We don’t ask for financial contributions to support this POLITICALLY VERY
INCORRECT BLOG, but do appreciate you clicking on the ADSENSE ADS you find at the right and at the bottom of all posts which puts funds in our pockets to keep it going. Thanks for your support.
AMERICA'S SORRY STATE
“And the causes are complicated. A big part of the story is the ascendency of corporate America at the same time that American communities were being defenestrated.”
It gets worse. We are at a point where 1-in-8 American men over the age of 18 has a felony conviction. Where the average life expectancy of big chunks of the populace is moving backwards.
America's Sorry State
11:50 AM, MAR 16, 2017 | By JONATHAN V. LAST
Art Credit: Thomas Fluharty
A few years ago I wrote a piece where I asked whether or the '00s had been worse than the '70s. At the time, I thought it was a close call, one that could go either way. Today, I'm not so sure.
I'd point you to two recent pieces that you simply have to read in order to understand America as it exists now. The first is by my colleague Christopher Caldwell, writing about the opioid epidemic over at First Things. It's an amazing, magisterial piece.
In taking full measure of where we are and how we got here, Caldwell argues that the scope of the problem we face is difficult to fully comprehend:
Salisbury, Massachusetts (pop. 8,000), was founded in 1638, and the opium crisis is the worst thing that has ever happened to it. The town lost one young person in the decade-long Vietnam War. It has lost fifteen to heroin in the last two years. Last summer, Huntington, West Virginia (pop. 49,000), saw twenty-eight overdoses in four hours. Episodes like these played a role in the decline in U.S. life expectancy in 2015. The death toll far eclipses those of all previous drug crises. . . .
A heroin scourge in America's housing projects coincided with a wave of heroin-addicted soldiers brought back from Vietnam, with a cost peaking between 1973 and 1975 at 1.5 overdose deaths per 100,000. The Nixon White House panicked. Curtis Mayfield wrote his soul ballad "Freddie's Dead." The crack epidemic of the mid- to late 1980s was worse, with a death rate reaching almost two per 100,000. George H. W. Bush declared war on drugs. The present opioid epidemic is killing 10.3 people per 100,000, and that is without the fentanyl-impacted statistics from 2016. In some states it is far worse: over thirty per 100,000 in New Hampshire and over forty in West Virginia.
And the causes are complicated.
A big part of the story is the
ascendency of corporate America
at the same time that American
communities were being
defenestrated.
But it also has something to do with a culture that can't say no to anything, that doesn't believe in taboo, that feels the need to excuse and expunge and relieve people of agency.
Again, go read Caldwell's piece. It's amazing.
The other blockbuster essay comes from my friend Nick Eberstadt in the new issue of Commentary.(And by the by, if you haven't subscribed to Commentary, you should. It's a truly great magazine.) In "Our Miserable 21st Century" Eberstadt takes a more general, 30,000-foot view of modern America. He examines reams of data—on finances, income, health, social mobility, and more—and the picture he paints is one of a nation in serious trouble. Decline, even.
Take economic growth: Economists now
believe that the potential growth rate for the
United States—that is, the rate at which the
economy would grow at full employment—is
just 1.7 percent. Which means that the long-
term growth rate is under 1 percent. The
work rates for the population have similarly
been revised downward. The rosy
unemployment numbers you hear on the
news are based on the assumption that the
percentage of Americans in the labor force
will never again be as high as it was in 2001.
BLOG: DURING OBAMA'S EIGHT YEARS of OPEN BORDERS, 2/3 OF ALL JOBS WENT TO FOREIGN BORN OR ILLEGALS!
Here's Eberstadt:
As of late 2016, the adult work rate in America was still at its lowest level in more than 30 years. To put things another way: If our nation's work rate today were back up to its start-of-the-century highs, well over 10 million more Americans would currently have paying jobs.
There is no way to sugarcoat these awful numbers.
They are not a statistical artifact that can be explained away by population aging, or by increased educational enrollment for adult students, or by any other genuine change in contemporary American society. The plain fact is that 21st-century America has witnessed a dreadful collapse of work.
What's worse, this collapse of work post-2000 has coincided with an explosion of wealth for the wealth-holders.
There's no way for these opposing trends to lead to either economic or cultural or political stability.
It gets worse. We are at a point where 1-in-8 American men over the age of 18 has a felony conviction. Where the average life expectancy of big chunks of the populace is moving backwards. Where geographic mobility is in its third straight decade of decline and social mobility is collapsing, too. In 1977, the average 30-year-old was almost a sure bet to be earning more money than his parents were making at the same age—he had an 86 percent chance. Today, his odds are just about even-money—51 percent.
Like I said, go read Eberstadt's sensational piece. This is the America of 2017. Donald Trump isn't Reagan. And morning isn't coming.
OBAMA-CLINTON-TRUMPERNOMICS... Will it finish off the American middle-class?
"The Tax Policy Center finds that for the top 0.1 percent of income earners—those making more than $3.75 million annually—repealing this investment tax would amount to an average tax cut of $165,090."
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan THEAMERICAN THINKER.com
The eight years of the Obama administration--begun with promises of “hope” and “change” and filled instead with endless war, attacks on jobs and living standards, and the steady erosion of social services such as education and health care--created the conditions for the Republican takeover of Congress and finally the victory of Donald Trump.
….. the American Middle-Class at death’s door and knocking
….
THE DEATH OF AMERICA: MEXICO SERVES
UP THE HEROIN.
The death toll translates into an
average of one fatal overdose every 12 hours in the state of West Virginia.
THE DEATH of WHITE AMERICA
“Whites had the highest rate of
overdose deaths of any ethnicity, more than double the combined death rate for
blacks and Latinos.”
“The lifetime costs of Social Security and Medicare
benefits of illegal immigrant beneficiaries of President Obama’s executive amnesty
would be well over a trillion dollars, according to Heritage Foundation expert Robert
Rector’s prepared testimony for a House panel obtained in advance by Breitbart
News.”
Republicans push plan to
gut Medicaid and slash taxes for the wealthy
By Kate Randall
13 March 2017
Top Trump
administration officials appeared on the political talk shows Sunday morning to
promote the American Health Care Act (AHCA), the House Republican bill for the
repeal and replacement of Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA), better known as
Obamacare.
The Republican
proposal builds on the core features of Obamacare, designed to boost the
profits of the private insurers and slash health care costs for the government
and big business.
The ACHA seeks to
strengthen the grip of the for-profit health care delivery system in America
while making sweeping cuts to Medicaid, the insurance program for the poor
jointly funded by the federal government and the states. It also slashes
financial assistance to low-income people seeking to purchase health coverage
and cuts taxes for the wealthy and big business by an estimated $600 billion.
The Congressional
Budget Office (CBO) is expected to release its numbers on the Republican plan
today. The Brookings Institution on Thursday predicted that the CBO’s analysis
will likely find that at least 15 million people stand to lose coverage under
the AHCA by the end of the 10-year scoring window.
In a prerecorded
interview aired on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, Health and Human Services
(HHS) Secretary Tom Price attempted to evade moderator Chuck Todd’s question:
“Can you say for certain that once this bill is passed nobody, nobody will be
worse off financially when it comes to paying for health care?”
Price answered by
pointing to the high premiums under Obamacare and the fact that patients are
forgoing health care as a result of high deductibles and out-of-pocket costs.
The HHS secretary, a rabid opponent of Medicaid, Medicare and government
“intrusion” into health care, knows full well the Republican plan will make the
situation for millions of working people, as bad as it is under Obamacare, even
worse.
Todd pointed to a
recent Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) estimate that the $4,000 tax credit that
a 60-year-old in Fayette County, West Virginia would get under the AHCA “is
almost $8,000 less than they would get under Obamacare.” Price brushed this
off, defending the Republican plan’s tax credits, which would provide from
$2,000 to $4,000 to those making up to $75,000, based purely on age and not
income, with older people receiving the most.
A KFF analysis has
found that for virtually every age group of individuals with incomes of
$20,000-$40,000 and families making $40,000-$75,000, tax credits would be
substantially lower under the ACHA than the subsidies provided under Obamacare.
Office of Management
and Budget (OMB) Director Mick Mulvaney appeared on ABC’s “This Week” program.
Host George Stephanopoulos raised that independent analysts had projected that
there will be about “$370 billion less in federal funding for Medicaid over the
next 10 years” under the AHCA. He asked how this squared with Trump’s promises
during his presidential bid that there would be no cuts to Social Security,
Medicare or Medicaid.
The OMB director
defended the Medicaid funding cuts, saying, “The Medicaid system as it exists
today is a one-size fits-all system. We fixed that. You can provide better
services for less if we get the federal government out of the way.”
In addition to the
massive cuts to Medicaid, the AHCA would implement the de facto end of the
program as an entitlement by 2020. Federal funding based on need would be
replaced with a per capita cap, forcing states to cut benefits and deny
coverage to qualified beneficiaries.
The plan would also
eliminate the enhanced matching federal funds for Obamacare’s expansion of
Medicaid, which has enrolled about 10 million people. Taken together, these
cutbacks will result in denial of benefits and care to millions of poor,
disabled and elderly people and to pregnant women. Some 74 million people are
currently covered by Medicaid.
Republican opponents
of the bill are pushing for the funding changes to Medicaid to be pushed
forward to as early as next year. Mulvaney said he was willing to consider this
and other amendments to the plan.
He said, “I think
Congressman Morgan Griffith from Virginia had some really good ideas regarding
things like changing the expansion date or perhaps putting work requirements in
on Medicaid—those are great ideas that would improve the bill. If the House
sees fit to make the bill better, they’d certainly have the support of the
White House.”
A number of
Republican governors are already pushing to impose a work requirement for
Medicaid for low-income adults without disabilities.
Last year, under
Obama, hundreds of thousands of so-called ABAWDs (able-bodied adults without
dependents) were cut off of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
(SNAP), or food stamps, due to the return in many areas of a three-month limit
on benefits for unemployed adults aged 18-49 who are not disabled or raising
minor children.
If a work requirement
is implemented for Medicaid, recipients who cannot prove their disability, or
are unable to find work, could summarily be denied benefits. Many of these
individuals, the poorest of the poor, would be the same people who have lost
their SNAP benefits.
Stephanopoulos raised
new figures showing that the AHCA “will provide about $157 billion in tax cuts
to people of incomes over $1 million in the next 10 years, yet older Americans,
middle-income Americans, are going to be paying more for their insurance.”
The budget director
was indifferent, saying, “Look, we promised to repeal the taxes for Obamacare.
That’s what the bill does.” He pointed to features of the AHCA that would allow
people at every income level to put away unlimited funds tax-free in health
savings accounts (HSAs). He also claimed that “lower premiums that come from
competition” would ease the burden on ordinary Americans.
The Committee for a
Responsible Federal Budget estimates that these unlimited HSAs would result in
$19 billion in tax savings—almost exclusively for the wealthy. For workers and
their families who are struggling to pay for basic necessities such as food,
housing and utilities, the concept of squirreling away “surplus” money to pay
for health care is an absurdity.
The Republicans’ AHCA
is making its way through various House Committees, and Speaker Paul Ryan,
Republican of Wisconsin, hopes to bring it before the full House before the end
of March. The Democrats are opposing the legislation, making the defense of
Obamacare their main domestic agenda, second only to their anti-Russian
campaign against Trump.
However, the
differences between the Democrats and Republicans on health care are
essentially a conflict between two right-wing factions within the ruling elite.
Both parties uphold the principle of private ownership and the subordination of
the health care system to the capitalist private market. Obamacare has paved
the way for an even more ferocious attack on health care for the working class
by Trump and the Republicans.
THE
TRUMP AMNESTY…. Yes, he lied again!
"If true, it
shows Trump being the ultimate cynic and not having the courage to state his
true beliefs to the American public who elected him. That's always been
my biggest problem with Trump: his lack of integrity and consistent belief
system." ----- ED STRAKER
THE DEATH of WHITE AMERICA
“Whites had the highest rate of
overdose deaths of any ethnicity, more than double the combined death rate for
blacks and Latinos.”
THE IMPACT OF TRUMPERnomics
AND THE MASSIVE TRANSFER OF WEALTH TO THE SUPER RICH
AMERICA: One paycheck
and two illegals away from homelessness.
"The economists found that the pre-tax share of
national income received by the bottom half of the US population has been cut nearly
in half since 1980, from 20 percent to 12 percent, while the income share of the
top one percent has nearly doubled, from 12 percent to 20 percent."
SOARING POVERTY IN AMERICA’S OPEN
BORDERS
TRUMPERNOMICS FOR THE SUPER RICH:
“In the US, the working class will confront a government unlike
any other in American history, which will continue and intensify a decades-long
social counterrevolution overseen by the Democrats and Republicans. The
incoming Trump administration is manned by billionaires, generals and arch
reactionaries. It is a government of, by and for the oligarchy, committed to
destroying every remaining gain won by workers over the past century.”
We don’t ask for financial contributions to support this POLITICALLY VERY
INCORRECT BLOG, but do appreciate you clicking on the ADSENSE ADS you find at the right and at the bottom of all posts which puts funds in our pockets to keep it going. Thanks for your support.
AMERICA'S SORRY STATE
“And the causes are complicated. A big part of the story is the ascendency of corporate America at the same time that American communities were being defenestrated.”
It gets worse. We are at a point where 1-in-8 American men over the age of 18 has a felony conviction. Where the average life expectancy of big chunks of the populace is moving backwards.
America's Sorry State
11:50 AM, MAR 16, 2017 | By JONATHAN V. LAST
Art Credit: Thomas Fluharty
A few years ago I wrote a piece where I asked whether or the '00s had been worse than the '70s. At the time, I thought it was a close call, one that could go either way. Today, I'm not so sure.
I'd point you to two recent pieces that you simply have to read in order to understand America as it exists now. The first is by my colleague Christopher Caldwell, writing about the opioid epidemic over at First Things. It's an amazing, magisterial piece.
In taking full measure of where we are and how we got here, Caldwell argues that the scope of the problem we face is difficult to fully comprehend:
Salisbury, Massachusetts (pop. 8,000), was founded in 1638, and the opium crisis is the worst thing that has ever happened to it. The town lost one young person in the decade-long Vietnam War. It has lost fifteen to heroin in the last two years. Last summer, Huntington, West Virginia (pop. 49,000), saw twenty-eight overdoses in four hours. Episodes like these played a role in the decline in U.S. life expectancy in 2015. The death toll far eclipses those of all previous drug crises. . . .
A heroin scourge in America's housing projects coincided with a wave of heroin-addicted soldiers brought back from Vietnam, with a cost peaking between 1973 and 1975 at 1.5 overdose deaths per 100,000. The Nixon White House panicked. Curtis Mayfield wrote his soul ballad "Freddie's Dead." The crack epidemic of the mid- to late 1980s was worse, with a death rate reaching almost two per 100,000. George H. W. Bush declared war on drugs. The present opioid epidemic is killing 10.3 people per 100,000, and that is without the fentanyl-impacted statistics from 2016. In some states it is far worse: over thirty per 100,000 in New Hampshire and over forty in West Virginia.
And the causes are complicated.
A big part of the story is the
ascendency of corporate America
at the same time that American
communities were being
defenestrated.
But it also has something to do with a culture that can't say no to anything, that doesn't believe in taboo, that feels the need to excuse and expunge and relieve people of agency.
Again, go read Caldwell's piece. It's amazing.
The other blockbuster essay comes from my friend Nick Eberstadt in the new issue of Commentary.(And by the by, if you haven't subscribed to Commentary, you should. It's a truly great magazine.) In "Our Miserable 21st Century" Eberstadt takes a more general, 30,000-foot view of modern America. He examines reams of data—on finances, income, health, social mobility, and more—and the picture he paints is one of a nation in serious trouble. Decline, even.
Take economic growth: Economists now
believe that the potential growth rate for the
United States—that is, the rate at which the
economy would grow at full employment—is
just 1.7 percent. Which means that the long-
term growth rate is under 1 percent. The
work rates for the population have similarly
been revised downward. The rosy
unemployment numbers you hear on the
news are based on the assumption that the
percentage of Americans in the labor force
will never again be as high as it was in 2001.
BLOG: DURING OBAMA'S EIGHT YEARS of OPEN BORDERS, 2/3 OF ALL JOBS WENT TO FOREIGN BORN OR ILLEGALS!
Here's Eberstadt:
As of late 2016, the adult work rate in America was still at its lowest level in more than 30 years. To put things another way: If our nation's work rate today were back up to its start-of-the-century highs, well over 10 million more Americans would currently have paying jobs.
There is no way to sugarcoat these awful numbers.
They are not a statistical artifact that can be explained away by population aging, or by increased educational enrollment for adult students, or by any other genuine change in contemporary American society. The plain fact is that 21st-century America has witnessed a dreadful collapse of work.
What's worse, this collapse of work post-2000 has coincided with an explosion of wealth for the wealth-holders.
What's worse, this collapse of work post-2000 has coincided with an explosion of wealth for the wealth-holders.
There's no way for these opposing trends to lead to either economic or cultural or political stability.
It gets worse. We are at a point where 1-in-8 American men over the age of 18 has a felony conviction. Where the average life expectancy of big chunks of the populace is moving backwards. Where geographic mobility is in its third straight decade of decline and social mobility is collapsing, too. In 1977, the average 30-year-old was almost a sure bet to be earning more money than his parents were making at the same age—he had an 86 percent chance. Today, his odds are just about even-money—51 percent.
Like I said, go read Eberstadt's sensational piece. This is the America of 2017. Donald Trump isn't Reagan. And morning isn't coming.
"The Tax Policy Center finds that for the top 0.1 percent of income earners—those making more than $3.75 million annually—repealing this investment tax would amount to an average tax cut of $165,090."
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan THEAMERICAN THINKER.com
The eight years of the Obama administration--begun with promises of “hope” and “change” and filled instead with endless war, attacks on jobs and living standards, and the steady erosion of social services such as education and health care--created the conditions for the Republican takeover of Congress and finally the victory of Donald Trump.
….. the American Middle-Class at death’s door and knocking
….
THE DEATH OF AMERICA: MEXICO SERVES
UP THE HEROIN.
The death toll translates into an
average of one fatal overdose every 12 hours in the state of West Virginia.
THE DEATH of WHITE AMERICA
“Whites had the highest rate of
overdose deaths of any ethnicity, more than double the combined death rate for
blacks and Latinos.”
“The lifetime costs of Social Security and Medicare
benefits of illegal immigrant beneficiaries of President Obama’s executive amnesty
would be well over a trillion dollars, according to Heritage Foundation expert Robert
Rector’s prepared testimony for a House panel obtained in advance by Breitbart
News.”
Republicans push plan to
gut Medicaid and slash taxes for the wealthy
13 March 2017
THE
TRUMP AMNESTY…. Yes, he lied again!
"If true, it
shows Trump being the ultimate cynic and not having the courage to state his
true beliefs to the American public who elected him. That's always been
my biggest problem with Trump: his lack of integrity and consistent belief
system." ----- ED STRAKER
THE DEATH of WHITE AMERICA
“Whites had the highest rate of
overdose deaths of any ethnicity, more than double the combined death rate for
blacks and Latinos.”
THE IMPACT OF TRUMPERnomics
AND THE MASSIVE TRANSFER OF WEALTH TO THE SUPER RICH
AMERICA: One paycheck
and two illegals away from homelessness.
"The economists found that the pre-tax share of
national income received by the bottom half of the US population has been cut nearly
in half since 1980, from 20 percent to 12 percent, while the income share of the
top one percent has nearly doubled, from 12 percent to 20 percent."
SOARING POVERTY IN AMERICA’S OPEN
BORDERS
TRUMPERNOMICS FOR THE SUPER RICH:
“In the US, the working class will confront a government unlike
any other in American history, which will continue and intensify a decades-long
social counterrevolution overseen by the Democrats and Republicans. The
incoming Trump administration is manned by billionaires, generals and arch
reactionaries. It is a government of, by and for the oligarchy, committed to
destroying every remaining gain won by workers over the past century.”
US ruling elite moves to repeal the 1960s
14 March 2017
The repeal of Obamacare, which began last week
with the introduction of legislation drafted by Republican House Speaker Paul
Ryan, working in conjunction with the Trump administration, has become the
vehicle for a much wider program of social reaction.
The new legislation, which will cut off health
coverage for 24 million people, will essentially put an end to Medicaid, one of
the major social reforms of the 1960s, a program that has funded health care
for tens of millions of poor, blind or otherwise disabled people, as well as
nursing home care for the low-income elderly. It sets the stage, as Ryan has
indicated, for even more sweeping legislation that will undermine and
eventually destroy Medicare, which has provided health coverage for most
elderly people in the United States for more than 50 years.
The major social gains of the 1960s--the last
period of significant social reform in American history--are in the final
stages of liquidation. This is the culmination of a protracted historical
process that began almost as soon as the American ruling elite made its
decision, driven by the breakdown of the post-World War II economic boom, to
shift from policies of relative class compromise to ruthless class warfare. The
initial steps were taken as long ago as the Democratic administration of Jimmy
Carter (1977-81), which began to curb social welfare spending and targeted
striking coal miners for government intervention under the Taft-Hartley Law.
The attacks were accelerated greatly under
Republican Ronald Reagan, who smashed the PATCO air traffic controllers strike,
giving the green light for a decade of corporate union-busting and
wage-cutting, and slashed federal social spending to fuel a record military
buildup. Reagan set the pace for further attacks on the programs established in
the 1960s and even in the 1930s, from Clinton’s abolition of Aid to Families
with Dependent Children to Bush’s targeting of aid to public education with his
“No Child Left Behind” legislation, co-authored by Democrat Edward Kennedy, and
the first steps towards the privatization of Medicare.
The Obama administration did not mark a reversal
of this decades-long process, but rather its intensification. Obamacare was not
an expansion of the welfare state, as its apologists claimed, but a reactionary
effort to shift the cost of health care from employers and the government to
working people. The all-out support of the Democrats for this legislation,
worked out in collaboration with the insurance industry and the drug
monopolies, testifies to the rightward evolution of the Democratic Party over
the past 40 years.
The eight years of the Obama
administration--begun with promises of “hope” and “change” and filled instead
with endless war, attacks on jobs and living standards, and the steady erosion
of social services such as education and health care--created the conditions
for the Republican takeover of Congress and finally the victory of Donald
Trump.
The ideologues of capitalism claim that the
“free market” will work wonders if only the restraints placed upon its
operations by past social reforms are removed. These “restraints” include every
social benefit won through the struggles of the working class over more than a
century. Now, every one of Great Society liberalism’s “big four,” as one historian
described the laws enacted in a six-month period from April to October 1965, is
targeted for destruction.
The Elementary and
Secondary Act of 1965: This legislation provided the first extensive federal
support for local public schools, which had become politically possible
following the legal abolition of segregated public schools in the South. Funds
were allocated to improve public schools in poor communities, expand libraries
and take the first steps in what became known as “special education.” The law
established the pre-school program Head Start as a permanent federal program.
Republican Congressman Steve King of Iowa has
introduced legislation that would rescind the Elementary and Secondary Act and
bar the Department of Education from funding any educational program except
state-controlled vouchers that could be used for charter or religious schools
or for home schooling.
Medicare and Medicaid, established through
the Social Security Act of 1965: This bill for the first time provided
government-backed health insurance for those over 65, half of whom had no
coverage in 1965. Medicare covered hospital care (Part A) and medical and
nursing fees (Part B), but did not pay for vision, dental or prescription
drugs. Medicaid covered the poorest sections of working people, including
children, the disabled and the blind, as well as long-term nursing home care
for the poorest elderly.
The Obamacare repeal legislation would put an
end to Medicaid as an entitlement program beginning in 2020, when grants to the
states would be capped, forcing them to ration care to the poor and disabled.
Medicare was already significantly undermined through Obamacare itself, which
cut $700 billion in reimbursements over 10 years, and the repeal legislation
will set the stage for even larger cuts, based on Ryan’s plan to convert the
program from an entitlement to a voucher program.
The Voting Rights Act of
1965 was the most
radical democratic measure enacted by a US Congress since post-Civil War
Reconstruction. It targeted those states, mainly in the Deep South, where
denial of the franchise to minorities was widespread. Before its passage, few
blacks were allowed to register and vote in southern states from Texas to
Virginia. Afterwards, voter participation among African-Americans rose sharply,
as the federal Justice Department continued to oversee state electoral policies
to block any efforts to discriminate.
The US Supreme Court
gutted the Voting Rights Act by a 5-4 decision in 2013 in Shelby vs.
Holder, ruling that the targeting of the southern states for federal
intervention could no longer be justified, despite repeated renewal and
extension of the law by Congress, most recently in 2006. This decision was part
of a wider effort led by Republicans in state after state to enact voter ID
laws and other measures whose purpose was to resurrect discriminatory practices
against minority and poor voters.
The Immigration and
Nationality Act of 1965, also known as the Hart-Celler Act after its leading Senate and
House sponsors, abolished longstanding restrictions on immigrants from Asia,
Africa and the Middle East, and ended the preference for immigrants from
Northern and Western Europe over those from Southern and Eastern Europe. It
also allowed unlimited immigration of family members of US citizens and
residents, encouraging the growth of immigrant communities.
Trump’s travel ban on
visitors from six majority Muslim countries directly violates the 1965 law,
which prohibits the use of national origin as a test for restricting
immigration. His executive orders on immigration as well as the proposed wall
along the US-Mexico border represent an effort to turn the clock back to the
period of the exclusion laws that barred Asian immigrants and the bracero program
that allowed Mexican immigrants only as semi-slave labor in the fields.
There are other reforms of the 1960s, from the
establishment of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment
for Humanities, to the Clean Water Act and dozens of other anti-pollution laws,
which led ultimately to the creation of the Environmental Protection
Administration. All these are under attack by the Trump administration and the
Republican Congress.
The Democratic Party has collaborated in one
attack after another on the social reforms with which it was once identified.
The Democrats have spearheaded the attacks on public education, introduced
major cuts in Medicare funding as part of Obamacare, and did not lift a finger
to restore enforcement after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. They
oppose Trump, not in defense of social services, but on behalf of sections of
Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus, attacking the new
administration over its supposed softness towards Russia.
Even in the 1960s, Democratic Party liberalism
was not a challenge to capitalism, but rather an effort, at the height of the
post-World War II economic boom, to make American capitalism more palatable to
the masses, and therefore safer for the capitalists, under conditions of
growing mass struggles over civil rights, against the Vietnam War, and for
better wages and working conditions. The measures of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great
Society” were far less ambitious than the welfare states built up in Western
Europe during the same period.
As historian James T. Patterson wrote of that
period: “The Great Society programs were… quintessentially liberal, not
radical. Except in the area of race relations--a major exception--they made no
serious effort to challenge the power of established groups, including large corporations.
In no way did they seriously confront socio-economic inequality or seek to
redistribute wealth.”
Today, under conditions of the protracted
historical decline of American capitalism, exacerbated by the impact of the
2008 financial crash and the massive transfer of wealth from working people to
bail out Wall Street, no section of the American ruling class can or will
defend any of the social gains of the 1960s.
The supposed Democratic resistance to Trump’s
program in Congress is merely for show. The Trump administration and the
Republican Party will get nearly everything they want, while the Democrats wage
a phony war and call on the victims of Trump’s attacks to wait until the 2018
elections.
The Democratic Party does not represent the
popular opposition to Trump and the Republicans, as congressional Democrats and
political charlatans like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren claim. Rather,
its function is to serve as a brake on the actual resistance to Trump, from the
working class, which will take on an increasingly explosive and politically
radical form.
The working class must take the lead in the
struggles to defend health care, education, environmental protection, the
rights of immigrants and all basic democratic rights. It must answer the capitalist
program of social counterrevolution with the working class alternative of
social revolution. Workers must build a mass political movement independent of
and opposed to the twin parties of big business, fighting on the basis of a
socialist program.
TRUMPERNOMICS: IMPLEMENTING
SEVERE
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS TO
SERVE THE SUPER RICH!
“The Republican proposal builds on the
core
features of Obamacare, designed to boost the
profits of the private
insurers and slash
health care costs for the government and big
business.”
TRUMPERNOMICS:
"The collection of
billionaires, bankers, CEOs, generals and social arch-reactionaries that
will comprise his cabinet and White House inner circle is pledged to
remove all constraints on the ability of the rich to plunder American
society for their own personal gain and profit."
THE IMPACT OF TRUMPERnomics
AND THE MASSIVE
TRANSFER OF WEALTH TO THE SUPER RICH
AMERICA: One paycheck
and two illegals away from homelessness.
"The economists found that the pre-tax share of
national income received by the bottom half of the US population has been cut nearly
in half since 1980, from 20
percent to 12 percent, while the income share of the
top one percent has nearly doubled, from 12 percent to 20 percent."
SOARING POVERTY
IN AMERICA’S OPEN BORDERS
TRUMPERNOMICS FOR THE SUPER RICH:
“In the US, the working class will confront a government unlike
any other in American history, which will continue and intensify a decades-long
social counterrevolution overseen by the Democrats and Republicans. The
incoming Trump administration is manned by billionaires, generals and arch
reactionaries. It is a government of, by and for the oligarchy, committed to
destroying every remaining gain won by workers over the past century.”
Greedy and the Crooked.
TRUMP’S CABINET OF STOOGES,
LOOTERS
and CRONIES... and that's not
just his own family!
Puzder’s nomination is of a piece with Trump’s other cabinet
choices. Betsy DeVos, an enemy of public education, has been selected to head
the Department of Education. Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon known for his
antipathy towards government “interference” in housing regulation, has been
nominated as the Housing and Urban Development Secretary.
AFTER
OBAMA-CLINTONIMCS, THE LOOTING OF AMERICA BY THE RICH TO CONTINUE UNDER THEIR
OWN, DONALD TRUMP
TRUMP
FILLS THE “SWAMP” WITH CRONY BILLIONAIRES!
"Far
from Trump’s demagogic claims that he would 'drain the swamp,' the corrupt
nexus between Wall Street and Washington is tighter than ever."
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS is now the new
TRUMPERnomics!
TRUMP VOWS TO SERVE THE RICH WITH
SUPER OBAMA-CLINTONIMCS!
There is a vast chasm between this empty populist rhetoric
and the personnel that Trump has selected to populate his government. The
speech followed a series of cabinet picks, including billionaire asset
strippers, Wall Street bankers, and dedicated opponents of
financial and corporate regulations, public education and Medicare and Medicaid,
to lead the Treasury, Commerce, Education and Health and Human Services
departments.
TRUMP
IMPOSES OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: Cut Federal Pensions and Medicare to Cover Tax
Cuts For the Super Rich
"Trump
is not the initiator of this class war against working people. It has been
underway for decades, beginning in earnest with the election of
Ronald Reagan in 1980 and continuing under every
succeeding administration, including the eight-year tenures of
Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The colossal redistribution of
wealth and income from the bottom to the top of American society reached
record proportions under Obama, whose legacy of falling
living standards and worsening economic crisis for tens of millions
of workers was a decisive factor in the victory of the fascistic demagogue
and con artist Trump."
TO COVER TAX CUTS FOR THE SUPER
RICH, TRUMP VOWS TO STRIP MEDICARE
It is obvious that this
scheme will mean a drastic decline in health care for the elderly and
disabled and result in increased poverty and disease and premature death
for millions of people. This is precisely what corporate
America, which considers health care for the elderly and poor
an intolerable drain on its profits, intends.
THE
TWISTED ROAD TO REVOLUTION CAME DOWN WALL STREET
FIRST
TRUMPERNOMICS
FOR THE SUPER RICH
"Between 2002 and 2015 annual
earnings for the bottom 90 percent of Americans rose by
only 4.5 percent, while earnings for the top 1 percent grew by 22.7 percent, according to the
Economic Policy Institute. Under the Obama administration, more than 90 percent of
income gains since the so-called “recovery” began have gone to the top one percent."
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan THEAMERICAN THINKER.com
TRUMPERNOMICS: The Goldman
Sachs Doctrine of Unbridled Looting
THE FINAL TRANSFER OF AMERICA’ ECONOMY TO THE SUPER RICH!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/09/barack-obama-and-his-crony-bankstershow.html
AMERICA’S ECONOMIC ARMAGEDDON – The
Impact of TRUMPERNOMICS
Under
Obama-Clintonomics, the rich became VERY rich and we got the tax bills for
their bailouts and crimes! Trump and his Goldman Sachs regime will double
the numbers of rich and quadruple the number of LEGALS living in poverty.
TRUMPERNOMICS: A NATION
RULED BY GOLDMAN SACHS:
IT WORKS! BUT ONLY FOR THE SUPER RICH!!!
"The same period has
seen a massive growth of social inequality, with income and wealth concentrated
at the very top of American society to an extent not seen since the
1920s."
"He (Trump) is able to get a
hearing because millions of people are being driven into
economic insecurity and poverty while the rich and
the super-rich continue to amass obscene levels
of wealth. He is able with some success to divert mass discontent
along reactionary nationalist and racialist channels precisely
because what passes for the “left” in American politics,
anchor by the Democratic Party, has moved ever further
to the right, culminating in the Obama administration which
has presided over endless war and an unprecedented redistribution of
wealth from the bottom to the top of the economic ladder."
A NATION IN BORDER MELTDOWN:
MILLIONS OF JOBS TO ILLEGALS AND
BILLIONS IN WELFARE
MEXICO WILL DOUBLE AMERICA’S POPULATION
IMMIGRANT SHARE OF ADULTS QUADRUPLED IN 232
COUNTIES
"More than
728,000 illegal immigrants have been shielded from being deported
and
granted work
permits through President Barack Obama’s 2012 executive amnesty
program, according
to the Migration Policy Institute."
US government agency projects 24 million to lose health coverage under Republican plan
By Kate Randall
14 March 2017
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Monday released its report on the House Republican plan to replace and repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Congress’s budget analysts project that by 2018 the number of uninsured Americans would rise by 14 million relative to the current law, popularly known as Obamacare.
Under the Republicans’ American Health Care Act (AHCA), the number of uninsured would rise by an additional 21 million by 2020, and by 24 million by 2026, leaving an estimated 52 million without insurance, compared to a projected 28 million under the ACA.
This massive surge in the uninsured would come largely on the backs of the poor, through draconian cuts to Medicaid, effectively ending it as an entitlement program. Also particularly hard hit would be those approaching retirement—under age 65 and not eligible for Medicare, the health insurance program for seniors—who would see their premiums and out-of-pocket costs soar.
The winners would be corporations and the wealthy, who would reap hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. Despite these tax cuts, the CBO estimates the legislation would reduce federal deficits by $337 billion over the 2017-2026 period, largely due to the cuts to Medicaid and to the tax credits to purchase insurance under the ACA, which would be replaced with much smaller credits.
Health and human services secretary Tom Price and Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney held a brief press conference Monday afternoon to respond to the CBO’s scoring of the AHCA. Price said that they “disagreed strenuously” with the report and its conclusions that millions more people would lose coverage.
Dismissing the CBO’s projections as anything approaching an accurate estimate, Price added, “We believe that our plan will cover more individuals at a lower cost and give them the choices that they want for the coverage that they want for themselves and their family, not that the government forces them to buy.”
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi also spoke briefly to the press after the CBO report’s release to give the Democratic Party response. They both denounced the AHCA as targeting Medicaid and seniors, with Pelosi calling on the Republicans to “pull the bill.”
The Democrats, however, have nothing to offer as an alternative but to maintain Obamacare. The truth is that the Republican proposal builds on the central features of the ACA, which has been designed to boost the profits of the private insurers and slash health care costs for the government and big business.
The AHCA seeks to further strengthen the grip of the for-profit health care delivery system, while leaving wide sections of the population with substandard insurance and health care, or no coverage at all. That millions of people stand to lose coverage under the Republicans’ plan is a natural outgrowth of the core regressive components of Obamacare.
The AHCA would reduce federal outlays for Medicaid by $880 billion over the 2017-2026 period, primarily through a reduction in enrollees. This reduction would culminate in 14 million fewer Medicaid enrollees by 2026, a decrease of about 17 percent relative to the number under current law.
Some of this decline in Medicaid recipients would come immediately, but most changes would begin in 2020, when the AHCA would terminate the enhanced federal matching rate for new enrollees under the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid.
The Republican plan would place a per-capita-based cap on the federal government’s payments to states for medical assistance provided through Medicaid, effectively ending the program—which provides insurance to the poor, disabled and some elderly people—as an entitlement in which funding grows according to need. By 2026, federal spending for Medicaid would be about 25 percent less than what the CBO projects under the ACA.
The AHCA would save $673 billion, stemming mostly from the elimination of the ACA’s subsidies for nongroup health insurance sold on the Obamacare exchanges, which under current law provide refundable tax credits for premium assistance and subsidies to reduce health care cost sharing. This would be partially offset by $361 billion for the new tax credits for health insurance established by the AHCA beginning in 2020.
The CBO estimates a reduction in revenues of $210 billion from eliminating the penalties paid by uninsured people and employers. With the elimination of the Obamacare “individual mandate,” uninsured people would no longer be required to purchase coverage from a private insurer, and businesses with 50 workers or more would not be required to provide insurance to their employees.
Under the Republican plan, tax credits based on income would be replaced by tax credits based on age, ranging from $2,000 to $4,000 for those with incomes up about $75,000, with older people receiving higher tax credits. While under current law a 64-year-old can be charged up to three times more than a 21-year-old for coverage, under the AHCA the 64-year-old could be charged up to five times as much.
This would tend to reduce premiums for younger people and increase premiums for older people. Low-income people across all ages would lack insurance at higher rates under the Republican plan. For those with incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level ($23,760 in 2016), by 2026 uninsured rates would double under the AHCA compared to the ACA.
Beginning in 2020, the AHCA would remove the ACA requirement that insurers who offer plans in the nongroup and small-group markets provide plans that cover at least 60 percent of the cost of covered benefits. This means that insurers could provide barebones or catastrophic coverage that leaves people “insured” in name only.
While the AHCA removes the Obamacare mandate, it requires insurers to apply a 30 percent surcharge on premiums for people who enroll in the nongroup or small-group markets if they let their insurance lapse for more than three months in a year.
The Republican plan is a boondoggle for the rich, repealing or delaying many of the changes the ACA made to the Internal Revenue Code. The single biggest tax cut is the repeal of the 3.8 percent tax the ACA applied to capital gains, dividend and interest income for families with $250,000 or more in income.
The Tax Policy Center finds that for the top 0.1 percent of income earners—those making more than $3.75 million annually—repealing this investment tax would amount to an average tax cut of $165,090.
The AHCA’s repeal of the 0.9 percent Medicare surtax, a tax on households with income in excess of $250,000 a year, would provide this same 0.1 percent of income earners an average annual tax cut of $30,520. Those households in the bottom 90 percent of earners would see virtually no benefit from these two tax cuts.
The differences between the Democrats and Republicans on health care are essentially a feud between two right-wing factions of the political establishment. Both parties uphold the for-profit health care industry and the subordination of health care to the private market.
The CBO’s scoring on the massive numbers of people who would become uninsured as a result of the House Republicans’ health care bill is further evidence that Obamacare—despite claims by the Democrats that it would provide “near universal,” quality health care—has paved the way for an even more brutal attack on the health and lives of the working class by Trump and the Republicans.
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