Daily News Digest May 22, 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:
U.S. Robber Barron Insider Traders
Satellites Reveal Widespread Decline In Global Lake Water Storage
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:
In my books Racist America and The White Racial Frame — both now banned in some U.S. schools — I have argued that this country’s long dominant white racial frame operates in part through the suppression of critical thought and the promotion of ignorance on many U.S. racial matters. Certainly, it helps whites to isolate themselves in white racial thought and action silos. It helps as well to maintain white racial privilege by shaping the way most whites and some other Americans, including generations of children, come to understand racism-related issues and in that way, to constantly reinforce systemic racism. — How Can We Resist Book Bans? This Banned Author Has Ideas.
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
Even at Ground Zero of the Climate Crisis Denial Remains the Norm
The Declaration of Independence Says We Have the Right to Overthrow the Government
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
America’s Wars and the US Debt Crisis To surmount the debt crisis, America needs to stop feeding the Military-Industrial Complex, the most powerful lobby in Washington. In the year 2000, the U.S. government debt was $3.5 trillion, equal to 35% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). By 2022, the debt was $24 trillion, equal to 95% of GDP. The U.S. debt is soaring, hence America’s current debt crisis. Yet both Republicans and Democrats are missing the solution: stopping America’s wars of choice and slashing military outlays. Suppose the government’s debt had remained at a modest 35% of GDP, as in 2000. Today’s debt would be $9 billion, as opposed to $24 trillion. Why did the U.S. government incur the excess $15 trillion in debt? The single biggest answer is the U.S. government’s addiction to war and military spending. According to the Watson Institute at Brown University, the cost of U.S. wars from fiscal year 2001 to fiscal year 2022 amounted to a whopping $8 trillion, more than half of the extra $15 trillion in debt. The other $7 trillion arose roughly equally from budget deficits caused by the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hunger in America Statistics Hunger and food insecurity are real issues for some American families. With a total population of approximately 330 million people, roughly 12% are food insecure. They do not have reliable, steady access to food. In this article, we will dive in and look at specific statistics regarding hunger in the United States including: Quick Hunger Statistics
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12% of the population in the US struggle with hunger -about 41 million people
- There are 38 million Americans that struggle with poverty
- Households with children that are headed by a single woman have the highest rate of food insecurity
- 7% of all children do not know where their next meal is coming from
- 22 million children rely on school for their meals
- 12% of senior citizens experience food insecurity
- Poverty is directly correlated to hunger, and the poverty rate is going down
- The average monthly income for those who use food assistance programs is $813/month
- The average cost of a meal in America is $3.02.
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New Mexico, Mississippi and Louisiana have some of the highest rates of hunger
Drone Terrorism: ‘They’re All Liars’: Pentagon Under Fire After US Drone Victim ID’d as Farmer With No Al-Qaeda Ties Family members and people who knew Lotfi Hassan Misto described him as “a kind, hard-working man whose ‘whole life was spent poor,'” The Washington Post reported.The Pentagon said earlier this month, without providing evidence, that a U.S. drone strike in northwest Syria killed a “senior al-Qaeda leader.”
The U.S. Still Owes Money to Family of 10 Afghans It Killed In “Horrible Mistake” Some survivors of the 2021 drone strike are struggling in California as they wait for the U.S. to make good on a promised condolence payment. NEARLY TWO YEARS after the U.S. killed 10 members of an Afghan family, including seven children, in a drone strike that prompted a rare apology from the Pentagon, the U.S. government has yet to make good on a pledge to compensate surviving relatives.
House Tackles Congressional Corruption – Yet Again Corruption in congress continues apace. Legislators get the inside skinny on a particular industry, including specific companies, and then make a killing executing stock trades on this illegal insider knowledge. A recent egregious example is Florida Democrat Lois Frankel. This representative sold shares of First Republic Bank, which was collapsing, and bought stock in the bank that took it over, namely J. P. Morgan. Frankel first sold her First Republic shares on March 16, and on March 22, “Frankel also purchased shares in J.P. Morgan,” according to Newsweek, May 1. The Treasury department started arranging bank actions to help First Republic March 16. So the bank had been in big trouble before that, the government knew about it, and this was the environment in which Frankel made her trades.
Corporate Food Chains Are Ripping You Off Oftentimes, when you suspect you’re being gouged by corporate price fixers, you’re right. Take the rat-a-tat-tat of today’s price jumps at supermarkets and chain restaurants. They make you want to race to the cash register before they raise prices again. No, no cry the CEOs of food giants, it’s not us, it’s “supply chain disruptions.” Then corporate politicians and economists chime in with old platitudes about the invisible hand of “supply and demand” while media know-nothings pile on, blathering about “ne’er-do-wells” causing a labor shortage. But that’s hogwash — your suspicions are right: It’s plain old price fixing by avaricious food monopolies.
DC Police Officer Indicted for Sharing Sensitive Jan. 6 Info With Proud Boys Lt. Shane Lamond of the Metro Police Department had been privately communicating with the Proud Boys since 2019. Lt. Shane Lamond was arrested on Friday, charged with one count of obstruction of justice and three counts of making false statements to investigators. The grand jury indictment charges stem from his communications with Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, and other members of the white supremacist organization, both after a pro-Trump rally in December 2020, when Tarrio stole and burned a “Black Lives Matter” banner, as well as following the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol building
Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!:
Biden’s Very Bad Climate Policies Are Also Very Bad Politics The Biden administration has approved more oil and gas drilling permits on public lands than the Trump administration did over an equivalent period of time. And his base—especially younger voters who helped propel him to the White House—are not impressed.
New York City is Sinking Due To Weight of Its Skyscrapers, New Research Finds City is sinking approximately 1-2mm each year on average, worsening effects of sea level rise and flooding threat New York City is sinking in part due to the extraordinary weight of its vertiginous buildings, worsening the flooding threat posed to the metropolis from the rising seas, new research has found. The Big Apple may be the city that never sleeps but it is a city that certainly sinks, subsiding by approximately 1-2mm each year on average, with some areas of New York City plunging at double this rate, according to researchers.
The Climate Numbers Blackrock Won’t Crunch For a company that prides itself on providing accurate numbers to clients so they can make informed fiduciary decisions, it is shocking how intent BlackRock is to underplay the climate devastation that will be unleashed by its invesmtents.
Fossil Fuel Firms Owe Climate Reparations Of $209bn a Year, Says Study Groundbreaking analysis by One Earth is first to quantify economic burden caused by individual companies The world’s top fossil fuel companies owe at least $209bn in annual climate reparations to compensate communities most damaged by their polluting business and decades of lies, a new study calculates. BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Total, Saudi Arabia’s state oil company and Chevron are among the largest 21 polluters responsible for $5.4tn (£4.3tn) in drought, wildfires, sea level rise, and melting glaciers among other climate catastrophes expected between 2025 and 2050, according to groundbreaking analysis published in the journal One Earth.
How to Rapidly Reduce Fossil Fuel Use (or Why Rationing Works Better Than Markets) The burning of fossil fuels—oil, coal, natural gas—is responsible for nearly 90 percent of global carbon emissions. Despite almost-universal recognition of the need to reduce the use of those fossil fuels, the industrialized world is having the hardest time breaking its addiction. The economic rebound from the COVID-19 shutdowns generated the largest ever increase in global emissions from fossil fuels in 2021—around 2 billion tons. The increase in 2022 was considerably more modest—thanks to a surge in renewable energy investments—but it was an increase nonetheless. Meanwhile, subsidies for fossil fuel consumption rose to a record $1 trillion last year.
More Than Half of the World’s Lakes Have Shrunk in Past 30 Years, Study Finds Lakes and reservoirs have lost 22 gigatonnes a year since 1992, driven by factors including global heating and human consumption.More than half of the world’s large lakes and reservoirs have shrunk since the early 1990s – chiefly because of the climate crisis and human consumption – intensifying concerns about water supply for agriculture, hydropower and human consumption, a study has found.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
3 Tennessee Teens Overdosed and 2 Died. Now the Survivor Is Charged With Murder. Overdose deaths continue to rise, but harm reduction advocates say criminalizing drug use won’t save lives. An estimated 109,680 people died of a drug overdose in 2022. Police and policy makers at all levels of government spent billions of dollars over the past decade attempting to contain this crisis, but 2022 saw the highest death toll on record, with fatalities exceeding 100,000 for the second year in a row.
‘You Hate Him More Than You Love Your Own Family,’ Nebraska Lawmaker With Trans Kid Says to GOP “I am not asking you to sit here through late nights to vote on these bills that we’re dragging out,” said state Sen. Megan Hunt as a GOP colleague complained about a missed family event. “I’m asking you to love your family more than you hate mine.”
Labor:
Rail Workers Union Wins ‘Trailblazing’ Paid Sick Leave Deal With Norfolk Southern “The BLET is currently working to secure similar sick leave agreements with the other Class 1 railroads,” said the union’s national president, “and I hope this settlement will help bring those negotiations to a positive conclusion.” A leading railroad workers’ union this week struck a landmark deal with industry giant Norfolk Southern to provide more than 3,300 employees up to seven days of paid sick leave each year.
Economy:
Shadow Government Statistics Daily Upate May 19th to 23rd
Intensifying signs of faltering economic activity put the lie to the FOMC’s “Overheating Economy” Fairy Tale: April 2023 Existing Homes plunged anew, by a deepening 23.2% (-23.2%) from one year ago.
- Benchmarked April Building Permits and Housing Starts continued in meaningful annual collapse.
- April Industrial Production detail showed headline quarterly contractions in both Fourth-Quarter 2022 and First-Quarter 2023, a traditional Recession pattern, dominated by weakening Manufacturing, with some positive offset in Mining from oil-price triggered production.
- April Real Retail Sales signaled Recession.
- April Cass® Freight Index continued in monthly and annual decline.
- Early May 2023 Consumer Sentiment plunged 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
World:
Ecuador: Banker-President Lasso Carries Out Power Grab Guillermo Lasso, Ecuador’s banker-president, has used Article 148 of the Constitution – known as the “muerte cruzada” or “mutual death” – to shut down the National Congress just two hours before the vote on his impeachment trial for corruption was due to begin. Elections must now be called within six months to renew both the executive (the president) and the legislature (the Congress), but in the interim, the president remains in office and rules by decree without parliamentary oversight. It is therefore a power grab or, as some have described it, an autogolpe (a self-coup).
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