Daily News Digest September 6, 2022
Images of the Day:
Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Has Been Aware of the Comming Catastrophe of Global Warming 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 very future of Humanity Is Now At stake!
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:
There are literally two Americas. One America is beautiful … overflowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of opportunity. This America is the habitat of millions of people who have food and material necessities for their bodies and culture and education for their minds and freedom and human dignity for their spirits. In this America, millions of people experience every day the opportunity of having life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in all of their dimensions. And in this America millions of young people grow up in the sunlight of opportunity. But tragically and unfortunately, there is another America. This other America has a daily ugliness about it that constantly transforms the ebullience of hope into the fatigue of despair. In this America millions of work-starved men walk the streets daily in search for jobs that do not exist. In this America millions of people find themselves living in rat-infested, vermin-filled slums. In this America, people are poor by the millions. They find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. — Martin Luther King, The Other America 4/14/1967
Videos of the Day:
“You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train”: Remembering the People’s Historian Howard Zinn at 100
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!
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.” ― Louis Brandeis
Chris Hedges: Let’s Stop Pretending America Is a Functioning Democracy A functioning democracy could easily dispatch Donald Trump and his doppelgängers. A failed democracy and bankrupt liberalism assures their ascendancy. There is a fatal disconnect between a political system that promises democratic equality and freedom while carrying out socioeconomic injustices that result in grotesque income inequality and political stagnation. Decades in the making, this disconnect has extinguished American democracy. The steady stripping away of economic and political power was ignored by a hyperventilating press that thundered against the barbarians at the gate — Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, ISIS, Vladimir Putin — while ignoring the barbarians in our midst. The slow-motion coup is over. Corporations and the billionaire class have won. There are no institutions, including the press, an electoral system that is little more than legalized bribery, the imperial presidency, the courts or the penal system, that can be defined as democratic. Only the fiction of democracy remains.
Since I wrote this essay in 2020, if you read Bernie Sanders speech, In UK Speech, Sanders Says ‘Stand Together and Tell the Oligarchs They Cannot Have It All’, the pauperization of the United States, has gotten worse!: The Condition of the United States Working Class — Where Do We Go From Here? July 24,2020 Update: Since One-Third of All Black Men in America Are Classified As Ex-Felons. and Black Ex-felons Have a Life Time Employment Probability Rate of 4,7%, the Actual Government Statistics Are Grossly Understated, the Overall Real Condition of the Working Class is Perpetual Pauperization!
If one wants to learn the Democrats’ real Policy — Just “Follow the Money!: : Biden Adviser’s Lobbying Firm Is ‘Undermining’ Democratic Party Priorities Senior Biden White House adviser Anita Dunn recently reported her personal finances in a 93-page disclosure revealing an investment portfolio worth as much as $48.2 million and a list of more than a dozen clients representing the heights of corporate power, including AT&T, Lyft, and Pfizer. Dunn is a co-founder of the public relations and lobbying firm SKDKnickerbocker, and was a close adviser to former president Barack Obama as well as the Biden presidential campaign. Prior to her current appointment, which requires financial disclosure, Dunn and the Biden administration exploited a loophole exempting temporary employees from disclosure by classifying her as a “special government employee” during stints in the Biden White House in 2021 and early 2022. Now, as senior adviser to the president, Dunn will have to divest her multi-million dollar stock portfolio as well as recuse herself from issues affecting her former clients. However, Dunn’s long client list and financial ties to corporations at the center of the most important policy debates in the US — including the fossil fuel, financial, healthcare, and technology sectors — prompted watchdog organization the Revolving Door Project to ask: “What the hell is Anita Dunn even allowed to work on?” . . . This dynamic can be seen in SKDKnickerbocker’s work in New York State, where Democrats control both legislative houses as well as the governor’s office. SKDK has millions of dollars operating front groups in New York for corporations in direct conflict with Democratic Party priorities on climate, labor rights, and housing justice.
Ralph Nader: America Needs a Civic Group to Oppose a Cashless Society The ever-increasing loss of consumer freedom is a daily work in regress by the fine-print commercial planners of growing consumer peonage. “For over a decade the screws have been tightening to coerce people into the credit-debt economy. Both the corporations and the government are to blame.”
Journalists Who Challenge Nato Narratives are Now ‘Information Terrorists’ A US state department sponsored round table on ‘countering disinformation’ was recently held at the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine. “Information terrorists should know that they will have to answer to the law as war criminals” — Andrii Shapovalov. According to the press release – “NGOs, mass media and international experts” took part in the round table discussions. Delegates discussed ‘disinformation methods’ used in Ukraine and abroad. On the agenda was legal and state prevention of ‘fakes and disinformation in the context of cyber security’. Andrii Shapovalov, head of the Ukrainian Centre for Combatting Disinformation emphasized that those who ‘deliberately spread disinformation are information terrorists’. Shapovalov recommended changes to the legislation to crack down on these terrorists – reminiscent of the pre-WW2 Nazi Germany suppression of media and information channels. Shapovalov determined that ‘information terrorists should know that they will have to answer to the law as war criminals’. It goes without saying that the crushing of dissent is essential for public support for NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine to be maintained. Russian media has already been wiped from the Western-controlled internet sphere. Ukrainian ‘kill lists’ such as the infamous Myrotvorets already include the courageous Canadian independent journalist Eva Bartlett and outspoken Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters.
Environment: Ecosocialism or Ecocide!
Human Rights Watch: Climate Change The climate crisis is the biggest global threat to human rights we’ve seen in our lifetime. From burning forests to sweltering cities, parched farmlands to storm-battered coasts, climate change is taking a mounting toll on lives and livelihoods around the globe. Unless governments act boldly—and quickly—to massively reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the situation could become unimaginably worse. Rising sea levels and massive food shortages could drive hundreds of millions of people from their homes. Conflicts over increasingly scarce resources could multiply exponentially, fueling violence, virulent nationalism, xenophobia, and authoritarian rule. The capacity of states to protect the rights of the most at-risk populations could be severely strained and, in many places, broken. Our ability to avert this dystopian future will likely depend, in large measure, on what governments do to uphold the rights of people today—those already enduring the impacts of climate change and those on the front lines of efforts to contain it.
How to Green Our Parched Farmlands and Finance Critical Infrastructure Congress has passed two major infrastructure bills in the last year, but imminent needs remain. The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law chiefly focused on conventional highway programs, and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) mainly centered on energy security and combating climate change. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), over $2 trillion in much-needed infrastructure is still unfunded, including projects to address drought, affordable housing, high-speed rail, and power transmission lines. By 2039, per the ASCE, continued underinvestment at current rates will cost $10 trillion in cumulative lost GDP, more than 3 million jobs in that year, and $2.24 trillion in exports over the next 20 years. Particularly urgent today is infrastructure to counteract the record-breaking drought in the U.S. Southwest, where 50% of the nation’s food supply is grown. Subsidies for such things as the purchase of electric vehicles, featured in the IRA, will pad the coffers of the industries lobbying for them but will not get water to our parched farmlands any time soon. More direct action is needed. But as noted by Todd Tucker in a Roosevelt Institute article, “Today, a gridlocked and austerity-minded Congress balks at appropriating sufficient money to ensure emergency readiness. … [T]he US system of government’s numerous veto points make emergency response harder than under parliamentary or authoritarian systems.”
How to Green Our Parched Farmlands and Finance Critical Infrastructure There are workarounds the U.S. can use to fund affordable housing, drought responses, and other urgently-needed infrastructure that was left out of the two recent spending bills. Congress has passed two major infrastructure bills in the last year, but imminent needs remain. The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law chiefly focused on conventional highway programs, and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) mainly centered on energy security and combating climate change. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), over $2 trillion in much-needed infrastructure is still unfunded, including projects to address drought, affordable housing, high-speed rail, and power transmission lines. By 2039, per the ASCE, continued underinvestment at current rates will cost $10 trillion in cumulative lost GDP, more than 3 million jobs in that year, and $2.24 trillion in exports over the next 20 years. Particularly urgent today is infrastructure to counteract the record-breaking drought in the U.S. Southwest, where 50% of the nation’s food supply is grown.10 of 13 ‘Flagship’ CCS Projects Failed to Deliver, IEEFA Analysis Concludes After a half-century of research and development, carbon capture and storage projects are far more likely to fail than to succeed, and nearly three-quarters of the carbon dioxide they manage to capture each year is sold off to fossil companies and used to extract more oil, according to a sweeping industry assessment released today by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).
United States of Crumbling Infrastructure: Capitalism’s Deferred Maintenance Policy ‘Coming Home to Roost!’: Jackson Mayor: Residents Face ‘Longer Road Ahead’ Before Safe Water is Restored Speaking to ABC’s This Week, Chokwe Antar Lumumba said there had been improvements, with water pressure restored to a majority of residents. But he said the state capital was “still in an emergency – will be in an emergency even as the water is restored to every home and even as the boil water notice is lifted because that is the fragile state of our water treatment facility”. The crisis has been blamed on decades of neglect that came to a head last month, after torrential rains and flooding of the Pearl river exacerbated problems at one of two water treatment plants, leading to a drop in pressure throughout the city. Residents were already under a boil-water order after pumps failed. Blazes Erupt Across California as State Bakes in Scorching Heat Seven firefighters hospitalized, with extreme temperature Firefighters were battling blazes across California in grueling heat on Friday, as fast-moving flames erupted near the Oregon border and prompted evacuation orders for at least 5,000 people.Residents of the towns of Weed, Lake Shasta and Edgewood in Siskiyou county were told to evacuate after a blaze, dubbed the Mill fire, began spreading in hot and windy conditions and grew to 500 acres in about an hour, the Siskiyou sheriff’s office said in a statement.
Civil Rights/ Black Liberarion:
Jackson, Mississippi Has Been Paralyzed by Racism, Classism, and the Worsening Climate Crisis “What we are experiencing now is literally just the crumbling of the empire’s infrastructure.” Jackson suffered some of the worst racist violence as Jim Crow laws disenfranchised African Americans across the South and white supremacist terrorism waged by the Ku Klux Klan and others drove millions of Blacks north in the Great Migration.
‘Water Is Dignity,’ Say Jackson, Mississippi Activists as Crisis Continues “It is obvious what the United States values more than basic necessities for Jackson’s people: war abroad and policing at home.” As of September 2, the vast majority of the residents of the city of Jackson, Mississippi—over 150,000—still have no access to safe drinking water. The Jackson water crisis began on August 30 when flooding caused the pumps at the main water treatment facility, O.B. Curtis, to fail. This left most residents without clean water and many with no water at all due to low water pressure. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves warned residents on August 31, “Do not drink the water from the pipes if you can avoid it.” “Meanwhile, the war on Ukraine has been bankrolled over the last 6 months to the tune of $54 billion.”FEMA Director Says It’s ‘Too Early’ To Tell When Jackson Will Have Clean Water Again Residents of Mississippi’s majority-Black capital still don’t have clean water after rains worsened the existing infrastructure. Residents of Jackson, Mississippi, still don’t have widespread access to clean drinking water as of Sunday, after massive rains and river flooding late last month worsened existing infrastructure problems at one of the two treatment plants in the majority-Black city. Some officials said Saturday that service has been restored to most customers, but the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency warned on Sunday that it’s still “too early” to tell when the city will have widespread clean drinking water again.
Labor:
Railroad Workers Appear Ready to Strike After Rejecting Contract Recommendations Railroad unions continue their slow creep along the path to a settlement — or strike — in contract negotiations covering 115,000 workers. On August 16, the Presidential Emergency Board convened by President Biden issued its recommendations for a settlement. Many rail workers say they fall short and are prepared to strike to win more. The PEB recommended 22 percent raises over the course of the five-year contract (dating back to 2020), which would be the highest wage increases rail unions have seen in decades. But they are offset by increases in health care costs — and come in the midst of high inflation. The PEB also refused to touch almost any of the unions’ demands on work rules and conditions, either denying them outright or suggesting that the unions return to the slow negotiation and arbitration process they have already languished in since November 2019. Unions have been demanding a sick leave policy — rail workers have no sick days — and the PEB refused them. The PEB also refused to take a position on the strict attendance policies have infuriated many rail workers.
Economy:
Energy, Cost of Living and Recession The G7 governments have a problem. The war in Ukraine against Russia is not won. It looks set to be a long grinding conflict, possibly with no end. And yet the world and particularly Europe depends on Russian energy supplies. The G7 has agreed to stop buying Russian oil, as part of its programme of using economics sanctions as a war weapon. But up to now, energy imports from Russia have not been stopped because it would mean a catastrophe for the EU countries, particularly Germany. And Russia is still selling huge volumes—globally – albeit at a discount from the world price—to India, China and other energy-thirsty economies. At the beginning of June, the European Union agreed to bar its companies from “insuring and financing the transport, in particular, through maritime routes, of [Russian] oil to third parties” after the end of 2022 to make it “difficult for Russia to continue exporting its crude oil and petroleum products to the rest of the world.” But that is still not being implemented and Greek-owned tankers are delivering Russian oil exports across the globe and until this week, Russian gas was still being imported into Europe. As a result, the Russian trade surplus has rocketed as oil and gas export revenues rise, driven mainly by huge price increase.
World:
Britain: Truss leadership Victory – A Poisoned Chalice Liz Truss has won the Tory leadership race, becoming Britain’s latest prime minister. She will inherit an array of crises: from soaring energy prices and ‘stagflation’, to a rising tide of industrial action. Revolutionary explosions impend. In the bus stops, the canteens, the working-class pubs and clubs, the hairdressers and corner shops – you name it – the conversations are the same: the price of food and energy bills; deteriorating public services; and the spiralling cost of living. Added to this is the utter contempt for the ‘two morons’ who, since the downfall of Boris Johnson, have been bidding to run the country.
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 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
Frustration. Burnout. Attrition. It’s Time To Address The National Teacher Shortage!
For a while, it was. But the last few years have made it clear that no single teacher can ever make a big enough difference, because she is a cog in a broken machine that wears her down more and more with each year it grinds on. It will never be enough until the people who rely on the machine and take it for granted start giving it the care and maintenance it needs. Let’s be clear: Educators are not the problem. They are, in fact, the duct tape that holds the whole janky thing together. Duct tape is probably the best analogy ever for a teacher: durable, endlessly versatile, and unbelievably cheap in proportion to its utility. It should be a no-brainer that schools can’t function without teachers, and that they are fundamental to student success. And yet, more and more districts don’t have enough teachers, qualified or otherwise. Google “teacher burnout” and you’ll start to understand why: “‘Exhausted and underpaid’: teachers across the US are leaving their jobs in numbers.” It’s not a new problem, but it’s gotten worse. For a while, it was. But the last few years have made it clear that no single teacher can ever make a big enough difference, because she is a cog in a broken machine that wears her down more and more with each year it grinds on. It will never be enough until the people who rely on the machine and take it for granted start giving it the care and maintenance it needs. Let’s be clear: Educators are not the problem. They are, in fact, the duct tape that holds the whole janky thing together. Duct tape is probably the best analogy ever for a teacher: durable, endlessly versatile, and unbelievably cheap in proportion to its utility. It should be a no-brainer that schools can’t function without teachers, and that they are fundamental to student success. And yet, more and more districts don’t have enough teachers, qualified or oth-erwise. Google “teacher burnout” and you’ll start to understand why: “‘Exhausted and underpaid’: teachers across the US are leaving their jobs in numbers.” It’s not a new problem, but it’s gotten worse. — After Teaching For 11 Years, I Quit My Job. Here’s Why Your Child’s Teacher Might Be Next