Daily News Digest November 29, 2022

Daily News Digest Archives

Images of the Day:

What Kind of Country Treats Its Migrant Workers Like That???Kern County Fracking Field

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!

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:

Westlands Water District, Are Owned By Chevron USA Inc., Tejon Ranch Company, Getty Oil Company, Shell Oil Company, Mccarthy Joint Venture A, Blackwell Land Company, Tenneco West Inc., And Southern Pacific Land Company . . . . These Corporations Were Attracted To The Central Valley Not Out Of A Love Of Farming But Because Of The Tax Benefits Afforded To Them If They Grew The Permanent Crops. During The 1960s, The Internal Revenue Service Allowed Investors To Immediately Write Off Their Entire Share Of Development Costs For Growing Almonds And Other Permanent Crops.     Some Of These Corporations Bought Up Land In The Central Valley Because Of The Vast Oil Deposits Lying Beneath Many Of The Now-Rich Croplands. Since This Oil Is A Thick And Viscous Crude That Must Be Mined With Steam, Extractors Need Large Volumes Of Water To Develop It. Though They Haven’t Done So On A Significant Level Yet, The Petroleum Giants Of The Central Valley May Soon Be Able To Double Their Money By Drilling And Processing The Black Gold Below Their Fields While They Grow The Highly Profitable Cash Crops On The Surface Both With The Aid Of Cheap State Project Water. (2014)  — Big Energy Frackers Keep On Fracking With Their Own Private Water Supplies During Drought

Videos of the Day: 

Robber Baron Legislators: Congress’ Pandemic Insider Trading

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 Republicrats 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

The 1%’s US Government, Spearheaded by Biden, Opposes Sick Leave for Workers!

Jonah Furman’s Facbook Sattements:

• Full sellout from the White House for the majority of rail workers who rejected the deal the President brokered, preemptively denying them the right to strike. This was the “which side are you on?” moment, and the White House chose the railroad bosses.
• It is exceedingly rare in the US for the White House to have direct control over union negotiations. This one was a layup. Put forward a bill to include paid sick days. Costs the rail carriers a fraction of their insane profits. Improves freight rail service. And Biden refuses.

 Biden Accused of Selling Out Rail Workers by Urging Congress to Prevent Strike “Biden is siding with corporate rail bosses over the rank-and-file workers who voted against this agreement,” said one progressive commentator after the president urged lawmakers to take action to force through a deal without paid sick leave.     Warning that the looming U.S. railroad strike “would devastate our economy,” President Joe Biden angered labor advocates on Monday after he implored Congress to take legislative action to force union members to keep working under a contract that many of them have rejected, mainly due to its denial of paid sick days. “I am calling on Congress to pass legislation immediately to adopt the tentative agreement between railroad workers and operators—without any modifications or delay—to avert a potentially crippling national rail shutdown,” Biden said in a statement.

Taxing the Rich Requires More Than Policy The Left is finally waking to the power of ballot initiatives as tools to advance egalitarian and redistributive policy. As a report recently published by the Center for Work & Democracy at Arizona State University shows, egalitarian initiatives pass at a 60% clip and redistributive ones pass at an astounding 75% rate. With results like these, many on the Left are increasingly attracted to the initiative process as a tactical path forward. Unfortunately, this interest has been roused at a moment when the initiative process is under concerted attack from the Right. By increasing the number of petition signatures needed, making the signature-gathering process stricter, or otherwise raising the threshold for making the ballot, many states are trying to clamp down on citizen’s initiatives. In many places, the initiative process is approaching Sisyphean levels of difficulty—irresistible as a means of directly pushing a progressive agenda but so bogged down by rule changes and oversight by hostile bureaucracies as to ultimately prove impossible.

Patrick Lawrence: Biden Sides With Trump in Killing Obama’s Iran Nuclear Deal Among our mentally impaired president’s more prominent campaign pledges during the 2020 political campaigns was that his national security people would negotiate America’s return to the multi-sided accord governing Iran’s nuclear programs. Without hesitation, I offered excellent odds that this would stand tall in Joe Biden’s forest of broken promises. It was a wager I truly did not want to win. And now it seems I have.      Events over the past several weeks, in the U.S. and in Israel, indicate strongly that the Biden administration has decided to drop all notion of reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the JCPOA, as the 2015 agreement is called. In effect, Biden will hold to the position Donald Trump took when he pulled the U.S. out of the pact in 2018.     

It is perfectly clear that the existing state is neither able nor willing to do anything to remedy the housing difficulty.     The state is nothing but the organized collective power of the possessing classes, the landowners and the capitalists as against the exploited classes, the peasants and the workers.      What the individual capitalists (and it is here only a question of these because in this matter the landowner who is also concerned acts primarily as a capitalist) do not want, their state also does not want.      If therefore the individual capitalists deplore the housing shortage, but can hardly be persuaded even superficially to palliate its most terrifying consequences, then the collective capitalist, the state, will not do much more.      At the most it will see to it that the measure of superficial palliation which has become standard is carried out everywhere uniformly. And we have already seen that this is the case.” ― Friedrich Engels, The Housing Question

Rent Is Too Damned High: US Tenants Mobilize to Demand Rent Controls Tenants nationwide are organizing to win affordable housing, limit rental fees and protect their homes and communities. When the African American Research Collaborative surveyed a cross section of Florida voters earlier this fall, more than 25 percent of those questioned reported that they had experienced homelessness — doubling up with family or friends or living in a car, shelter, storage shed or motel — at some point in the last few years.     This came as no surprise to Sheena D. Rolle, senior director of strategy at Florida Rising, an organization that formed in 2021 from a merger between the New Florida Majority and Organize Florida. The goal of the group, according to its website, is to “win elections, change laws and create a state where everyone can be safe, happy, healthy and whole.”

Because ‘Publishing Is Not a Crime,’ Major Newspapers Push US to Drop Assange Charges “This indictment sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to undermine America’s First Amendment and the freedom of the press,” The Guardian, The New York Times, and other media outlets warned.     The five major media outlets that collaborated with WikiLeaks in 2010 to publish explosive stories based on confidential diplomatic cables from the U.S. State Department sent a letter Monday calling on the Biden administration to drop all charges against Julian Assange, who has been languishing in a high-security London prison for more than three years in connection with his publication of classified documents 

As the World Fixates on Ukraine, Another War is Brewing in the Middle East As war rages in Ukraine, another conflict is ready to explode in the Middle East as the US and its allies confront Iran over its nuclear programme, supply of drones to Russia, and repression of anti-government protests. If the US or Israel were to attack the main Iranian nuclear facility producing weapons-grade nuclear fuel, Iran would most likely retaliate by using its drone and missile arsenal to close the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf, through which tankers daily carry almost a fifth of the world’s oil and gas.

Environment: Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:

Scientists Revive ‘Zombie’ Virus After 50,000 Years Trapped in Siberian Permafrost Researchers documented 13 never-before-seen viruses that have been lying dormant, frozen in thick ice, over tens of thousands of years. “One-quarter of the Northern Hemisphere is underlain by permanently frozen ground, referred to as permafrost,” researchers wrote in the paper. “Due to climate warming, irreversibly thawing permafrost is releasing organic matter frozen for up to a million years, most of which decomposes into carbon dioxide and methane, further enhancing the greenhouse effect. Part of this organic matter also consists of revived cellular microbes (prokaryotes, unicellular eukaryotes) as well as viruses that remained dormant since prehistorical times.”

Newsom is Pro-Oil; As California is Thristy!: Drought-Wracked California Allows Oil Companies to Use High-Quality Water. But Regulators’ Error-Strewn Records Make Accurate Accounting Nearly Impossible. California’s oil industry uses hundreds of millions of gallons of freshwater a year in a state with none to spare. Most of that water is used in Kern County, where communities have long lacked affordable, safe drinking water.     Last month, with California in the grips of a megadrought, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a plan centered on “the acute need to conserve water” in the face of a drier, hotter future caused by climate change. The plan outlines actions to “transform water management” and calls on California residents to step up and do their part to conserve water.     Yet the plan does nothing to limit use of California’s dwindling water supplies by one of the primary drivers of climate change: the oil and gas industry.       An Inside Climate News analysis of data collected by the California Geologic Energy Management Division, or CalGEM, shows high-quality water is being diverted from state domestic and agricultural supplies, predominantly in Kern County, to extract viscous crude from some of the world’s most climate-polluting oilfields.

 Saito: The Metabolic Rift and De-Growth Communism Kohei Saito is an associate professor at Tokyo University and an erudite Marxist scholar.  Not a candidate for a best-seller in the non-fiction book world, you might think.  But you would be wrong in this case.  Saito’s new book (currently in Japanese), which analyses the relationship between capitalism and the planet, has been a smash hit in Japan, with over half a million sales already. In the English version out shortly, the book is entitled,  Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism  . The book’s message is stark and clear.  Capitalism’s rapacious drive for profit is destroying the planet and only “degrowth” can repair the damage by slowing down social production and sharing wealth.  Humans need to find a “new way of living”, and that means replacing capitalism.

The Colorado River is Imperiled; Why It Matters to You UC Riverside experts discuss the decline of this major water source Hit by years of drought exacerbated by a warming planet, the great reservoirs of the Colorado River are at historic lows. The dramatic shrinking of Lake Mead near Las Vegas and Lake Powell above the Grand Canyon has prompted the Biden administration to call for the river basin states to cut their river water use by 25 percent next year or face federally mandated cuts. While the greatest proportion of California’s share goes to the Imperial Valley to irrigate crops, the river is also an important water source for 19 million people in Southern California. We asked UCR water experts from UCR’s School of Public Policy – professors Bruce Babcock, Ariel Dinar, Mehdi Nemati and Kurt Schwabe – to discuss the impacts of the decline of this invaluable resource.     Babcock: Southern California residents depend on imported water from the Colorado River, the Owens River, and the Feather River. All three sources have been in stress because of two years of short-run drought and many years of a longer-term drought. The supplies just are not there. Shortages on the Colorado cannot easily be made up by alternative supplies because supplies are tight everywhere. The only way to balance water supply and water demand is to build more supply or decrease demand.  Additional supply, such as desalination plants, increased recycling, and investments in groundwater storage is expensive. Cutting demand means reducing agricultural production and changing urban water use. So Southern California residents have a large stake in decisions that need to be made. 

‘Cleaner Air Is Coming’ as London Expands Vehicle Pollution Fee to Entire Metro Area “Around 4,000 Londoners die prematurely each year because of long-term exposure to air pollution, with the greatest number of deaths in outer London boroughs,” noted Mayor Sadiq Khan in announcing the expansion.

Civil Rights Black Liberation:Police Are Increasingly Monitoring Social Media to Identify and Harass Activists Artist and climate activist Shanai Matteson moved back to her hometown of Palisade, Minnesota, to make a positive impact on the community. But her homecoming was far from sweet. In the years following her return, she says, local law enforcement monitored and threatened her. She became painfully aware of how being an activist painted a target on her back. She was charged and tried for a crime based on the thinnest of evidence: social media posts.

Labor:

Health Education 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   

Educator Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade: Teachers Must Fight Inequality, Not Create It Schools typically see children as broken and try to fix them, but it’s our schools and society that is broken.

For-Profit Abortion Telemedicine Start-Ups Are Proliferating in Wake of “Roe” As for-profit telemedicine companies replace shuttered clinics, advocates worry about who will have access to abortion. In 2020, a federal judge ruled that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must suspend its requirement that patients pick up mifepristone, one of the pills used in medication abortion, in person. After some back-and-forth under the Trump administration, the FDA permanently repealed the rule, which had long been decried by medical experts as unnecessary, in 2021.

How Banks and Private Equity Cash In When Patients Can’t Pay Their Medical Bills  As Americans are overwhelmed with medical bills, patient financing is now a multibillion-dollar business, with private equity and big banks lined up to cash in when patients and their families can’t pay for care. By one estimate from research firm IBISWorld, profit margins top 29% in the patient financing industry, seven times what is considered a solid hospital margin.