Skip to content
Images 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 of the Day:
The staggering lack of easily available testing, however, remains a glaring national crisis that, from the sound of things, doesn’t seem to have much of a share of the administration’s attention. — Where Are the Damn PCR Tests Already? It’s Been 21 Months!
LBJ:
The big business republicrates pass tax code tax code loopholes, tax subsidies etc., to avoid taxes. We need a workers party to end tax code tax code loopholes, tax subsidies etc., to shiftthe tax burderen formthe 1% to the 99%!
“Development is not primarily a matter of mechanically collecting taxes to fund spending, no matter how useful this spending may be. Development is about building trust in institutions, including, most importantly, governments. When governments take more from the poor than from the wealthy, sustained trust becomes impossible.” — The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay
The techniques used by these billionaires to generate losses are generally legal. Loopholes for fossil-fuel businesses date back practically to the income tax’s birth in the early 20th century. Carve-outs for real estate and oil and gas have withstood sporadic efforts at reform by Congress in part because there has been widespread support for investment in housing and energy. The commercial real estate and fossil fuel breaks have enabled some of the wealthiest Americans to escape federal income taxes for long stretches of time. Sometimes they amass such large losses that they cannot use all of them in a given year. When that happens, they fill up reservoirs of deductions that they then draw down bit by bit to wipe away taxes in future years. Before ProPublica’s analysis of its trove of tax data, the extent of this type of avoidance among the nation’s wealthiest was not known. Typical working Americans do not generate these kinds of business losses and thus can’t use them to offset income or reduce income tax. As long as there have been income taxes, there have been schemes to manufacture illusory losses that reduce taxes, and there have likewise been counterefforts by Congress and the IRS to rein them in. But ProPublica’s findings show these measures to prevent deduction abuses “aren’t doing what they are supposed to do,” said Daniel Shaviro, the Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation at New York University Law School. “The system isn’t working right.” — US Tax Code Is Complicit in Helping Real Estate and Oil Tycoons Game the System
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 ownershipof 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! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich. Tax the Rich! — They Can Afford To Pay!
How Congress Loots the Treasury for the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex Despite a disagreement over some amendments in the Senate, the United States Congress is poised to pass a $778 billion military budget bill for 2022. As they have been doing year after year, our elected officials are preparing to hand the lion’s share – over 65% – of federal discretionary spending to the U.S. war machine, even as they wring their hands over spending a mere quarter of that amount on the Build Back Better Act. The U.S. military’s incredible record of systematic failure—most recently its final trouncing by the Taliban after twenty years of death, destruction and lies in Afghanistan—cries out for a top-to-bottom review of its dominant role in U.S. foreign policy and a radical reassessment of its proper place in Congress’s budget priorities.
China’s Schoolkids Beat American Students in All Academic Categories The academic performance of American schoolchildren hasn’t budged in two decades, despite billions of dollars in increased funding. Key Takeaways:
-
The results come from the PISA survey, OECD’s triennial study of 15 year-old students across the world.
-
Compared to other OECD member nations, American students performed especially poorly in math.
-
Alarmingly, only 14 percent of American students were able to reliably distinguish fact from opinion in reading tests.
Environment:
The Naïve American Genocide Continues: Indigenous Communities Face ‘International Human Crime’ as Ottawa Considers Tailings Pond Releases Some Indigenous communities in northern Alberta say they’re being handed a choice between terrible options as the federal government develops regulations to allow treated tailings from tar sands/oil sands operations to be released into the environment. One advocate is calling the prospect of tailings releases into the Athabasca River an “international human crime”. It takes three to four barrels of water to produce one barrel of bitumen, CBC News reports. And under current rules, “companies must store any water used to extract oil during the mining process because it becomes toxic. The massive above-ground lakes are known as tailings ponds, which are harmful to wildlife and have resulted in the death of birds that land on the water, on multiple occasions.”
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Labor:
Economy:
World Inequality World inequality The world has become more unequal in income and wealth in the last 40 years. That’s according to the World Inequality Report 2022, available here. Produced by the World Inequality Lab, run by Thomas Piketty and a group of over 100 analysts from around the world, the report has the most up-to-date and complete data on the various facets of inequality worldwide: global wealth, income, gender and ecological inequality. The report shows how in 2021, “after three decades of trade and financial globalisation, global inequalities remain extremely pronounced … about as great today as they were at the peak of Western imperialism in the early 20th century.” Although the World Inequality report found inequalities between nations had declined since the end of the cold war (mainly due to the rise in living standards in China), it said inequality had increased within most countries and had become more pronounced as a result of the global pandemic over the past two years. The global concentration of personal wealth is extreme. According to the WIR, the richest 10% of adults in the world own around 60-80% of wealth, while the poorest half have less than 5%.
Oil Monopoly Price Rigging: Oil and Gas Industry Profits Climbed as Americans Faced High Gas Prices in 2021. Companies like Exxon and Chevron have posted high profits in the third quarter of 2021; in just four months, the 24 companies made $74 billion in profits. Exxon alone reported making $6.9 billion in the third quarter, a 60 percent increase in revenue from the same time last year and its highest profits for four years. Meanwhile, gas prices have hit a seven-year high during the third quarter especially, increasing by 50 percent in just a year — amounting to an average of $3.40 per gallon in the U.S. — even as wholesale prices have gone down. This has helped pad profits for the oil and gas companies as increased demand drives higher gas prices after pandemic restrictions have been lifted. Critics of the oil and gas industry say that the high gas prices are by design, as oil and gas companies haven’t been replenishing fuel supplies to meet high demand. Conservative politicians have deceptively tried to blame high gas prices on President Joe Biden’s climate policies, despite the fact that the president’s climate approach has been tepid at best. But sustainable energy groups like the International Energy Agency have said that high prices are thanks to “the deliberate policies of energy producers.” From a climate perspective, more oil and gas production is not to be cheered — but the oil and gas industry has little incentive to shrink the fuel supply due to the climate crisis, and wouldn’t raise prices for that reason. Instead, the industry is likely manipulating costs because gas prices typically have little effect on demand and are not likely to drive down usage. This also means that middle- and- lower-income people with few alternatives for transportation will be hurt the most by these prices, as they continue to experience high levels of hardship nearly two years into the pandemic.
Saule Omarova Withdraws as Biden’s Nominee to Head National Bank Regulator; Puzzling Questions Remain Yesterday, Cornell Law Professor, Saule Omarova, withdrew from her nomination to become the head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the regulator of national banks. Emily Flitter, reporting for the New York Times, said it was because Omarova had been “painted as a communist.” In terms of the full story on why Omarova had to withdraw, that is like pointing to a single droplet of rain as the cause of a hurricane. In October, the Vanderbilt Law Review published a 69-page paper by Omarova in which she made the following bizarre recommendations to reform the U.S. banking system:
-
Move all commercial bank deposits from commercial banks to so-called FedAccounts at the Federal Reserve;
-
Allow the Fed, in “extreme and rare circumstances, when the Fed is unable to control inflation by raising interest rates,” to confiscate deposits from these FedAccounts in order to tighten monetary policy;
-
Allow the most Wall Street-conflicted regional Fed bank in the country, the New York Fed, when there are “rises in market value at rates suggestive of a bubble trend,” such as with technology stocks today, to “short these securities, thereby putting downward pressure on their prices”;
-
Eliminate the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) that insures bank deposits in the U.S. and prevents panic runs on banks;
-
Consolidate all bank regulatory functions at the OCC – which Omarova was nominated to head.
World:
Indonesia: How British Spies Helped Destroy the Communist Party In 1965, reactionary military generals in Indonesia began an anti-communist massacre, slaughtering up to two million members and supporters of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in one of the twentieth century’s worst mass murders. This year – after six decades of cover up – documents have been released that show the pivotal role played by the British secret services in moulding public opinion in preparation for the slaughter, through a series of propaganda leaflets disguised as the writings of concerned Indonesian emigres.
Overt Open Racism of the Makes the United States Look Bad to Uganda: United States: There’s a Nonsensical Propaganda Campaign to Make China Look Bad in Uganda On November 25, 2021, an article appeared in Uganda’s national newspaper the Daily Monitor with the headline: “Uganda surrenders airport for China cash.”
The article pointed to “toxic clauses” in the loan agreement signed by the Ugandan government with the Export-Import (Exim) Bank of China on March 31, 2015. The loan—worth $207 million at 2 percent interest—was for the expansion of the Entebbe International Airport—a project under the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Work on the expansion of the airport began in May 2016. . . . Flooded with accusations, the Chinese Embassy in Kampala, Uganda, posted a statement on its Twitter account on November 28. The embassy said that the story in the Daily Monitor “has no factual basis and is ill-intended only to distort the good relations that China enjoys with developing countries including Uganda. Not a single project in Africa has ever been ‘confiscated’ by China because of failing to pay Chinese loans. On the contrary, China firmly supports and is willing to continue our efforts to improve Africa’s capacity for home driven development.” The next day, on November 29, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin repeated the word “confiscated,” refuting allegations of China’s takeover of Entebbe International Airport and underlining the fact that China has not “taken over” any “China-Africa cooperation project” on the African continent due to nonpayment of loans. In 2020, Uganda’s deputy head of mission to the embassy in China, Ambassador Henry Mayega, said, “China has been a very good development partner to many African countries especially Uganda and that’s why it gives us loans every time we are in need.” Mayega’s comment came at a time of great tension on and around the African continent regarding Chinese investments and relations with African countries. In 2000, the Chinese government, in partnership with several African states, set up the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). A few days after the Daily Monitor ran its story, FOCAC gathered in Dakar, Senegal, for its Eighth Ministerial Conference from November 29 to November 30. The news from Uganda threatened to overshadow the events across the African continent. Nonetheless, China’s President Xi Jinping made two announcements that caught the eye: China will provide 1 billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to the continent (600 million as donations and 400 million produced in joint ventures with certain African countries), and China will invest $40 billion in the African continent. The announcement of the vaccines comes just as Europe, the U.S. and several other nations shut their doors to Africa after fears and rumors that the COVID-19 variant Omicron—which was declared a variant of concern by WHO—originatedfrom Botswana. This decision to initiate travel curbs against certain southern African countries was harshly criticized for its racism by Dr. Ayoade Olatunbosun-Alakija of the African Union’s African Vaccine Delivery Alliance. The false story from Uganda did not derail the FOCAC meeting, but it has inflamed public opinion—particularly on Twitter—about Chinese investments.
Education, Health, 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
The Vicious Cycle Created by Pollution and COVID-19 The COVID-19 pandemic has been a mainstay of everyday life for almost 2 years now. Everything became harder; from the way we buy our groceries to the way our kids learn in school. Luckily, it seems like the numbers are trending in the right direction nationwide.
New COVID cases are dwindling, hospitalizations due to the virus are down, and vaccinations are up with about 60% of the country fully vaccinated. However, despite this backdrop of optimism, there are certain negative impacts that will linger for far longer than the pandemic. Among environmental justice (EJ) communities, the pandemic has exacerbated several health conditions – especially respiratory problems. Communities in areas where particulate matter pollution is elevated, where diesel vehicle traffic is high, or near industrial pollution sources such as asphalt plants experience lung cancers, asthma, chronic coughs and wheezing, and many other respiratory complications. In isolation, these conditions are bad enough to cripple a community. Add COVID to the mix and we have a public health crisisCOVID-19 has several long-term health complications that are not yet fully understood due to the novel nature of the disease. However, there is significant research that points towards a number of lung problems that can remain long after the initial COVID infection is overcome. Significant lung scarring, a condition known as interstitial lung disease, can occur in as much as 20% of hospitalized COVID cases. COVID-19 induced pneumonia seems to be associated with the development of asthma-like symptoms that may persist for a few weeks or may remain as a permanent condition. Other respiratory problems that may stem from COVID-19 are less well understood. The result of this perfect storm of environmental toxics and novel pathogens is a negative feedback loop that perpetuates this public health crisis. The air pollution that is originally in place makes the community susceptible to the development of respiratory problems; these problems in turn make the community much more likely to develop severe complications from COVID-19; and finally, the virus leaves them with decreased lung function and even more susceptible to respiratory problems from further air pollution. It is a vicious cycle that has been quite ignored in the existing pandemic response. (More)
Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Ws 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!
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”, is Still True for Today’s World!
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!