Daily Archives: June 2, 2020

2020-06-02: News Headlines

Staff (2020-06-02). 'Tough On Crime' Cities Might Make Violence Worse. therealnews.com Baltimore's leading mayoral candidates are embracing calls for change, but their proposals risk worsening mass incarceration and inequality.

news.un (2020-06-02). Coronavirus a challenge, and opportunity, to fix remittances system than funnels billions home from abroad. news.un.org With a euro here and a dollar there, remittances — the money that migrant workers send home to their families — have been adding up in a big way to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals and lift tens of millions out of extreme poverty.

Marie Patino (2020-06-02). Poor Neighborhoods Are Only Getting Poorer. zcomm.org There are more communities living in poverty across U.S. metropolitan areas than there were four decades ago — and the neighborhoods that were already poor have even less now…

Caitlin Johnstone (2020-06-02). DC On Fire: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix. thealtworld.com — US government prioritizes ordinary Americans over the desires of wealthy sociopaths. | — Derek Chauvin charged with second-degree murder immediately after murdering someone, because that's what you're supposed to do. | — Everything's cool. | — We're all still talking about Tiger King. | ~ | "The people are angry about police violence. What should we do?" | 'Hmm… have we tried using police violence?' | "Yeah! It just made them angrier!" | 'Must not be violent enough. Let's try military violence.' | ~ | Mainstream America is being made more and more aware of the vast chasm of difference betw…

WSWS (2020-06-02). Australia's richest "Top 20" soar further in wealth during pandemic. wsws.org The results illustrate the immense concentration of wealth since governments bailed out the financial elite after the 2008—09 economic breakdown.

_____ (2020-06-02). Unemployment in USA now exceeds that of 1933 Great Depression. truepublica.org.uk By TruePublica: As most people will know, the Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place mostly during the 1930s, beginning in the United States. The timing of the Great Depression varied across the world; in most countries, it started in 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s. It was the longest, deepest, …

Stephen Lendman (2020-06-01). Rage Against the United States of Institutionalized Inequality and Injustice. globalresearch.ca Public rage in dozens of US cities goes way beyond the killing of African American George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. | Like countless others in the US, Floyd was a victim of institutionalized racism, inequality and injustice….

Matt Sedlar (2020-06-01). The UN's Anti-Poverty Proposal for Latin America: A "Basic Emergency Income" cepr.net The economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis on Latin America could be potentially devastating, according to a new Special Report by the UN's Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). The report, based on the available data in mid-April, has estimated a -5.3 percent drop for the region's GDP growth in 2020 — …

David Cavendish (2020-05-29). Millions jobless, benefits hard to get — We need a federal unemployment system. peoplesworld.org The current federal-state unemployment insurance (UI) system in the United States was a disaster waiting to happen. And when COVID-19 forced large parts of the economy to shut down in recent months, the disaster proved to be even worse than feared. With the number of newly unemployed people now officially passing 40 million (with millions more uncounted), …

Alan Macleod (2020-05-29). Media Elite Denounce Looting Even as Billionaires Reap Record Profits from Taxpayer-Funded Bailouts. mintpressnews.com A mountain of studies on wealth inequality have shown its corrosive effect on social cohesion, with the more unequal a society gets, the less likely people are to see themselves as participants in a community and view others as a threat.

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 …

Alison P. Galvani, Alyssa S. Parpia, Abhishek Pandey, Charlotte Zimmer, James G. Kahn, Meagan C. Fitzpatrick (2020-05-17). [Commentary] The imperative for universal healthcare to curtail the COVID-19 outbreak in the USA. thelancet.com The COVID-19 outbreak in the United States is growing steeply and spreading widely. As of March 26, national incidence surpassed every other country, and as of April 28 has reported over a million cases. The COVID-19 crisis is exposing the systemic frailties in our healthcare system. More than 78 million people in America do not have access to adequate health insurance [1]. Given that health insurance in the US is typically provided by employers, millions more are at risk of losing their healthcare coverage as unemployment surges.

Tim Bryant (2020-05-16). Starve The Beast, Feed The Light. thelastamericanvagabond.com It is often echoed by the marginalized masses that "the system doesn't work for the people" and "it only works for the elite that own it." Regardless of ideology, it's pretty hard to deny this claim when wealth inequality and power concentration are rampant all over society with plenty of hard data to back it …

Julia Conley, staff writer (2020-06-01). 'They Need Our Help': As CBO Projects $16 Trillion GDP Loss Due to Pandemic, Sanders and Schumer Demand Relief for Working Families. commondreams.org Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer demanded to know on Monday how Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can remain committed to passing no additional coronavirus relief for working families. | www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/styles/cd_special_coverage/public/headline/thumbs/unemployment_coronavirus_1.jpg

Staff (2020-06-01). "America's Moment of Reckoning": Cornel West Says Nationwide Uprising Is Sign of "Empire Imploding" democracynow.org As thousands from coast to coast took to the streets this weekend to protest the state-sanctioned killing of Black people, and the nation faces its largest public health crisis in generations and the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression, professor Cornel West calls the U.S. a "predatory capitalist civilization obsessed with money, money, money." He also makes the connections between U.S. violence abroad and at home. "There is a connection between the seeds that you sow of violence externally and internally."

Staff (2020-05-22). Mike Davis: Workers Face "Sophie's Choice" Between Income & Health as 50 States Reopen Amid Pandemic. democracynow.org All 50 states will be at least partially reopened this Memorial Day weekend, as the U.S. death toll from the COVID-19 outbreak tops 95,000 and some states prepare for a surge in cases. We're joined by historian and writer Mike Davis, who says in Jacobin that "Reopening the Economy Will Send Us to Hell."

The Commonwealth Club (2020-06-02). Tuesday 6/9: My Vanishing Country: Bakari Sellers talks about memior on being son of civil rights hero. indybay.org Online via Livestream…

Staff (2020-05-31). Ocasio-Cortez: "If You Want to End Unrest, End the Conditions That Create It" truthout.org In a video message posted to Instagram on Saturday amidst days of nationwide protest in response to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota earlier this week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez issued a plea to anyone calling for the end of the "unrest" stirred by brutality and oppression to focus on the root causes of poverty, distrust, and violence in American society. | "If you are calling for an end to this unrest… but you are not calling for the end to the conditions that…

yenisafak (2020-06-02). MTV goes dark, record labels hit pause as US protests rage. yenisafak.com Youth television channel MTV and other stablemate channels said they will go dark around the world on Monday to mark the death in police custody of George Floyd, joining other U.S. entertainment outlets in condemning racial inequality.MTV will be joined by its other ViacomCBS youth and music channels, including Comedy Central, CMT, and VH1, at 5 p.m. ET (2100 GMT) in an eight minute, 46 second blackout – the length of time they said that a white Minneapolis police officer last week knelt on the neck of Floyd, a black man.Floyd's death has prompted mass protests in cities around the United States decrying the trea…

_____ (2020-06-02). The Treason Of The Ruling Class. popularresistance.org The ruling elites no longer have legitimacy. They have destroyed our capitalist democracy and replaced it with a mafia state. What the Roman philosopher Cicero called a commonwealth, a res publica, a "public thing" or the "property of a people," has been transformed into an instrument of naked pillage and repression on behalf of a global corporate oligarchy. We are serfs ruled by obscenely rich, omnipotent masters who loot the U.S. Treasury, pay little or no taxes and have perverted the judiciary, the media and the legislative branches of government to strip us of civil liberties and give them the freedom to comm…