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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:
Deferred Maintenance: Deferred maintenance is repairs to infrastructure and assets that get delayed and backlogged because of budget limitations and lack of funding.
With all the media hoopla last week about the Perseverance rover, going almost totally unreported was that its energy source is plutonium—considered the most lethal of all radioactive substances—and nowhere in media that NASA projected 1-in-960 odds of the plutonium being released in an accident on the mission. . . . Further, NASA’s Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the $3.7 billion mission acknowledges that an “alternative” power source for Perseverance could have been solar energy. Solar energy using photovoltaic panels has been the power source for a succession of Mars rovers. — Plutonium in Space: What Are the Odds of a Catastrophe?
Videos of the Day:
‘Wear Your Damn Masks, Please,’ Says Rep. Pocan After NIH Director Ties Politicization to ‘Tens of Thousands’ of US Deaths As the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus pandemic approached the half-million mark, one of the nation’s top doctors on Sunday tied the politicization of mask-wearing—for which former President Donald Trump and various other Republicans have been widely criticized—to “tens of thousands” of deaths nationwide. “The evidence was pretty compelling by last March or April that uniform wearing of masks would reduce transmission of this disease. And yet, with a variety of messages through a variety of sources, mask-wearing became a statement about your political party or an invasion of your personal freedom,” National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins told “Axios on HBO.”
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 Fake Debate Over a Minimum Wage Capitalism’s “conservative” defenders yet again oppose raising the minimum wage. They fought raising it in the past much as they tried to prevent the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938) that first mandated a U.S. minimum wage. The major argument opponents have used is this: setting or raising a minimum wage threatens small employers. They may collapse or else fire employees; either way, jobs are lost. What is conveniently assumed here is a necessary contradiction between minimum wages and small business jobs. That assumption enables opponents to claim that not setting a legal minimum wage, like not raising it, saves jobs. The system thus presents very poorly paid workers with this choice: low wages or no wages. “Liberals” in the United States have mostly accepted the assumption of that contradiction, the necessity of that final choice. However, they try to demonstrate that the social gains from a higher minimum wage would exceed the social losses from the reduced employment they admit. Their idea, in effect, is that a higher minimum wage would increase demand for goods and services. Any workers fired because of the minimum wage would be rehired elsewhere to meet the rising demand. Countless empirical studies by conservatives and liberals yield, as usual, correspondingly conflicting conclusions. In the actual history of U.S. capitalism, the minimum wage has been undercut from the outset. In real terms (what the minimum wage can actually buy), its long-term decline began from a peak in 1968. It was last raised in 2009 (to $7.25 per hour) despite a rising consumer price index every year since then. U.S. business interests plus the “conservative” politicians, media, and academics they support have inundated the public with the idea that raising the minimum wage will hurt poorly paid workers (by losing mostly small business jobs) more than help them. This debate over the minimum wage, intensified whenever proposals to raise it gain public attention, has been “won” chiefly by the conservative/business side. By Richard D. Wolff
Environment:
Water, Water, Everywhere
Capitalism Is A Failed System: The Fifty Year Policy of Deferred Maintenance and Deregulation Have Come Home to Roost in the United States: USA: Capitalism’s Weather Disaster in Texas Last week, a devastating winter storm hammered Texas and wreaked havoc on 90% of the state’s energy infrastructure. The crisis caused a loss of heat, unreliable water utilities, and structural damage to homes. A projected four million people were without power at one point. Nearly 70 deaths have been attributed to this disaster, and magnitudes more are experiencing hardships and desperation. By Gage Tijerina
Crumbling Pipes: It Could Cost $1 Trillion to Keep America’s Drinking Water Safe, Flowing For many of us, having clean drinking water is something we take for granted. Overall, the United States has one of the safest supplies of drinking water in the world. For many of us, having clean drinking water is something we take for granted.Overall, the United States has one of the safest supplies of drinking water in the world. By Bobby Cherry
As Millions in Texas Lack Safe Water, Sunrise Movement Rallies at State Capitol Demanding Green New Deal “Texas is the perfect example of what happens when our politicians cater to fossil fuel executives instead of the young people who have been… warning of an impending climate emergency like this.” While millions of Texans on Monday continued living without safe drinking water and many faced storm damage and massive electricity bills, youth leaders with the Sunrise Movement rallied at the state capitol in Austin, using the current conditions across the Lone Star State to bolster their demand for a Green New Deal. By Jessica Corbett
As Millions in Texas Lack Safe Water, Sunrise Movement Rallies at State Capitol Demanding Green New Deal “Texas is the perfect example of what happens when our politicians cater to fossil fuel executives instead of the young people who have been… warning of an impending climate emergency like this.” While millions of Texans on Monday continued living without safe drinking water and many faced storm damage and massive electricity bills, youth leaders with the Sunrise Movement rallied at the state capitol in Austin, using the current conditions across the Lone Star State to bolster their demand for a Green New Deal. By Jessica Corbett
12 Cities With the Worst Tap Water in the US The scandal was one of the most egregious instances of water contamination in the US, but it wasn’t an isolated occurrence. Every year from 1982 to 2015, between 9 million and 45 million Americans got their drinking water from a source that violated the standards of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). By Aria Bendix
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
From Book Review: ‘Why the U.S. Government Assassinated Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.’: Motive The heart of Sheppard’s work is his analysis of the motive for these two government assassinations. There is nothing more threatening to the U.S. corporate elite, the government, the military and the mass media than the prospect of revolution. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. were developing beyond their original Black liberation philosophies. They were emerging as powerful advocates and organizers for revolutionary change in the American economic and political system. ..Sheppard describes the activities of COINTELPRO, the FBI’s program to infiltrate, disrupt and destroy the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-Vietnam War movement and any other threat to the status quo. FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover called King “the most dangerous Negro” and tried to blackmail him into silence. To discredit Malcolm X, the FBI paid an informer inside the Nation of Islam. When these efforts failed, assassination was the final option. The U.S. government assassinated Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. because they rightly came to understand and challenge the capitalist economic system, its social impact – war, poverty, injustice, environmental disaster – and its reliance on racism to divide and conquer. Sheppard concludes with an appeal to action; we must learn the truth about Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. so we can carry their vision forward and conclude the struggle they so bravely began. Roland Sheppard describes himself as a retired business representative of Painters Local 4 in San Francisco, a lifelong social activist and socialist. Prior to being elected as a union official in 1994, he worked for 31 years as a house painter. Roland Sheppard’s Daily News is accesible at https://rolandsheppard.com/.
Black Agenda Radio for Week of February 22, 2021
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Police, Prisons and Prosecutors just Create More Victims “We believe that all forms of law enforcement” in the US “are rooted in systems of violence,” said Samah Sisay, an organizer with the abolitionist group “Survived and Punished” and a Justice Fellow with the Center for Constitutional Rights. Often-times, said Sisay, survivors are punished for surviving, such as the case of Marissa Alexander, who was initially sentenced to 60 years in prison for firing a warning shot, in her own home, to ward off her abusive husband.
“The State” and “Racial Capitalism” to Blame for Anti-Black Violence in UK After long study, an anti-racial violence Monitoring Group found that anti-Black violence in the UK is driven mainly by “the police and other mechanisms of the state,” said Adam Elliott-Cooper, a Research Associate at the University of Greenwich and anti-racial violence activist and scholar. “Racial capitalism is the most urgent issue,” said Elliott-Cooper, who notes that Cedric Robinson was living in London when he wrote “Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition,” which introduced the term “racial capitalism.”
World Rebelling Against Dollar Domination “Washington has been overusing the sanctions weapon,” causing both allies and competitors to seek ways to circumvent the global dominance of the dollar, said Dr Gerald Horne, the prolific author and University of Houston professor of African American Studies and History. “The US doesn’t seem to realize that we are in a multi-polar world,” where no nation can dictate to all the others. Speaking on the Sputnik Radio program “The Critical Hour,” Horne told hosts Wilmer Leon III and Garland Nixon that China is preparing to circulate a digital form of yuan to break the stranglehold of the dollar.
The Left Lens presents Dr. Cornel West The United States celebrates Black History Month every February but does so with little regard to the Black Radical Tradition for social justice and liberation. Dr. Cornel West joins co-hosts Margaret Kimberley and Danny Haiphong to discuss key aspects of the Black Radical Tradition and their relevance to the current situation confronting Black Americans and the rest of humanity both in the U.S. and around the world. Dr. Cornel West is a public intellectual and professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University.
Labor:
The Pentagon, Corporations and Slave Labor In U.S. Prisons . . . Hand-in-hand with the military-industrial complex, U.S. imperialism has created a massive prison-industrial complex that generates billions of dollars annually for businesses and industries profiting from mass incarceration. For decades, workers in the U.S. have been assured that they benefit from imperialist looting by the giant multinational corporations. But today more than half the federal budget is absorbed by the costs of maintaining the military machine and the corporations, which are guaranteed profits for equipping the Pentagon. That is the only budget category in federal spending that is guaranteed to increase by at least 5% per year — at a time when every social program is being cut to the bone. The sheer economic weight of militarism seeps into the fabric of society at every level. It fuels racism and reaction. The political influence of the Pentagon and the giant military and oil corporations — with their thousands of high-paid lobbyists, media pundits and network of links into every police force in the country — fuels growing repression and an expanding prison population. The military, oil and banking conglomerates, interlinked with the police and prisons, have a stranglehold on the U.S. capitalist economy and reins of political power, regardless of who is president or what political party is in office. The very survival of these global corporations is based on immediate maximization of profits. They are driven to seize every resource and source of potential profits. Thoroughly rational solutions are proposed, whenever the human and economic cost of militarism and repression is discussed. The billions spent for war and fantastically destructive weapons systems could provide five to seven times more jobs if spent on desperately needed social services, education and rebuilding essential infrastructure. Or it could provide free university education, considering the fact that it costs far more to imprison people than to educate them. Why aren’t such reasonable solutions ever chosen? Military contracts generate far larger guaranteed profits to the military and the oil industries, which have a decisive influence on the U.S. economy. The prison-industrial complex — including the prison system, prison labor, private prisons, police and repressive apparatus and their continuing expansion — are a greater source of profit and are reinforced by the climate of racism and reaction. Most rational and socially useful solutions are not considered viable options By Sara Flounders
Economy:
Why Once Successful Countries Like the UK Get Left Behind As a nation loses its ability to innovate, it starts to stagnate Since the global financial crisis, UK productivity has been virtually stagnant. In a stagnant economy, economic policy becomes zero-sum: the situation of some can only be improved by worsening that of others. This is a recipe for conflict. It is essential to generate sustainable economic growth, instead. The decline in productivity growth is not unique to the UK. Every member of the G7 leading high-income countries had sharply lower growth of output per hour between 2010 and 2019 than between 1990 and 2000. But the UK’s deterioration was the biggest, down from an annual rate of 2.6 per cent to a mere 0.4 per cent. The only G7 economy with lower productivity growth in the latter period was Italy. By Martin Wolf 
Is Citadel’s Hedge Fund a Harmless $35 Billion Minnow or a $235 Billion Killer Shark? At the end of last Thursday’s 4-hour long hearing on the forces behind the wild trading in shares of New York Stock Exchange-listed GameStop, Congressman Jesus (Chuy) Garcia of Illinois asked Citadel hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin how much money was managed by his hedge fund. Griffin replied: “We manage approximately $35 billion dollars of assets.” By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Myanmar Coup: Protesters Defy Military Warning In Mass Strike Hundreds of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of Myanmar in one of the largest demonstrations yet against the country’s military coup. Businesses closed as employees joined a general strike, despite a military statement that said protesters were risking their lives by turning out. The statement prompted fears the protests could turn violent, but they remained peaceful throughout Monday.Myanmar has seen weeks of protest following the coup on 1 February.
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
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: