Daily News Digest August 5, 2023

Special Edition!

 Daily News Digest Archives

Images of the Day:

UPSer’s Reject Contract Givebacks

UPS Contract Vote Count  UPS Local-by-Local Results Sorted by Supplement.

How Low Can the UPS Union Bureaucracy Go? — As low as Necessary!: After No Vote, Contract Chaos at Ups Hoffa’s Package Division Director Denis Taylor has created massive confusion by announcing that the UPS contract is ratified, even though members Voted No and UPS  announced the contract was rejected and negotiations would resume. UPS Teamsters demand majority rule, a return to the bargaining table, and a vote on a new contract offer.  Here’s how the contract chaos unfolded. After UPSers Voted No to reject the contract, the company issued a statement that, “We are disappointed the Small Package and Freight tentative agreements were not ratified.” The company pledged to return to the bargaining table. 

Editorial Why the UPS Teamsters Tentative Agreement in not a ‘Historic’ Victory But Another Defeat! The tentative agreement is base upon an agreement between the Teamster Labor Leaders Who are in partnership with the UPS Owners! It is a reflection of the declining Condition of the United States Working Class, since the wage-price – freeze of 1972! Wages have not pace with inflation (Decling Value of the dollar ), real unemplyment is higH, and employers are hiring morE and more part-time workers!

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

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:

But Jack London bears comparison in this domain not only with the reformists. One can say with assurance that in 1907 not one of the revolutionary Marxists, not excluding Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, imagined so fully the ominous perspective of the alliance between finance capital and labor aristocracy. This suffices in itself to determine the specific weight of the novel. — Leon Trotsky and the Iron Heel

Podcasts/Vidoes of the Day:

Trump & the KKK Act: Carol Anderson on Reconstruction-Era Voting Rights Law Cited in Trump Indictment

 Blowback in Africa: U.S.-Trained Officer Overthrows Pro-U.S. Leader in Niger, Site of U.S. Drone Base

After World War II Rosa Luxenburg Coined the Slogan: ‘S0cialism or Barbaism’! Now the Slogan Should Be: ‘Ecosocialism or Ecocide’!

One of Many Ways to Begin to End Global Warming: Expose ‘Greenwashing’ — Tax the Polluters 100%!

Beware ADNOC’s Greenwashing Ahead of COP28 The concept of a fossil fuel company registering a website that mirrors the temperature rise the world is trying to limit itself to because of burning fossil fuels would be seen as deeply ironic by many. But not the deeply misguided leaders at Occidental  CCS should not be used as a smokescreen for real climate action or as an excuse to carry on drilling. We must transition away from oil and gas.   

‘Terrifying’: Scientists Raise Alarm Over Unprecedented Global Ocean Heat The global average ocean surface temperature is expected to rise even further in the coming months as El Niño strengthens. Climate scientists on Friday said the rapidly rising temperature of the planet’s oceans is cause for major concern, particularly as policymakers in the top fossil fuel emissions-producing countries show no sign of ending planet-heating oil and gas extraction.    The European Union’s climate agency, Copernicus Climate Change Service, reported this week that the average daily global ocean surface temperature across the planet reached 20.96°C (69.7°F), breaking the record of 20.95°C that was previously set in 2016.     The record set in 2016 was reported during an El Niño event, a naturally occurring phenomenon which causes warm water to rise to the surface off the western coast of South America. The weather pattern was at its strongest when the high ocean temperature was recorded that year.     El Niño is forming this year as well, but has not yet reached its strongest point—suggesting new records for ocean heat will be set in the coming months and potentially wreak havoc in the world’s marine ecosystems.

Employer Protection Agency (EPA): EPA Approved Fuel Ingredient Nearly Guaranteed to Cause Cancer Over a Lifetime The substance has a lifetime cancer risk more than 1 million times higher than what the agency usually finds acceptable. The Environmental Protection Agency approved a component of boat fuel made from discarded plastic that the agency’s own risk formula determined was so hazardous, everyone exposed to the substance continually over a lifetime would be expected to develop cancer. Current and former EPA scientists said that threat level is unheard of. It is a million times higher than what the agency usually considers acceptable for new chemicals and six times worse than the risk of lung cancer from a lifetime of smoking.    Federal law requires the EPA to conduct safety reviews before allowing new chemical products onto the market. If the agency finds that a substance causes unreasonable risk to health or the environment, the EPA is not allowed to approve it without first finding ways to reduce that risk.     But the agency did not do that in this case. Instead, the EPA decided its scientists were overstating the risks and gave Chevron the go-ahead to make the new boat fuel ingredient at its refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Though the substance can poison air and contaminate water, EPA officials mandated no remedies other than requiring workers to wear gloves, records show.

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 

A Vote for Trump or Biden is a Vote for Ecocide!

Supreme Court Coup D’état?: Alito’s Stab at Congress Violated Ethics Code, Senate Judiciary Democrats Say.   Democrats are urging the chief justice to take action on Alito after his recent comments to The Wall Street Journal. Conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito must be recused from future cases regarding legislation regulating the Court after his recent striking comments in an interview with The Wall Street Journal constituted a violation of the Court’s ethics code, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have said.     In a letter sent to Chief Justice John Roberts on Thursday, Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and fellow Judiciary Democrats urged Roberts to take steps to ensure that Alito is recused from cases that could involve legal disputes over the Supreme Court ethics bill recently passed through the committee, as well as Moore v. United States.      They cited a WSJ article last week in which Alito claimed that Congress has no power to regulate the Supreme Court — a statement that contradicts the basic principle of checks and balances and the Constitution, as many Democrats pointed out. “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period,” Alito had said.

Civil Rights/Blackliberation:

The first civil and human rights movement by and for Black people started during the Civil War and the period of Black Reconstruction that followed. It was a time of radical hopes for many freed slaves. But it was also a time of betrayal. Then President Andrew Johnson and the non-radical Republicans, in collusion with the Democratic Party, the party of slavery, sold out the early post-war promises for full equality and “40 acres and a mule”. Instead, the promise of equality was soon replaced by the restoration of the property rights of the former slave owners in the South. This was accomplished by the Compromise of 1877. Thomas Nast,at that times illestrated the results ofthat betrayal.

“Worse Than Slavery”

How did they accomplish this betrayal?  The answer is simple— The answer is simple —By the Use of Terrorism! — They used police and terroristic Ku Klux Klan violence. These extra-legal and ‘legal’ activities laid the basis for the overthrow of Black Reconstruction and the institutionalization of legal segregation (Jim Crow) in the former slave states. To enforce Jim Crow, Black people were, for decades, indiscriminately lynched and framed. — The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights Movement

Compassionate Release for 3 of Newburgh 4 Highlights FBI Misdeeds . . . “The FBI invented the conspiracy, identified the targets; manufactured the ordnance; federalized what would otherwise have been a state crime.” . . . Smith’s praise may well be warranted in this case. But the FBI has a long, dark history of targeting political dissidents and other marginalized communities. Muslim Americans were especially hard hit in the wake of the attacks of September 11th, 2001.     Take the case of the Newburgh Four. Just days before this latest Trump indictment was unsealed, a federal judge in New York granted compassionate release to three inmates who had been convicted in 2010 of terrorism and given the mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years in prison. These prisoners, David Williams, Onta Williams, and Laguerre Payen are three members of a group known as the Newburgh Four. The fourth, James Cromitie, is expected to apply separately for compassionate release.

 Labor:

Since 2008 Crash,There has Not Been a Recovery for the Majority!

Since June 2009 Americans have lived in the false reality of a recovering economy.  Various fake news and manipulated statistics have been used to create this false impression.  However, indicators that really count have not supported the false picture and were ignored. For example, it is normal in a recovering or expanding economy for the labor force participation rate to rise as people enter the workforce to take advantage of the job opportunities.  During the decades of the long recovery, from June 2009 through July 2023, the labor force participation rate consistently fell from 65.7 to 62.6percent. —Paul Craig Roberts, The Diminishing American Economy (Update) 

FRED Labor Force ParticipationRate:62.6%

Economy: 

US Leaders Split on China Policy On the one hand, U.S. policy aims to constrain China’s economic, political, and military development because it has now become the United States’ chief economic competitor and thus enemy. On the other hand, U.S. policy seeks to secure the many benefits to the United States of its companies’ trade with and investments in China. U.S. debates over “decoupling” the two countries’ economies versus the milder version of the same thing—“de-risking”—exemplify, on both sides, U.S. policy’s split approach to China.     The difficult reality for the United States is economic dependence on the world’s number two economy that deepens with China’s relentless march toward becoming the world’s number one. Likewise, China’s stunningly rapid growth over recent decades entangled it in a complex economic codependence with the U.S. market, the U.S. dollar, and U.S. interest rates. In stark contrast, neither the Soviet Union nor Russia ever offered the U.S. economic opportunities or competitive challenges comparable to what China now does. In this context, consider World Bank 2022 data on GDPs in Russia, Germany, China, and the United States: $1.5 trillion, $3.9 trillion, $14.7 trillion, and $20.9 trillion, respectively.

World:

Health. Welfare, and Education:

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

One Can Run for President While in Jail!: Eugene V. Debs: . . .Debs was sentenced on September 18, 1918, to ten years in prison and was also disenfranchised for life.[1] Debs presented what has been called his best-remembered statement at his sentencing hearing:[53]     Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.   Debs appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court. In its ruling on Debs v. United States, the court examined several statements Debs had made regarding World War I and socialism. While Debs had carefully worded his speeches in an attempt to comply with the Espionage Act, the Court found he had the intention and effect of obstructing the draft and military recruitment. Among other things, the Court cited Debs’s praise for those imprisoned for obstructing the draft. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. stated in his opinion that little attention was needed since Debs’s case was essentially the same as that of Schenck v. United States, in which the court had upheld a similar conviction. . . . Debs ran for president in the 1920 election while imprisoned in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. He received 914,191[55] votes (3.4 percent),[56] a slightly smaller percentage than he had won in 1912, when he received 6 percent, the highest number of votes for a Socialist Party presidential candidate in the United States.[5][57] [5][57] During his time in prison, Debs wrote a series of columns deeply critical of the prison system. They appeared in sanitized form in the Bell Syndicate and were published in his only book, Walls and Bars, with several added chapters. It was published posthumously.[1] [5][57] During his time in prison, Debs wrote a series of columns deeply critical of the prison system. They appeared in sanitized form in the Bell Syndicate and were published in his only book, Walls and Bars, with several added chapters. It was published posthumously.[1]   .[5][57] During his time in prison, Debs wrote a series of columns deeply critical of the prison system. They appeared in sanitized form in the Bell Syndicate and were published in his only book, Walls and Bars, with several added chapters. It was published posthumously.[1]. . . . In 1924, Debs was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the Finnish Socialist Karl H. Wiik on the grounds that “Debs started to work actively for peace during World War I, mainly because he considered the war to be in the interest of capitalism.”[66]