs over consumerism can facilitate the elevation of “being” over “having,” and the achievement of a deeper sense of freedom for all. To realize this vision, however, environmentalists and socialists will need to recognize their common struggle and how that connects with the broader “movement of movements” seeking a Great Transition. By Michael Löwy
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Labor:
Economy:
Economic Consequences of a 2nd Economic ‘Mitigation’ Bill As of mid-December 2020 the US economy has begun showing increasing signs of an exceptionally weak 4th quarter, October-December, growth. After having collapsed -10.5% in the March-June 2020 period, followed by a partial ‘rebound’ (not sustained recovery) in the 3rd quarter, July-September 2020, the economy is now slowing rapidly once again. Dismal reports of consumer and especially retail sales in October-November appear driving the slowing growth—in turn driven by rising unemployment claims, a growing number of permanent layoffs by large businesses as the economy structurally changes long term, and, shorter term, by a sharp rise in Covid deaths, infections, and consequent partial shutdown of the services sector of the US economy throughout the US. By Jack Rasmus
The Sabotage of the U.S. Postal Service Is a National Security Matter Among the growing list of priorities for the incoming Biden administration is a comprehensive investigation of the efforts to sabotage the U.S. Postal Service. In August, Aaron Gordon, reporting for Vice’s Motherboard, published a leaked internal document from the U.S. Postal Service showing that management was planning to eliminate hundreds of high-speed sorting machines in the midst of a pandemic. Sources inside the Postal Service that spoke with Gordon told him that they had “personally witnessed the machines, which cost millions of dollars, being destroyed or thrown in the dumpster.” By Pam Martens
Fed Chair Powell Opens a Big Can of Worms at His Press Conference There was a jaw-dropping exchange between Politico reporter Victoria Guida and Fed Chair Jerome Powell at his press conference yesterday following the two-day meeting of the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). Powell first acknowledged in his opening statement that “the current economic downturn is the most severe of our lifetimes.” But he then proceeds to tell Guida that the Fed has given no thought at all to what kind of emergency lending it might engage in under the incoming Biden administration. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has kneecapped the Fed’s existing emergency loan facilities by demanding that the Fed return the Treasury’s unused money that is backstopping these facilities as loss-absorbing capital. The Fed has for years attempted to reassure markets that there will be no surprises from the Fed; that it will be providing lots of forward guidance to Wall Street to assuage any nervous jitters about its actions. And yet this is what Powell tells Guida about the Fed’s future plans for emergency lending facilities: “We’re very focused on getting through year end. We’ve been very focused on the issues that are right in front of us. And honestly, we’re not planning on anything or having any discussions about what we might do down the road.” By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
UN Warns New Wave of Locust Swarms Threatens Food Security of Millions in East Africa “We must not waiver. Locusts keep growing day and night and risks are exacerbating food insecurity for vulnerable families across the affected region.” By Jessica Corbett
The Crisis of Reformism: Class Collaboration and Compromise The crisis that began in 2008 exposed capitalism. It started a process in which millions of young people and workers began to challenge, not just so-called ‘neoliberalism’, but capitalism itself. Yet this crisis of capitalism, rather than propelling the left to power, has pushed the left into crisis. Superficially, this is a contradiction, but if we look beyond the surface, we see it flows from the limitations of reformist politics in a period such as the one we are living through. By Niklas Albin Svensson
France : Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité & Laïcité….But Not for Muslims? “…Our country is one that has no problems with any of the world’s religions whatsoever, because they are all practised freely in our country. And to all French people of the Muslim faith, and indeed to citizens from anywhere else in the world whose religion is Islam, I should like to say to them that France is a country in which this religion, too, is freely practised.” – Emmanuel Macron, President of France, 31st October, 2020 in an interview with Al Jazeera By Mariamne Everett
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
Beethoven: Revolutionary Times It is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig Beethoven, who was born either on 16 or 17 December 1770; nobody was quite sure, including Beethoven himself. Beethoven is considered the most musically revolutionary of ‘classical’ composers. And in my view, that was no accident of history because Beethoven was a man of his time. He was born at the time of what has been called the ‘enlightenment’, when European thought broke from a subservience to religion and monarchy and raised the banner of free thinking, science and democracy – and there were the first glimmerings of a new economic order based of ‘free trade and competition’. Adam Smith published his seminal work, The Wealth of Nations, when Beethoven was six years old. And the American war of independence took place, in which the formerly British settlers broke from the British monarchy, with the financial and military support of France to establish a republic with voting rights, exercised again this year. By Michael Roberts
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: