Humanity Will Not be Covid Free, Until the Vaccines, Like the Salk Polio Vaccine, are Free For the Whole World!
Images of the Day:
Walt Handelsman: Alabama Choice 
Richardson & Bendib, Abortion laws and inequality 
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!
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!
Videos of the Day:
Quotes of the Day:
Our examination uncovered no evidence that fracking can be practiced in a manner that does not threaten human health directly or without imperiling climate stability upon which human health depends. The strength of evidence for a plethora of harms has only grown. Further, we found increasing documentation demonstrating that fracking is injustice. Direct public health impacts as well as impacts from climate change—to which methane emissions from fracking and its infrastructure dramatically contribute—are not borne equally by all. Throughout the United States, pregnant women, children, Indigenous people, communities of color, and low-income communities are disproportionately harmed by fracking. Further, international organizations and tribunals have found the fracking industry to be responsible for human rights violations. — Sandra Steingraber, re: Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking and Associated Gas and Oil Infrastructure
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 th poor and gives to the Rich. Taxthe Rich! — They Can Afford to Pay!
Editorial: The United States Never was a Democracy! The 1% rule! The filibuster is just one example That the United States Undemocratic, undemocratic! — It can prevent majority rule! The filibuster is one of the things in the constitution to prevent the majority from ruling! James Madison, who is a hero of the orignalists, made it very clear that the constitutional system must be designed so as to ensure that the government will, in his words, “protect the minority of the opulent against the majority,” The Supreme Court is anoter example of a constitutional tool of the opulent minority.
The majority support access to abortion but can’t see themselves as a majority without demonstrations,” professor and activist Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor proclaimed on Twitter. ”The autocrats in SCOTUS can’t feel their illegitimacy without protests.” The alarming, if predictable, attack on reproductive rights comes from a profoundly anti-democratic institution that has only drifted further from public opinion in recent decades. — Protesting Works: Mobilizing Against the Supreme Court’s Attack on Abortion
Glen Greenwald: The Irrational, Misguided Discourse Surrounding Supreme Court Controversies Such as Roe v. Wade Politico on Monday night published what certainly appears to be a genuine draft decision by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito that would overturn the Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. Alito’s draft ruling would decide the pending case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health rganization, which concerns the constitutionality of a 2018 Mississippi law that bans abortions after fifteen weeks of pregnancy except in the case of medical emergency or severe fetal abnormalities. Given existing Supreme Court precedent that abortion can only be restricted after fetal viability, Mississippi’s ban on abortions after the 15th week — at a point when the fetus is not yet deemed viable — is constitutionally dubious. To uphold Mississippi’s law — as six of the nine Justices reportedly wish to do — the Court must either find that the law is consistent with existing abortion precedent, or acknowledge that it conflicts with existing precedent and then overrule that precedent on the ground that it was wrongly decided. Alito’s draft is written as a majority opinion, suggesting that at least five of the Court’s ground that it was “egregiously wrong from the start” and “deeply damaging.” In an extremely rare event for the Court, an unknown person with unknown motives leaked the draft opinion to Politico, which justifiably published it. A subsequent leak to CNN on Monday night claimed that the five justices in favor of overruling Roe were Bush 43 appointee Alito, Bush 41 appointee Clarence Thomas, and three Trump appointees (Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett), while Chief Justice Roberts, appointed by Bush 43, is prepared to uphold the constitutionality of Mississippi’s abortion law without overruling Roe. Draft rulings and even justices’ votes sometimes change in the period between the initial vote after oral argument and the issuance of the final decision. Depending on whom you choose to believe, this leak is either the work of a liberal justice or clerk designed to engender political pressure on the justices so that at least one abandons their intention to overrule Roe, or it came from a conservative justice or clerk, designed to make it very difficult for one of the justices in the majority to switch sides. Whatever the leaker’s motives, a decision to overrule this 49-year-old precedent, one of the most controversial in the Court’s history, would be one of the most significant judicial decisions issued in decades. The reaction to this leak — like the reaction to the initial ruling in Roe back in 1973 — was intense and strident, and will likely only escalate once the ruling is formally issued.
Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:
Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking and Associated Gas and Oil Infrastructure, Eighth Edition, April 28, 2022 The Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking and Associated Gas and Oil Infrastructure (the Compendium) is a fully referenced compilation of evidence, spanning many scientific and social scientific fields, documenting continuing and increasing impacts on health and environment. The risks and harms of fracking for public health, the climate, and environmental justice are real and growing. Many early warnings in our previous editions have been borne out. The growing and substantial body of research reveals fundamental problems with the entire life cycle of operations associated with fracking and its infrastructure.
We Are Toast: Montana’s Extreme Drought One of Governor Ted Schwinden’s favorite excuses for his failure to prepare Montana for the state’s disastrous droughts in the 80s was: “Montana is a ‘next year’ state.” It means that even though our rivers dried up, fish died, crops withered, and as he infamously put it, “the whole damn state’s on fire,” we should all hope “next year” will be better. Well, it’s ‘next year’ following last year’s severe drought and guess what, it’s not better, it’s much, much worse — and Republican Governor Gianforte is no more prepared for it than was his Democrat predecessor 37 years ago. Having chaired the Governor’s Drought Task Force back in the 80s and early 90s, it’s grim business to hear the damage reports come in. River and reservoir levels dropping, wells going dry, crops desiccated, wildlife driven onto the last remaining green fields, and destruction of dewatered aquatic ecosystems.
Let’s Re-house Climate Displaced Families Everywhere Whether we like it or not, the truth is that the money needed to prevent and resolve climate displacement has not been forthcoming and is unlikely to be for a very long time, if ever. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that 1.6-3.8 trillion (1.6T-3.8T) will be needed each year to avoid warming of more than 1.5C.[2] In 2021, global GDP is just shy of 93T.[3] In 2009 the world’s wealthy nations committed to channel USD 100 billion (100B) to less wealthy countries annually to tackling climate change, but to date have fallen far short from this target. Some have alleged that the estimates of the funds that have been raised thus far are wildly exaggerated, and that even if 100B were provided each year that this would come nowhere near solving the climate crisis.[4] While calculations vary widely from only slightly more than 10B in total to just short of 100B, the prevailing understanding is simply that “Trillions of dollars will be needed each year to meet the 2015 Paris agreement goal of restricting global warming to well-below 2C, if not 1.5C, above pre-industrial temperatures.[5] Of the funds allocated to this initiative, the vast majority is in the form of loans that need to be paid back by countries that face financial difficulties to do so.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
For 100 Years, The Filibuster has Been Used toDeny Black Rights! The most famous such use of the filibuster was against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Opponents of the Act filibustered for a record-breaking 60 working days. Millions of Americans watched as CBS’s Roger Mudd reported live from the steps of the Capitol on white Southern senators’ efforts to kill the legislation. But the modern filibuster’s first civil rights fatality actually occurred decades earlier in the searing 1922 defeat of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill. The Senate’s abandonment of this landmark legislation in the history of anti-Black violence is little remembered today, but it set a path for partisan and ideological battles in the century since and continues to reverberate in our legal system.
Ocasio-Cortez Says Filibuster Defender Sinema Can ‘Take a Seat’ on Women’s Health “Hold everyone contributing to this disaster accountable, GOP and Dem obstructionists included,” the New York Democrat said. “She should be primaried.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among those condemning Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema on Tuesday for reiterating her defense of the legislative filibuster, a Senate rule that is impeding congressional action on abortion rights as the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade. “We could protect Roe tomorrow, but Sinema refuses to act on the filibuster,” Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted after Sinema (Ariz.) issued a statement touting her support for the Women’s Health Protection Act, House-passed legislation that would codify the right to abortion care into federal law.
Labor:
Worker Pensions are Endanger From Wall Street Banksters!: Wall Street’s Biggest Secret Could Be Exposed Politicians have cut secret deals funneling retirees’ savings to financial firms — but new legislation would finally let the public see the details. Wall Street’s most closely guarded and lucrative secrets may finally become public, if New York Democratic lawmakers pass a new bill requiring financial firms to show what they are doing with hundreds of billions of dollars of Americans’ retirement savings. The groundbreaking legislation sponsored by New York Assemblyman Ron Kim would require state officials to disclose the contracts governing how private equity firms, real estate companies, and hedge funds manage money from New York’s pension system. In the two decades since public pension systems began funneling workers’ money into those high-risk, high-fee investments, states and cities have concealed the contracts governing the investments of the retirement savings of millions of teachers, firefighters, first responders, and other government workers. If the New York legislature’s Democratic supermajority passes Kim’s bill, for the first time it would open up those contracts to public scrutiny.
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation Insurance Programs Figure 10: Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s (PBGC) Net Financial Position of the Single-Employer and Multiemployer Programs Combined, Fiscal Years 2000 through 2020 the multiemployer program becomes insolvent, participants in insolvent pension plans that receive financial assistance from PBGC will receive a small fraction of current statutory guarantees. PBGC’s fiscal year 2019 projections show that in 2027 the program’s income from premiums would cover less than 14 percent of financial assistance.
Economy:
That sort of across-the-board debt forgiveness can’t be done today because most of the creditors are private lenders. Banks, landlords and pension fund investors would go bankrupt if their contractual rights to repayment were simply wiped out. But we do have a serious debt problem, and it is largely structural. Governments have delegated the power to create money to private banks, which create most of the circulating money supply as debt at interest. They create the principal but not the interest, so more money must be repaid than was created in the original loan. Debt thus grows faster than the money supply, as seen in the chart from WorkableEconomics.com below. Debt grows until it cannot be repaid, when the board is cleared by some form of market crash such as the 2008 financial crisis, typically widening the wealth gap on the way down. — Ellen Brown: A Monetary Reset Where the Rich Don’t Own Everything
What You Can Expect to Hear at the Fed’s Press Conference Today The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will release its decision on hiking the Fed’s benchmark interest rate at 2:00 p.m. ET today, along with its plans for shrinking the Fed’s $9 trillion balance sheet. The announcement will be followed with Fed Chair Pro Tempore Jerome Powell holding a press conference at 2:30 p.m. ET. (Powell still awaits full Senate confirmation for a second term as Fed Chair, thus the designation “Pro Tempore.” Wall Street is expecting a 50-basis point rate hike (half of one percent), which would put the Fed Funds rate in a range of 0.75 to 1 percent. Wall Street does not like large interest rate increases from the Fed because five of the megabanks are sitting with a $200 trillion albatross of derivatives around their neck with questionable counterparties on the other side of a lot of those trades. (See our report: Fed Chair Powell Telegraphs the Perfect Storm for Wall Street’s Megabanks: Rapid Rate Hikes Hitting $234 Trillion in Derivatives.)
Health, Education. and Wealfare:
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 they 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!