Showing posts with label socialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label socialism. Show all posts
Friday, March 6, 2020
Message from Represent Us
Victory in Virginia
The Virginia House of Delegates just passed the anti-gerrymandering amendment! Voters will now have the opportunity to make gerrymandering illegal in Virginia at the ballot this November.
This is a huge victory for our partners at OneVirginia2021 and all Virginians. It shows how much impact we can make when we all work together. Thousands of RepresentUs members like you got involved in this campaign and created real pressure that the politicians couldn’t ignore.
Will you share this graphic on Facebook to celebrate the big win in Virginia and spread the word about our movement’s momentum?
I’m amazed by how much work this team put in to get Virginia politicians to pass the amendment, which ends a corrupt practice that rigs elections by letting politicians choose their voters. Over the last month, RepresentUs members joined phonebanks and textbanks to reach out to over 70,000 Virginia voters directly, we traveled to the State Capitol to meet with politicians, and we delivered petition signatures to legislators from over 3,400 RepresentUs members representing all 50 states.
We will need to replicate this energy in the months ahead as we continue the fight to make gerrymandering illegal in states across the country. That includes making sure this amendment wins in November.
But for the moment, let’s celebrate this triumph for voters in Virginia and supporters of fair districts across the nation. Please share the victory graphic on Facebook to tell everyone that you are part of a winning movement that’s ending gerrymandering nationwide.
Oil Bonanza Plunges Guyana Into Political Crisis
Anatoly Kurmanaev. New York Times. March 5, 2020
GEORGETOWN, Guyana — The discovery of an enormous oil deposit off the coast of Guyana was meant to catapult this tiny country into the top echelons of petroleum producers and put its citizens on the path to better lives.
Instead, it has deepened the historical tensions shackling the nation, leaving some Guyanese afraid that the newfound wealth will subvert the country’s fragile democracy and wipe out other industries, as happened in neighboring Venezuela.
The tensions surrounding the elections for president and members of the National Assembly this week may be a sign of trouble to come.
The contest will determine the politicians who will be in charge when the oil money begins to flow this year. It was a hotly disputed race between leaders representing each of the country’s two main ethnic groups, the Afro-Guyanese and those of Indian descent. Voters were split almost perfectly along ethnic lines.
Since the election on March 2, public debate has descended into a cycle of historical grievances. Both parties fear that if they concede, the opposing party would use the oil wealth to shut them out of government for years to come — and deprive their constituents of their fair share of revenue.
So, without official results, both sides are claiming victory, threatening to hamstring the economy of Guyana, already one of the poorest countries on the continent, and plunge it into a prolonged political crisis.
“We’re an ethnically riven society,” said Winston DaCosta Jordan, the country’s finance minister.
“It’s a rare incidence,” he added, to expect to see “money bringing people together.”
The Guyanese recognize that overcoming long standing divisions is a challenge. But the discovery of 8 billion barrels of oil off the coast of Guyana by a consortium led by ExxonMobil could have been a powerful enough incentive for the country’s 750,000 citizens to overcome mutual suspicion and unite around the promise of an economic bonanza that could benefit all.
The start of oil production in December is expected to nearly double the country’s gross domestic product in 2020, according to the International Monetary Fund, and multiply in years to come.
Instead, the winner-takes-all attitude that has marred the elections is weighing heavily on Guyana’s economic prospects as it enters the oil age, said Ralph Ramkarran, a prominent local statesman who led a largely Quixotic campaign for a small multiethnic party.
“The thinking here is, ‘why share when you’re winning?’” he said. “Until that’s fixed, it will remain a place of suspicion and economic underdevelopment.”
The stakes could not be higher.
Exxon started production in December, and although the payoff in 2020 will be a trickle relative to what will come, it is expected to elevate oil income this year to a third of all government revenue, surpassing all of the country’s traditional exports combined, according to the I.M.F.
By the end of the decade, the country’s output will reach 1.2 million barrels a day, according to estimates by the oil consultancy Rystad. That would mean Guyana’s production would overtake the current output of its neighbor, the declining oil giant Venezuela.
The economic decisions taken by the next government will largely determine whether the former British sugar-growing colony is able to harness its oil wealth for national development. But neither major party has offered a plan for the nation.
Guyana’s tiny civil service and outdated laws have not kept up with Exxon’s breakneck development. The company began exporting crude from Guyana’s first deepwater well, located 120 miles off the country’s coast, in January, five years after making the initial oil discovery. The revenue from the government’s first load is expected to fall into the country’s coffers within the next few days.
The country’s mining and environmental laws, which also regulate the oil industry, are outdated and don’t even mention petroleum.
A tentative deal between the government and Exxon to use the natural gas associated with oil production to provide Guyana with cheap electricity, a major voter demand, has gone nowhere because there are no laws or state agencies that can guide such a project, said Guyanese officials.
“We were not expecting this level of activity,” said Newell Dennison, the head of Guyana’s Geology and Mines Commission, who is responsible for overseeing oil exploration from his office in the former colonial railway headquarters.
Mr. Dennison’s computer screen was obscured by stacks of paper, which covered his desk. Because the government’s natural resource databases are not digitized, he seldom needs to turn on the computer, he said.
Some in Guyana worry that the government’s preoccupation with oil is already displacing resources from the country’s traditional industries — sugar, rice, bauxite and gold — which are the country’s largest sources of employment. In the last few years, the government has shut down four unprofitable sugar plants, leading to the loss of 7,000 jobs. The main bauxite mine, run by Russia’s Rusal, is also cutting jobs and exports.
“They have stopped paying attention to the other sectors,” said Bharrat Jagdeo, leader of the opposition.
A new economy catering to oil is rapidly taking shape. Around the capital, Georgetown, abandoned sugar fields are being bulldozed and turned into luxury gated compounds for foreigners and supply bases for the oil companies. A new shopping mall hosting a Hard Rock Cafe and 12 cinemas is catering for those able to tap into the industry’s boom.
But while the offshore oil fields will shower Guyana with billions of dollars in the coming years, they provide few direct jobs. And like everything else in the country, the fate of the displaced agricultural and mining workers has become a partisan battle.
The opposition People’s Progressive Party, backed primarily by the descendants of indentured Indian laborers brought by the British, has promised to use the oil revenues to reopen and modernize the bankrupt sugar refining plants, reflecting their traditional strength in the rural areas.
The ruling Partnership for National Unity party, supported mainly by Afro-Guyanese, wants the agricultural workers to retrain by pouring the oil money into health and education, a nod to their strongholds in the public sector.
But neither party has provided any concrete investment figures or outlined any initial projects.
“The profits from our petroleum industry will provide you, and you and you with a good life,” President David Granger, a 74-year-old retired Army Brigadier who is running for re-election, told tens of thousands of supporters on Saturday.
He didn’t provide details, instead treating his jubilant supporters to colorful live performances of reggae and chutney, Guyana’s national music style, mixing Caribbean calypso with Bollywood themes.
At the opposition closing rally earlier that day, the opposition leader, Mr. Jagdeo, lambasted the government’s handling of the Exxon contract, which grants the company highly favorable terms, without presenting a detailed path forward.
For many voters, party preference is driven by tradition and allegiance to their own group rather than policies.
“My family has voted for them since I was little,” said Ashad Ali, a welder who attended the PPP’s closing rally in the outskirts of Georgetown. He and six of his friends shrugged when asked to explain why their party would be a better manager of the oil wealth.
According to the latest census, ethnic Indians comprise 40 percent of Guyana’s population, compared with 30 percent for the Afro-Guyanese. The country’s traditional swing vote are the Indigenous communities comprising about 10 percent of the population.
The strong performance of a multiethnic party, Alliance for Change, in the last elections briefly raised hopes that the country finally began to surmount its colonial past.
But support for the party had collapsed after it joined Mr. Granger’s coalition.
“We can’t bridge a racial divide,” said Mr. Ramkarran, the veteran champion of a multiethnic government.
Sanders & Biden Spar Over Social Security
WASH POST: Sanders & Biden Spar Over Social Security
David Sirota Mar 6
Bern Notice is a production of the Bernie 2020 campaign. Please forward this on to your friends and tell them to subscribe. The views expressed here are solely of the bylined author.
The Washington Post has a new story about how Social Security is now taking center stage in the Democratic primary, now that the contest is a between Bernie and Joe Biden. And there is new evidence from Google data suggesting that voters are keenly interested in this particular contrast.
Click here to read the Washington Post report.
Biden has worked with Republicans to push proposals to freeze Social Security funding, cut Social Security benefits and raise the Social Security retirement age. Biden has even been on the floor of the Senate giving speeches bragging that he tried to cut Social Security on four separate occasions. By contrast, from the moment he was sworn in as a congressman, Bernie has worked to block Social Security cuts and expand Social Security benefits.
Bernie 2020 is right now airing a new ad reviewing the difference between Bernie and Biden on Social Security.
Bern after reading,
Sirota
What must be done to fight the Pandemic
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/03/06/pers-m06.html
6 March 2020
The coronavirus pandemic continues to spread through dozens of countries around the world in what is among the worst outbreaks of infectious disease in a century, threatening the lives of millions of people.
Refuting the White House’s criminally dishonest dismissal of the disease’s severity, the number of cases in the United States continues to rise rapidly. The response at every level of government has been negligent and incompetent, exposing a total lack of planning and preparation in the world’s richest capitalist country.
Even as the White House was downplaying the lethality of the virus and equating it with the common flu, the United Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO) reported on March 4 that 3.4 percent of people infected by the coronavirus had died.
There is no way to accurately determine the extent of the infection in the United States because of the absence of testing equipment.
The indifference of the Trump administration to the health of the population is no better, and perhaps worse, than the attitude of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt to the slaves. The media has spent far more time bemoaning the fall in share values on Wall Street than the loss of human life.
Congress has authorized a mere $8.3 billion to fight the outbreak—less than one tenth the annual cost of the war in Afghanistan and one fifteenth the wealth of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
Without emergency intervention, there is a danger that this pandemic will spread uncontrollably throughout the population and cause a staggering loss of life. In the worst-case scenario, outlined this week by Dr. Marc Lipsitch of Harvard University, as much as 60 percent of the global population could become infected. At current rates of mortality, this would mean the deaths of over a hundred million men, women and children.
As the World Health Organization pointed out in its February 28 report, “The COVID-19 virus is a new pathogen that is highly contagious, can spread quickly, and must be considered capable of causing enormous health, economic and societal impacts in any setting.”
The report noted that the virus “is transmitted via droplets and fomites [objects] during close unprotected contact between an infector and infectee.” The WHO added that “human-to-human transmission of the COVID-19 virus is largely occurring in families.”
Measures can be taken to dramatically reduce the number of infections and prevent the loss of countless lives. But the response of governments throughout the world has been disastrously inadequate and an untold number of people will die as a result. The vast majority of the victims will be from the working class, the poor and other vulnerable sections of society.
This social catastrophe must be prevented. All sections of the working class, youth and students must demand that governments take emergency action to stop the spread of the virus and provide the necessary care for all those who are infected by the disease. This requires a massive reallocation of social resources.
The principle that must guide the response is that the needs of society overrule the interests of profit. Capitalist calculations of share values and profits must not be allowed to limit, undermine, or prevent the combating of the disease.
From this standpoint we raise the following demands:
No expense can be spared in making testing for the coronavirus available immediately in every country. Trillions of dollars must be invested internationally in testing regimes, the manufacture of protective clothing, the purchase of oxygen machines and other necessary technology, the construction of new hospitals and the expansion of existing hospital facilities.
Accessible and universal testing: There is no way to combat the spread of coronavirus without testing that is accessible to all those who show symptoms. It is essential that testing be made available immediately throughout the United States and the entire world.
Free high-quality treatment: Stopping the spread of the coronavirus is impossible in a society where only those with money can see a doctor. In a country like the United States, where the average household cannot afford to pay cash for a $400 expense, providing free treatment is inseparable from controlling the spread of the disease.
Every country must immediately begin to provide free testing and treatment, and pay all medical costs associated with the coronavirus. Medical care is not a privilege, it is a right!
Paid sick leave for all workers: It is vital to ensure that workers do not feel pressured to work when they are sick. Corporations and governments must immediately begin providing paid sick leave for all employees.
Equality of care: In the United States, a vast and disproportionate share of medical resources is monopolized by the financial oligarchy. Reports abound of the V.I.P. emergency rooms in Manhattan and the Hamptons for the super-rich, and the massive emergency bunkers and private medical treatment centers being constructed by the oligarchs in their own mansions.
There can be no preferential treatment in combating this pandemic! Equality of care is not only a moral question, but an urgent social necessity. The private doctors of the rich and those engaged in vanity procedures must be immediately drafted to treat the general population. Access to care must be determined by necessity, not wealth. The rich have the right to the same treatment as anyone else—but no better.
Protect refugees, prisoners and the homeless: Around the world, millions of people are homeless, millions more are fleeing war and poverty, and countless others are imprisoned under conditions that make them vulnerable to infectious disease. Everything must be done to improve the conditions of prisoners, refugees and the homeless and provide these vulnerable populations with access to hygiene and the best quality medical care.
Stop price gouging: Medical supplies and sanitary products must be made available to households and medical workers, and all those profiting from the crisis should be held criminally liable.
Safe working conditions: Employers and the government must be responsible for providing all employees—from medical workers to factory, warehouse, retail and service workers—with a safe work environment.
The supervision of safety cannot be left to the employers. Workers should form rank-and-file committees to make sure that safety codes are being observed by the employers and measures are being taken to combat the spread of the disease. These committees will ensure that workers are not compelled to work in an unsafe environment and that coworkers who become ill receive the necessary treatment and support.
Support the ill and the quarantined: No one should fear that being designated and quarantined means neglect and ostracism. Workers should form neighborhood committees to ensure that those who are sick and quarantined are safe and have social support and the necessary food and supplies.
For international collaboration: US economic sanctions against Iran are causing severe medical shortages in a country with over 3,000 coronavirus cases, and the US political establishment has been waging a campaign to demonize Chinese scientists and doctors. All sanctions must immediately be lifted and all restrictions on international medical collaboration ended!
In responding to this dangerous disease, one principle must guide us: that human need is primary. Combating an epidemic that threatens millions of lives cannot be subordinated to considerations of private profit.
Any claim that there is no money to save the lives of millions of people is a contemptible lie. In the United States alone, there are more than 13,000 individuals with over $30 million in wealth. Just three people—Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett—own more wealth than the poorest half of American society.
Funding shortfalls must be covered by emergency seizures of the fortunes of ultra-high-net-worth individuals.
It is necessary to build a mass movement of the working class to demand an immediate emergency response to the crisis, to be paid for by the corporations, the government and the financial oligarchy.
As the International Committee of the Fourth International wrote its statement of February 28, 2020:
In demanding that capitalist governments implement these emergency measures, the international working class does not abandon its fundamental aim: the ending of the capitalist system. Rather, the fight for emergency action will raise the consciousness of the working class, develop its understanding of the need for international class solidarity, and increase its political self-confidence.
The opportunities provided by modern medical technology to stop such an outbreak are unprecedented. Never before has so much been known about a pathogen so early: Its genome has been sequenced and effective tests have been designed within a matter of weeks.
But the outbreak of the disease has exposed the gaping chasm between the enormous promise of modern medical technology and the totally irrational character of a society based on the private accumulation of wealth.
Whatever the outcome of this pandemic, the crisis irrefutably establishes the fact that capitalism cannot deal with the existential threats facing humanity—from climate change to natural disasters and infectious diseases. The coronavirus crisis poses the urgent necessity for the socialist reorganization of society.
Statement of the Socialist Equality Party (United States)
Researchers at MIT Affirm: No Evidence to Support OAS’s Suggestions of Fraud in Bolivian Elections
New analysis of Bolivia’s October elections, and the OAS’s publications on them, by Jack Williams and John Curiel, researchers at the MIT Election Data and Science Lab, has reopened international debate and been widely discussed in the media. The study, which CEPR commissioned and has posted in full here, determines: “it is very likely that Morales won the required 10 percentage point margin to win in the first round of the election on October 20, 2019.” Williams and Curiel replicate findings CEPR published in November.
“Argentine President Alberto Fernández said the report’s findings justified his continued support for Morales,” Reuters reported. “We demand the prompt democratization of #Bolivia, with the full participation of the Bolivian people and without prescriptions of any kind,” he Tweeted.
Mark Weisbrot said: “The OAS greatly misled the media and the public about what happened in Bolivia's elections, and helped to foster a great deal of mistrust in the electoral process and the results.”
“The OAS seems to have made statements regarding the preliminary election results without basis in fact,” Williams says. Evo Morales “appears to have been heading toward a first-round victory prior to the interruption of the preliminary count.”
“It is obvious from this report that simply tweaking the system is not enough.”
CEPR’s new report on hospital consolidation in Colorado shows the damage it causes and the cascading harm that follows – to health care insurers, patients, and communities. Colorado’s hospital systems are a microcosm of what is broken in America’s health care system.“The incentives of all the players in the system are pointed away from quality, accessible, and affordable health care for all,” said Jared Gaby-Biegel, author of the report.
The coronavirus has quickly revised the economic outlook. When stock markets plunged last week, Mark Weisbrot reminded Buzzfeed, "the stock market is not the economy, and it shouldn’t be treated so much as such." In the Washington Post, Dean Baker and Jared Bernstein penned a checklist of things the US can do to prepare the economy for a global pandemic. Vox and the New York Times have quoted CEPR research and Eileen Appelbaum on how the US is uniquely vulnerable because it is the only advanced economy with no federally mandated paid sick leave policy. The loss of a paycheck is a powerful incentive to work when urged to stay home.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) asked for ideas for a new poverty measure and Shawn Fremstad eagerly responded. A long-time critic of the outdated poverty measure, Fremstad suggests an alternative could “set the poverty threshold equal to 60 percent of median equivalized disposable income.”
CEPR’s Revolving Door Project has expanded and is pleased to announce the launch of its first-ever dedicated web home. This new website makes it easier than ever to learn about this groundbreaking project. Visit www.therevolvingdoorproject.org to see a record of much of the project’s work since its founding, including blog posts, op-eds, public comments, letters, and FOIA requests. Also, be sure to check out the Revolving Door Project and the Demand Progress Education Fund’s newly-launched Agency Spotlight, which is easily accessible from our new homepage. And, finally, don't leave without signing up for the project's regular newsletter!"
“An honest accounting of the violence in Haiti must also address the political and economic elite...”
“An honest accounting of the violence in Haiti must also address the political and economic elite who sponsor these violent outbursts with arms, money, and protection — a phenomenon that transcends political affiliation,” Kira Paulemon writes for Haiti Relief and Reconstruction Watch.
The Trump administration is requesting $200 million dollars “to address the crisis in Venezuela,” including for regime change. This represents a twenty-two-fold increase from the administration’s FY 2020 request. Read Cavan Kharrazian’s post for The Americas Blog.
“Honesty will … be a precondition for any leader serious about addressing the roots causes of migration. And it might help explain why, in Nevada at least, Sanders received more than 50 percent of the Latino vote,” Jake Johnston writes in a post examining how Democratic candidates are, or aren’t, discussing US policies that have destabilized Latin American countries.
Thursday, March 5, 2020
Wednesday, March 4, 2020
'Organized Money vs. Organized People': New Sanders Memo Details Stark Choice Between Biden and Bernie
"Voters face a decision between Bernie's working-class movement and his message of change, and Biden's effort to—in his own words—make sure that 'nothing will fundamentally change' for the billionaire class."
Jake Johnson, staff writer
25 Comments
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/03/organized-money-vs-organized-people-new-sanders-memo-details-stark-choice-between?
Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign sent a memo to staffers and surrogates Monday evening spotlighting "stark" policy differences between Sanders and Joe Biden on Social Security, trade, and other major issues after the former vice president received a wave of high-profile endorsements on the eve of Super Tuesday.
"Voters face a decision between Bernie's working-class movement and his message of change, and Biden's effort to—in his own words—make sure that 'nothing will fundamentally change' for the billionaire class that buys elections."
—Sanders campaign memo
The memo (pdf), authored by Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir and senior adviser Jeff Weaver, characterizes Biden's endorsements from Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Beto O'Rourke, and former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as part of an effort by the former vice president to "coalesce the Washington establishment and its big donors around his campaign to protect the status quo."
"Heading into Super Tuesday," the memo continues, "the choice in the Democratic primary is now crystal clear: voters face a decision between Bernie's working-class movement and his message of change, and Biden's effort to—in his own words—make sure that 'nothing will fundamentally change' for the billionaire class that buys elections."
"With Biden bankrolled by a super PAC and boosted by billionaire donors, the primary is far from over," the document declares. "We are now entering the phase of the primary in which the differences between Bernie and Biden will take center stage."
David Sirota, speechwriter and senior adviser to the Sanders campaign, echoed that message in social media posts on Monday.
"It is organized money versus organized people," Sirota tweeted, "as it always ends up being in every consequential battle in history."
The memo points to Biden's decades-long record of advocating for cuts to Social Security, a history the Sanders campaign argues could harm Biden's chances in a potential general election match-up with President Donald Trump.
"Joe Biden spent 30 years trying to cut Social Security, while Bernie fought those cuts and pushed to expand the program," the memo says.
The document also highlights Biden's votes as a Delaware senator in favor of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the 2005 bankruptcy bill. By contrast, Sanders voted against each of those.
"These differences make clear that the choice between these two candidates is stark—it is a choice between the party's core economic and social justice agenda, and the Washington establishment's agenda that aims to protect and enrich the wealthy and well-connected," the memo says. "The differences also spotlight how Bernie's agenda is a far more popular general election agenda than Biden."
Read the full memo:
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