DEMOCRATS ARE OFFICIALLY REPUBLICANS!

By Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report.August 29, 2020 | EDUCATE!

The Democrats Claim To Be The Opposition Party, But They Seek Out Republicans, Hate The Left Of Their Own Party, And Don’t Seem To Care If They Lose The Election.

“Biden’s slogan may as well be He’s Not Trump because that is all the Democrats had to say.”

Become;

The Democratic Party has ended any debate or dispute about its true nature. It is a party representing neo-liberal interests and international gangsterism, just like their putative opposition, the Republican party.

Even a cursory observation of the recent Democratic National Convention proves that this assessment is correct. There were paeans of love to the late warmonger John McCain and even an appearance from his widow. A special segment was set aside for Republicans like John Kasich whose speech was used in part to beat down progressives and make clear that Joe Biden wants nothing to do with them. Not to be outdone with Kasich and McCain’s ghost, war criminal Colin Powell was dragged out to put the bipartisan imperialist seal of approval on Biden.

The convention was high on production value but skimpy on details. Speaker after speaker repeated that Donald Trump is a very bad, terrible, awful, pandemic denier who cozies up to dictators. They didn’t say how they would undo his evil deeds or make life better for the average person in this country. The awful Biden slogan of Build Back Better is meaningless. That of course is why they use it. The slogan may as well be He’s Not Trump because that is all the Democrats had to say.

“War criminal Colin Powell was dragged out to put the bipartisan imperialist seal of approval on Biden.”

No one knows that there are any Biden Republicans. The presence of Republicans at the convention and a handful of prominent people known colloquially as “never Trumpers” didn’t help Hillary Clinton in 2016. New York Senator Charles Schumer can never live down his 2016 prediction. “For every blue-collar Democrat we will lose in western Pennsylvania we will pick up two, three moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” The Democrats are letting us know two things. One, they are de facto Republicans and seek out Republican voters by espousing conservative policies. Two, they aren’t particularly concerned about losing. They hope to thread the needle and win by using a strategy proven to be a failure. But devotion to their donors and their interests outweigh everything else, including winning. Disappearing any expectation of progressive policies is a victory for them.

The serious Democratic campaign took place earlier this year, when the party establishment took great pains to defeat Bernie Sanders. Black people were played by their misleaders into supporting the same neo-liberal policies that are destroying their lives. It was not difficult to do with a voting block that has whittled down its demands to just one, keeping Republicans out of office. Black primary voters were the marks in the con game, as the Democrats coalesced around Biden and Sanders agreed to play the role of dupe.

“Black people were played by their misleaders into supporting the same neo-liberal policies that are destroying their lives.”

Lest we forget, Barack Obama once declared himself to be a “moderate Republican.” Not that he needed to say it after repeatedly proclaiming his admiration for Ronald Reagan. There should be no surprise that his party now dispenses with any pretense. If Democrats choose to vote for Biden it should be with honesty and eyes wide open. There will be no holding feet to the fire, moving anyone left, or expecting Medicare for All or a minimum wage increase. A Republican will be inaugurated president in January 2021. No one should expect anything different.

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well at patreon.com/margaretkimberley and she regularly posts on Twitter @freedomrideblog. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

Corona-virus, Militarism And The End Of An Illusion…

People are waking people up to the fact that the US state and government does not belong to them but to a capitalist class that is only looking out for itself. The ‘sheltering in place’ order is starting to look like a convenient tool for the state to manage the growing frustration, fear and anger.”

“The nation that considers itself to be the apex of capitalist achievement on planet Earth turns out to have no health care system worthy of the name – a testament to the sucking moral vacuum at America’s imperial, white settler colony core. A lowly virus – a form of being that exists at the very border between “life” and “not-life” – has revealed the world’s superpower as butt-naked and very much afraid. (Glen Ford)

Coronavirus and second economic collapse in just ten years should finally put to rest the fairy-tale of U.S. Exceptionalism.
Trump’s “Make America Great” and Obama’s “U.S. Exceptionalism” are slogans that reflect an ongoing commitment to the normalized assumption of white racial and civilizational superiority. The idea that the territory that became the United States, and its settler population, were specially anointed by a god who gave them providence over the land and the Indigenous people is so ingrained in the national imagination that its extension to rationalize and justify U.S. imperialist policies was seamless.
The U.S. over the years shamelessly boasted of its “greatness” and being number one in all things, including having the best healthcare system in the world. And even though Bernie Sanders and healthcare movements in the U.S. consistently revealed the devastating reality of a system that generated billions of dollars for the healthcare industry while simultaneously generating unnecessary deaths, bankruptcies and millions without coverage — the mythology that the U.S. had a workable system remained in place, until now.
The coronavirus has dramatically stripped away the veneer of the for-profit healthcare system to expose a patchworked and completely dysfunctional system held together by state programs and two national programs, Medicare and Medicaid, that are still unable to provide basic coverage to millions of citizens and non-citizens.

 

 

The mythology that the U.S. had a workable system remained in place, until now.”

 

But it is not just the absence of a public healthcare system that exposes the lie of U.S. exceptionalism. Black Alliance for Peace Coordinating Committee and Black Agenda Report’s Margaret Kimberley writes that COVID-19 is not just a health emergency but it has exposed the causes of inequality and suffering in the U.S.
And what is the source of inequality and suffering?
Union del Barrio says that coronavirus has “unmasked the sick brutality of capitalism .”
The brutality and criminality of the colonial/capitalist system of state violence is reflected most graphically by the illegal and immoral policy of sanctions imposed on 39 nations by the U.S. and its Western allies. Sara Flounders from the International Action Center exposes the role of Big Pharma as part of U.S. effort to destroy the capacity of nations to protect their population’s health. She details the inhumane policies being imposed on nations like Venezuela and Iran, that are being denied the ability to import medicines and medical equipment to counter the COVID-19 pandemic. to accept draconian restrictions on basic civil liberties and human rights under the guise of the public health emergency.
BAP is concerned with the troubling signs that the global recession and disruption of the national economy that has resulted from the coronavirus crisis is now seen as a serious security threat by the capitalist oligarchy. The state, with the full support of corporate media, appears to be a conditioning the public to accept draconian restrictions on basic civil liberties and human rights under the guise of the public health emergency.

 

“Venezuela, Cuba and Iran are being denied the ability to import medicines.”

 

Ahjama Umi raises the very important point that we must resist efforts to panic the public into supporting a growing police state.
It is becoming clear that if the issue is really about containing the spread of the virus, there are effective protocols for combatting pandemics. Mark P. Fancher, a member of BAP’s Africa Team, discusses the measures that are in place in Africa, in nations like Nigeria, for preventing, tracking and containing infection; measures that could have been easily applied to the U.S.
But with the repressive proclivities of the U.S. national security state, it is important that we view critically some of the measures being called for: from the use of the military to national lockdowns.
The “sheltering in place” order is starting to look like a convenient tool for the state to manage the growing frustration, fear and anger as it becomes apparent that the economic and racially stratified healthcare delivery system are unable to protect the lives of the working class.
As the system finds itself immersed in a crisis that is deepening by the day, the propensity for violence and ferocious repression on the part of the U.S. state must be seen as a real threat to the people. BAP will continue to monitor the situation. The oppressed should have no illusions.
The conservative pro-business measures offered by the capitalist class to deal with the consequences of COVID-19 are waking people up to the fact that the state and government does not belong to them but to a capitalist class that is only looking out for itself.
That revelation of truth will be the only positive that will emerge from the crisis.
Netfa, Brandon, Vanessa, Jaribu, Margaret, Dedan, YahNe, Paul, Ajamu
BAP Coordinating Committee

The Black Alliance for Peace is a people(s)-centered human rights project against war, repression and imperialism.

 

“TRUE REVOLUTION COMES FROM TRUE REVULSION; When things get bad enough the Kitten will kill the Lion” Are we there yet brothers & sisters! New & Used Left Wing & Progressive Books, Memorabilia – http://www.facebook.com/Fahrenheit451bookstore/

 

Corporate America Fleeced Us Again!

The coronavirus bill is an orgy of corporate welfare that rivals the 2008 bailout.
BY Moe Tkacik

Boeing’s CEO of Commercial Airplanes Stanley Deal speaks at the annual Aviation Summit in Washington, D.C., on March 5. Boeing, its business floundering after a a series of debacles, was quick to ask for a coronavirus bailout–before the pandemic affected it at all. It’s an audacious power grab by the same bunch of monstrous grifters who’ve spent the past 20 years reverse mortgaging the American economy to finance Third World dictator lifestyles.

The fundamental spirit of the CARES Act, the diabolical plutocrat bailout the Senate just passed, is summed up by the fact that it was inspired by the 60 billion dollar demand of a company whose business had not yet even been impacted by coronavirus.
You read that right. When Boeing made its humble plea for $60 billion in coronavirus relief funds on Saint Patrick’s Day 2020, leading the pack of corporate supplicants, all its assembly lines unrelated to its notorious self-hijacking 737 Max jets, whose production halted in January, were still operating at normal capacity. They were still open in spite of the fact that Seattle public schools had been closed for six days at that point, in spite of the fact that every restaurant and bar in the state had been closed the weekend earlier, and in spite of the fact that the disease was quickly spreading among the factory workers, one of whom, a 27-year veteran of the company, would die within days.
And they were still running in spite of the fact that demand for Boeing planes, thanks to the 737 crashes, is at an all-time low, with the company in January, a month in which its archrival Airbus sold 274 planes, reporting its first month in history without a single order. Which is to say, I can think of a lot of reasons Boeing might need a bailout. In December a space capsule the company designed to transport astronauts to the International Space Station failed to launch into orbit during a test mission because its timer was eleven hours off, a potentially half billion dollar mistake that may cost the company billions more in lost NASA business to Elon Musk’s SpaceX. In January, the company revealed that its attempts to load a software fix onto the 737s was repeatedly crashing the planes’ computers. Not long after that, the company finally admitted that the three-year-delay on its KC-46 aerial refueling tanker was going to be, at minimum, another three years. And then of course there’s the $70 billion the company has squandered over the past decade on stock buybacks and dividend checks.
What all of these problems have in common is that none of them has shit to do with coronavirus. And neither does the $500 billion corporate bailout the Senate appended to an otherwise vitally important relief package. It’s an audacious power grab by the same bunch of monstrous grifters who’ve spent the past 20 years reverse mortgaging the American economy to finance Third World dictator lifestyles. It’s just like the secret multitrillion dollar scramble to throw money at insolvent banks in 2008, only a hundred times more craven, and even though the American public is also considerably less naive than we were when we assumed programs with words like “home affordable relief” might actually, you know, offer some relief to homeowners hit with extortionate mortgage payments, it doesn’t matter. We don’t matter. We don’t matter because we don’t have lobbyists.

 

 

 

 

The airlines have faced an avalanche of criticism for their bailout ask for good reason: They took the spoils of a decade spent gouging passengers with fees for baggage and chips and wifi and ticket changes and four extra inches of legroom, and spent 96% of them on stock buybacks. But the strings attached to the airlines’ bailout are quite possibly the sole redeeming lines in the slush fund section of the bill. Thanks no doubt in large part to lobbying by the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA under the leadership of Sara Nelson, the airline bailout is structured to avoid layoffs, including those of contract employees, who are targeted in a special $3 billion loan program. In exchange for cash, airlines must keep their staff and pay full salaries through September 30.
And in their defense, the airlines can at least claim to have been legitimately done in by the coronavirus. Can the same really be said for the cargo carriers? Just last week, an air cargo travel consultant told Wired the cargo carriers were charging twice the typical per-kilogram fee to transport cargo from China to Chicago—and yet there they are in Section 4003, earmarked for a dedicated loan guarantee program totaling $4 billion.
And what about the provision lowering capital reserves for small banks, who say loosened reserve ratios will free up capital for emergency lending to small businesses (because that’s what they always say) but will invariably end up plowing the funds into real estate speculation (because that’s what they always do, and, also, the CARES Act just made real estate speculation $170 billion more profitable.)
You might have heard about the special provisions for abstinence-only education and for-profit colleges and the Kennedy Center. But in the end it’s probably the general free money programs that haven’t been earmarked yet that threaten to inflict the gravest injustices upon our already grievously unbalanced economy. There are the myriad special crisis era lending programs the Fed has resurrected to halt the stock market selloff, as well as Mnuchin’s $350 billion slush fund to the special Small Business Administration program, which forgives the loans of companies that retain or re-hire employees. Under the CARES Act, any individual Marriott or Hilton or Cheesecake Factory qualifies as a “small business” if it employs fewer than 500 people; the applications otherwise involve “very few borrower requirements,” according to an overview of the legislation prepared by law firm Steptoe & Johnson. But the federal government has demonstrated time and again, most recently with its pathetic student loan forgiveness programs and before that during the foreclosure crisis, that it has no real appetite or aptitude for processing large amounts of loan paperwork on behalf of hundreds of thousands of new applicants, and literally no one thinks the woefully neglected Small Business Administration is remotely up to the task. And so we can only assume the loans will go to he who hires the best lobbyists. Do not be surprised over the coming weeks when genuine small businesses begin getting swallowed by such ersatz small businesses, flush with private equity dry powder and lobbyist-secured government cheddar.
And don’t be surprised when in a few years someone reveals, as TARP watchdog Neil Barofsky did of then-Treasury Secretary Tim Geithnner’s comments about using the fiction of foreclosure relief programs as a ploy to “foam the runway” for the banks, that another corporate welfare orgy was the plan all along.

 

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