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 of the Day:
There are 535 senators and representatives whose names are known. They embody the most powerful legislature in the world and can remedy, diminish, or prevent scores of injustices by lawmaking and oversight of the executive and judicial. — Ralph Nader: Less Than an Inkblot, A Failed Congress Jeopardizes Our Future
With access to the procedure shrinking rapidly even for Texans under six weeks, pregnant people without the ability or resources to travel out of state, especially undocumented Texans, rural Texans and/or Texans of color, are already turning to self-managed methods. That doesn’t necessarily mean the kinds of desperate measures pregnant people have traditionally turned to in the past when abortions were illegal, although it doesn’t rule them out either. Most commonly, self-managed abortion has come to look like women obtaining abortion-inducing pills from online telemedicine sites and online pharmacies. After decades of Republican-backed abortion restrictions, low-income and rural Texans were already turning to self-managed abortions as the number of licensed clinics in the state dwindled from 41 in 2008 to only 15 by 2020. In that time, abortion-inducing pills quickly became the most common method to terminate early pregnancies. According to the reproductive rights research organization Guttmacher Institute, 60 percent of early-term abortion-seekers elect to take a pill over having surgery. — Beyond Lawsuits, Texas Providers Could Face Jail Time for Prescribing Abortion Pills
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, who profit from war and the war budget, voted 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! Every ‘Tax. Reform’ From President Kennedy has Been an incrase in taxes from the Poor,the Woking Class, and the Middle Class, to the Rich! —The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich. Tax the Rich! — They Can Afford To Pay!
Pax Americana and The Failure of ‘Lesser Evilism’. Just before the 2000 Presidential Election, in September 2000, George Bush’s think tank, The Project for the New American Century, put into writing a document titled Rebuilding America’s Defenses, Forces and Resources For a New Century. In that document they called for war upon Iraq, a US military presence in the middle east, and the construction of military bases throughout Asia and the world to enforce, what they termed, as a ‘strategic goal’, the preservation Pax Americana — the ‘new world order’ that was proclaimed after the first Gulf War. There has been no objection or opposition, from the Democratic Party, to this ‘strategic goal’ for this century, even though the document stated, two years prior to 9/11: A transformation strategy that solely pursued capabilities for projecting force from the United States, for example, and sacrificed forward basing and presence, would be at odds with larger American policy goals and would trouble American allies. Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.
Ralph Nader: Less Than an Inkblot, A Failed Congress Jeopardizes Our Future Congress has so lowered the public’s expectations, by fueling cynicism and always blaming others, that people do not realize how easy it can be to turn Congress around and improve our society. Bruce Fein, constitutional law specialist who has testified before Congress approximately 200 times, calls Congress “an inkblot.” Let’s see if he is exaggerating.
Congress has abdicated its duties and constitutional authorities to the president regardless of party affiliation. Presidents start wars, spend unauthorized money recklessly, defy congressional subpoenas, snoop unlawfully on their citizens, and lazily enforce the laws against corporate outlaws flouting the status of an indifferent Congress.
Since 1992, Congress has let the Pentagon violate a federal law requiring all federal departments to provide auditable data for its annual budget. By far the DOD has the largest operational budget in Washington and it is ridden with waste and is unauditable, thanks to a weak-willed Congress.
To evade its responsibility under the Constitution’s Declare War Clause, Congress resorts to Overseas Contingency Operations, a slush fund for the Pentagon to fight undeclared wars with tens of billions of dollars in discretionary funds. This is abdication big time!.
Congress doesn’t conduct hearings or broadly investigate “forever” White House wars to determine changes in policies or to stop such wars as it finally did with the Vietnam War. Then, Congress simply cut off the money.
Congress is less accessible to citizens’ calls, letters, and emails on policy matters than ever. Yet many members of Congress and Hill staffers become closer to corporate lobbyists who write drafts of legislation before taking members for a wine and dine with campaign cash flowing before and after.
Congress starves the IRS budget leaving one trillion dollars a year in uncollected taxes according to IRS chief Charles Rettig. If collected, this money could be used to rebuild our infrastructure needs. The super-rich and giant corporate CEOs laugh all the way to the bank. Tax escapees are feeding at the trough like never before, as Congress aids and abets tax evasion.
Members of Congress have allowed, subsidized, and personally benefited from ravaging energy, healthcare, and financial industries. Trillions are wasted annually, with large preventable losses of life and property.
Congress has frozen the federal minimum wage at $7.25 per hour, allowed corporations to loot worker pensions, and perpetuated the most anti-labor laws in the western world (e.g., the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947).
Congress, repeatedly informed and warned for decades, allows the climate crisis and disruptions to get worse yearly. They’ve long known the future has to be an energy efficient and solarized society. Yet Capitol Hill remains stubbornly fossilized.
Perhaps the worst abdication is Congress actively enabling the vast expansion of corporate power over the constitutional sovereignty of the people. Unprecedented immunities and unaccountable harms pose the gravest peril to our posterity. No public hearings, no update of the feeble federal corporate crime laws, and restraining the few federal cops on the corporate crime beat means Congress is overwhelmingly soft on corporate crime.
Smug and operating in mostly safe-district silos, members of Congress will not reform our First Branch of government. The debilitating Newt Gingrich changes in 1995 cut committee staff, abolished the critical Office of Technology Assessment, and concentrated power in the hands of the four House and Senate leaders with paralytic effects that were maintained when the Democrats took over and remain in effect to this day.
John Kiriakou: A Traitor to Torture Those who invented America’s torture program were promoted and protected by presidents of both parties. Only the whistleblower was prosecuted. This is his story. Those who invented America’s torture program were promoted and protected by presidents of both parties. Only the whistleblower was prosecuted. This is his story.
The Employer Protection Agency (EPA) at Work!: ‘The Harm To Children Is Irreparable’: Ruth Etzel Speaks Out Ahead of EPA Whistleblower Hearing The former EPA scientist is among five who have come forward alleging that the agency has become deeply corrupted The US Environmental Protection Agency is failing to protect children by ignoring poisons in the environment and focusing on corporate interests, according to a top children’s health official who will testify this week that the agency tried to silence her because of her insistence on stronger preventions against lead poisoning.
The Vocabulary of Neoliberal Diplomacy in Today’s New Cold War George Soros has thrown a public sissy fit over the fact that he can’t make the kind of easy money off China that he was able to make when the Soviet Union was carved up and privatized. On September 7, 2021, in his second mainstream editorial in a week, George Soros expressed his horror at the recommendation by Black Rock, the world’s largest asset manager, that financial managers should triple their investment in China. Claiming that such investment would imperil U.S. national security by helping China, Mr. Soros stepped up his advocacy of U.S. financial and trade sanctions. China’s policy of shaping markets to promote overall prosperity, instead of letting the economic surplus be concentrated in the hands of corporate and foreign investors, is an existential threat to America’s neoliberal priorities, he spells out. President Xi’s “Common Prosperity” program “seeks to reduce inequality by distributing the wealth of the rich to the general population. That does not augur well for foreign investors.”[1] To neoliberals, that is heresy.
Environment:
Global Droughts: Thirst For Profit Drains Planet Dry In the face of the pandemic, the environmental crisis has been somewhat overshadowed. Its impact, however, rages on. We are now reaping the consequences of climate change with extreme weather conditions becoming increasingly common. This year, in particular, ominous droughts have impacted regions spread all over the world. alifornia, Brazil, and Taiwan have all seen record-breaking droughts. Entire regions including Europe, Africa, and the Middle East have also seen dire water shortages. Decades of capitalist mismanagement, corruption, and climate change have produced an extreme water crisis that is now posing an urgent choice before humanity: either we execute a planned emergency response, or we will see large swathes of our planet reduced to inhabitability.Warming Seas Cut Marine Mammals’ Survival Chances Warmer waters force endangered whales to move into the danger zone to find food, and leave other marine mammals hungry. Thanks to climate change, things are going wrong for the right whale. As the Atlantic warms, one ocean giant has had to shift its feeding grounds − and into more dangerous unprotected waters. Other marine mammals will find it harder to survive. Eubalaena glacialis, or the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, may in the last decade have lost more than a quarter of its population.Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Labor:
Economy:
China and Common Prosperity Back in May the Chinese government set up a special zone to implement ‘common prosperity’ in Zhejiang province, which also happens to be the location of the headquarters of several prominent internet corporations– Alibaba among them. And last month, China’s President Xi Jinping announced plans to spread “common prosperity”, heralding a tough crackdown on wealthy elites – including China’s burgeoning group of technology billionaires. At its August meeting, the Central Finance and Economics Committee, chaired by Xi, confirmed that “Common Prosperity” was “an essential requirement of socialism” and should go together with high quality growth. Over the past fortnight, the tax administration pledged to crack down on tax dodgers and fined Zheng Shuang, one of the country’s most popular actresses, $46m for tax evasion. The Supreme Court declared the 72-hour work weeks common at many private-sector companies to be illegal. And the housing ministry said on Tuesday that it would cap annual residential rent increases at five per cent. And a new layer of officials has been arrested for corruption. Also, the government is moving to restrict domestic companies from listing on US stock exchanges, in a move threatening to restrict the growth of tech firms that had come to symbolise record Chinese economic growth rates and the emergence of rich company bosses. The years of unbridled speculation by billionaire privately owned companies in league with various local and national officials to do what they want, including usurping state control of the retail banking system, are over.
9/11 Launched the First of the Unaccountable Bailouts by the Fed to Wall Street Most Americans believe that the unprecedented Fed bailouts of Wall Street didn’t begin until December of 2007, on the cusp of Wall Street’s financial collapse in 2008. That’s wrong. The Fed’s first massive bailout of Wall Street started on 9/11. By the closing bell on September 10, 2001, the day before the attacks, the Nasdaq stock market was already in the midst of a full-scale implosion, having lost 66 percent of its market value and wiping out $4 trillion of wealth. The Wall Street mega banks were in the cross-hairs at the time of then New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer for bringing to market Initial Public Offerings of companies that the banks’ own research analysts were internally calling “crap” and “dogs” while the same banks issued buy recommendations on the “dogs” to the unknowing public. One internal email from Jack Grubman, an analyst at Salomon Smith Barney, captured the brazenness of the deception: “Most of our banking clients are going to zero and you know I wanted to downgrade them months ago but got huge pushback from banking.”World:
Hashtag ‘Untie_Our_Hands’: How Many More Palestinians Must Die for Israel’s ‘Security’? A large Israeli army campaign is taking social media by storm. The unstated aim of what is known as the “#Untie_Our_Hands” initiative is the desire to kill, with no accountability, more Palestinian protesters at the Gaza fence. The campaign was motivated by the killing of an Israeli sniper, Barel Hadaria Shmueli, who was reportedly shot from the Palestinian side of the fence on August 21.
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!
Capitalism is Inhumane!: Global Poor ‘Facing Life or Death’ as Rich Nations Block Vaccine Patent Waiver Poor nations “can no longer rely merely on charitable or voluntary measures dictated by only a small number of high-income countries and the pharmaceutical industry,” said one public health campaigner.Letting the Future out of its Cage We pretend to have enemies, but mostly what we “have” are people whose lives simply don’t matter. And then we kill them, either directly — via airstrikes or other war games, turning them into collateral damage — or indirectly . . . by simply failing to notice that they exist. The moral idiocy of this transcends cruelty and indifference. We’re also killing ourselves. The idea that humanity — that life itself — is “all one” isn’t just a nice thought, an outreach of kindness, but the cornerstone of survival. Take, for example, the concept of “vaccine apartheid” — denying developing nations, where so far 85 percent of the Covid deaths have occurred, adequate access to the vaccine. “More than 5.41 billion vaccine shots have been administered worldwide, with 81 percent in only ten high and upper middle-income countries,” Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram write at Inter Press Service. “Meanwhile, the poorest countries have only received 0.4 percent.”
Another Example of Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Was Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 5 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!
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”
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!
‘The Other 9/11’: Progressives Remember Allende’s Chile “On this day in 1973, Salvador Allende’s democratically elected socialist government was overthrown in a military coup led by the U.S.-backed fascist Augusto Pinochet.” As people reflect on the 20th anniversary of the September 11,For Those Who STILL Don’t Believe That 9 11 Was An Inside JobCapitalism 2001 attacks, progressives drew attention to another horrifying event less well-known in the U.S. but referred to elsewhere as “the other 9/11“: the bombing of Chile’s presidential palace on September 11, 1973 by the nation’s armed forces during a right-wing coup supported by Washington and other capitalist regimes.
The Employer Protection Agency (EPA) at Work!: 
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
World:
