Daily News Digest April 18, 2024
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”
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: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, andThe 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! Globaly, With the Current Gaza War, The Right of Assembly is Under Attack! 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:
I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. – Thomas Jefferson
Pocasts/Videos of the Day:
One Year into War, Sudan Wracked by World’s Largest Displacement and Hunger Crises
No Tech for Apartheid: Google Workers Arrested for Protesting Company’s $1.2B Contract with Israel
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 ford 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
‘Weasel Words’: Julian Assange’s Wife Slams US Assurances to UK The diplomatic note does nothing to relieve our family’s extreme distress about his future—his grim expectation of spending the rest of his life in isolation in U.S. prison for publishing award-winning journalism.” The wife of jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sharply criticized “assurances” the U.S. government made as the U.K. High Court considers allowing the 52-year-old Australian’s extradition to the United States, where he faces 175 years in prison. The U.S. document states that if extradited, “Assange will have the ability to raise and seek to rely upon at trial (which includes any sentencing hearing) the rights and protections given under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States,” though it points out that “a decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is exclusively within the purview of the U.S. courts.”
How Large Corporations Avoid Paying Taxes It is not unusual for large U.S. corporations to pay no U.S. income taxes despite making billions of dollars in profits. In fact, one study of corporate securities filings found 55 of America’s largest companies paid no income taxes in 2020 despite generating hefty profits, while netting $3.5 billion in aggregate tax rebates. Nearly half of those companies paid no U.S. income taxes for three successive years.1 Among those not paying income taxes for at least three years were profitable blue chips Nike, Inc. (NKE), FedEx Corp. (FDX), and Salesforce, Inc. (CRM).1 How do profitable corporations get away with paying no U.S. income tax? Their most lucrative (and perfectly legal) tax avoidance strategies include accelerated depreciation, the offshoring of profits, generous deductions for appreciated employee stock options, and tax credits. Key Takeaways
- Large companies use a maze of tax breaks and deductions to minimize and often eliminate their corporate income tax liabilities.
- Recent efforts to limit profit shifting to lower-tax countries have not been cost-effective.
- Accelerated depreciation, tax credits, and the expensing rules for employee stock options are other ways large companies cut their tax bills.
- The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 imposed a new alternative corporate minimum tax, while doling out $369 billion in additional tax credits over a decade.
The Following Liberal Truthout Essay Fails (Ignores) to Point Out That Tax Loopholes Have Allowed the 1% to Declare Less Total ‘Taxable’ Income and Pay Little or No Taxes! Actually, the Real ‘Rate of Taxation’ has had Little Effect on the Lack of Taxation on the 1%!: Millionaires’ Effective Tax Rate Has Been Cut by Half Since Mid-20th Century Between 1945 and 1980, households with a $1 million income or more paid effective tax rates as high as 60 percent. Millionaires are currently being taxed at half of the effective tax rate they were paying in the mid-20th century, a new report finds, as the tax code has become increasingly regressive and wealth inequality has reached record highs in recent years. from investments, the group found.
The Sad Spectacle of Lesser-Evil Elections One of the two major-party candidates for the presidency of the United State has allowed an decades-long ethnic cleansing to morph into a genocide, a horror that could be stopped with one phone call; has escalated the drilling of oil and gas despite the existential threat of global warming; forced railroad workers to swallow a bad contract by breaking their strike; and spent his Senate career as an errand boy for banks. And that’s the lesser evil! Joe Biden really is the lesser evil in this dismal race for the White House, and that such an office holder is easily not the worst candidate is surely sufficient to illustrate the decline of the world’s still extraordinarily dangerous superpower. Out of more than 300 million people, this is the best the country can do? Given the quite understandable reluctance (to put it mildly) for the types of folks who are reading these words to contemplate voting either for President Biden or Donald Trump, what do we do when the lesser evil is so evil that he has the sobriquet “Genocide” attached to his name?
Cori Bush: Lawmakers’ Warmongering Against Iran Is “Blatantly Unconstitutional” “We cannot let the warmongers win; our country and our world are calling for restraint,” said Rep. Cori Bush. In the wake of a series of retaliatory attacks launched by Iran on Saturday after Israel killed 16 people in a bombing of Iran’s embassy in Syria earlier this month, progressive lawmakers in the U.S. are warning fellow lawmakers against calling for a war against Iran — and instead are calling for an immediate ceasefire “on all sides” as Israel’s aggression in Palestine and beyond is causing conflict across the Middle East.
U.S. Funded Plestinian Genocide:
Workers Stage Sit-Ins to Demand Google End Israeli Cloud Contract “Just as people of conscience demanded institutions cut ties with apartheid South Africa in the 1980s, the time is now to rise up in support of Palestinian human rights,” said Google employees in an open letter. Following recent reports that Google may soon expand its tech collaboration with the Israeli government, dozens of the company’s employees on Tuesday entered its offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California and announced that they wouldn’t leave until executives pull out of its $1.2 billion cloud services and data contract with the country.
Environment:
Fund Climate! — Not Genocide! One of Many Ways to Begin to End Global Warming: Expose ‘Greenwashing’ — Tax the Polluters 100%! After World War II Rosa Luxenburg Coined the Slogan: ‘S0cialism or Barbaism’! Now the Slogan Should Be: ‘Ecosocialism or Ecocide’!
Capitalism’s Wars for Oil: When Bodies Start Stacking Up From Climate Change-Related Disasters, Will These Monsters be Held to Account?
Handing Taxpayers The Climate Cleanup Bill New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Democratic legislative leaders nix a landmark proposal that would have made Hochul’s fossil fuel donors pay for their pollution. In states across the country, lawmakers face a daunting budget question: Who should pay to deal with the climate mess created by the fossil fuel industry — taxpayers or the industry itself? In the Democratic stronghold of New York — which requires expensive infrastructure investments to fortify its cities and towns against flooding — environmental advocates say Democratic leaders are about to offer a troubling answer: New York taxpayers should foot the bill, not the party’s fossil fuel industry donors.
The Climate/Global Warming Emergency:
Playing Russian Roulette with our Only Planet: Middle East Gets Failing Grades on Climate Action Last September witnessed what used to be a truly rare weather phenomenon: a Mediterranean hurricane, or “medicane.” Once upon a time, the Mediterranean Sea simply didn’t get hot enough to produce hurricanes more than every few hundred (yes, few hundred!) years. In this case, however, Storm Daniel assaulted Libya with a biblical-style deluge for four straight days. It was enough to overwhelm the al-Bilad and Abu Mansour dams near the city of Derna, built in the 1970s to old cool-earth specifications. The resulting flood destroyed nearly 1,000 buildings, washing thousands of people out to sea, and displaced tens of thousands more.
From Florida to Australia, Global Coral Bleaching Could Soon Be Worst on Record Coral reefs are a reliable gauge of climate disruption because 90 percent of global warming is occurring in the oceans. A fter a year of ocean heat waves and unprecedented temperatures off the coast of Florida that alarmed conservationists last summer, the world is currently experiencing a “global coral reef bleaching event,” the fourth ever recorded and the second in the past decade, according to climate scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Wyden Says Spying Bill Would Force Americans to Become an ‘Agent for Big Brother’ “If you have access to any communications, the government can force you to help it spy,” said Sen. Ron Wyden. Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden took to the floor of the U.S. Senate on Tuesday to speak out against a chilling mass surveillance bill that lawmakers are working to rush through the upper chamber and send to President Joe Biden’s desk by the end of the week. The measure in question would reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for two years and massively expand the federal government’s warrantless surveillance power by requiring a wide range of businesses and individuals to cooperate with spying efforts.
Jim Crow Laws: FL Senate’s Tampa Bay Maps Are Racial Gerrymander, Residents Allege in Lawsuit The lawsuit claims Black voters were “packed” into one district, diluting their ability to influence outcomes elsewhere. Last week, five residents of the Tampa Bay area of Florida filed a federal lawsuit alleging that racial gerrymandering had diluted the voting power of Black voters in two state Senate districts.
Labor:
Economy:
Gold Has Set Historic Highs this Year as the Federal Reserve Has Reported Historic Losses According to Federal Reserve data, for the first time in its history, the Fed has been losing money on a consistent basis since September 28, 2022. As of the last reporting date of April 10, those losses came to a cumulative $162.9 billion. As the chart above from the Fed indicates, the monthly losses thus far in 2024 have ranged from a high of $13.4 billion in January to $5.5 billion in March. According to Federal Reserve data, for the first time in its history, the Fed has been losing money on a consistent basis since September 28, 2022. As of the last reporting date of April 10, those losses came to a cumulative $162.9 billion. As the chart above from the Fed indicates, the monthly losses thus far in 2024 have ranged from a high of $13.4 billion in January to $5.5 billion in March. We are not talking about unrealized losses on the debt securities the Fed holds on its balance sheet, which it acquired under its various Quantitative Easing programs. (The Fed does not mark to market the gains or losses on those securities on the basis that it plans to hold them to maturity.) We’re talking about real cash operating losses the Fed is experiencing from earning approximately 2 percent interest on its $6.97 trillion of mostly low-yielding debt securities while it continues to pay out 5.4 percent interest to the mega banks on Wall Street (and other Fed member banks) for the reserves they hold with the Fed; 5.3 percent interest it pays on reverse repo operations with the Fed; the eye-popping 6 percent dividend the Fed pays to member shareholder banks with assets of $10 billion or less; and the lesser of 6 percent or the yield on the 10-year Treasury note at the most recent auction prior to the dividend payment to banks with assets larger than $10 billion. An interesting market action is happening in tandem with the Fed’s growing operating losses. The price of gold has been setting historic new highs this year. From a futures front month price of around $2050 at the beginning of March, gold has topped $2,400 in recent days – dramatically outperforming the year-to-date performance of the S&P 500.
World:
War and Plunder in Eastern Congo The United States Institute of Peace on February 27 awarded its “Women Building Peace” award to Pétronille Vaweka. She responded: “I weep because at this moment, in … Goma women and children are dying … [and] thousands of families are forced from their villages.” Goma, population two million, is the capital of North Kivu province in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). For Guardian reporter Owen Jones, the DRC “is the site of the deadliest war since the fall of Adolf Hitler, and yet I doubt most people in the west are even aware of it.” Diminished U.S. and European press coverage of the region’s humanitarian crisis contributed to massive human suffering as, unwatched, lethal violence enabled the wholesale stealing of natural resources. One million refugees entered eastern DRC from neighboring Ruanda during and after that country’s genocide in 1994. By early 2023 one million newly displaced people had arrived in the Goma region. Within months there would be half a million more. Of the 7.1 milliondisplaced persons in the region now, 97% were displaced due to violent attacks by non-statemilitary forces. The 1.1 million children and 605,000 women who are malnourished exemplify the suffering there.
Education, 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
Low-Income Consumers Were Targeted in ACA Plan-Switching Scheme, Lawsuit Alleges Insurance call centers enrolled people in Affordable Care Act plans or switched their existing coverage without consent. A wide-ranging lawsuit filed April 12 outlines a moneymaking scheme by which large insurance sales agency call centers enrolled people into Affordable Care Act plans or switched their coverage, all without their permission. According to the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, two such call centers paid tens of thousands of dollars a day to buy names of people who responded to misleading advertisements touting free government “subsidies” and other rewards. In turn, sales agents used the information to either enroll them in ACA plans or switch their existing policies without their consent.