Daily News Digest Archives
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!
Daily News Digest February 24, 2017
Images of the Day:
Bendib: All the Palestine You Can Eat 
The Earth Has Capitalism
Quote of the Day:
I live in Georgia, so I checked SRTA the State Road and Tollway Authority. And there, right under “About” I found a page called “Investor Relations”. You can find an investor relations page for the Pennsylvania Turnpike and the Florida Turnpike and many other key roads connecting important US transportation corridors. It’s not universal. Some smaller tolling entities are self financing and their tolls actually cover operations. Some others, like the Indiana Toll Road are wholly owned outright by private investors. But if you live in a big city, and there are EZ Pass lanes sprouting up, you can pretty much bet they’re either wholly privately owned, or financed with money borrowed from the once percent via the device of bond issues. Directly taxing the rich to maintain the roads or for any other purpose is pretty much impossible in the US. Directly taxing the rest of us is not impossible, but it’s politically unpopular, especially since a whole school of politicians run for office claiming they ought to lower everybody’s taxes. So in the United States the traditional thing to do is to borrow from the rich, often at interest rates that would make pawn shop operators blush. This borrowing is called a “bond issue”, and bond issues are frequently though not always issued with the “full faith and credit” of a state, which means the state will pay the loan if the tolls from the road cannot. Payments on these kinds of bonds are often tax free, and the bonds are negotiable instruments which can be sold and resold. The business of issuing bonds is deliberately complicated and obscure, to conceal the fact that they great deals for the bond buyers and the law firms that handle the business, and bad business for everybody else. It’s not uncommon for a bond repayment with ancillary fees to be double the amount supposedly borrowed. Worse still, if the bond is guaranteed by a state, it becomes a scared priority obligation of state government, which in the name of “fiscal responsibility” has to be paid before employee wages, pensions and benefits, and other matters. Debts to the rich are always more important than debts or services to the poor. — EZ Pass — Tip of the Road Privatization Vacuum Cleaner
Videos of the Day:
Standing Rock and the Struggle Against Corporate Power
Whistleblower Teacher Says Defunded Public Schools Vulnerable to Mass Privatization
U.S.:
Dakota pipeline protest camp nearly empty as holdouts face removal By Terray Sylvester
Ten Examples of Resistance to Government Raids Resistance to unjust government action is the duty of all people who care about human rights. As Dr. King reminded us in his letter from a Birmingham jail, “Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.” By Bill Quigley 
EZ Pass — Tip of the Road Privatization Vacuum Cleaner Since EZ Pass has made toll collection possible without stopping traffic. The Obama administration increased the number of interstate highways where toll lanes are allowed, and the Trump administration is expected to rely even more heavily on borrowing from the rich for infrastructure projects rather than taxing them. By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
Environment:
Alarming New Coral Bleaching Event Has Begun at the Great Barrier Reef By Dahr Jamai
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Black Liberation/ Civil Rights:
Black Misleadership Class: High-Speed Sell-Outs The NAACP and the Urban League want to leave Internet neutrality to the tender mercies of the Republican-controlled Congress. But that’s nothing new. The Black Misleadership Class has been selling out the people’s interests to giant telecom companies since 2006, in exchange for organizational and campaign funding. Eminently buyable, they constantly seek to position themselves close to Power — and then cash out. by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
February is Black History Month:
March on Washington 1963: Original Draft of John Lewis’ Speech
(As the head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, John Lewis drafted a fiery speech to present to the crowds gathered at the March on Washington. But the night before the storied march, the speech was mistakenly leaked to the press, and as word of its contents began to spread, Lewis was summoned to a meeting with the march’s leaders and urged to tone down certain elements. Out of respect for leaders like A. Philip Randolph and Dr. Martin Luther King, Lewis edited his harsh criticism of the Kennedy administration’s civil rights bill, which he’d originally called “too little and too late,” and changed his call for a march “through the heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did” to a march “with the spirit of love and with the spirit of dignity that we have shown here today.”)
We march today for jobs and freedom, but we have nothing to be proud of, for hundreds and thousands of our brothers are not here. They have no money for their transportation, for they are receiving starvation wages, or no wages at all.
In good conscience, we cannot support wholeheartedly the administration’s civil rights bill, for it is too little and too late. There’s not one thing in the bill that will protect our people from police brutality.
This bill will not protect young children and old women from police dogs and fire hoses, for engaging in peaceful demonstrations: This bill will not protect the citizens in Danville, Virginia, who must live in constant fear in a police state. This bill will not protect the hundreds of people who have been arrested on trumped up charges. What about the three young men in Americus, Georgia, who face the death penalty for engaging in peaceful protest?
The voting section of this bill will not help thousands of black citizens who want to vote. It will not help the citizens of Mississippi, of Alabama and Georgia, who are qualified to vote but lack a sixth-grade education. “ONE MAN, ONE VOTE” is the African cry. It is ours, too. It must be ours.
People have been forced to leave their homes because they dared to exercise their right to register to vote. What is there in this bill to ensure the equality of a maid who earns $5 a week in the home of a family whose income is $100,000 a year?
For the first time in one hundred years this nation is being awakened to the fact that segregation is evil and that it must be destroyed in all forms. Your presence today proves that you have been aroused to the point of action.
We are now involved in a serious revolution. This nation is still a place of cheap political leaders who build their careers on immoral compromises and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic and social exploitation. What political leader here can stand up and say, “My party is the party of principles?” The party of Kennedy is also the party of Eastland. The party of Javits is also the party of Goldwater. Where is our party?
In some parts of the South we work in the fields from sunup to sundown for $12 a week. In Albany, Georgia, nine of our leaders have been indicted not by Dixiecrats but by the federal government for peaceful protest. But what did the federal government do when Albany’s deputy sheriff beat attorney C. B. King and left him half dead? What did the federal government do when local police officials kicked and assaulted the pregnant wife of Slater King, and she lost her baby?
It seems to me that the Albany indictment is part of a conspiracy on the part of the federal government and local politicians in the interest of expediency.
I want to know, which side is the federal government on?
The revolution is at hand, and we must free ourselves of the chains of political and economic slavery. The nonviolent revolution is saying, “We will not wait for the courts to act, for we have been waiting for hundreds of years. We will not wait for the President, the Justice Department, nor Congress, but we will take matters into our own hands and create a source of power, outside of any national structure, that could and would assure us a victory.”
To those who have said, “Be patient and wait,” we must say that “patience” is a dirty and nasty word. We cannot be patient, we do not want to be free gradually. We want our freedom, and we want it now. We cannot depend on any political party, for both the Democrats and the Republicans have betrayed the basic principles of the Declaration of Independence.
We all recognize the fact that if any radical social, political and economic changes are to take place in our society, the people, the masses, must bring them about. In the struggle, we must seek more than civil rights; we must work for the community of love, peace and true brotherhood. Our minds, souls and hearts cannot rest until freedom and justice exist for all people.
The revolution is a serious one. Mr. Kennedy is trying to take the revolution out of the streets and put it into the courts. Listen, Mr. Kennedy. Listen, Mr. Congressman. Listen, fellow citizens. The black masses are on the march for jobs and freedom, and we must say to the politicians that there won’t be a “cooling-off” period.
All of us must get in the revolution. Get in and stay in the streets of every city, every village and every hamlet of this nation until true freedom comes, until the revolution is complete. In the Delta of Mississippi, in southwest Georgia, in Alabama, Harlem, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and all over this nation, the black masses are on the march!
We won’t stop now. All of the forces of Eastland, Bamett, Wallace and Thurmond won’t stop this revolution. The time will come when we will not confine our marching to Washington. We will march through the South, through the heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did. We shall pursue our own scorched earth policy and burn Jim Crow to the ground — nonviolently. We shall fragment the South into a thousand pieces and put them back together in the image of democracy. We will make the action of the past few months look petty. And I say to you, WAKE UP AMERICA!
