2020-05-28: News Headlines

Bruce Bostick (2020-05-28). Trump using record unemployment to push an anti-labor agenda. peoplesworld.org Trump, followed immediately by Republican governors across the nation, stated that our nation "must reopen." Those governors all then told workers in their states that they must return to work when recalled, or they will have their unemployment benefits cut off. This past week, with millions more filing jobless claims, the total new claims related …

Mark Gruenberg (2020-05-28). Official pandemic jobless claims pass 40 million. peoplesworld.org WASHINGTON—More than 40 million people are now jobless thanks to closures resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, after the Labor Department reported 2.173 million more people joined the unemployment rolls in the week ending May 22. And that's just the official (under) count. DOL put the official number of jobless since mid-March at 30.957 million. AFL-CIO …

Terrace (2020-05-28). Global Crisis Spurs Global Activism. popularresistance.org The COVID-19 pandemic's global spread has highlighted inequities in the world like inequality of income and access to resources in many communities. The response to the crisis has been a varied patchwork of public health measures and economic assistance, but in most countries, those with wealth and access to resources have fared significantly better than poor and marginalized communities. | Now, a group of more than sixty academics, activists, writers, artists, workers, students, and others from more than twenty countries have come together to draft a manifesto addressing these inequities and offer some guidepost…

teleSUR (2020-05-28). Unprotected Migrants Roam Through Southeastern Mexico. telesurenglish.net Hundreds of Central American migrants are going through situations of poverty and high risk of contracting COVID-19 while wandering the streets of Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico. | RELATED: | In this municipality, humanitarian shelters decided to avoid overcrowding and suspended the admission of new guests from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala | This decision left migrants stranded in Tapachula homeless as they hope to…

Robert S. Becker (2020-05-28). Will the left leverage today's stock surge/unemployment gap shocker? nationofchange.org Fat cats play the system like hungry lions stalking prey. The progressive challenge is to educate more voters how our predatory system helps the rich get richer.

Alan Macleod (2020-05-27). "Germ-Ridden Masses" — How America's Wealthy Elite Describe the Rest of Us. mintpressnews.com Many of the world's super wealthy are trying to wait out the COVID-19 pandemic on their luxury yachts. But how to get to them without interacting with the public and catching the virus themselves? Such are the difficult quandaries only billionaires have to deal with. Fortunately, financial news outlet Bloomberg has solved the big question of the current era. A new company, it excitedly

Matt Sedlar (2020-05-27). The Impact of Upward Redistribution on Social Security Solvency (2020 Update). cepr.net Economic inequality in the US has ballooned since the early 1980s. Wage and salary growth at the top of the earnings distribution has significantly outpaced that at the bottom and middle, resulting in decades of unabated upward redistribution of income. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated this divide. In addition to the immediate problems …

Editor (2020-05-27). In dire economic crisis, lessons from the most oppressed. workers.org The U.S. is in a historic, crushing economic crisis, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. While the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on May 21 the official unemployment rate was 14.7 percent, that same day Fortune magazine — a voice of the capitalist class — said the U.S. real unemployment rate . . . |

Sonali Kolhatkar (2020-05-27). For America's Wealthiest, the Pandemic Is a Time to Profit. zcomm.org Even in the midst of the pandemic, the rich are getting richer and bolder in their fight against working Americans…

Martin Hart-Landsberg (2020-05-26). Victory: Ohio's plan to deny workers their unemployment insurance is shelved. mronline.org In early May, Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine began reopening the state economy. And to support business and slash state expenses, both at worker expense, he had a "COVID-19 Fraud" form put up on the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services website where employers could confidentially report employees "who quit or refuse work when …

Jeff Jurgens (2020-04-30). U.S. Organizations React to Global Military Spending Report. peaceaction.org Joint Statement: U.S. organizations react to global military spending report April 27, 2020 Our diverse group of 39 think-tanks, non-profits, faith-based organizations, and advocacy groups based in the United States find the exorbitant amount of money spent on militaries worldwide to be an irresponsible and harmful use of global wealth. The Global Military Expenditures Report …

Andrey Areshev (2020-05-28). Australia & the Working of the American Imperial Hand. strategic-culture.org The paradox of Australia: a wealthy country whose complacent, U.S.-indoctrinated political elites are betraying its promise in so many important ways, writes Tony Kevin. | Tony KEVIN | It is hard to explain Australia to foreigners: a complicated former British colonial society that likes to think of itself as simple and honest, and sometimes persuades others that this may be true. The Australia of the "Dustyesky Russian Choir" that recently became a brief sensation on Russia's mainstream Channel One is a reassuring image: one in which some Russians might still sentimentally like to believe. | Yet there is a darke…