Ex-President Alvaro Uribe freed from house arrest

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVUXODpO7hA&ab_channel=TeleSUREnglish

McConnell Abandons Court Plan to Save Himself

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3-f2BH2lRY&ab_channel=HardLensMedia

Richest 50 Americans now have as much wealth as bottom 165 million

Gabriel Black




https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/10/ineq-o10.html




The Federal Reserve released data this week on US household wealth that documents the acceleration of wealth inequality during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the second quarter of 2020, the bottom 50 percent of households—some 165 million people—held $2.08 trillion, or $12,600 per person, while the richest one percent of the population controlled $34.2 trillion, i.e., over $10.4 million per person. In percentile terms, the top one percent of the population held 30.5 percent of all wealth, while the bottom 50 percent controlled only 1.9 percent.

According to a Bloomberg analysis of the data, the richest 50 Americans now have as much wealth as the bottom half of the population. The increased concentration of wealth at the top in the course of 2020 is the result of the unprecedented injection of money into the stock market by the Fed, which has led to an explosive growth in the fortunes of moguls such as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Tesla chief Elon Musk and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The divide in wealth appears even more gigantic when one looks at the top 10 percent of the population as a whole. Combined, the top one percent and next nine percent held 69 percent of the nation’s wealth at the end of the second quarter of 2020, a total of $77.32 trillion.

Between the first and second quarter of 2020, the top one percent of the population increased its share of the country’s wealth from 30 percent to 30.5 percent. The biggest losers were those in the 50 to 90 percentile range of wealth holders, who saw their overall share shrink from 29.7 percent to 29.1 percent. The 90 to 99 percentile and the bottom half remained largely unchanged.

While these changes may appear slight, they actually represent a substantial shift in a short period of time. The top one percent of the population substantially increased its share of the country’s wealth as the Fed effectively printed over $3 trillion and injected it into the financial markets. Better-off sections of workers, who, unlike the bottom half of the working class, have some level of savings, retirement funds or other assets, saw their wealth share decline, as they were forced to draw on savings amidst the global downturn.

One explanation for this sharpening division between, roughly, the top 10 percent of the population and the bottom 90 percent of the population is the disproportionate ownership of stocks and mutual funds. The top one percent of the population owns 52.4 percent of all corporate equities (stocks) and mutual funds, the next nine percent owns 35.8 percent.

Combined, 88.2 percent of the US economy, as represented in corporate equities and mutual funds, is owned by just 10 percent of the population.

While the bottom half of the population has for the last several decades held only one percent of the nation’s stocks, better-off sections of the working class, the 50th to 90th percentiles, held 21.4 percent of this wealth in the early 2000s. However, today this share has fallen to just 11.2 percent. In other words, better-off sections of the working class, less connected to the financial markets, have seen their fortunes move in an opposite direction to those in the top 10 percent of the population.

Another interesting feature of the Fed data is its breakdown by age group. The Millennial group—those born between 1981 and 1996—is today the largest share of the American workforce, accounting for 72 million workers. However, Millennials own just 4.6 percent of US wealth.

In contrast, the data shows that in 1989, when the typical member of the Baby Boomer generation was 34, that generation controlled about 21 percent of wealth.

This contrast between the wealth of Millennials and that of Boomers at similar times in their life cycles reflects the incredible difficulty that young people today face in landing a decent-paying job, paying for college and paying for health care, let alone taking out a mortgage, raising a family and saving for retirement.

The Fed data comes on top of several other recent reports and announcements about social inequality, including:
A UBS report showing that the world’s billionaires have increased their wealth by over $1.3 trillion, more than 10 percent, in just three years.
An announcement by the World Bank that the fallout from COVID-19 will push as many as 150 million people into what it classifies as extreme poverty (living on less than $1.90 per day) by 2021. This is the first time the number of people in extreme poverty has increased since 1998.




A Wall Street Journal report that, using Labor Department data, demonstrated the divergence of fortunes for educated and noneducated workers amid the pandemic. The Journal found that, while those with college degrees have nearly recovered from COVID-19 job losses (which were smaller), high school dropouts still have 18 percent fewer jobs.
A RAND report that found the bottom 90 percent of Americans would be making 67 percent more without last four decades of deepening inequality.

The ever-growing concentration of wealth at the top of the population weighs like a malignant tumor over society. No social problem, whether it be inequality, global warming, education, health care, retirement or the pandemic, can be solved without mobilizing these vast fortunes at the top and placing them under the democratic control of the broad majority of the population.

The process of extreme class restructuring, and the decimation of the ranks of the better-off, “middle-class” workers depicted in the Fed data, has been underway for at least 40 years. Under Democratic no less than Republican leadership, president after president, Congress after Congress, policies have been carried out that inflated the wealth of the ultra-rich while degrading the conditions of the working class.

This process was sped up by the 2008 financial crisis, in which the Obama administration took measures to gut autoworkers’ pay while funneling trillions of dollars to Wall Street.

Now, a similar but even more drastic social restructuring is underway in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Millions have been thrown into long-term joblessness and poverty, while $3 trillion have been injected into the financial markets and hundreds of billions of dollars given out to major corporations under the bipartisan CARES Act.

The needs of the working class—the broad majority of the population—stand in direct conflict with the interests of the parasitic financial elite. The major banks and corporations, which control nearly every aspect of global life today, must be placed under the democratic ownership and supervision of the working class so that that the needs of the population can be met.

Democrats and corporate media cover-up Trump’s role in Michigan coup plot

Eric London
10 hours ago

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/10/pers-o10.html





Within 24 hours of the announcement of charges against 13 Michigan fascists who plotted to kidnap and kill Governor Gretchen Whitmer, the corporate media has pushed the story off the front pages. The far-reaching implications of this plot, and its connections to Trump’s strategy to transform the election into a coup, are being covered up.

By Friday morning, coverage of the Michigan conspiracy had all but disappeared from the online editions of the Washington Post and New York Times. Neither the Times nor the Post, the main newspapers politically aligned with the Democratic Party, have published an editorial on the plot. It was treated on the cable and network news as a minor part of the news cycle.

Democratic candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have not issued a major statement on the plot and did not even refer to it at a campaign rally Thursday night in Phoenix, Arizona.

The Democratic Party and the corporate press have raised no questions about the potential role of Trump’s fascist advisors or where the plotters obtained the money to plan their operations and buy equipment. Unlike Watergate, there is to be no investigation or congressional hearings into the connections between the plotters and top operatives in and around the Trump administration. No Democrat has called for subpoenaing Roger Stone, Stephen Miller, Steven Bannon, Erik Prince, or any other aides with ties to fascist groups. The position of the Democratic Party is: “nothing to see here.”
The rapidity of the coverup by the political establishment is inversely related to the amount of information making clear the Michigan events were only one part of an ongoing nationwide conspiracy. There is a clear and present danger of dictatorship in America. Workers must demand answers to questions about the plotters’ ties to the White House, the Republican Party, and their powerful dark money sources within the ruling elite.

The only significant statements about the broader framework of the conspiracy have come from Michigan officials. The state’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, told MSNBC’s Katy Tur yesterday: “I will tell you this: this may very well be the tip of the iceberg. I don’t feel as though our work or the work of the federal authorities is complete. And I think there are still dangerous individuals that are out there.”

Speaking yesterday on ABC’s “Good Morning America”, Whitmer warned, “I’m not the only governor going through this… It is not unique to me.”

Neither Michigan official gave any details of what they know. However, it is clear that the threats to kill governors and launch insurrections are focused on battleground states with Republican legislatures and Democratic governors: Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. These states are the linchpin of Trump’s strategy to carry out a coup.
In May, Salon reported police were investigating organized militias armed with assault rifles who were threatening North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper over lockdown measures. Anti-lockdown protesters were bussed to the state capitol with “enthusiastic astroturf support from Republican operatives and megadonors—one of whom offered to pay to bus protesters into the city.”
In Pennsylvania, a 28-year-old was charged on May 11 for organizing an armed group to kill Democratic Governor Tom Wolf. The next day, on May 12, Trump tweeted: “The great people of Pennsylvania want their freedom now and they are fully aware of what that entails.”
In Wisconsin, fascist gunman Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed two protestors on August 23 during protests in Kenosha against the police murder of Jacob Blake. Rittenhouse was part of a network of fascist militia who descended upon the city. Trump praised Rittenhouse and defended his actions, writing in August that “he was in big trouble. He probably would have been killed.”

Similar threats have been made against the Democratic governors in other states.
Yesterday, a radio station in Louisiana (which is not considered a battleground state) reported that “more than 30 groups designated as ‘hate groups’ or anti-government militias like the group arrested last week in Michigan” place Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards’ life in danger.
In January, when over 10,000 militia rallied at the Virginia state capital in Richmond, Democratic Governor Ralph Northam said he had “credible intelligence” that the demonstrators “may be armed and have as their purpose not peaceful assembly, but violence, rioting and insurrection.” A state legislator, Democratic Socialists of America member Lee Carter, was forced to flee the capitol to a safe house due to threats against his life.

On September 17, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the House of Representatives that the agency was conducting “a good bit north of 1,000 [investigations of far-right violence] this year.” This was “higher” than normal, he said, explaining that the threat posed by right-wing militias was “commensurate with ISIS.”

The next day, Trump threatened to fire Wray for these comments, saying, “I did not like his answers yesterday,” and “Antifa is bad, really bad.”

Wray’s testimony and the recent threats against other Democratic governors in battleground states raises serious questions. What do the remainder of the over 1,000 ongoing investigations show? How many fascist groups are mobilizing to carry out insurrection this November? Which governors are next? Who are the other figures on their “kill lists?”

On all of these questions, the Democrats and their main media mouthpieces are silent. By contrast, the pro-Trump Wall Street Journal went on the offensive, publishing an editorial on the Michigan plot that characterized Whitmer’s regime as an “overreaching state government,” which “exceeded her legal authority in the pandemic, and often in arrogant fashion.” It went on to denounce Whitmer for blaming Trump and echoed Trump’s declaration that she should have thanked the “Trump Justice Department.”

The silence of the Democrats and the media on what is the most advanced conspiracy to overthrow the constitution in American history can only be understood in class terms. The principal concern of the Democratic Party, a party of Wall Street and factions of the military-intelligence apparatus, is that the working class will become aware of the enormous dangers and take independent action.

On Wednesday, after Trump left the Walter Reed Medical Center, the World Socialist Web Site explained that he had to return rapidly to the White House because his ongoing political conspiracies could not be orchestrated from a hospital bed. While noting the extreme crisis of the Trump administration, the WSWS wrote:


There is one factor that works in Trump’s favor: the duplicity, spinelessness and fundamentally reactionary character of the Democratic Party. The Democrats can claim no credit for the crisis of the Trump administration. Rather than exposing his plots, they have done everything they can to stifle mass opposition to Trump’s fascistic conspiracies and cover up the danger of dictatorship.

The Democrats’ response to the attempted coup in Michigan once again exposes their political role. They want to ensure that the unprecedented political crisis remains confined entirely to the conflicts within the ruling class and its state.

Opposing Trump’s plot against America means pulling the rug out from under the financial aristocrats who plot and conspire against the democratic rights of the population. This task falls to the working class, which produces all of society’s wealth and is forced to go to work and school under deadly conditions. It is this powerful social force that must lead the opposition to Trump’s attempt to establish a dictatorship.

Wolff Responds: Profit Motives and Competition Often Fail Us

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pApS-JTHAWY&ab_channel=RichardDWolff

Trudeau admits US heading for post-election “disturbances,” but won’t condemn Trump

Keith Jones

10 hours ago



https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/10/trtr-o10.html




Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been compelled to break his silence on American President Donald Trump’s repeated statements that the only legitimate outcome of the November 3 US presidential election is his re-election and that he will not countenance a peaceful transfer of power, whatever the vote tally.

These statements are Trump’s public call to arms for a coup d’état, already set in motion by the White House and aimed at establishing a presidential dictatorship. Trump is conspiring to overturn his all but certain defeat at the polls by mobilizing sections of the military-police apparatus and his fascist supporters to unleash violence and mayhem, and through intrigues involving the unelected Supreme Court and the anti-democratic Electoral College (see: “Trump’s Operation Dictatorship: What the debate exposed”).

Asked at a media event Thursday about the US political crisis, Trudeau refused to condemn Trump for his flouting of the most basic democratic norms and his lies about the integrity of mailed ballots, let alone for plotting to overthrow American democracy.

“We are certainly all hoping,” said Trudeau “for a smooth transition or a clear result from the election, like many people around the world.

“If it is less clear, there may be some disruptions and we need to be ready for any outcomes. That’s what Canadians would expect of their government, and we’re certainly reflecting on that.”

As in early June, when Trudeau visibly groped for a response when asked about Trump’s attempt to illegally deploy the military against the mass protests over the police murder of George Floyd, Canada’s prime minister went on to say he wouldn’t “comment or weigh in on American political processes.”

Trudeau’s remarks and not for attribution statements by various senior government officials indicate that he, his inner circle, and Canada’s military-intelligence apparatus are fully aware of what is now unfolding in America, and carefully calculating their response based on the two principal concerns of the Canadian ruling class. These are: maintaining Canadian imperialism’s longstanding and ever more pivotal economic and military-security partnership with Washington and Wall Street; and limiting, as best they can, the political crisis in the US from further destabilizing class relations in Canada, which have already been rendered fraught by rampant social inequality, the decades-long assault on public services and worker rights, and now the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to a Reuters’ report, published later Thursday, the Canadian government is in consultations with the principal European imperialist powers, and likely also Japan, about how they will respond to a Trump coup.

“Canada’s foreign ministry,” wrote Reuters, “is gaming out scenarios for the US election and what the implications could be, especially if the aftermath is unpredictable, five sources familiar with the matter said.

“Ottawa,” continued the Reuters report, “is talking to other members of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations who are working on similar initiatives that plan out responses to various election outcomes, one source said.

“The sources said officials were looking at scenarios ranging from a straightforward win by either Republican President Donald Trump or Democratic opponent Joe Biden to more complicated outcomes where the result is contested or delayed.”

Just hours after Trudeau spoke of his government’s concern about the crisis in the United States, the extent of the coup plot was starkly revealed when news broke of the arrest of over a dozen right-wing militiamen in Michigan on charges of plotting to kidnap and kill Governor Gretchen Whitmer—a frequent target of Trump’s tirades. They also planned to seize the state legislature and violently overthrow the state government.

Trump, subsequently, refused to denounce the conspiracy against Whitmer’s life and the constitutional order, and instead railed against her on Fox News for “complaining” about the plot and implementing COVID-19 restrictions.

In his remarks Thursday, Trudeau, just before speaking about possible post-election “disruptions,” referred to the election outcome’s “potential impact on the Canadian economy.”

The Reuters report similarly cited Ottawa “insiders” concerns about the adverse impact events in the US could have on “highly integrated” Canada-US “supply chains, especially for the auto industry.”

This has been interpreted by the media as a reference to the possible disruption of Canada-US trade due to White House orders to close the border or restrict cross-border commerce, similar to those George W. Bush issued following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Left unsaid is another even more significant scenario: an explosion of working class opposition to Trump’s coup in the form of mass protests and strikes that could shut down the auto industry and all or much of the US economy.

The Toronto Star also published a report Thursday citing a “senior government source” who “agreed to lay out Ottawa’s contingency planning on the condition the Star withheld their name.”

According to the Star, their source “downplayed” one of the government’s “scenarios”—“that a disputed” election outcome leads “to widespread civil unrest and protests, with Trump refusing to leave office and discrediting the election results.”

The Star report said the government is bracing itself for the next stage of the US political crisis by focusing on reaching out to US “powerbrokers,” just as it did when Trump repudiated the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was ultimately replaced by a more expressly US-led continental trade war bloc. The Trudeau government’s NAFTA response, as the Star article notes, saw Ottawa court leading Congressional representatives and state governors, as well as key figures in Trump’s inner circle, including Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and the fascist ideologue Steve Bannon.

The Reuter’s report suggests that Canada’s US ambassador, Kirsten Hillman, a career civil servant, “is playing a central role” in the current reconnoitring mission.

All of these reports should be viewed critically. Trudeau and his Liberals have very close connections to the Democratic Party, and were on the best of terms with the Obama-Biden administration. As such, the highest levels of Canada’s government are no doubt fully informed as to the Democrats’ response to Trump’s coup plot.

As highlighted by the refusal of Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, to answer a question in Wednesday’s vice presidential debate about what the Democrats would do if Trump refused to leave office, the Democrats are desperately seeking to downplay Trump’s coup threat.

It is the growing of social opposition in the working class that is the greatest fear of the Democrats and of the sections of the US financial oligarchy and military-intelligence apparatus for which they speak. They are determined to keep the American political crisis within the corridors of power and aim to thwart Trump’s coup plot, not by an appeal to the American people, but by convincing the military and intelligence agencies that his attempt to overturn the results of the election will provoke mass opposition thereby imperilling bourgeois rule. A Biden-Harris administration, they are arguing, is the “safer, better” bet to uphold US imperialist interests at home and abroad.

Trudeau, his government, and the broad sections of the Canadian ruling class that oppose Trump are similarly determined to downplay the threat represented by Trump’s coup plot, and for like reasons.

First, because any serious examination of the breakdown of US democracy would quickly reveal that the same fundamental processes—rooted in the ruling elite’s monopolization of wealth, promotion of war and militarism, and cultivation of reaction—are at work in all the imperialist countries.

Second, because they share the Democrats’ mortal fear of an upsurge of the American working class and the galvanizing impact that it would have on the class struggle in Canada.

And finally, because much as they consider Trump a liability to North American imperialist interests, should he prevail the basic economic and geopolitical interests of Canadian capital will require that they work out a modus vivendi with America’s führer president—just as they have for the past four years.

The preparations for a coup in Washington and the Canadian ruling elite’s complicit response must serve as a call to action. Opposition to the growing threat of dictatorship and the imperialist Canada-US military-strategic partnership requires uniting Canadian and American workers in a common struggle and on the basis of a socialist and internationalist program.

Are You Ready For A Radical Idea?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZO_u9Ejg_M&ab_channel=SenatorBernieSanders