Daily News Digest August 10, 2022
Images of the Day:
On the issue of the gap between the rich and the poor, many countries have, the mainland as a developing country has been racking its brains in this area, after all, it is difficult to formulate policies that take into account all classes at the same time, so in the next ten years, ordinary working-class people can only rely on their own efforts to complete the counterattack of life. — The Plight of Hundreds of Millions of Poor Second Generations: Entering Social Work, 5-10 Years Behind Others, Self-Awakening is too Difficult
Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Has Been Aware of the Comming Catastrophe of Global for Over 5 Decades 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!
Quotes of the Day:
When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land. — Desmond Tutu
Karl Marx was one of the first to oppose the colonial oppression of the world’s masses. He did not mince his words in, Capital”, Volume One, Part VIII, Chapter 31, (the) “Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist, he wrote: “The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. … If money … comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek, capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.”
Marx on National Debt: As the national debt finds its support in the public revenue, which must cover the yearly payments for interest, &c., the modern system of taxation was the necessary complement of the system of national loans. The loans enable the government to meet extraordinary expenses, without the tax-payers feeling it immediately, but they necessitate, as a consequence, increased taxes. On the other hand, the raising of taxation caused by the accumulation of debts contracted one after another, compels the government always to have recourse to new loans for new extraordinary expenses. Modern fiscality, whose pivot is formed by taxes on the most necessary means of subsistence (thereby increasing their price), thus contains within itself the germ of automatic progression. Overtaxation is not an incident, but rather a principle. In Holland, therefore, where this system was first inaugurated, the great patriot, DeWitt, has in his “Maxims” extolled it as the best system for making the wage labourer submissive, frugal, industrious, and overburdened with labour. The destructive influence that it exercises on the condition of the wage labourer concerns us less however, here, than the forcible expropriation, resulting from it, of peasants, artisans, and in a word, all elements of the lower middle class. On this there are not two opinions, even among the bourgeois economists. Its expropriating efficacy is still further heightened by the system of protection, which forms one of its integral parts. The great part that the public debt, and the fiscal system corresponding with it, has played in the capitalisation of wealth and the expropriation of the masses, has led many writers, like Cobbett, Doubleday and others, to seek in this, incorrectly, the fundamental cause of the misery of the modern peoples. — “Capital”, Volume One, Part VIII, Chapter 31, (the) “Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist”
Videos of the Day:
Phrantic x GLDY LX — Set The World On Fire!
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!
We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both— Supreme Court Judge Louis D. Brandeis
Whe Money Talks the Bullshit Walks!: Nearly All Senators Vote Against Sanders’s Amendments to Inflation Reduction Act During the Senate’s 16-hour amendment marathon for the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) over the weekend, nearly all senators united against several amendments that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) introduced to expand the bill, which is a mixed bag for the climate crisis and prescription drug prices. . . . Nearly all of the amendments were proposals that had been considered during last year’s negotiations on the Build Back Back Better Act (BBBA) — and all of them got near-unanimous disapproval from the Senate. One amendment would have provided $30 billion for climate spending, including for the formation of a Civilian Climate Corps. Democrats had pushed for the inclusion of a Civilian Climate Corps in last year’s bill, saying that such a jobs program could boost conservation and resilience efforts across the U.S. That amendment failed 98 to 1, with Sanders casting the lone “yes” vote.
Environment: Ecocide or Ecosocialism!:
This Time: Fire, Drought, and Floods!: ‘What Happens When You Warm a Planet’: Massive Flooding Kills At Least 8 in Seoul “Two months’ worth of rain in half a day. We are in a climate emergency,” wrote meteorologist Eric Holthaus.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Black and Poor Women Will Suffer the Most From Abortion Bans—The Answer Is Universal Healthcare Those who claim to be “pro-life” should also advocate for a healthcare system that guarantees support for Black mothers and babies most at-risk due to the overturning of Roe. On July 29, Louisiana reinstated a controversial abortion ban, which led to the immediate cancellation of procedures in the state. Following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in late June, a number of states across the country have moved to outlaw abortion, and in Louisiana, women in poverty will bear the worst burdens of the newly reinstated ban. These women are the true experts regarding the fatal risks of taking away reproductive freedom in the state—not anti-abortion politicians.
Labor:
Depression Statistics: Shadow Government Statistics Alternate Unemployment Charts The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers. The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.July 2022
Shadow Government Statistic s Alternate Unemployment rose to 24.4% from 24.3% on top of U.6 rising to 6.73% from 6.67%
Subminimum Wages Were Always Deplorable. Inflation Is Making Them Worse. Activists are pushing to end policies that allow employers to pay some workers less than the $7.25 federal minimum wage. Call it the luck of location. If you happen to live in Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon or Washington State, and work in an occupation that relies on tips from customers, you must be paid your state’s full minimum wage for every hour you work. But if you’re a tipped worker in one of 15 (mostly Southern) states, you earn just $2.13 an hour — a subminimum rate that has been in place since 1991. The remaining states — 28 and Washington, D.C. — pay workers more than $2.13 but less than the federal $7.25 hourly minimum.
Work, Work, Work—So a Few Can Be Rich These days, we read newspaper and magazine reports about working people. How they had to cope with the spread of COVID in their workplaces. How working from home, especially if you were a woman with children, was exhausting. That tens of millions quit their jobs, and how tens of thousands more are forming labor unions. But we almost never see anything about the nature of work, exactly how it is done, what effect it has on the minds and bodies of those who do it, and why it is organized in a special way, radically different than in most of human existence. Bud felt the effects of his work. But did he and those who toiled in that glass factory understand the larger forces shaping their jobs? Do workers today? “Words indicating labour in most European languages originate in an imagery of compulsion, torment, affliction and persecution.” Humans cannot live unless they combine what is available to them in the natural world with their capacity to labor. This is what we must do to produce the food, clothing, and shelter necessary for life to continue. But why should this be a torment? It certainly wasn’t for most of our time on earth. We lived in bands of gatherers and hunters, and exerting labor to bring forth useful products collectively was a normal part of lifs. Anthropologists tell us that our ancestors didn’t have to exert an extraordinary amount of energy to provide life’s necessities; there was plenty of time for what today we might call leisure activities: singing, dancing, chanting, drawing on cave walls. People performed complex tasks, the learning of which helped mark the transition from child to adult, as a member of a cohesive community. The distribution of what was produced was remarkably equal by today’s standards, and skill at something like hunting did not guarantee a larger proportion of the resulting food. Of considerable importance, work did not much disturb the metabolism of the natural world. The gatherers and hunters acted as one with the earth.
Economy:
Shadow Government Statistics Daily Update – August 8th to 10th Recently covered July 2022 Employment and Unemployment (including the Alternate Data Tab) were posted on August 5th – Amidst shifting, revised seasonal adjustments and prior-period revisions, headline July Payroll Employment recovered its Pre-Pandemic Peak level by a minimal (albeit not statistically significant) 0.02% or 32,000 jobs. Inflation-adjusted, Real Second-Quarter 2022 GDP (July 28th) showed a second consecutive quarterly contraction, consistent with a “New Recession.” Induced by the FOMC (see July 27th discussion), a renewed downturn appears to be in play, despite the official obfuscation already underway. On the June 2022 Money Supply front (July 26th), there was no noticeable slackening in headline money growth suggestive of any pending Inflation relief.
China-Owned Banks in the U.S. Are Getting U.S. Taxpayer-Backstopped FDIC Insurance while China Threatens the Second in Line to the Presidency The Federal Reserve recently released its 2021 Annual Report. We decided to peruse its wonky pages. We came upon a passage that gave us pause. It read: “As of year-end 2021, a total of 135 foreign banks from 48 countries operated 144 state-licensed branches and agencies, of which 6 were insured by the FDIC, and 50 OCC-licensed branches and agencies, of which 4 were insured by the FDIC… Altogether, the U.S. offices of these foreign banks controlled approximately 17 percent of U.S. commercial banking assets.” The FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) is a federal agency. Its federal deposit insurance is backstopped by the U.S. taxpayer. Why should U.S. taxpayers be insuring foreign bank deposits in the U.S. – especially since federal regulators cannot even provide adequate oversight of domestic megabanks?
World:
Israel’s Savagery in Gaza Claims the Lives of More Children Israel is able to perpetrate this violence against them thanks to the international impunity and support it continues to enjoy, especially from the United States, Canada, and the European By late evening on Sunday, the Gaza health ministry said 44 Palestinians had been killed in the territory, including 15 children.
Surrendering Power to Reverence “I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous Peoples.” So said Pope Francis last week, at a powwow in Alberta, at the start of his “apology tour” across Canada — for the participation of the Catholic Church in the multi-century horror of Native American “residential schools” on this continent, which more accurately might be called concentration camps for 6-year-olds. This papal mega-apology, while cheered by some, has been widely criticized as little more than a wimpy shoulder-shrug — sorry about that — for a governmental, church-complicit policy, lasting well into the 20th century, of snatching indigenous children from their families and squeezing their culture, if not their life, out of them. Clearly an official apology is hardly adequate for this egregious wrong — one facet of the larger goal of genocide and continent-theft — but it does throw some raw, horrifying light on who “we” are . . . on the moral values of white, European, a.k.a., colonial, culture, which continues to hold enormous global power. Could the pope’s apology be the starting point of actual learning, troubling awareness and, good God, real change?
Britain: Enough is Enough – Revolutionary Alternative Needed A mass fightback against the ruling class’ attacks is beginning, with strikes and grassroots movements building. To win, workers and youth must be armed with a militant strategy, bold socialist policies, and a clear revolutionary perspective. It is fifty years since, in 1972, the TUC threatened a general strike in response to the imprisonment of five dockers – the famous ‘Pentonville Five’ – for defying the anti-union laws. Back then, Britain was in the grip of a pre-revolutionary crisis, with new layers increasingly being drawn into the class struggle. Today, Britain is again in the grip of a strikewave; a reawakening of the working class, not seen for decades.
Strikes and Communist Party Manoeuvres Point to Rising Class Struggle in Vietnam A wave of class struggle, rising all over the world, is approaching Vietnam. Under increasing financial pressure, sections of the Vietnamese working class have engaged in furious wildcat struggles. The rising tension is also reflected in the actions of the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam (VCP), which is now led by its most powerful leader in decades. While making a show of proactively addressing corruption in Vietnamese society in an effort to appease the masses, it has simultaneously increased repression.
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 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!
COVID Hasn’t Been Defeated, But Effective Public Health Measures Have Been The demands of the market have been treated as more sacrosanct than the obligation to control and prevent a pandemic Early carnivals offered political power a safety valve. For a few days a year, rich and poor switched positions. The poor ran society (if in ritual only), except, when things were going badly in the everyday, the reversal suddenly turned into open rebellion from below. In the present pandemic, it’s the powerful who are running a months-long masquerade, taking off masks ironically enough, in the face of all the evidence that the pandemic is marching on and mask mandates in combination with vaccines and other interventions can protect populations from infection. The ruling class’s public health putsch aims to free a precarious just-in-time capitalism from supply chain gluts and social welfare obligations that a serious pandemic imposes. Better let people get sick or die than violate such a society’s prime directive placing profits first, the political class plots.