Daily News Digest March 20, 2023
Capitalism is Now a Worldwide Threat to Humanity! It is on the Fast Track to Global Warming and/or Nuclear War Catastrophes!
Images of the Day:
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 Capitalism 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:
Michael Roberts Blog: But wait, let’s examine the data more closely. Continuing with the US economy, the best performing among the top seven (G7) capitalist economies, much of the last year’s increase in employment and the low unemployment rate can be explained by statistical adjustments and by the large number of people who have not returned to work after COVID, thus causing a very tight labour market. January saw a statistical adjustment that added in an extra 1.6m to add to the payrolls that had been missing from data. And here’s the other thing. Back last March 2022, there were 132.6m Americans in full-time work. In January 2023, there were 132.6m. So there was no increase in full-time jobs in ten months. Instead part-time jobs rose by 1.5m! What we have is a ‘strong’ labour market where workers can only get part-time, often casual work, and where they often take two or three jobs to make ends meet in the face of rocketing prices of necessities. — A Burst of Optimism: Unfounded?
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
Thousands of LAUSD Workers znd Teachers Rally Outside City Hall
Dennis Kucinich and Michael Hudson on the Anatomy of Bank Failures
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. Tax the Rich! — They Can Afford To Pay! Both Parties Support U.S. Capitalism’s Wars! (The Only War the Democrats Opposed was the Civil War!)
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 D. Brandeis Quotes
The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. MLK, Beyond Vietnam
Rent Is Unaffordable for More Than Half the Country!:Suppose you’ve managed to get together your up-front costs. What can you expect to pay each month? The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development considers housing affordable when rent takes no more than 30% of an individual’s or family’s monthly income. Human Rights Watch (!) reported in December 2022 that the Census Bureau’s 2021 Annual Community Survey revealed a little over half of all renters are spending more than 30% of their income that way — and in many cases, significantly more. It tells you something that Human Rights Watch is concerned about housing costs in this country. The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) put its data in perspective through what it calls a “Housing Wage”: the hourly rate you’d need to make working 40 hours a week to afford to rent a place in a specific area. For many Americans, housing, they report, is simply “out of reach.” “In 2022, a full-time worker needs to earn an hourly wage of $25.82 on average to afford a modest, two-bedroom rental home in the U.S. This Housing Wage for a two-bedroom home is $18.57 higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25. — Don’t Try to Find a Home in Washington, D.C.
This is Fascism, SVB Bailout Edition The very public failure of SVB (Silicon Valley Bank) is raising concerns of a renewed wave of bank failures that threatens Western economies. The subtext is residual fear that the earlier (mid-2000’s) bank crisis was never adequately addressed. The very bankers who sank the banking system back then were handed trillions in public largesse to cover their losses, but the system of Wall Street provision of credit to fuel capitalism was never reconsidered. As then Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner put it, ‘the US doesn’t do nationalization (of banks).’
For First Time, US Democratic Voters Sympathize More With Palestinians Than Israelis: Poll In a sign of a major shift in U.S. public perception that’s largely generational, U.S. Democrats favor Palestinians by an 11-point margin. A decade ago, the gap was 36% in favor of Israelis. . . According to the survey of 1,008 U.S. adults, 49% of Democrats said they sympathize more with Palestinians, while 38% favored Israelis and 13% chose neither side or said they sympathize equally with both. A decade ago, 55% of Democrats sympathized more with Israelis, while only 19% said they had more sympathy for Palestinians.
Alliance of 60+ Groups Demands Farm Bill That Rejects False Climate Solutions “There’s no way around it—we have to actually cut fossil fuel emissions,” said Food & Water Watch. Dozens of climate action, Indigenous rights, and public interest groups on Thursday announced an alliance that plans to engage with lawmakers ahead of this year’s congressional debate on the Farm Bill, calling on them to pass legislation that rejects carbon offsets, carbon markets, and other policies that perpetuate a planet-heating agricultural system.
Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!:
People Affected by Toxic Fuel Leak in Hawaii Now Face Taxes on Emergency Aid Adding insult to injury, some residents are receiving tax bills for aid sent after the Navy contaminated their water. It’s been nearly 16 months since 14,000 gallons of fuel and water leaked from the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility in Honolulu, Hawaii. Located merely 100 feet above the Southern O’ahu Basal Aquifer, the military fuel storage facility’s leaking drain line poisoned the main fresh water source for 100,000 people, causing oral chemical burns, stomach pain, sore throats, rashes, headaches and vomiting, among other illnesses for residents relying on that water. More than 93,000 residents were affected, and 3,500 families were forcibly displaced, with many staying in Waikiki hotels for months on end as the Navy began cleanup early last year. Although the Department of Defense provided temporary housing and emergency assistance to those impacted by its negligence, it didn’t come without a price. In fact, for some, the funding they received for temporary housing is considered taxable income by the Internal Revenue Service, with recipients quite literally paying the U.S. government back for the funds they received.
East Palestine Soil Contains Dioxin Levels Hundreds of Times Over Cancer Risk Threshold “I certainly wouldn’t be comfortable living there,” said one organic chemist. East Palestine, Ohio residents’ concerns about the enduring impact of last month’s fiery train derailment are likely to intensify following the release of data showing that levels of dioxin in the soil near the wreck site are far higher than the cancer risk threshold recommended by federal scientists. Dioxin is a toxic and carcinogenic byproduct of burning vinyl chloride, a hazardous chemical that at least five Norfolk Southern train cars were carrying when they derailed in early February, sparking a full-blown environmental and public health disaster.
A (Bad) Trip to the Most Radioactive Place in America
If you’re like any number of people I’ve talked to over the last few years, you aren’t really sure what Hanford is all about. Maybe you haven’t even heard of the place; I certainly wouldn’t blame you. It is, after all, off the beaten path. The Hanford Nuclear Site is located in eastern Washington State. It’s far from Seattle, three hours to the Idaho border, on the banks of the Columbia River, and a couple of hundred miles upstream from Portland, Oregon. I won’t inundate you with all the details just yet; we’ll get to all of that later. But here’s a modest primer: Hanford was home to the US government’s gargantuan plutonium operation. The site churned out nearly all of the radioactive fuel that was used in the country’s nuclear arsenal. Like a ceaseless conveyer belt, Hanford generated plutonium for nearly four long decades, reaching maximum production during the height of the Cold War. Now, however, Hanford no longer produces plutonium. Instead, it’s a sprawling wasteland of radioactive and chemical sewage, a landmass three times larger than Lake Tahoe. It’s also the costliest environmental remediation project the world has ever seen and, arguably, the most contaminated place on the entire plane
The World’s Largest Methane and and PFA Pollution Emitter: Biden Approves Largest-ever Oil Project on Public Lands in Alaska Biden has reneged on one of his cornerstone campaign promises to ban any new permitting for oil and gas on public land and water. ConocoPhillips massive Willow project was approved by the Biden administration Monday, despite “substantial concerns” about the oil project’s climate and environmental impacts, and despite President Joe Biden’s campaign promise to ban “new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters.”
Civil Rights Black Liberation:
US Banks are Sacrificing Poor Communities to the Climate Crisis The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank will bring many forms of fallout. One of the most obvious consequences is that the biggest banks – Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, Bank of America – will probably get even bigger. That is why we’re joining protests across the United States outside hundreds of those banks’ branches on Tuesday, 21 March: if they’re going to hold that much power over the planet’s economy, we need them to recognize and help with our great crises. We need them not to do what they did last century, which is to ignore or exacerbate our deepest troubles. . . . The four biggest banks in America are the four biggest financiers of fossil fuel expansion in the world. These banks didn’t need Donald Trump’s help to sabotage the Paris climate accord: since 2015, they have provided well over $1tn in lending and underwriting to the companies building new coal plants, pipelines, fracking wells, gas export terminals and more. This polluting infrastructure is designed to last decades – long past the point at which science tells us we need to wean off fossil fuels. We can’t shut off all oil and gas overnight, but we can, and must, call on these banks to keep it from expanding, to move money out of dirty energy projects and finance more clean energy instead. It’s entirely clear who is hit the hardest by the impacts of the climate crisis. Both in the US and around the world, the poorest and most vulnerable people disproportionately suffer the effects of a warming planet, despite having done the least to cause it.
Labor:
Child Labor is Back…with a Vengeance! Child labor is back. That’s because rich corporations and their political parasites want it back. What better way, they doubtless imagine, for penniless, unaccomp-anied migrant children to spend their time than performing danger-ous tasks in slaughterhouses or moiling with toxic cleansers in factories? What else are these kids going to do with their time? Go to school? Not likely, if our oligarchs have it their way. Corporate billionaires need workers, especially post-Great Resignation, when millions of employees, after remembering thanks to covid that life is short, basically said “You can take this lousy job and shove it.” As a result, it’s a tight labor market, despite the Federal Reserve’s best efforts to boost unemployment, to wit, Fed chairman Jerome Powell’s interest rate increases, his volley in the class war that backfired, potentially taking down the banks (poetic justice that could ruin us all). And a tight labor market means higher wages. Our corporate bigwigs don’t like that at all, and thus eye child workers all the more eagerly, because they can pay them peanuts.
Economy:
The Banks Get Their Money for Nothing and Get Their Profits for Free!: They buy two year treasury bonds that are now making 4.48% interest, while they’re paying depostors only 0.35% yearly interst!
JPMorgan’s High Risk Footprint; Bloomberg News as PR Agent for Jamie Dimon; and the Untold Story of the Failed “Rescue” of First Republic by the Mega Banks At 6:33 a.m. this morning, this big, bold headline appeared at the very top of Bloomberg News web page: “How Dimon and Yellen Helped Secure $30 Billion Lifeline for First Republic.” This headline is part of a very long, highly questionable promotion of Jamie Dimon by Bloomberg News as the wunderkind of Wall Street banking. In reality, under Dimon’s tenure as Chairman and CEO, JPMorgan Chase has been on an unprecedented crime spree, including being charged with five felony counts by the U.S. Department of Justice, and his bank is annually ranked by U.S. banking regulators as well as the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision as the riskiest bank on the planet. (See charts at this link at the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Financial Research. Give the page time to load the charts.)
World:
France: Macron Forces Through Pensions Bill – What Next for the Movement? Yesterday, for the eleventh time in 10 months, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne invoked article 49.3 of the French Constitution, to force through Macron’s hated pension reforms without a parliamentary vote. This, however, did not go unnoticed. In the hours following the Prime Minister’s announcement, thousands of people gathered at the Place de la Concorde in Paris to denounce the manoeuvre. Spontaneous rallies took place in other cities. The mainstream media and the parliamentary opposition are stressing that this is a major “failure” for Macron, who would have preferred a formal vote in the National Assembly on his pension reform. It is indeed a failure, but one that logically follows another failure, or rather a debacle: that of Macron’s party (LREM) in the legislative elections last June. Macron does not have a majority in the National Assembly. Hence the use of article 49.3, considered a ‘nuclear option’. Early next week, motions of no confidence will be put to a vote in the National Assembly. If one of them wins a majority, Macron will probably not simply be able to reshuffle his government: he will have to dissolve the National Assembly. But precisely for this reason, it is unlikely that a motion of no confidence will win a majority. A significant number of opposition MPs do not want early parliamentary elections.
‘Macron Resign!’ French Protests Intensify Over Attempt to Force Retirement Age Hike “This forced passage with the use of Article 49.3 must be met with a response in line with this show of contempt toward the people,” declared one union leader as MPs introduced no-confidence Protests in Paris and across France have ramped up since President Emmanuel Macron’s government on Thursday used a controversial constitutional measure to force through a pension reform plan without a National Assembly vote. Fears that the Senate-approved measure—which would raise the retirement age from 62 to 64—did not have enough support to pass the lower house of Parliament led to a Council of Ministers meeting, during which Macron reportedly said that “my political interest would have been to submit to a vote… But I consider that the financial, economic risks are too great at this stage.”
Furious Over Railway Disaster, Greeks Take to the Streets in Nationwide General Strike “It is the debt of every worker, every youth, to continue to demand the obvious: This crime must not be covered up!” At least tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of cities and towns across Greece Thursday to protest the government’s handling of last month’s Tempi railway disaster and the capitalist system that puts profits before people. The general strike—which was called by the General Confederation of Greek Workers and public sector workers umbrella organization ADEDY—crippled transportation on land, in the air, and at sea. In the capital Athens, metro services and the tram network were shut down. Many flights were canceled due to a work stoppage by air traffic controllers, and many ferries remained docked.
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 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