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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:
Matt Wuerker: Ship Of State
Quotes 0f the Day:
Biden’s appointments are drawn almost exclusively from the circles of the Democratic Party and corporate elite, those responsible for the massive social inequality, trade deals, de-industrialization, militarized police, world’s largest prison system, austerity programs that abolished social programs such as welfare, the revived Cold War with Russia. —The Dangerous Fantasy of Hope Rooted in Self-Delusion
After the spill, BP secured about a third of the world’s supply of dispersants, namely Corexit 9500 and 9527, according to The New York Times. Of the two, 9527 is more toxic. Corexit dispersants emulsify oil into tiny beads, causing them to sink toward the bottom. Wave action and wind turbulence degrade the oil further, and evaporation concentrates the toxins in the oil-Corexit mixture, including dangerous compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), known to cause cancer and developmental disorders.— After the spill, BP secured about a third of the world’s supply of dispersants, namely Corexit 9500 and 9527, according to The New York Times. Of the two, 9527 is more toxic. — Corexit, Oil Dispersant Used By BP, Is Destroying Gulf Marine Life, Scientists Say
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!
This Last-Minute Congress Stimulus Package Is Terrorism by Austerity Congress Stimulus Package Finally Passes—But It Is Too Little, Too Late. 900 billion dollars is a big amount, Apparently one trillion is a whole order of magnitude greater. Or at least the number is so terrifying that politicians bend heaven and earth to avoid being connected with trillion dollar expenditures. And this allergic reaction is bipartisan. In the early stages of the world financial crisis President Obama worked consistently albeit futilely to bring Republicans aboard to his 900 billion proposal. The trillion dollar phobia provoked one twitter user, Carlos Mucha, to ask a pertinent question: “Does it bother anyone else that sum of $1 trillion is still the mental event horizon for Senate moderates in current stimulus discussions, just as it was in stimulus healthcare reform discussions in 2009, even though equivalent sum (adjusted for GDP growth) is $1.5 trillion?” By John Buell
The Dangerous Fantasy of Hope Rooted in Self-Delusion The real lesson we should learn from the rise of a demagogue such as Trump and a pandemic that our for-profit health care industry proved unable to contain is that we are losing control as a nation and as a species. Joe Biden and the systems managers of the deep state and empire are returning to power. Trump and his coterie of buffoons, racists, con artists and Christian fascists are sullenly preparing to leave office. U.S. pharmaceutical corporations are starting to disseminate vaccines to mitigate the globe’s worst outbreak of COVID-19 that has resulted in more than 2,600 deaths per day. America, as Biden says, is back, ready to take its place at the head of the table. In the battle for the soul of America, he assures us, democracy has prevailed. Progress, prosperity, civility and a reassertion of American prestige and power are, we are promised, weeks away. By Chris Hedges
Americans are Broke and Hungry, as Politicians Have Sat on Their Hands Covid-19 not only killed over 300,000 Americans, it also bankrupted millions. When it first attacked, congress and the white house rushed billions to rich corporations, while the Fed turned on the money spigot to keep the stock market afloat. But this largesse also reached ordinary people. It saved millions from destitution. That one effort, however, was about all the GOP could stand. The thought of more money for regular people was too much for it. Dems readied a $3 trillion relief bill last spring, but it sat on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s desk – and sat, and sat, and sat. The same GOP that enthusiastically hastened Trump’s massive tax cut for billionaires and rich corporations balked at extending $600 dollars a week for the unemployed. That, we were told last summer, would encourage laziness. So the GOP-led senate did nothing, the Dems basically did nothing, and as summer rolled into fall, Americans because more desperate. By Eve Ottenberg
What We Have Here is a Failure to Negotiate No relief worth a damn? No healthcare? What we have here is a failure to negotiate. And that is a direct outcome of the failure to challenge power. I was only chief negotiator once but I sat at enough bargaining tables to know an epic failure to negotiate when I see one. The Congressional progressives missed three great opportunities to use their leverage — and instead set the pattern for austerity and misery. The same problems of class struggle, corporate power and austerity plague the labor movement. By Richard Moser
The ‘Non Profit’ Profteers!: MALT Board of Directors’ Conflicts of Interest Exposed as Legal Battle Unfolds In January 2017, the Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT) paid $1.66 million to the family business of a member of its board of directors, Sam Dolcini. … Years later, in May 2020, Parks suddenly ordered MALT to refund the county funds used to purchase the $1,666,500 Dolcini easement. The reason? When applying for the funding, MALT had failed to disclose the existence of an appraisal it had commissioned that valued the easement at half a million dollars less than the price paid by MALT and the county. MALT immediately refunded $833,250 to the county using private donations. The Dolcinis did not return any of the money, said MALT spokesperson Isabel French. In June, executive director, Jamison Watts, resigned to “recalibrate my life-work balance.” As facts about the board’s historic conflicts of interest spill into view, MALT has lawyered up. It turns out Sam Dolcini is not the first board member to sell an easement to the land trust. MALT has spent tens of millions of dollars in public and private funds buying easements from its own board members. By Peter Byrne
Environment:
The US’s “Best” University Fuels the Climate Crisis. Princeton Must Divest. Most of Princeton’s climate research is funded by notorious polluters like ExxonMobil and BP. New York State’s announcement that it will divest its $226 billion pension fund of fossil fuels — the first state in the country to do so — signals that the tides are turning in the climate movement. This groundbreaking step in the climate finance movement demonstrates the imperative for leadership on climate. Somehow though, universities like ours that tout their leadership have been left as laggards on climate. As New York State shows leadership, Princeton University provides cover for fossil fuel companies through engagement and continuing to invest. ByTom Taylor and Hannah Reynolds
The Ocean Floor Is Spewing Methane Due to Abandoned Oil and Gas Wells Out on the deck of a research boat, Tara Yacovitch looked out to the water. In the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, the seascape is peppered with lights. And every light is part of an offshore oil or gas platform. Offshore platforms can vary greatly in size — some are as big as multi-storied buildings, while others resemble small but very tall rooms. The boat carrying Yacovitch and her team also housed a variety of science equipment: methane isotope readers, spectrometers, and other tools to measure methane levels in the air around these sites. Yacovitch, an instrument scientist at Aerodyne Research, is trying to understand the scope of what some scientists say is a massive environmental issue lurking below our seas. Wells are routinely drilled into the sea floor for oil and gas production, and abandoned when they stop being economically viable — sometimes this is after years of oil or gas extraction, sometimes it’s part way through drilling before the well is even finished. But not all of these wells are plugged and properly maintained before being left behind. The result: methane and other gases leaking in unknown quantities for years on end from tens of thousands of holes in the ocean floor. By Out on the deck of a research boat, Tara Yacovitch looked out to the water. In the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, the seascape is peppered with lights. And every light is part of an offshore oil or gas platform. Offshore platforms can vary greatly in size — some are as big as multi-storied buildings, while others resemble small but very tall rooms. The boat carrying Yacovitch and her team also housed a variety of science equipment: methane isotope readers, spectrometers, and other tools to measure methane levels in the air around these sites. Yacovitch, an instrument scientist at Aerodyne Research, is trying to understand the scope of what some scientists say is a massive environmental issue lurking below our seas. Wells are routinely drilled into the sea floor for oil and gas production, and abandoned when they stop being economically viable — sometimes this is after years of oil or gas extraction, sometimes it’s part way through drilling before the well is even finished. But not all of these wells are plugged and properly maintained before being left behind. The result: methane and other gases leaking in unknown quantities for years on end from tens of thousands of holes in the ocean floor. By Hannah Seo
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
You Can’t Shame the Shameless Black Misleadership Class The Black misleaders have been busy selling out Black people for half a century, but are still only barely tolerated by the rich man’s Democratic Party and its racist figurehead, Joe Biden. “The Black misleaders have no bite and have not even dared to bark in half a century.” The Black Misleadership Class continues its descent into utter political irrelevance, dragging 48 million African Americans ever deeper into the abyss with them. Like a soap opera whose central pathologies endure through decades of changing casts of characters, the misleaders cling to their demeaning subservience to the Democratic Party in hopes of one day becoming honored and respected partners. The Black supplicants are always betrayed, of course, but prefer a bad marriage to no relationship at all. Indeed, the Black misleaders and the Democrats have been locked in what Malcolm X would describe as a house Negro/slave master relationship for so long – certainly since the late Sixties – that the Black junior partner knows no other way to behave. Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
Labor:
Millions of Young Adults Are Out Of School Or Work. We Need An Education and Employment Promise In the United States, the long pathway from kindergarten to the job market is an obstacle course that sets up tens of millions of young people for failure, particularly those who are Black or brown. Now, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, young people are navigating a disrupted education system or looking for jobs during the third economic downturn in the past 20 years. We need a radically different vision for the transition to adulthood, and we need it now. From spring 2019 to spring 2020, unemployment among young adults spiked from 8.4% to 24.4%. Even before the pandemic, the youth labor market was in crisis, with the percentage of young people employed or looking for work at historic lows. In 2018, more than 4 million 16- to 24-year-olds were “opportunity youth,” neither in school nor employed. As many as one in three young adults may now fall into this group—over 10 million people. Martha Ross and Thomas Showalter
Fewer Jobs, Rising Poverty: Scathing Report Finds Trump Economic Legacy ‘One of the Worst Among All US Presidents’ “American businesses and workers are struggling to survive because President Trump refused to listen to advice from public health experts and economists about the best way to handle the coronavirus.” By Jake Johnson
Economy:
Research Arm of Congress Confirms that Mnuchin Never Released Bulk of CARES Act Money Earmarked for Fed’s Emergency Loans On November 27, Wall Street On Parade reported that U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin had failed to turn over to the Federal Reserve 75 percent of the $454 billion that Congress had earmarked in the CARES Act for the Fed’s emergency lending programs. We wrote at the time: “…for months now, the Federal Reserve’s weekly financial statements known as the H.4.1 have indicated that all the Fed received from Treasury for its emergency lending facilities was $114 billion, leaving $340 billion unaccounted for.” By Pam Martens and Russ Martins
World:
Pakistan: huge turnout for Students Day of Action On 19 December 2020, the Progressive Youth Alliance (PYA), a revolutionary organisation struggling for the rights of students and youth in Pakistan, organised a nationwide protest, entitled “Students Day of Action” (covered by Pakistan’s oldest English-language newspaper): for free education and the restoration of student unions; and against sexual harassment of women, state abductions and unemployment. Participants in all cities also raised slogans for the release of comrade Amar Fayaz, who was abducted by the state authorities last month. Still, his whereabouts are unknown.
Imperial Intent: Destroying India’s Farm Sector Agriculture in India is at a crossroads. Indeed, given that over 60 per cent of the country’s 1.3-billion-plus population still make a living from agriculture (directly or indirectly), what is at stake is the future of India. Unscrupulous interests are intent on destroying India’s indigenous agri-food sector and recasting it in their own image. Farmers are rising up in protest. By Colin Todhunter
Britain’s Dangerous New COVID-19 Strain: A Warning to Take Urgent Action Now! With 1.7 million people already dead worldwide and hospitals overwhelmed, scientists are sounding the alarm about a new, more infectious strain of COVID-19 that has emerged in Britain and is leading to a major surge in infections there. The new strain of COVID-19 is believed to be responsible for the doubling of daily new COVID-19 cases in the UK this month. The country recorded 35,000 new cases on Sunday, its highest ever, up from an average of just 15,000 two weeks before. The massive spread of this new strain of COVID-19 stands as yet another indictment of the Johnson government’s reckless and criminal response to the pandemic. By abandoning all efforts to eradicate the virus, the government left the population vulnerable and exposed to a deadly threat the consequences of which are still unknown. By Robert Stevens
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
Hospital Ceos Have Gotten Rich Cutting Staff and Supplies. Now They’re Not Ready For the Next Wave. Years of understaffing nurses and health care workers have consequences, experts say. IN 2006, Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx had healthier patients, just enough nursing staff to take care of them, and a CEO who was earning $2 million a year, a senior nurse and union leader told The Intercept. Fifteen years later, its patients are sicker than ever before, its staffing levels are inadequate, and, as of 2018, its new CEO is earning $13 million per year. The nonprofit hospital, like hundreds of others across the nation, has been cutting costs, progressively going leaner on staffing and supplies over the years. This accelerated approach has meant that the pandemic has hit the hospital, especially health care workers, doubly hard. The nurse, Karine Raymond, has provided care at the facility for 27 years. In the second wave of Covid-19, as in the first, she and her colleagues are taking care of double the patients that they typically do. By Matthew Cunningham-Cook
China, Christmas and the Coronavirus As we hunker down this holiday season, waiting for our vaccines, or at least until the diffusion of the vaccines has slowed the spread of the pandemic, it’s worth thinking for a moment about an opportunity lost. Specifically, we lost an opportunity to have worldwide cooperation in the development of vaccines, bringing in not only Europe, but China. While we now have two vaccines (counting Moderna’s) that have been approved by the FDA, China has one vaccine that has already been approved by the licensing agencies in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and a second that is likely to soon be approved in several countries. Russia also has a vaccine to which it gave approval several months ago. It would be worth asking whether these vaccines could be saving lives here. By Dean Baker
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!