https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdsDnPtwFD0
Tuesday, August 25, 2020
The Fox is Still in the Henhouse at the Post Office
Sarah Anderson August 20, 2020
https://citizentruth.org/the-fox-is-still-in-the-henhouse-at-the-post-office/
In the face of a historic public outcry, the postmaster general has promised to stop sabotaging essential services—temporarily.
(Common Dreams) Skyleigh Heinen, a U.S. Army veteran who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis and anxiety, relies on the Postal Service for timely delivery of her meds to be able to function. She was one of thousands of Americans from all walks of life who spoke out recently to demand an end to a forced slowdown in mail delivery.
The level of public outcry in defense of the public Postal Service is historic—and it’s having an impact.
Shortly after Postmaster General Louis DeJoy took the helm in June, it became clear that the fox had entered the henhouse. President Trump had gained a powerful ally in his efforts to decimate the public Postal Service.
Instead of supporting his frontline workforce, DeJoy has made it harder for them to do their job.
For example, he banned overtime, ordering employees to leave mail and packages behind if they could not deliver it during their regular schedule. Until this point, postal workers had been putting in extra hours to fill in for sick colleagues and handle a dramatic increase in package shipments.
As the mail delays worsened, more than 600 high-volume mail sorting machines disappeared from postal facilities. Blue collection boxes vanished from neighborhoods across the country. Postal managers faced a hiring freeze.
President Trump threw gas on the fire by gloating that without the emergency relief he opposes, USPS couldn’t handle the crisis-level demand for mail-in voting.
Outraged protestors converged outside DeJoy’s ornate Washington, D.C. condo building and North Carolina mansion, and they flooded congressional phone lines and social media. Political candidates held pop-up press conferences outside post offices.
At least 21 states filed lawsuits to block DeJoy’s actions, while Taylor Swift charged that Trump has “chosen to blatantly cheat and put millions of Americans’ lives at risk in an effort to hold on to power.”
After all this, DeJoy announced he’s suspending his “initiatives” until after the election.
This is a victory. But it’s not enough.
DeJoy’s temporary move does not address concerns about the threats to the essential, affordable delivery services that USPS provides to every U.S. home and business, or the decent postal jobs that support families in every U.S. community. These needs will continue long past November 3.
Second, DeJoy has made no commitment to undo the damage he’s already done. And he promised only to restore overtime “as needed.” Will he replace all the missing mail-sorting machines and blue boxes? Will he expand staff capacity to handle the backlog he’s created and restore delivery standards?
Third, DeJoy makes no mention of the need for pandemic-related financial relief. USPS has not received one dime of the type of emergency cash assistance that Congress has awarded the airlines, Amtrak, and thousands of other private corporations.
While the pandemic has been a temporary boon to USPS package business, the recession has caused a serious drop in first-class mail, their most profitable product. Postal economic forecasters predict that COVID-related losses could amount to $50 billion over the next decade.
DeJoy has proved he cannot be trusted to do the right thing on his own. Congress must step in and approve at least $25 billion in postal relief—and legally block actions that undercut the ability of the Postal Service to serve all Americans, both today and beyond the election.
For the American people, this is not a partisan fight. We will all be stronger if we can continue to rely on our public Postal Service for essential services, family-supporting jobs, and a fair and safe election.
“A Disturbing Milestone”: America’s Top 12 Plutocrats Now Own $1 Trillion in Wealth
https://citizentruth.org/a-disturbing-milestone-americas-top-12-plutocrats-now-own-1-trillion-in-wealth/
New figures from the Institute for Policy Studies show that, despite a pandemic that has stunted the economy for months, America’s billionaire class is becoming richer than ever, adding nearly $700 billion to their fortune since the nationwide lockdown in March.
(By: Alan Macleod, Mintpress News) For the first time in history, the 12 richest individuals in the United States collectively hold over $1 trillion in wealth. New figures from the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) show that, despite a pandemic that has stunted the economy for months, America’s billionaire class is becoming richer than ever, adding nearly $700 billion to their fortune since the nationwide lockdown in March, now holding $1.015 trillion. Speaking with MintPress today, the IPS’ Chuck Collins described his findings as a “disturbing milestone in the history of extreme inequality in the U.S.” adding:
This despotic dozen has tremendous power and wealth related to their control of the technological platforms and digital commons that we all depend on.”
Included on the list are figures like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest living individual, who has nearly doubled his fortune to an estimated $189 billion, and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, who saw his personal net worth triple to $73 billion in the last six months.
The news of these billionaires’ growing fortunes comes amid record stock market gains. Yesterday, the S&P 500, an index measuring the performance of America’s 500 largest corporations, reached an all time high, closing at 3,389.78, breaking the previous record set in February.
Few Americans, however, are feeling any benefits. The coronavirus pandemic has wrought a terrible economic and social cost on the country, with an estimated 26 million going hungry in the last week, 40 million facing eviction from their homes, and around 55 million filing for unemployment benefits since March. Food banks across the country have seen great increases in demand and, in some cases, are struggling to meet it.
Wages fall as profits soar
President Trump has many times touted the surging stock market as a reflection of his administration’s competence, mirroring the 1950s slogan “what’s good for General Motors is good for the country.” However, few appear to accept Trump’s word on it. Dean Baker, Senior Economist at the Center for Economic Policy Research in Washington, D.C., told MintPress that, “Stocks measure the expected value of future corporate profits. With the labor market weak and likely to remain so for a while, wages are likely to lag productivity, which will be good for profits. Also, continued low interest rates mean there are not good alternatives to stock” — something that raises the question of for whom is the economy currently working. “It is a societal failure when so much wealth and power are in so few hands,” said Collins.
The full list of 12 plutocrats and their quickly rising net worth are as follows:
Jeff Bezos ($189.4 billion)
Bill Gates ($114 billion)
Mark Zuckerberg ($95 billion)
Warren Buffett ($80 billion)
Elon Musk ($73 billion)
Steve Ballmer ($71 billion)
Larrry Ellison ($71 billion)
Larry Page ($67 billion)
Sergey Brin ($66 billion)
Alice Walton ($62 billion)
Jim Walton ($62 billion)
Rob Walton ($62 billion)
Of the twelve, five have taken a pledge to give away at least half of their wealth during their lifetimes. But only one of those on the list, business tycoon and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet, has actually seen his net worth decrease in the past six months. Bezos, whom some are predicting will be the world’s first trillionaire, has not, and is asking the public for donations to help his 800,000 employees through the pandemic. One-third of Amazon employees in Arizona are on food stamps, with other states not faring that much better.
While working-class Americans have had to make do with one $1,200 government check, the country’s billionaires have been most carefully looked after. A report from the Joint Committee on Taxation, a nonpartisan congressional body, found that 82 percent of the tax breaks from the Trump administrations Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act went to those making over $1 million annually, with the super-wealthy feeling the most benefits. And as the government has gone on vacation until September, it is unlikely that any relief will arrive in the near future.
Nevertheless, serious changes are necessary, both over the short and long terms. “Without any significant reforms — which include an excess profits tax, a wealth tax and a progressive estate tax — wealth will continue to concentrate in the hands of a small minority and worsen inequality in the future,” said Collins’ colleague at the Program on Inequality and the Common Good, Omar Ocampo. With Trump promising another large tax cut, the problem of wealth inequality is likely to get worse rather than better.
New York University moves to implement racial segregation in student dorms
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/24/nyur-a24.html
By Karsten Schneider
24 August 2020
Since late June, the Office of Residential Life and Housing Services at New York University (NYU) has been working closely with a small, student-led task force to make racially segregated housing a reality in undergraduate student dorms.
On July 20, Washington Square News, the weekly undergraduate student newspaper of NYU, published an article titled “Student-Led Task Force Calls for Black Housing on Campus,” in which they reported on the university’s willingness to help implement residential communities open solely to “Black-identifying students with Black Resident Assistants.” Since then, the university has officially given the project a green light, aiming to have NYU’s first segregated residential floor established by Fall 2021.
A little over two months ago, a recently-organized advocacy group called Black Violets created an online petition demanding that the university “implement Black student housing on campus in the vein of themed engagement floors across first-year and upperclassmen residence halls.” In their petition, the group argues that “Too often in the classroom and in residential life, black students bear the brunt of educating their uninformed peers about racism.” African American students, they state, desperately require a “safe space” where they can escape from students, staff, and faculty of other races.
At NYU, “themed engagement floors,” also known as “Themed Engagement Communities,” are a network of theme-based floors, located in various undergraduate residence halls, that allow students living on a specific floor to explore a specific subject through various programs and activities planned by a Resident Assistant. There are over twenty Themed Engagement Communities at NYU, with themes ranging from film, literature, and theater to technology, science, and foreign languages. All floors are open to all students, who request residency on a specific floor prior to the start of the academic year.
The approval of a Themed Engagement Community open to students based on their race is new at NYU. However, it is not the first time that the Office of Residential Life and Housing Services has considered such a proposal. In 2002, an NYU senior submitted a plan to develop race-based housing for African American students, claiming that “such a housing program would unite African American students on campus,” and better combat racial discrimination. This proposal was eventually rejected by the university after a brief review and discussion.
Now, despite signs of minimal support from the undergraduate student body—the online petition has garnered a mere 1,105 signatures out of the 26,733 total undergraduates currently studying at NYU—the proposal for race-based housing has been warmly welcomed by the university administration.
There is nothing progressive about the establishment of racially segregated housing at NYU. It is irrelevant whether the segregation being implemented is voluntary or mandatory. Racial segregation, in all forms, is entirely reactionary.
The vile argument advanced in the proposal is that all non-African American students, staff, and faculty are, to varying degrees, hostile and dangerous towards African American students. Their animosity stems from an inherent antipathy towards individuals of different races. Therefore, to end discrimination and ensure true equality within the university, African Americans must completely separate themselves from the rest of the community and “train” non-African Americans to overcome their intrinsic racism.
This irrational and anti-scientific ideology lies at the heart of similar proposals made at several major academic institutions across the country in recent years. This includes the moves towards racially segregated housing at Syracuse University and the recent calls for the implementation of racial quotas at several elite American universities. These demands do not stem from an egalitarian and progressive desire to make education easily available for everyone and eliminate the real dangers that face the majority of students and youth (massive debt, unemployment, homelessness, hunger, poverty, etc.), but from the desire to advance the interests of a very small, privileged layer of the population.
It is no coincidence that a renewed push for race-based housing at NYU comes at a time of unprecedented social, economic, and political crisis in the United States and throughout the world. This move is an outcome of the ever-intensifying racialist campaign being conducted by the sections of the ruling class and affluent middle class politically represented by the Democratic Party and their media mouthpiece, the New York Times. For over 50 years, these oligarchs and their obedient servants in the upper-middle class have relentlessly sought to defend their interests by dividing the working masses through the promotion of racial and identity politics.
Racism cannot be countered with racialism. They are two sides of the same coin. The fundamental division in capitalist society is class, not race. An individual’s relationship to the means of production ultimately determines their position in society.
A review of studies on wealth stratification between the richest and poorest members of the African American community alone exposes the class interests behind identity politics. According to statistics from 2017, the top 10 percent of the African American population owns over 75 percent of all wealth owned by African Americans. The bottom 50 percent of the African American population has zero or negative wealth. Under Barack Obama’s administration, the top 1 percent of African Americans saw their share of wealth double from 19.4 percent to 40.5 percent. Working-class African Americans are worse off than they were four decades ago, while things have never been better for the rich.
The growth of social inequality and poverty has occurred across all racial groups. White workers, black workers, Latino workers, Asian workers, and Native American workers have all seen their standard of living sharply decrease as that of the top 10 percent has dramatically increased.
Regardless of their race, workers face the same daily struggle to survive, laboring for long hours in horrendous conditions for dismal wages. Now, as a result of the ruling class’s ruthless back-to-work campaign, they also face infection with and death from COVID-19 as they are herded back into unsanitary factories and workplaces to pump out the surplus value necessary for the ruling class to pay off its debts.
In the aftermath of the international, multi-racial, mass protests against police brutality, sparked by the brutal murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and the outbreak of wildcat protests and strikes across several major industries, the ruling class has pushed racial identity politics in an effort to misdirect growing opposition. Using the New York Times’ 1619 Project as a basis, they seek to completely erase class consciousness and the progressive content of the two American revolutions in order to stifle movement towards the third.
Identity politics solely serves the interests of the wealthy and privileged layer of society that has profited from the suffering of the working class. Specifically, it is the primary mechanism through which the “next 9 percent,” directly below the top 1 percent, seeks to achieve a more equal distribution of wealth within the top 10 percent of society. This layer, the upper-middle class, has no more qualms over exploiting the working masses for personal gain than the corporate, financial oligarchs at the very top of society.
University campuses, dominated by the upper-middle class, have been breeding grounds of anti-Marxism and imperialist recruitment for many decades. NYU stands at the pinnacle of that section of academia’s reactionary position within society. The university’s subservience to the profit interests of Wall Street and its extensive ties to US imperialism drive its every decision. Over the last few years, NYU has carried out significant attacks on workers, subordinated student mental health and food insecurity to profit interests, and demonstrated complete contempt for democratic rights. NYU, like all institutions of “higher” education, is first and foremost a business and will do everything in its power to defend the profit system.
This includes full compliance with the ruling class’s vicious back-to-work campaign. NYU, against the advice of medical professionals around the world, is one of the many academic institutions that has decided to hold in-person classes. Students from across the country are currently flying into New York City to undergo a mandatory two-week quarantine before the university opens.
The decision to hold in-person classes at NYU will prove to be disastrous. Over the last few weeks, several major US schools, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Notre Dame, Princeton, and the University of Southern California, were forced to revert to online instruction after explosions of COVID-19 cases amongst their students, staff, and faculty. Despite this, NYU has decided to go ahead with a full reopening; knowingly sacrificing the lives of students, staff, and faculty for profits.
It is imperative that all students realize the danger that they are facing in returning to school. What is needed is not the division of students along identity-based lines, but their unification against the present, barbaric social order. The fight against all forms of exploitation and oppression is inherently linked to the fight against capitalism. Students at NYU and universities around the world who seek to fight for genuine social equality must turn to the international working class, the great, powerful, progressive force in society. It is only by uniting workers of all races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, and nationalities behind a clear, socialist program and perspective that capitalist barbarism will be overcome.
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) are at the forefront of this struggle, striving to provide the working class with the independent, socialist leadership that is necessary to end a social order that prioritizes private profit over social need.
The author also recommends:
The cancellation of professor Adolph Reed, Jr.’s speech and the DSA’s promotion of race politics
[18 August 2020]
Demands mount for racial quotas at elite US universities
[13 July 2020]
Police misconduct database reveals top NYPD brass guilty of abuse of authority
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/24/nypd-a24.html
By Josh Varlin
24 August 2020
Leading New York City Police Department (NYPD) officials, including Police Commissioner Dermot Shea, have extensive misconduct allegations against them, according to years of records made public by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU). Shea has overseen the NYPD since being appointed by Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio in November 2019.
NYCLU, the state affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), was able to publish data from the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) after a federal judge ruled, per a recent change in state law, such data could be made public.
The CCRB data published by NYCLU includes 323,911 complaints against 81,550 NYPD officers stretching back to 1985. It does not include complaints which are currently being investigated. According to the CCRB, most years only 30-40 percent of complaints are fully investigated, with most stymied due to witness noncooperation or inability to identify the officer.
If investigated, the allegations are either substantiated (the incident happened and constituted misconduct) or unsubstantiated (the CCRB could not prove that the incident happened, or that it constituted misconduct), or the officer is exonerated (the CCRB found that the incident happened but did not constitute misconduct).
While representing only the tip of the iceberg in terms of police misconduct, several current and former NYPD top officials appear in the NYCLU database.
According to the nonprofit New York City news site T he City, “Police Commissioner Dermot Shea got cited for what appears to be a wrongful vehicle search in 2003, during the era of ‘stop and frisk,’ when he was a captain in The Bronx.”
The incident is a microcosm of the indignities and abuse working-class New Yorkers suffer at the hands of the police. The CCRB substantiated that the 2003 incident involved misconduct. Shea was found to have wrongfully pulled over the vehicle before illegally searching it and unlawfully frisking at least one passenger. The disciplinary result of Shea’s illegal actions was that he was given “instructions.”
Three other complaints against Shea resulted in him being exonerated, meaning that the CCRB—an independent body whose board members are appointed by the New York City Council, the mayor and the police commissioner—found that the incident occurred but that the officer conduct did not violate procedure or the law.
Shea’s predecessor, James O’Neill, who was police commissioner from September 2016 until November 2019, also appears in NYCLU’s database. The CCRB substantiated charges that then-Lieutenant O’Neill unlawfully searched and detained someone, along with “unspecified abuse charges,” during a 1997 incident. The CCRB could not substantiate allegations of O’Neill threatening to use and actually using force improperly, as well as using “nasty words.”
T he City reports, “There’s no record indicating O’Neill received any form of discipline stemming from the substantiated charges.” O’Neill was exonerated of three other allegations in 1997, 1999 and 2002, including regarding illegal search of premises and damage of complainant property.
Other top NYPD officials appear in the NYCLU database. The highest-ranking uniformed cop, Chief of Department Terence Monahan, “was named in six ‘abuse of authority’ complaints, at least five of them during the 2004 Republican National Convention [RNC], which saw clashes between protesters and police,” according to the New York Post. While none of the allegations against Monahan were substantiated, protesters at the RNC were awarded a $200,000 settlement for the abuse they received at the hands of the NYPD.
Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison has 21 complaints against him, of which an abuse of authority complaint was substantiated. Chief of Crime Control Strategies Michael LiPetri has 25 complaints against him, of which three have been substantiated.
That abusive cops rise to the top in the NYPD comes as no surprise to most New Yorkers. However, summary data put forward by the CCRB, as well as analyses of the NYCLU database, hint at the much broader culture of brutalization within the NYPD.
The CCRB received 7,663 complaints (each complaint can contain multiple allegations) in 2006, with a general decline over the following decade, in part due to the official discontinuation of stop-and-frisk, which a judge found to constitute unconstitutional searches and be racially discriminatory in application. However, from 2016 through 2019 complaints increased annually, reaching 4,962 in 2019.
A plurality of complaints originated in incidents which did not result in arrests or even a summons, and a plurality occur when a police officer suspects a crime—that is, is not called to the scene of a reported crime—expressing the arbitrary character of police violence and other heavy-handedness meted out to the city’s working class residents.
ProPublica, which separately published a subset of the CCRB data, found that of the 36,000 current NYPD officers, 3,900, or 11 percent, have “had at least one substantiated allegation.”
A small fraction of complaints, less than 3 percent, led to the officer receiving punishment, with only 12 officers dismissed, according to the NYCLU. For those cases investigated and substantiated, the NYPD decides internally how to act on the CCRB’s findings, with Police Commissioner Shea—himself, as revealed by the data, an abusive cop—making the final decision.
Several categories of allegations within the NYCLU database are revealing:
Beating: 4,215 allegations, of which 314 were substantiated. Except for two entries of “No Disciplinary Action,” no NYPD findings or punishments are listed in the database.
Chokehold: 1,746 allegations, of which 84 were substantiated. The NYPD found the officer not guilty in about half of the substantiated cases.
Gun firing: 423 allegations, of which 16 were substantiated. About half of the NYPD findings and punishments are not listed.
Refusal to obtain medical treatment: 1,885 allegations, of which 132 were substantiated, mostly resulting in training and command discipline. Officer Damian Marcaida was fired in 1999 for this infraction.
Vehicle search: 5,575 allegations, of which 753 were substantiated, mostly resulting in command discipline, training or instructions.
Offensive racial language, e.g., slurs: 2,781 allegations, of which 75 were substantiated by the CCRB. About half of these, despite being substantiated by the CCRB, had their charges dismissed by the NYPD, or were found not guilty. Many of those found guilty received instructions or written warnings, with very few substantiated claims resulting in penalties such as the loss of vacation days.
Offensive language against black people (separate from the above category): 2,970 allegations, of which 200 were substantiated, with no NYPD findings or punishments listed beyond a single finding of “not guilty.”
There were also three allegations of a sexually motivated strip search, one of a sexually motivated frisk and 32 of a “sexual/romantic proposition.” Offenses include multiple categories for police officers using items like flashlights and radios as clubs, as well as for offensive language targeting complainants’ race, ethnicity, gender, disability or religion. There are also eight threats related to immigration status. Such bigoted and backward elements find a ready home in police departments across the United States.
That so few police officers are held accountable for their actions is by design. The CCRB functions as a fig leaf for the NYPD. Its board is appointed by the political representatives of the same ruling class which the NYPD defends, along with appointees from the NYPD commissioner himself. It has limited powers and can only make recommendations to the NYPD, which often lets officers off the hook entirely in its own process or gives them merely a slap on the wrist for serious violations of democratic rights.
Even the limited oversight the board provides is anathema to the police and their fascistic unions, which sued to keep the NYCLU database under wraps after the organization obtained it through a Freedom of Information request.
Hundreds of cases being investigated by the CCRB have been delayed since March because officers refused to attend remote hearings necessitated by the pandemic, reportedly over concerns that such testimony would be leaked. It was only in early August that the department ordered officers to attend hearings.
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