Daily News Digest May 18, 2023

Daily News Digest Archives

Capitalism is Now a Worldwide Threat to Humanity! It is on the Fast Track to Global Warming and/or Nuclear War Catastrophes!

Warning — Lives are at Stake!!: The Supreme Court May Deregulate!:  Marjorie Cohn: SCOTUS Case May Slash Regulation of Everything From Workers’ Rights to Clean Air Overruling “Chevron deference” could imperil our health, safety, labor, air, water, food and environmental protections.     In an ominous but unsurprising development, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that may well imperil our health, safety, labor, clean air and water, food and environmental protections. On May 1, the court decided to reconsider its 40-year-old precedent in the current case of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.     Courts have used Chevron deference to:

• Uphold the National Labor Relations Board’s decision that live-haul workers are employees entitled to protections of the National Labor Relations Act;

• Sustain the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) rule that requires states to reduce emissions from power plants that travel across state lines and harm downwind states;
• Affirm the Department of Labor’s interpretation of portions of the Black Lung Benefits Act that enable coal miners afflicted with black lung disease to receive compensation; and
• Accept the EPA’s revision of regulations under the Toxic Substances Control Act to provide additional protection from exposure to lead paint.    

If the high court overrules Chevron, judges would be free to strike down regulations enacted by agencies such as the National Labor Relations Board, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Labor. Right-wing judges could overturn regulations that benefit workers or limit climate change.

Images of the Day:

Mike Luckovich: Florida Curriculum

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:

Sliding Scale of Wages and Sliding Scale of Hours: Under the conditions of disintegrating capitalism, the masses continue to live the meagerized life of the oppressed, threatened now more than at any other time with the danger of being cast into the pit of pauperism. They must defend their mouthful of bread, if they cannot increase or better it. There is neither the need nor the opportunity to enumerate here those separate, partial demands which time and again arise on the basis of concrete circumstances – national, local, trade union. But two basic economic afflictions, in which is summarized the increasing absurdity of the capitalist system, that is, unemployment and high prices, demand generalized slogans and methods of struggle.    The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the politics of the capitalists which, to a considerable degree, like the politics of their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole burden of militarism, the crisis, the disorganization of the monetary system and all other scourges stemming from capitalism’s death agony upon the backs of the toilers. The Fourth International demands employment and decent living conditions for all.     Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick. Against a bounding rise in prices, which with the approach of war will assume an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.     Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat cannot permit the transformation of an increasing section of the workers into chronically unemployed paupers, living off the slops of a crumbling society. The right to employment is the only serious right left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is being shorn from him at every step. Against unemployment, “structural” as well as “conjunctural,” the time is ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices. It is impossible to accept any other program for the present catastrophic period.     — Leon Trotsky, The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International

Videos/Podcasts of the Day:

BNSF’s Sick Leave Policies Place Heavy Burden on Working Mothers: Jennifer Ross’s Story  Being a railroad mother gets short shrift. The lack of women in the rail crafts primarily drives that sentiment, but certainly does not excuse it. Long gone are the days where June Cleaver stays home in her house apron. Women are in the work force, belong in the work force and will continue to achieve great things in the work force. Heck, BNSF is led by a woman and mother. Gender roles have shifted. 

[Podcast] Class Struggle in Africa: Part One

 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 

US National Security Experts: Give Peace in Ukraine a Chance  A full-page ad in The New York Times calls the war an “unmitigated disaster,” and urges President Joe Biden and Congress to help bring it to an end “speedily through diplomacy.”      TheNew York Timespublished a full-page advertisement signed by 15 U.S. national security experts about the war in Ukraine. It was headed “The U.S. Should Be a Force for Peace in the World,” and was drafted by the Eisenhower Media Network.     While condemning Russia’s invasion, the statement provides a more objective account of the crisis in Ukraine than the U.S. government or TheNew York Times has previously presented to the public, including the disastrous U.S. role in NATO expansion, the warnings ignored by successive U.S. administrations, and the escalating tensions that ultimately led to war.

Inside The Pentagon’s New “Perception Management” Office to Counter Disinformation “Perception management” came to prominence during the Reagan administration, which used the term to describe its propaganda efforts.     Not long after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration launched what it called the Office of Strategic Influence, which would seek to “counter the enemy’s perception management” in the so-called war on terror. But it quickly became clear that the office, operating under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, would be managing those perceptions with its own disinformation.     As the New York Times reported at the time, its work was to “provide news items, possibly including false ones, to foreign journalists in an effort to influence overseas opinion.” In the nascent Internet age, observers worried the propaganda could boomerang back on Americans.Patrick Lawrence: The USA’s Soviet-Style President We are in for 19 months of relentless, insultingly transparent spin by way of which a patently incompetent man will be purveyed as commander in chief for another four years.     We are in for 19 months of relentless, insultingly transparent spin by way of which a patently incompetent man will be purveyed as commander in chief for another four years. Joe Biden announces — via a video, not in person so we can see him live — that he will run for reelection in 2024. Immediately we read that Forty-Six is playing his cards close to his chest, letting his record speak for itself — a daring proposition — and has no plans to begin campaigning in earnest, not even in those states we commonly refer to as “swing.”  

   Inside The Pentagon’s New “Perception Management” Office to Counter Disinformation “Perception management” came to prominence during the Reagan administration, which used the term to describe its propaganda efforts.     Not long after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration launched what it called the Office of Strategic Influence, which would seek to “counter the enemy’s perception management” in the so-called war on terror. But it quickly became clear that the office, operating under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, would be managing those perceptions with its own disinformation.     As the New York Times reported at the time, its work was to “provide news items, possibly including false ones, to foreign journalists in an effort to influence overseas opinion.” In the nascent Internet age, observers worried the propaganda could boomerang back on Americans. 

Why We Should Abolish the Super-Rich In many parts of the world, inequality is spiraling out of control. The basic facts have become depressingly familiar.     In the United States, the top 0.1 percent now control about the same amount of wealth as the bottom 90 percent of the entire population. Globally, the richest eight individuals possess as much wealth as half the entire planet.     The United States could completely eradicate homelessness by taxing away just 2 percent of the wealth of a mere two billionaires, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. If we redistributed 2 percent of the wealth of all the world’s billionaires, leaving completely untouched the wealth of well over 99.9 percent of the world’s population, we could eliminate extreme poverty entirely. Billionaires, meanwhile, would likely not even lose any money in the process since they typically earn more than 2 percent annually off their wealth.

Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!:

Global Heat Will Hit New Records in Next Five Years Global temperature to surge 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels in at least one year Global temperatures are likely to surge to record levels in the next five years, fueled by heat-trapping greenhouse gases and a naturally occurring El Niño event, according to a report issued on May 17 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). 

New U.S. Power Plant Rules Exclude ‘Vast Majority’ of Gas Plants The Biden administration’s long-awaited plan to regulate emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants covers only 147 of 3,400 such facilities in the United States and relies heavily on costly technologies like carbon capture and hydrogen, critics say.     The proposal, which requires coal stations and large gas plants to reduce or capture 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions by 2038, “would drive dramatic changes across the electric sector,” according to the Financial Post. It could spur early closures of some fossil-fired plants and accelerate the power sector’s embrace of renewables, “but regulators softened the immediate impact,” focusing on the largest emitters and ignoring “peaker plants” that fire up to meet demand spikes.

Why is AOC Parroting Nuclear Industry Propaganda?   After rolling out her ideas for Green New Deal at a press conference with Senator Ed Markey (right), AOC began to vacillate over inclusion or not of nuclear power. Her position today remains unclear. (Photo: Senate Democrats/Wikimedia Commons).    Note: During a visit to Japan, including to the destroyed Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant site, US Representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, an outspoken Democrat from Queens, New York, made a series of Instagram posts. Despite being loaded with errors of fact and science, her pronouncements were seized upon by the nuclear power propagandists, heralding her as the latest defector from the “Left” to the pro-nuclear power cause — even though nuclear power is in fact not a partisan issue; a majority of elected Democrats support it. AOC did not state overtly that she supported nuclear power. But her errors are costly — to her credibility, as well as to the climate cause.

Civil Rights/Black Liberation: 

Research Reveals Staggering Rate of Premature Black Deaths in US A higher mortality rate among Black Americans resulted in 1.63 million excess deaths over two decades. Research has long shown that Black people live sicker lives and die younger than white people.     Now a new study, published Tuesday in JAMA, casts the nation’s racial inequities in stark relief, finding that the higher mortality rate among Black Americans resulted in 1.63 million excess deaths relative to white Americans over more than two decades.     Because so many Black people die young — with many years of life ahead of them — their higher mortality rate from 1999 to 2020 resulted in a cumulative loss of more than 80 million years of life compared with the white population, the study showed.

Labor:

Workers Need Permanent Cost of Living Wage Increases!: Rising Inflation Brings Striking Fall in Real Wages, ILO Report Finds Well-designed policy measures are needed urgently to prevent the deepening of existing levels of poverty, inequality and social unrest, according to the latest ILO report on global wages.

The Middle Class Is Being Systematically Destroyed  If you wanted to destroy the middle class, one way that you could accomplish that goal would be to flood the system with money.  Of course that is precisely what we have witnessed over the past few years.      Our leaders have pumped trillions of new dollars into the system, and the wealthy have gotten much, much wealthier.   But meanwhile, the rest of us have seen the cost of living rise much faster than our paychecks have.  As a result, we are getting poorer and the middle class is shrinking.     Over time, our capitalist economy has steadily evolved into a system where almost all of the wealth and almost all of the power are concentrated in the hands of giant institutions. Collectively, big government and big corporations run virtually everything, and this system of “corporate socialism” funnels tremendous amount of wealth into the pockets of a very small minority of the population. 

Fast Fashion Harms Workers and the Planet To cheaply and quickly reproduce the latest styles, manufacturers contract to companies in some of the poorest countries in the world where wages are low and standards of protection for the workers and the environment are ignored.

Economy:

Shadow Government Statistics Daily Update May 16^th to 17th

• No Overheating Economy Here: April 2023 Industrial Production detail showed headline quarter-to-quarter contractions in both Fourth-Quarter 2022 and First-Quarter 2023 aggregate activity [a traditional Recession pattern], dominated by weakening Manufacturing, with some positive offset in Mining from oil-price triggered production.

• April Real Retail Sales also continued signaling Recession. — April Cass® Freight Index continued in monthly and annual decline.

• Early May 2023 Consumer Sentiment declined anew, shy by a deepening 42.9% (-42.9%) [previously 37.1% (-37.1%) in April] of ever recovering its February 2020 pre-Pandemic peak.

Americans Stampeded into TreasuryDirect Last Year, Opening Almost 3 Million New Accounts to Capture Rising Yields on Savings Bonds and Treasurys Last year, newspapers across America were buzzing with the enticing yields available on U.S. savings bonds, Treasury bills and Treasury notes. It’s now apparent that millions of Americans got the message to move out of the meager yields being offered on savings accounts and money market at their bank and move to the free accounts and government-backed instruments offered by TreasuryDirect.gov. Investors, small and large, can buy directly from the U.S. Treasury at this site.     According to data provided by TreasuryDirect, new account openings in 2022 surged to a total of 2,956,790 from a total of 460,057 in 2021 – an increase of 543 percent in one year. Even more impressive, the total par value of the savings bonds and Treasury securities purchased in those accounts went from $9,711,113,646 in 2021 to $87,775,900,168 in 2022 – an 804 percent increase. (See chart below using data from TreasuryDirect.)

World:

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 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 

At Medicare for All Town Hall, Sanders Says For-Profit System Is ‘Failing’ and Must End “The current healthcare system in the United States is totally broken, it is totally dysfunctional, and it is extremely cruel.”” The American people understand that healthcare is a human right,” said the Vermont senator.

Big Pharma’s Illegal Profiteering: Big Pharma’s ‘Rampant Corporate Lawlessness’ Cost Americans $40 Billion in 2019: Report “Big Pharma is manipulating and breaking the law to expand corporate profits at the expense of patients and taxpayers.” The U.S. pharmaceutical industry’s aggressive and often unlawful efforts to prevent competition and keep drug prices elevated cost American patients, insurers, and federal health programs more than $40 billion in 2019 alone, according to a report released Tuesday.     The new report—put out by the American Economic Liberties Project and the Initiative for Medicines, Access, and Knowledge (I-MAK)—focuses specifically on pharmaceutical companies’ antitrust law violations, which the groups say are a key reason why U.S. drug prices are astonishingly high compared to those of other rich nations.