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Image of the Day:
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!
Quotes 0f the Day:
Today, about half a million American kids between the ages of 1 and 5 have a blood-lead level that exceeds 5 micrograms per deciliter. And it’s a problem that disproportionately affects children of color, according to the CDC. The impact of this contamination in American cities could be enormous. One provocative hypothesis, for example, draws a direct connection between lead exposure as a child and crime later in life. “Higher levels of lead exposure are correlated with lower test scores and higher rates of criminal activity,” says Kevin Schnepel, an economics professor at Canada’s Simon Fraser University and co-author of the — “Life after Lead.”
Roughly $15 billion is spent in the U.S. annually to handle new cases of lead poisoning. Fully eradicating the toxin in our towns and cities means replacing 7 million lead service lines, remediating lead paint in 38 million housing units, and cleaning up countless tons of soil contaminated by the lead spewed into the air by automobiles. One estimated price tag: About half a trillion dollars. — The Unequal Burden of Urban Lead
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
United States in the Epoch of Imerpialist Decay
Lead in America’s Water Systems Is A National Problem
America’s Crumbling Infrastructure Has Become A Global Laughingstock. A New Government Agency Could Fix It – Here’s How. In this week’s episode of “Pitchfork Economics,” co-host Nick Hanauer points out that the United States doesn’t really have an industrial policy. Other nations intentionally establish suites of economic, regulatory, and fiscal policies which direct their industrial sectors into specific fields, focus manufacturing into new technologies, and discourage harmful corporate behavior such as environmentally unsound investments. Over the last 40 years, America’s leaders have largely left the industrial sector alone to govern itself. That hands-off approach is responsible for some disastrous economic results for the United States. Case in point: Solar cells were created in the United States, and many of the world’s leading solar power experts live here, but Hanauer says that “at some point it became staggeringly obvious” to Chinese leaders that cheap and abundant solar cells “would be enormously useful to the economy and the world, and that having a national competence and advantage in making them would be a good thing.” They directed Chinese manufacturers toward “the goal of building scale and dominance in photovoltaic cells.” By Paul Constant
America’s Infrastructure is Crumbling And These People are Suffering Because of It The fabric of America is crumbling. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gives the nation’s infrastructure a D+ grade — that’s the roads and bridges we drive on every day, the airports we use for business and vacation travel, and the schools where we send our children to learn. And newer networks critical to modern life, like broadband internet, haven’t even reached many areas yet.
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Roads and Bridges: The nation’s roads got a D in the latest ASCE report card. Michigan and New York were the worst, both getting a D-
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Schools: The nation’s schools got a D+ in the latest ASCE report card.
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Broadband Internet: 24 million Americans don’t have broadband access, according to the Federal Communications Commission.
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Airports: The nation’s airports got a D in the latest ASCE report card.
Calls for the Biden Administration to Prioritize Our Water Infrastructure Newly introduced legislation would help counteract decades of underinvestment in water infrastructure that’s been plaguing America’s drinking water systems. As it is, decades of underinvestment in water infrastructure have been plaguing America’s drinking water systems. The Guardian reported last week that federal funding for water systems has fallen by 77% in real terms since its peak in 1977. This has left local utilities scrambling to raise funds to pay for infrastructure upgrades, comply with safety standards for toxic contaminants such as Per-and Polyfluorinated Substances (PFAS), lead and algae blooms, and adapt to extreme weather conditions like drought and floods linked to global heating. So, it is indeed urgent and necessary that building America’s public water infrastructure becomes a priority for the Biden administration. The WATER Act of 2021, as Sen. Sanders puts it, “is the most comprehensive approach to improving our water systems and helping ensure that every person has access to safe and clean water in the United States.” By Shiney Varghese
Biden’s Hawkish Cabinet Portends Renewed US Militarism in Northeast Asia Although the Biden administration has yet to present its North Korea policy, the new president’s cabinet includes many career diplomats and business lobbyists advocating the Cold War policy toward Asia and personnel from hawkish think tanks financed by the military industrial complex, leading many Korea experts to predict that an aggressive militaristic policy with respect to the Korean Peninsula is on the horizon. Although the Biden administration has yet to present its North Korea policy, the new president’s cabinet includes many career diplomats and business lobbyists advocating the Cold War policy toward Asia and personnel from hawkish think tanks financed by the military industrial complex, leading many Korea experts to predict that an aggressive militaristic policy with respect to the Korean Peninsula is on the horizon. By Simone Chun
Close the Concentration Camps!: Immigrants Will Continue to Die as Long as Agencies Like ICE and CBP Exist Just hours after inauguration, President Biden departed starkly from the violent anti-immigrant rhetoric and attacks that have characterized much of these past four years under Donald Trump. After issuing a slew of immigration-related executive orders, including a 100-day pause on some deportations, Biden’s actions faced almost immediate retaliation. On February 23, a federal judge in Texas banned Biden’s deportation moratorium indefinitely, siding with state Attorney General Ken Paxton, the same individual who is also currently suing to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. By José Luis Granados Ceja 
As The Forever Wars Drone On!: Pop Culture Portrays Aerial Bombardment of Middle East as “Business as Usual” President Biden’s airstrike on the Syrian border on February 25 was received in some quarters as though it was his first act of presidential warfare. But U.S. military operations in the Middle East, particularly remote drone operations, are a matter of routine, rather than an exceptional rarity. No matter the personality or predispositions of the commander-in-chief — whether they are statesmanlike and grandfatherly like Biden, or vulgarly reactionary like his predecessor — the continuous military violence of the forever wars initiated by George W. Bush’s admin-istration is ingrained into the structure of everyday power. Biden’s letter to Congress rationalized the strike in terms of the U.S.’s inherent right of self-defense, and in some ways this shows that Biden doesn’t even need to think of a new justification for these strikes. Despite his announcement of a review of his drone policy, presidential aerial bombardment of the Middle East is “business as usual.” By Alex Adams 
Environment:
Ancient Tree Shows Result of Magnetic Pole Switch A preserved ancient tree trunk records the story of a climate catastrophe more than 40 millennia ago. It could happen again. Here is the news of the world from 42,000 years ago. Imagine a dramatic shift in global climate during the last Ice Age; a co-incident extinction of one human species and a range of giant Australian mammals; a devastated ozone layer and astonishing displays of auroras over the tropics, all triggered by a simple but unimaginable shift. It happened when the north and south magnetic poles weakened, then swapped places, and then swapped back again, all in the space of about 800 years. The episode, carefully decoded from the story told by the growth rings of a vast and long-lived ancient tree preserved for 42,000 years in a New Zealand swamp, has been given its own name.By Tim Radford
California’s Wildfire Smoke Could Be More Harmful Than Vehicle Emissions, Study Says Toxic particles spewed by wildfires resulted in 10 times as many respiratory-illness related hospitalizations as other types of pollution, researchers found The thick, grey wildfire smoke that shrouds California each autumn and winter could be more harmful to humans than pollution from cars and other sources, a new study has found.Coming at the heels of the state’s worst wildfire season on record, the findings add to growing evidence that extreme fires, fueled by climate change, will have increasingly dire health consequences for residents in the western US. By Maanvi Singh
Intensive Fishing and the Birth of Capitalism, Part 2 While treasure fleets carried silver to Spain, far more ships were carrying men, fish and whale oil across the North Atlantic. Part One discussed the development of fish as a mass food commodity, and the Dutch use of factory ships in the North Sea in the 16th Century. Part Two looks at the rise of an even bigger capitalist fishery on the other side of the Atlantic. Accounts of transatlantic trade in the 1500s typically focus on what Perry Anderson calls “the most spectacular single act in the primitive accumulation of European capital during the Renaissance” — the plunder of precious metals by Spanish invaders in South and Central America.[2] Year after year, well-guarded convoys carried gold and silver to Europe, simultaneously enriching Spain’s absolute monarchy and destabilizing Europe’s economy. Spain’s treasure fleets certainly played a big role in the long-term development of European capitalism, but they were not alone in creating a disruptive transatlantic economy. While Spanish ships carried silver and gold, a parallel trade involving far more ships developed far to the north. Historians of capitalism, including Marxists, have paid too little attention to what Francis Bacon called “the Gold Mines of the Newfoundland Fishery, of which there is none so rich” By Ian Agnus
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Labor:
The Bailout or a Bonus is/are a One-Day Raise — A Wage Increase is Permanent!: Hiking the Minimum Wage to $15 Is Key — But It’s Hardly a Living Wage The federal minimum wage hasn’t increased in over a decade. After a brief but failed attempt by the Biden administration to raise it to $15 an hour, it will most likely remain at the current $7.25 for an indefinite time to come. This is a shame, for the economic benefits of wage hikes are beyond dispute, as many studies have shown, including those authored by Robert Pollin, distinguished professor of economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Pollin is co-author of The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy (1998) and A Measure of Fairness: The Economics of Living Wages and Minimum Wages in the United States (2008) and has worked with many U.S. non-governmental organizations on creating living wage statutes at both the statewide and municipal levels. In this interview, Pollin discusses why, even though we must continue to push for a $15 minimum wage, we must also consider what a true living wage looks like. C.J. Polychroniou
Economy:
World:
Insurrectionary Anger Erupts In Senegal Over the last few days, a social eruption has shaken the West African country of Senegal. The movement, emerging apparently from nowhere, has quickly gained insurrectionary features with the state completely losing control of big parts of the capital Dakar
Social Explosion in Paraguay Against Government Mishandling of Pandemic Paraguay is witnessing a social explosion. Police repression of mass protests at the government mishandling of the COVID-19 crisis left one dead and 18 injured on Friday 5 March. Fearing the masses on the streets, President Mario Abdo forced the resignation of half a dozen ministers and offered dialogue.
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
Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Was Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 4 Years Ago and Did Nothing!: Under Capitalism — Human Lives Don’t Matter Capitalism Does Not, and Never Has, Worked for the Masses! In Its Death Agony, Capitalism Is Traveling About The World Like The Four Horsemen of the The Apocalypse, Spreading Racism, War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. The future of Humanity Is Now At stake!
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!