https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Famh6HTuxPo&feature
Sunday, August 9, 2020
Gangs in Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Cost Taxpayers $55 million
Gangs of sheriff’s deputies, violent cliques who glorify “aggressive” policing, have operated out of Los Angeles County stations and jails for decades. Their criminal behavior has been so egregious it has resulted in $55 million in legal payouts.
August 8, 2020 Alene Tchekmedyian LOS ANGELES TIMES
https://portside.org/2020-08-08/gangs-los-angeles-county-sheriffs-department-cost-taxpayers-55-million
Los Angeles County has paid out roughly $55 million in settlements in cases in which sheriff’s deputies have been alleged to belong to a secret society, records obtained by the Los Angeles Times show, illuminating the entrenched nature of a subculture that has plagued the Sheriff’s Department for years.
The figure comes from a list that includes payouts in dozens of lawsuits and claims involving deputies associated with tattooed groups accused of glorifying an aggressive style of policing. The report, prepared by L.A. County attorneys, lists nearly 60 cases, some of them still pending, and names eight specific cliques.
The county has paid out nearly $21 million in cases beginning in the last 10 years alone, according to the document.
The high cost underscores how these deputy groups — with monikers such as the Vikings, Regulators, 3000 Boys and the Banditos — have operated out of several Sheriff’s Department stations and jails for decades, exhibiting what critics have long alleged are the violent, intimidating tactics similar in some ways to criminal street gangs. The cases involve incidents that date to 1990.
Over the years, a succession of elected sheriffs has failed to bring the subgroups under control despite multiple internal investigations and, more recently, a probe by the FBI. Many civil liberties advocates and county watchdogs have accused the Sheriff’s Department of turning a blind eye.
“I think it’s a willful failure,” said John Sweeney, an attorney who has represented families of people killed by deputies. “For some reason, they pride themselves, the Sheriff’s Department, on having these violent cliques I guess to show the public who’s the boss. But, you know, what it does is just fosters a horrible relationship between the community that these sheriffs serve.”
The Board of Supervisors requested the list of payouts last year after The Times reported that members of the Banditos, who operate out of the East L.A. station, were accused of assaulting other deputies during an off-duty party in 2018. One deputy was knocked unconscious.
Sheriff Alex Villanueva has said that he put measures in place in February that prohibit deputies from participating in cliques.
“The fact that I’ve had to address these issues which have been festering since 1990 is an illustration of the failure of past sheriffs from addressing the issue head on,” he said in a statement, adding that he transferred leadership personnel from at least one station to combat the clique problem and was holding employees accountable if they failed to uphold the new policy.
Inspector General Max Huntsman said last week that he was “aware of no implementation whatsoever” of Villanueva’s new measures and that his office couldn’t effectively investigate the secret societies “because of the obstruction of the Sheriff’s Department.” Huntsman said the criminal investigation in the off-duty Banditos beating amounted to a “cover-up,” noting that more than 20 deputies present during the incident were not required to give statements.
Lt. John Satterfield said investigators conducted more than 70 interviews as part of an administrative investigation of the Banditos claims and were sharing information from reviews under the new clique policy with the FBI.
“The IG continues to further this distorted narrative that his office is not provided documents or information in order to ‘investigate’ or provide oversight,” he said, adding that in the last 13 months the oversight office has had access to more than 500 documents. “Despite his misleading statements, the sheriff continues to provide him with access and continues to welcome oversight.”
Defenders of the deputy cliques say they represent hard work and boost morale by fostering camaraderie.
Sean Kennedy, a member of the Civilian Oversight Commission and professor at Loyola Law School, said last week that he and his students had identified at least 17 gangs — some of them historical — in the department.
The largest payout on the list — $10.1 million — went to Francisco Carrillo Jr., who spent 20 years behind bars before having a murder conviction overturned in 2011. Carrillo, who was 16 at the time of the 1991 fatal drive-by shooting, maintained his innocence through two trials and in prison.
He sued later, claiming that deputies had improperly influenced witnesses to pick his picture from a photo lineup and that deputies involved in the case were members of the Lynwood Vikings, a white supremacist gang within the Sheriff’s Department.
“This has been a cancer of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department for decades,” said Ron Kaye, an attorney who represented Carrillo. “The only reason that this type of illegal activity and lawlessness under the color of law can survive is if the department and its administration looks the other way.”
Another lawsuit involving a bicyclist shot and killed by deputies in South L.A. was settled for $1.5 million in 2018 in part because one deputy had probably committed perjury when he denied that he was a member of the Regulators operating out of the Century station, officials said.
Several of the payouts involve the 3000 Boys and the 2000 Boys at Men’s Central Jail. A top jail official had described exclusive gangs of deputies who would “earn their ink” by breaking inmates’ bones.
Richard Drooyan, the court-appointed monitor of jail reforms in the Sheriff’s Department, said the agency had taken steps to address the problem in the jails, where deputies are rotated into different assignments more frequently to prevent the formation of cliques.
More recently, a sheriff’s deputy filed a claim alleging that the Executioners clique,which is not named in the county report, essentially runs the Compton sheriff’s station.
Austreberto Gonzalez’s claim, the precursor to a lawsuit, alleges that the group numbers about 20 deputies, while 20 more are prospects or associates. Many work at night, the claim says, and communicate through WhatsApp. Black and female deputies are not allowed in the clique, the claim says.
The claim says the group sports tattoos of a skull with Nazi imagery and an AK-47, and celebrates deputy shootings and the induction of new members with “inking parties.”
In recent years, the claim says, its members were involved in illegal arrest quotas and threatened work slowdowns — which involve ignoring or responding slowly to calls — when they did not get preferred assignments.
Gonzalez alleges in his claim that members of the gang retaliated against him after he reported that a deputy who belonged to the Executioners assaulted a colleague, Thomas Banuelos.
Banuelos filed a claim Tuesday alleging that the deputy who attacked him warned him not to cooperate with investigators and to lie about the assault or he would be labeled “no good” by the clique, said his attorney Alan Romero.
Also on Tuesday, Compton Mayor Aja Brown called on state Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra and the U.S. Justice Department to investigate whether Compton deputies had engaged in misconduct, excessive force, discriminatory policing and improper stops, searches or arrests. The city has a $22-million contract with the Sheriff’s Department for patrols and other law enforcement services.
“We demand the same treatment that deputies provide to the residents of Malibu, Rancho Palos Verdes and other affluent communities. And, according to the size of our contract with the Sheriff’s Department, we have $22 million reasons to expect it,” Brown said in a statement.
Letter to the Socialists, Old and New
Always recall that we win nothing because we are right, or just, are smarter, or have a better analysis of the crisis. We win with solid and powerful organizing led by a guiding and time-tested set of Socialist principles.
August 8, 2020 Chris Townsend REGENERATION
https://portside.org/2020-08-08/letter-socialists-old-and-new
I joined the labor movement 41 years ago. I had enrolled in the socialist movement two years before that. When I started out my links to the rest of the socialist movement were few; there were dwindling handfuls of people who identified publicly as “socialists.” The U.S. Mail and shortwave radio were my links to the bigger movement out there in the world. What remained of the socialist movement was rapidly decelerating and fissuring after the big 1960’s radicalization had run its course.
Even in these inopportune conditions I managed to climb aboard and find my places in both the labor and socialist movements. All these years later I am still at it.
And the role played by numerous senior trade unionists, communists, and socialists who I was lucky enough to run across in my experiences played a crucial role in keeping me on that course. They showed me that you could keep at this for years, decades, and ultimately a lifetime. All counseled that this was a long race, nothing that was going to succeed overnight. They reached out and listened to me when I was young, and new, and I am still here at my post in large part because of it.
I have done a lot of the ordinary work of our movements; taken on some great responsibilities; and done some of the heaviest lifting at times. Like a few others I helped keep the fires burning through the lowest points of U.S. socialist and communist experience. There were no more bleak and demoralizing years than the 1990’s and 2000’s. One was left frequently on your own to keep up the important work with only occasional glimmers of hope. The question of the day, day after day, was “How do we rebuild our ranks and our movement?” Most times it primarily a question of keeping the dwindling socialists motivated and active — or even just communicating with each other. All of the scattered women and men who did this socialist work under those conditions deserve a commendation; this was no easy task. Defeat, setback, stagnation, and an ever-dwindling cadre of the hardcore fighters, this was the year-after-year experience for most of us. You know who you are if you held on, and held out. You deserve thanks.
And as we can all see around us today comrades, those days are over.
By comparison, our movement today overflows with new and fresh recruits – and even some reactivated veterans. The old political order is decaying. The new socialist movement is taking off, propelled by Occupy, then the Sanders movement, now the Black Lives Matter movement. The economic collapse driven by the viral plague and the nationwide rebellion against the police murder of George Floyd energizes, radicalizes, and sweeps countless new recruits into our world. And there are a hundred other root causes for this growth. Socialism is now back on the agenda, back on the streets, and back in the minds of countless workers and students. Important sections of the working class are beginning to heat up. Some of the old veterans are stirring again.
So, it is in this optimistic context that this veteran offers my short letter to the Socialists, new and old.
LETTER TO THE NEW SOCIALISTS
I would only like to address the new Socialists with the greatest respect; you join and inherit a movement of great promise and hope, but a movement set back by defeats and hobbled some days as much by our internal defects as by the hostile elements arrayed against us. But you must play the hand that is dealt to you. You already know that nothing in this capitalist system is fair. It is an ugly and un-reformable machine that opposes and retards all attempts to undermine or overthrow it, and is devised solely to exploit and rob the working class and oppressed peoples. It creates and strengthens our political opposition, those who defend this rotten set-up, both politically and militarily. It is a formidable foe.
You are needed and welcomed; I extend my best as you join and participate in our ranks. I extend my thanks to you who may have joined the movement yesterday, or you who are passing your first, second, fifth, and tenth anniversaries as socialists. Take your responsibilities to heart. Many of us never stopped believing that you were coming, and we held on. We held on when it seemed that revolutionary possibilities and socialist renewal was nearly impossible.
But that long night has passed.
So, for what they may be worth to you, I have learned a few lessons over these many years since I was a young worker and a young socialist, both. And I wish you well as you consider these thoughts of mine at this critical point in time:
1. Wherever you are at in this fight for working class emancipation, dig in, fight harder, and stick to Socialist principles. Dismiss the pleadings of former movement glitterati who long ago gave up on revolutionary change and instead settled in comfort for the least worst of what the Democratic Party offers. It’s your movement now, it’s not theirs anymore.
2. Take full active part in the struggles all around you; labor and workplace organizing, community agitation against racism, student work, tenant organizing, work amongst the oppressed and pauperized masses at any level. Sitting it out is not an option. Motionless socialists are not socialists, they are spectators and bystanders. Avoid those who do little of the work and most of the talking.
3. Encourage and invite new recruits to join our movement; help them and welcome their presence since, like you, they are the future hope of the working class. Take seriously the need to recruit new workers to our movement; and then do it. If the trade union movement treated “organizing” the way the left generally does, it would have passed out of existence long ago. It is deliberate and difficult work to recruit. So do it.
4. Never forget the calls by Bernie Sanders for “a political revolution”, and then make it happen. Bernie is passing from the scene but our movement is not; we are at a fork in the road, not at the end of anything. Sanders has opened up the floodgates for many to enter our movement, but we face the task of expanding his message and crystallizing our own thoughts and organizations to carry on the work far, far, beyond his boundaries. With his reforms and program now blocked, and with the old order collapsing before our eyes, the time for ambitious action is now.
5. Never forget that a debating society never successfully competes for power, but well organized and motivated workers and people sometimes do. Build the movement more; debate each other less. Beware the sinkhole of too much social media. Shorten the talk and take action more. Make sure you confront the bosses more than you confront each other.
6. Expect nothing but sacrifice while in our movement, but know that your contributions are appreciated by your comrades here and working people world-wide. And be mindful to put more in than you take out.
7. Lead by example; other workers and the people are watching you and they measure the movement by your deeds and character as much as measuring you by your politics. Study and develop your skills; the task of socialist reconstruction will need all of your talents. You have something to contribute here, and prepare for that day.
8. Don’t ignore the theory and philosophy of our movement. Set aside the time to sit down and study the Socialist classics; read Marx and Engels, read Lenin, Luxemburg and Debs; and read the works of the other great women and men who built the movement before us. Develop a theoretical understanding of our movement. These lessons learned will help to sustain you in harder times, and help you gain insights and knowledge that will be useful to our movement if it is to grow, become stronger, and compete for power. And do this when you are young, before life events overcome you.
9. Be careful not to over-think things; at this moment our movement requires a premium on urgency of action, not merely more historical re-visitation and argument.
10. Always remember that the class struggle is the engine of history, and that you have a role to play in it. Always take the initiative in your struggles against the bosses and their system.
11. Know that all of our Socialist predecessors were sometimes right, and sometimes wrong; they possessed no crystal ball. You don’t possess one either.
12. After looking backwards you still must look ahead; we must deal with the problems of today and not the problems of the past. Historical knowledge is critical but avoid becoming swallowed up by it.
13. Share what you learn with other workers and learn to teach and lead both. Always remember that tens of millions of workers were never able to go to college, so they may not instantly hear exactly what you are trying to say to them. Patiently pull them in and many will learn and make extraordinary contributions to our cause; ignore them or ridicule them and they may become the shock troops of reaction. I was one of these workers; how many more like me are out there unreached by our message?
14. Devise means and experiments to take the socialist message to the workers in the vast unorganized regions and industries and into the armed forces. These workers have likely never encountered socialist ideas, and they remain largely in the grasp of the bosses’ ideology – and they will be used against us at every turn. They can be won over, but not without deliberate and focused effort.
15. Learn to despise the bosses and their political front men and familiarize yourselves with the horrors they visit on working people – and draw your motivation knowing that someday, somehow, we will end their rule.
16. Learn to love – or at least tolerate – your fellow comrades no matter how wrong they may seem to be. Or try – for at least most of them.
17. Avoid most showdowns regarding internal matters, since almost always the issue is of no great importance in three days, or three weeks, or three months. Splits, factionalism, and internal divisions debilitate our movement ninety nine times for every one time that it cleanses and reinvigorates it. Don’t play with this. Condemn those who do.
18. Always remember that the system is the enemy, not the misguided among us who likewise work for its overthrow.
19. Accept your full share of the financial responsibilities to our movement; our struggle will not be successful operating on nickels and dimes. Make significant financial contributions, not token donations. Financial questions are political questions, and treat them as such.
20. Overcome your fears and apprehensions about asking others to likewise meet their full measure of financial obligation to our work. Support especially the left organizations and the left press. Stop starving them in this critical time.
21. Throw out once and for all your reverence for the old order, and dare to dream about what its replacement will look like. We want and deserve something new and better. Chattel slavery and subjugation were replaced by wage slavery, and we fight for freedom from this last slavery which holds a tight grip on billions of fellow workers worldwide. As socialists we are optimists. Our movement follows the high road of history.
22. Spend time with the old Socialists and old Bolsheviks when you can, before they are gone; talk to them, get to know them, ask them questions and pull them into your work. Learn what can be learned from them, and insist that they support the movement fully, including financially. Many have led prosperous lives and they can – and should – be generous in their support of the new socialist generation. Ask them for the money and resources to fund the movement today; many have it.
23. Always remember that the movement does not exist for your benefit; shun those who treat it as a hobby, or use it as a platform to inflate their egos, or who by design escape the un-glamorous tasks. Beware dilettantes.
24. Drive out of our movement those who are hopelessly debauched, who prey on fellow comrades, who abuse comrades and workers, and most certainly expel from our ranks all who serve the boss or the police.
25. Plan for the long haul and pace yourself, and play your part in our movement knowing that we confront a well-organized and deadly foe that will not be easily defeated. Build your life around the movement and you will be enormously enriched.
26. Keep foremost in your minds that our movement is little if it does not compete seriously for power – in the community, at election time, and in the workplaces — and only wins when it can muster credible forces superior to the enemy.
27. Always recall that we win nothing because we are right, or just, are smarter, or have a better analysis of the crisis. We win with solid and powerful organizing led by a guiding and time-tested set of Socialist principles.
28. Value the great revolutionary inheritances that come down to you as participants in the Socialist movement; we owe it commitment and loyalty as our highest obligation. “Socialism or Barbarism” is not a slogan; it is a certainty.
LETTER TO THE OLD SOCIALISTS
To the Socialist veterans, the old-timers, those with many years of experiences like myself I address all of you with even more urgency than the fresher faces. Like many of you I survived the lean years. I did my part to keep things together under those miserable conditions, for years and years. And here we are today at the start of a political upsurge and mass radicalization the likes of which none of us have seen in more than 50 years.
My message to all of you is brief, but urgent:
1. An old Marx told the young Paul Lafargue that his work was animated by the need to bring forth new blood; “I must train up men who will continue the communist propaganda after I am gone.”. See your role today likewise. Your lifetime of work and sacrifices will count for little if you sit it out at this critical moment.
2. For those re-entering the movement after years or decades, welcome. Pick up where you left off and play your part. The system is collapsing, as we knew that it would someday. Contribute once again to the struggle for something better. The new Socialists need support and leadership and not relentless criticism or lecture; figure out what you can give and give it.
3. For those prone to it, cease the bitter critiques of Bernie Sanders, and get over it; his campaigns, work, and thoughtful leadership have done much to bring forward the new radicalization. For the heartbroken, do likewise. Recall the destructive effects of sectarianism and despondency in your own movement experiences. It’s time to open even wider the doors of our movement to a new mass enrollment that will go far beyond Bernie.
4. Take stock of your life’s work and accumulations and give selflessly to the movement. Arrange to do that in your will when you pass; many of us have prospered and the movement is in dire need of the funds to function and expand. It is our obligation to help rebuild the movement through our significant financial support – today.
5. Support the work of the newcomers even if you don’t understand them completely or even if you do not fully support their current Socialist understanding. They will learn the same lessons you learned the same way you learned them and your support will enable you to influence them far more effectively than relentless criticism or boycott. Remember that some of the socialist old timers of our day looked at us frequently with scorn and derision; and it did nothing to move our movement forward. Particularly encourage young fighters who come forward from the women’s movement, from the struggles against racial discrimination and oppression, from the LGTBQ liberation movement, and seek out young workers who otherwise would never hear our messages.
6. Take care to distribute your libraries and papers to the new Socialists so as to pass along the literary inheritance; your books and pamphlets need to be scattered to the new recruits. They marvel at the old classics and publications; so share them out before you go. Introduce them to the socialist publications that have survived, and don’t assume that they will find them on their own.
7. Take heart again in this moment that we are in; you can make a difference again, even after these many years. This system is collapsing and revolutionary opportunities are opening; young fighters are refilling our ranks; there is a new and positive energy that merits our full support.
I dedicate my Letters to the Socialists to the memories of Paul Medellin; Ruth and Joe Norrick; Willard Uphaus; Fern and Henry Winston; James Matles; Gil Green; Ben Barish; Michael Harrington; William Moody; Terence Carroll; Vito DeLisi; Don Tormey; and Mary Brlas. To my many young friends and co-workers I also owe a great debt of gratitude.
Workers of all Countries, Unite!
Marjorie Greene, the QAnon anti-Semite gun fanatic who loves Israel
Michael F. Brown
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/marjorie-greene-qanon-anti-semite-gun-fanatic-who-loves-israel
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a right-wing Republican and pro-Israel candidate, may well be the next representative from Georgia’s conservative 14th district. Greene won a first round of voting in June by close to 20 percentage points, but failed to clear the 50 percent threshold and consequently faces John Cowan in an 11 August runoff.
The winner is widely expected to be the next representative for a district that voted overwhelmingly for Mitt Romney in 2012 and Donald Trump in 2016.
Greene is among a number of candidates who support the QAnon conspiracy theory.
Travis View, who has written about QAnon for The Washington Post, has described it as being “based upon the idea that there is a worldwide cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who rule the world, essentially, and they control everything.”
Greene goes beyond conspiracy into outright bigotry. In June, Politico released video evidence of Greene voicing her racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic views.
In one Facebook video she verbally attacked Muslims. “If you want Islam and Sharia law, you stay over there in the Middle East,” she inveighed. “You stay there, and you go to Mecca and do all your thing. And, you know what, you can have a whole bunch of wives, or goats, or sheep, or whatever you want.”
Greene decried what she termed “an Islamic invasion into our government offices” following the 2018 elections. She also accused Muslim men of pedophilia.
In another video, she suggested Black people are held down by gangs and lack of education rather than by white people.
Greene contended that if she were Black she would feel “proud” to see Confederate monuments because they would show how far she had come.
She repeated a common right-wing anti-Semitic attack against George Soros, a Democratic contributor and founder of the Open Society Institute, when she stated, “George Soros is the piece of crap that turned in – he’s a Jew – he turned in his own people over to the Nazis.” This is a repugnant misrepresentation of reality.
Soros was a child at the time of the Second World War and was in profound danger of death from the Nazis.
Days before the runoff, she labeled Soros an “enemy of the people” on her campaign’s Facebook page.
In another recent post, she referred to Black Lives Matter and anti-fascists, saying that “Soros funds the destruction of America by supporting BLM /Antifa /Fake News Media, the true enemy of the American people.”
She added, “He’s bank-rolling left-wing movements worldwide who want to destroy Israel, one of the few friends the American people have.”
Greene posted a nearly 30-minute video following Trump’s election putting forward the theories of the internet commenter – or three commenters – known as Q.
She noted the theories could also be found at hate site 4Chan.
In the video, Greene speculates about the Washington elite’s involvement in pedophilia and Democratic Satanic worship. She cites Q as discussing a triangle involving Saudi Arabia, the Rothschilds and Soros.
These are supposedly “the puppet masters that fund this global evil.”
Greene adds, “I definitely would believe that.” She then says the triangle recently lost “one of its sides” – Saudi Arabia – around the time Trump visited the country to be honored there in 2017.
This is a clear mishmash of anti-Semitism and anti-Arab sentiment.
Anti-Semitic, but pro-Israel
Nonetheless, Greene trumpets her pro-Israel credentials in the apparent expectation that it will wipe away her anti-Jewish views.
In November 2018 she spoke up for George Papadopoulos, an adviser to Trump during the 2016 election campaign, and Michael T. Flynn, a former national security adviser, regarding their “stance on Israel.”
In fact, according to The New York Times, Flynn lied to the FBI about his discussion with Russian ambassador Sergey I. Kislyak regarding how Russia would vote on UN Security Council resolution 2334 in late 2016. The resolution condemns illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.
Flynn is a QAnon supporter who tweeted himself taking the group’s oath on 4 July this year.
He has more than 855,000 followers on Twitter. Presumably, he anticipates that many will be taken in by this Satanist pedophilia conspiracy theory in the midst of a deadly pandemic that some believe is fake news.
Papadopoulos, for his part, announced at the time of Trump’s inauguration: “We are looking forward to ushering in a new relationship with all of Israel, including the historic Judea and Samaria” – calling the West Bank by the name Israel uses. He later served 12 days in federal prison for lying to the FBI.
Nearly four years later the Trump administration has signaled it might recognize Israel’s possible annexation of some of that West Bank territory in violation of international law.
Greene also supported moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and declaring it the capital of Israel. She has not displayed any understanding of the dispossession and occupation of the Palestinian people by Israeli forces.
Racist gun proponent
The aspiring House representative has made clear her disdain for Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, claiming that they and other members of Congress have “destroyed” the National Football League and are “destroying” the stock-car racing firm NASCAR – apparently for getting rid of the Confederate flag which for many Americans represents treason, the enslavement of Black people and Jim Crow racial discrimination.
She has gone so far as to make a claim of dual loyalty against Omar.
And she released a racist Facebook attack against Ocasio-Cortez and Omar that suggests they like the damage to American cities from recent protests over the killing of George Floyd because, in words falsely attributed to Omar, it feels “more like home.”
Greene is a staunch proponent of the second amendment which has made the US one of the most dangerous countries in the world, particularly for school children.
One of her campaign advertisements has her drive up in a Humvee before firing an AR-15 at signs saying “gun control,” “open borders,” the “Green New Deal” and “socialism.” The “open borders” shot is a clear threat to undocumented migrant workers crossing the southern US border and fits with the racism she has expressed elsewhere.
In another ad, she touts Trump as declaring antifa to be a “domestic terrorist organization.” Holding her AR-15, Greene hints at her capacity for violence when she warns “antifa terrorists” to “stay the hell out of northwest Georgia.”
The anti-science Greene is certain to promote conspiracy theories, a more gun-stuffed US and belligerent support for Israeli colonial expansion if she wins her August runoff and again in November. At the moment, there’s a strong possibility she will be in Washington in January as the next representative of Georgia’s 14th congressional district.
The ‘Free Market’ Wolves of the Pandemic
Vijay Prashad espouses confidence in rejecting the neoliberal capitalist framework, which arose against plenty of warnings over several decades and now exposes workers to the wolves of the “free market” during the pandemic.
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/08/07/covid-19-the-free-market-wolves-of-the-pandemic/
The novel coronavirus continues its march through the world, with 18 million confirmed cases and at least 685,000 deaths. Of these, the U.S., Brazil and India are the worst-hit, harboring about half of the world’s cases.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that these numbers are high because of higher rates of testing is not borne out by the facts, which show that it is not testing that has ballooned the numbers, but the paralysis of the governments of Trump, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, and India’s Narendra Modi and their failure to control the contagion. In these three countries, testing has been hard to access, and the test results have been unreliably reported.
Trump, Bolsonaro and Modi share a broad political orientation — one that leans so heavily towards the far right that it cannot walk upright. But beneath their buffoonish statements about the virus, and their reluctance to take it seriously, lies a much deeper problem that is shared by a range of countries. This problem goes by the name of neoliberalism, a policy orientation that emerged in the 1970s to stabilize a deep crisis of stagnation and inflation (“stagflation”) in global capitalism. We define neoliberalism plainly in the image below:
The tax strike by the very rich, the liberalization of finance, the deregulation of labor laws and the evisceration of welfare provisions deepened social inequality and reduced the role of the vast mass of the world’s population in politics. The demand that “technocrats” — especially bankers — run the world produced an anti-political sentiment amongst large sections of the world, who became increasingly alienated from their governments and from political activity.
Institutions of society that emerged to protect us from catastrophes of one kind or another were undermined. Public health systems were dismantled in countries such as the United States and India, while associated social services for childcare and eldercare were cut back or destroyed.
In 2018, a United Nations study found that only 29 percent of the global population has access to social protection systems (including income security, access to health care, unemployment insurance, disability benefits, old-age pensions, cash and in-kind transfers, and other tax-financed schemes).
A consequence of ending even meager social protection for workers (such as sick leave) and of failing to provide public universal healthcare is that in the case of a pandemic, workers can neither afford to remain at home nor can they access healthcare: they are left to the wolves of the “free market,” which is really a world designed around profit and not the well-being of people.
It is not as if there have not been warnings about the policy framework known as neoliberalism and the austerity project that it has driven. In September 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned about the deep cuts in public health spending — including the lack of hiring of public health workers — and the impact this would have if a pandemic were to break out. That was on the verge of this pandemic, although earlier epidemics (H1N1, Ebola, SARS, MERS) already showed the weakness of the public health systems to manage an outbreak.
From the onset of neoliberalism, political parties and social movements warned about the threats posed by these cuts; as social institutions are whittled away, society’s ability to withstand any crisis — be it economic or epidemiological — is damaged. But these warnings were dismissed, the callousness remarkable.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), founded in 1964, lit the red light of caution from the publication of its first “Trade and Development Report” (TDR) in 1981; this UN body tracked the new economic agenda premised on liberalized trade, debt-driven investment in the developing world and the slow emergence of a broad slate of austerity policies pushed by the IMF’s structural adjustment programs.
The austerity programs imposed on countries by the IMF and by the wealthy bondholders negatively impacted GDP growth and produced large fiscal imbalances. Growth in foreign direct investment (FDI) and exports did not necessarily mean an increase of incomes for people in the developing world. The TDR from 2002 explored the paradox that, while the developing countries were trading more, they were earning less; this meant that the trading system was rigged against these countries whose economies are largely reliant on exporting primary commodities.
The 2011 TDR looked closely at the after-effects of the 2007-08 credit crisis, which — it noted, “highlighted serious flaws in the pre-crisis belief in liberalisation and self-regulating markets. Liberalised financial markets have been encouraging excessive speculation (which amounts to gambling) and instability. And financial innovations have been serving their own industry rather than the greater social interest. Ignoring these flaws risk another, possibly even bigger, crisis.”
After re-reading the 2011 TDR, I wrote to Heiner Flassbeck, who was the chief of microeconomics and development at UNCTAD from 2003 to 2012, to ask him about that report and his feelings about it almost a decade later. Flassbeck re-read the report and wrote, “it seems to me that it is still a good guide into a new global order.”
Last year, Flassbeck wrote a three-part series of articles titled “The Great Paradox: Liberalism Destroys the Market Economy” in which he argues that neoliberalism destroyed the ability of economic activity to create jobs and wealth for the majority of the people. Now, Flassbeck wants to emphasize the importance of stagnant wages as an indicator of problems, as well as a place from which to develop solutions.
The 2011 TDR argued that “the forces unleashed by globalisation have produced significant shifts in income distribution resulting in a falling share of wage income and a rising share of profits.” The Seoul Development Consensus of 2010 had advised that “for prosperity to be sustained it must be shared.”
Apart from China, which developed a major scheme in 2013 to eradicate poverty and share growth, most countries saw wage growth fall short of productivity growth, which has meant that domestic demand grew more slowly than the supply of goods; nor were the possible solutions of relying on external demand or stimulating domestic demand with credit sustainable.
Flassbeck replied to Tricontinental: Institute of Social Research:
“The core of the matter is wages. That was missing in the TRD 2011. All attempts to stabilise our economies and bring them back to strong investment growth are futile if the wage question is not fixed. To fix it means to implement in all countries of the world strong regulation to make sure that wage earners are fully participating in the productivity growth of their national economies. In the developing world, this is understood in Eastern Asia but nowhere else. You need strong government intervention to force companies, national as well as international, to apply wage growth in line with productivity growth and the inflation target set by the government or the central bank. It can be pushed through by governments decisions about the increase of the minimum wage, as China did it, or by informal pressure on the companies, as Japan did it.”
In a recent report, Flassbeck argued that many developing countries — even in the midst of the coronavirus recession — look to the advanced capitalist countries, which are cutting wages, underspending, and pursuing failed policies of “labor market flexibility;” the IMF often forces along these policies, which are the “main hindrances to a better growth and development performance.”
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