Daily News Digest December 5, 2022

Daily News Digest Archives

Images of the Day:

Steve Bell UK Rail Strike

 Editorial: Railroad Workers Sold Out By the Squad and Bernie Sanders and The Republicrats! — They Could Have Been Heros! They Could Have Stood Up with the Railworkers, who, by majority vote, voted against and Opposed the !%/Labor Bureaucracrates/Biden propose sellout! Instead, they voted to impose the sellout! The Squad and Sanders contine to stay mired in the swamp  of Democratic Party politics! Where they are allowed to do the talk, but not stand up for the workers and the entire Working Class!

The Old Talk ‘Left’ to Turn Right!

In the past period, the squad voted for huge increases for the military industrial conplex, the largest single environmental polluter in the world, while giving lip service about protecting the environment.

As prices rise and jobs fall.

The Rail Workers have been sold out by their union leaders who are in a stated alliance with their employers and the Democratic Party

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:

Now, Biden himself stands forth as the latest Reagan, whose poll numbers soared after he busted the PATCO strikers, prepared to stomp on the very workers he claimed to represent but never has when push comes to shove. (For more on this history see our new book, An Orgy of Thieves: Neoliberalism and Its Discontents.)

Democrats are always “pro-labor” until that crucial moment when labor asserts itself against the machinery of corporate profit-making. How the neoliberal Biden–the go-to senator for bankers, credit card companies, and the DuPonts–has gotten away w/ his Scranton Joe routine for 50 years is a mystery. The only unions he ever truly supported are the ones whose members are cops, firefighters and prison guards… — Roaming Charges: Railroaded, Again

Videos of the Day:

Hanford Nuclear Site & The Permanent Disaster Economy

War is the Greatest Evil, An Interview with Chris Hedges

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

Two Party Shell Game: There is No Democracy — The 1% Rule!: Putting ‘Profits Over People’, Senate Rejects Paid Sick Leave for Rail Workers. “Senate Republicans and Joe Manchin have yet AGAIN failed working Americans by voting down seven days of paid sick leave for rail workers,” lamented Rep. Jamaal Bowman.     Speaking on the U.S. Senate floor Thursday before votes on a trio of bills affecting the nation’s freight rail employees, Sen. Bernie Sanders said he had one “simple question” to ask: “Are any Republicans prepared to stand with rail workers who have zero paid sick days or are they instead going to back the outrageous greed of the rail industry?”

America’s Moral Neo-Imperialism Democrat-controlled Senate and a Republican-controlled House of Representatives will not radically change US foreign policy. To those unaware of it, it may even reveal a convergence between most Republican politicians’ neoconservative militarism and the moral neo-imperialism of a growing number of Democrats.     We’ve been here before. In 1917 Democratic president Woodrow Wilson took his country into the first world war, a conflict which was all about imperial rivalries, claiming he wanted to ‘make the world safe for democracy’. This did not stop him being a Ku Klux Klan sympathiser. Later, during the cold war, Republican and Democratic presidents took turns defending the ‘free world’ against the ‘evil empire’ of atheist communism. With the Soviet Union gone, along came the ‘war on terror’, which President George W Bush promised would end ‘tyranny in the world’.

The Iron Heel in Haiti!: US Tax Dollars at Work: Neocolonial Dictatorship, Paramilitary and Police Terror in Haiti Today On October 7th, in the face of massive and ever-growing demonstrations all across Haiti demanding the uprooting of the right-wing Haitian Tét Kale Party (PHTK) dictatorship, Prime Minister Ariel Henry exploited the fiction of a war between his regime and “gangs” to call for the intervention of foreign troops to expand the colonial occupation of Haiti. In doing so, he was echoing the tweet made the day before by OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro. Within days, the Biden Administration proceeded to draft a UN Security Council resolution calling for the expanded deployment of foreign troops in Haiti. To date, the UN Security Council has not yet passed this resolution, due to concerns voiced by the governments of Russia and China. On the ground in Haiti, there have been major demonstrations against new intervention of foreign troops.

US Capitalism’s Bully Boys Hundreds of thousands of words have been written about the rise of the United States’ industrial and financial empire. These descriptions include everything from journal and magazine articles to textbooks and monographs of various lengths. All too many of them celebrate the men who got extremely rich from their activities during those years most often included in that historical period. In what is taught as history to most of us, these men are usually celebrated for their foresight, their drive, and their success; a success measured by their vast wealth. Although some of the histories of this type offer a nod to the negative aspects of these men’s rise to the top of the capitalist food chain–the low wages they paid, the corruption they depended on to get their way with governments, their attacks on workers attempting to organize–those negatives are treated more like a sidebar. You know, the cost of doing business.

US Tax Dollars at Work: Neocolonial Dictatorship, Paramilitary and Police Terror in Haiti Today On October 7th, in the face of massive and ever-growing demonstrations all across Haiti demanding the uprooting of the right-wing Haitian Tét Kale Party (PHTK) dictatorship, Prime Minister Ariel Henry exploited the fiction of a war between his regime and “gangs” to call for the intervention of foreign troops to expand the colonial occupation of Haiti. In doing so, he was echoing the tweet made the day before by OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro. Within days, the Biden Administration proceeded to draft a UN Security Council resolution calling for the expanded deployment of foreign troops in Haiti. To date, the UN Security Council has not yet passed this resolution, due to concerns voiced by the governments of Russia and China. On the ground in Haiti, there have been major demonstrations against new intervention of foreign troops.

Environment: Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:

Other studies have shown elevated levels of chemicals associated with fracking in surface water, however, these levels often tend to be below federal guidelines, are not monitored closely, and even if detected do not rise to levels that trigger remediation.  The new study indicates that fracking-related chemicals – including dangerous volatile organic compounds – are making their way into groundwater that feeds municipal water systems, and that the potential for contamination is greatest during the pre-production period when a new well is established.  With only 29 out of more than 1,100 shale gas contaminants regulated in drinking water, the results suggest that the true contamination level is higher. The study specifically finds that every new well drilled within one kilometer of a public drinking water source was associated with an 11-13 percent increase in the incidence of preterm births and low birth weight in infants exposed during gestation.      “These findings indicate large social costs of water pollution generated by an emerging industry with little environmental regulation,” said Hill.  “Our research reveals that fracking increases regulated contaminants found in drinking water, but not enough to trigger regulatory violations.  This adds to a growing body of research that supports the re-evaluation of existing drinking water policies and possibly the regulation of the shale gas industry.” —  Study Links Fracking, Drinking Water Pollution, and Infant Health

 There Won’t be Much Left of Our Public Forests After the Forest Service Gets Done “Restoring” Them The sheer scope of logging, road-building and other “treatments” on the Custer-Gallatin National Forest leaves one to wonder: Will there be any forests left when the Forest Service is done “restoring” them? The sad truth is that although these projects purport to “restore” historic conditions and make forests more “resilient,” they will do just the opposite and destroy scarce remaining forest habitat for wildlife and fisheries.

 The Poorest Still Paying the Biggest Price on a Burning Planet What is the U.N. climate summit but a meeting place where the world’s elite have protected their power for 27 years and counting? On October 29th, 75-year-old Saifullah Paracha, Guantánamo Bay’s oldest detainee, was finally released by U.S. authorities and flown home to his family in Karachi, Pakistan. He had been incarcerated for nearly two decades without either charges or a trial. His plane touched down in a land still reeling from this year’s cataclysmic monsoon floods that, in July, had covered an unparalleled one-third of that country. Even his own family’s neighborhood, the well-heeled Defense Housing Authority complex, had been thoroughly inundated with, as a reporter wrote at the time, “water gushing into houses.”

Campaigners Demand Deep Cuts to Plastic Production as Global Treaty Negotiations Ramp Up “The scale of the problem is mind-boggling,” said one advocate. “Plastic is in our blood. It’s in fetuses. It’s really encroaching on every aspect of human existence.” Climate campaigners attending the first negotiations for a global plastics treaty in Punta Del Este, Uruguay this week are reporting that discussions have had a strong emphasis on protecting the rights of communities that are severely impacted by plastic pollution, but they warned that policymakers must avoid producing a “Paris agreement for plastics.”

Civil Rights Black Liberation:

Labor:

Democrats Prove That They are a ‘Friend’ of the Labor Bureaucracy and Not Rank and File Workers!

From The Railway Labor Act is a Law to Ban Strikes and Suppress The Railroad Workers: Thus, at this point, the original demands of the workers, if they haven’t been arbitrated away, have been “mediated” and “cooled off” for several months or often years.      The purpose of these RLA provisions are to ensure that any sustained motion by the workers will be dissipated and broken.      By placing the conflict in the hands of a host of government “mediators”, “boards” and bureaucrats, the workers have been robbed of their initiative and blocked from taking matters into their own hands.     But what happens when the workers persist in pressing their demands and the RLA no-strike provisions run out ? Are the workers then “free” to strike the railroads?     Never. Without fail, the capitalist laws will still be used to block the workers from taking action. Over the years, the capitalist government has perfected its various means of brutally suppressing strikes on the railroads after the RLA no-strike provisions have run their course.     Truman was confronted with several rail strikes during his administration.      These strikes were part of the railroad workers’ struggle for the still unrealized 40-hour week. Truman dealt with the provisions of the RLA running out by simply having the federal courts issue injunctions to “outlaw” strikes and backing up these injunctions with the threat of the use of troops. On three occasions, Truman had the government seize the railroads. In the third of these instances, when the workers persisted in an illegal strike in defiance of the court injunction, Truman ordered the army to take over running the railroads and to put the workers back to work at the point of a gun.      The Secretary of the Army proceeded to issue a “General Order” declaring that any worker who refused to work would be immediately fired.     Another method resorted to for suppressing rail strikes after the provisions of the RLA run out, was devised by the arch-imperialist J. F. Kennedy. In 1963 the railroad workers became legally “free” to strike under the RLA. To cope with the threatened walkout, Kennedy hurriedly called together a midnight session of Congress to pass an “Emergency Law” setting up an “Arbitration Board”.      This government board was given the power to impose compulsory, binding arbitration of the dispute.    This was the first time in U.S. history that Congress enacted a law that dictated binding arbitration for the suppression of one particular strike.

Biden Just Knifed Labor Unions in the Back. They Shouldn’t Forget It US railway workers threatened to strike until they got paid sick leave. The president’s administration chose political cowardice!

 As the ‘Progressive’ Democartes Play ‘Good Cops’ They Opposed the the Right of workers to Strike!: United States: Railroad Strike – No to Congress, Support the Right to Strike! : Since the publication of this article, in a bipartisan vote, the House of Representatives has voted 290 to 137 for Biden’s scandalous legislation to ban rail workers from striking over the holiday period. Virtually all the Democrats in the House voted to steal the right to strike from rail workers, including “left-wingers” such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar.     These are the reactionary results of “socialists” using the “Democratic Party ballot line,” as advocated by the “dirty-break” and “party-surrogate” proponents in DSA. With the exception of Congresswoman Tlaib of Michigan, all of the DSA members and the other members of the Squad voted to illegalize the strike.     In a separate vote, the House passed an amendment by 221 to 207 to add a provision to the rotten agreement, stitched up with the rail bosses over workers’ heads, to increase paid sick days from one to seven. This was purely a maneuver by the Democrats to cover themselves in light of their egregious attack on workers’ rights—and even this is not guaranteed to pass. People like AOC—who was tweeting that rail workers should “stay strong” and “we’ve got your back,” right before driving a knife into it—pledged to fight “tooth and nail” for the seven-day increase, which still falls short of what workers rightly demand. Once again, the whole of the Democratic Party, from its “moderate” to “progressive” wing, have shown where they stand: firmly on the side of capital, against the working class.

Bernie Sanders, DSA Play Crucial Role In Passing Anti-Strike Law Against Railroaders This anti-strike legislation could not have passed in the form that it did, with the speed that it did, without the support of the pseudo-left. On Thursday afternoon, the US Senate voted by a margin of 80 to 15 to impose the terms of a national rail contract that tens of thousands of workers voted to reject. The vote in the Senate followed the law’s passage Wednesday in the House of Representatives. The law—which does not even include the fig leaf of seven paid sick days that was narrowly approved as a separate measure in the House—is a major assault on the democratic rights of all workers in the United States.     While Wall Street breathed a sigh of relief, the vote resolves nothing from the standpoint of railroaders. Workers still have not agreed to anything, and they cannot accept as legitimate a dictatorial vote based on the “right” to override workers that Congress has arrogated to itself.

The Eviction Crisis: When COVID hit, the United States was in the midst of a full-blown eviction crisis. Rent rose four times faster than income between 1985 and 2020, which meant increasingly larger portions of tenants’ paychecks went toward keeping a roof over their heads. Tenants who pay over 30 percent of their income towards rent are considered “rent burdened.” In 2001, 41 percent of tenants were rent burdened. By 2011, the number increased to over 53 percent. Nor could these tenants downsize — according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), every state in the U.S. has a severe shortfall of affordable housing; for every 100 low-income families, only 36 affordable housing units exist. Scraping together an emergency fund becomes difficult when so much of one’s paycheck goes towards rent: In 2016, nearly half of all renters had less than $1,000 in savings.    When COVID hit, conditions grew worse, and yet evictions plummeted. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) eviction moratorium had a lot to do with this, but the health emergency also gave birth to something that years of legislative effort had failed to accomplish: well-funded programs to help people catch up on their rent and avoid eviction.     “There was a historic investment of $46.5 billion in rental assistance across the country,” says Adam Chapnik, a political scientist and research specialist at Eviction Lab. The programs did not stop all evictions, but they made a big difference. “Our estimate is that in 2021, about 1.36 million evictions were halted.”

As a UC Academic Worker, I Need a Contract That Addresses the Cost of Living A vocal rank-and-file movement is emerging to reject a contract that pays us anything less than a living wage. Earlier this year, I passed a major milestone in my graduate education: I passed my qualifying exams and defended my prospectus. I had just begun looking seriously at my data and engaging with a new set of literature with an eye toward completing the dissertation when my union, UAW 2865, voted to go on strike. The vote was nearly unanimous. Of 48,000 academic workers at the University of California, 36,558 votes were cast, 98 percent of whom voted to go on strike. 

Shadow Government Stistics 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 as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment. Alternate Unemployment rose to 24.5% from 24.4% on top of U.6 rising to 6.8% from 6.7%

Economy:

 Marxism, Money, and Inflation Marxism, money, and inflation After decades of low inflation and rock-bottom interest rates, economies throughout the world are now facing a spectre unseen since the 1970s: rising inflation levels combined with the beginnings of another recession. It is clear that we have entered a new chapter in the crisis of world capitalism, which the strategists of capital themselves are at a loss to explain.     This article asks: what conjunction of factors lie behind the present stage in capitalism’s crisis? What really causes inflation? And what effect will inflation – and the ruling class’ attempts to curb inflation – have on the class struggle?

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