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US jobless claims fall below 1 million but remain high The number of laid-off workers applying for unemployment aid fell below 1 million last week for the first time since the pandemic intensified five months ago, yet still remains at a high level
US jobless claims fall below 1 million but remain high By CHRISTOPHER RUGABERAP Economics WriterThe Associated PressWASHINGTON
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans applying for unemployment dropped below 1 million last week for the first time since the coronavirus outbreak took hold in the U.S. five months ago, but layoffs are still running extraordinarily high.
The figures show that the crisis continues to throw people out of work just as the expiration of an extra $600 a week in federal jobless benefits has deepened the hardship for many — and posed another threat to the U.S. economy.
Applications for jobless benefits declined to 963,000 , the second straight drop, from 1.2 million the previous week, the government said Thursday. That signals layoffs are slowing, though the weekly figure still far exceeds the pre-outbreak record of just under 700,000, set in 1982.
The virus is blamed for more than 166,000 deaths and 5.2 million confirmed infections in the U.S. — easily the highest totals in the world. The average number of new cases per day is on the rise in eight states, and deaths per day are climbing in 26, according to an Associated Press analysis.
Worldwide, the scourge has claimed more than 750,000 lives and caused over 20 million known infections.
The virus, the shutdowns meant to fight it and the reluctance or inability of many people to shop, travel or eat out continue to undermine the economy and force companies to cut staff. Over the past few months, 23 states have paused or reversed their business re-openings because of a resurgence of the virus.
Overall, fewer people are collecting unemployment, a sign that some employers are hiring. The total declined last week to 15.5 million, from 16.1 million the previous week.
“Another larger-than-expected decline in jobless claims suggests that the jobs recovery is regaining some momentum, but … much labor market progress remains to be done,” said Lydia Boussour, senior economist at Oxford Economics.
Hiring is believed to have slowed since the spring, when states reopened and millions of workers at bars, restaurants and stores were rehired. The job gain in August will probably fall short of the 1.8 million added in July , analysts say.
For months, on top of their state benefit, unemployed Americans also collected the $600 a week in federal jobless aid. But that expired at the end of July, and negotiations in Congress to extend it, probably at a lower level, have collapsed in rancor.
Last week, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that would provide $300 a week to replace the expired $600. But experts say it could take weeks for the states to reprogram their computers and process and dispense the payments.
A crush of benefit applications earlier in the outbreak resulted in huge backlogs that left millions of the unemployed waiting. Washington state went so far as to call in the National Guard to help process applications.
Some economists say they believe the end of the $600 has contributed to the drop in unemployment claims of late. Some of the unemployed may feel less incentive to apply.
The supplemental federal aid had enabled many jobless Americans to afford rent, food and utilities, and its expiration threatens to weaken consumer spending.
Michelle Meyer, an economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said the loss of the additional aid will reduce Americans’ incomes by $18 billion a week.
“That’s a big hit to purchasing power,” she said.
In addition to people who applied last week for state benefits, nearly 489,000 others sought jobless aid under a new federal program that has made self-employed and gig workers eligible for the first time. That figure isn’t adjusted for seasonal trends, so it is reported separately.
Counting those receiving aid under the new program would bring to 28.2 million — roughly 18% of the U.S. workforce — the number of Americans now receiving some form of unemployment benefits.
With confirmed virus cases still high, it’s not clear when business owners will be able to reopen or will have enough customers to rehire.
Grace Della is one of them. She opened her food tour business in Miami a decade ago with $300 from her mother. On weekends, she led the tours herself and eventually built up a business with 13 guides, averaging 10 tours a day through culinary hot spots in South Beach and Little Havana.
With scant customer demand, it has been more than four months since Miami Culinary Tours has taken out guests. Della, 46, said she hopes to reopen later this month but isn’t sure she can, given the state’s high level of confirmed infections.
Della said she tries to stay positive but confesses to moments of crippling fear. At one point, hyperventilating with anxiety, she contacted firefighters.
“There’s no money coming in,” Della said. “We’re all scared.”
___
AP writer Kelli Kennedy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contributed to this report.
The selection of Kamala Harris and the degradation of American politics 13 August 2020 With the selection of Kamala Harris to be the running mate of Joe Biden, the framework of the 2020 elections has been set. As was to be expected, the Democrats have chosen the most right-wing candidates to run the most right-wing campaign possible.
There is a certain inevitability to the choice of Harris. In July of last year,—based on a survey of who would be the worst, most reactionary and at the same time most suitable choice for second spot on the Democratic Party ticket— predicted that Harris would most likely be named the vice presidential candidate if she failed to win the nomination. She had all the ruthlessness, narcissism and careerism requisite for the job, plus the ethnic background to suit the Democrats’ obsession with racial and gender identity.
Kamala Harris is a dyed-in-the wool political reactionary.
This year has seen mass demonstrations throughout the country in response to the police murder of George Floyd. As a direct result of the policies of the ruling class, nearly 170,000 people have died to date in the coronavirus pandemic, with the daily death toll now at more than 1,000. There is growing anger in workplaces over the homicidal back-to-work campaign and broad opposition among teachers to the efforts to reopen the schools. Tens of millions of people are unemployed, and they have been cut off from federal benefits and face being evicted from their homes.
In the midst of this monumental political, economic and social crisis, and against the backdrop of so much suffering, the American people are to be offered the “choice” between the fascistic Trump, the conman from New York, and a Democratic Party ticket headed by a corporate shill from Delaware and an ex-prosecutor from California. This says everything about the degraded state of American politics.
Following the announcement by Biden on Tuesday, the media leapt into action with its nauseating effusion of state propaganda. The selection of Harris has been universally proclaimed to be “historic,” a watershed moment.
In terms of her politics, there is clearly nothing “historic” about Harris. As district attorney in San Francisco (2004-2011), attorney general in California (2011-2017), and, finally, US senator (2017 to the present), Harris has compiled a track record of backing the police, locking up workers and immigrants, covering up for the banks and supporting militarism and war.
Wall Street is certainly happy with the choice. “A VP pick that big business can back,” ran a headline on the inside pages of the New York Times . As for the military, its main concern is what will happen if the aging Biden doesn’t make it through a full term. Since the beginning of the Trump administration, opposition from the Democratic Party has been focused on issues of foreign policy. Harris, who has no other agenda than her own self-promotion, will be silly putty in the hands of the military-intelligence apparatus.
The “historic” character of the Harris nomination is premised entirely on her race and gender. She would be the “first African-American vice president,” the “first Asian-American vice president” and the “first female vice president.” She already is the “first Black woman on the national ticket of the Democrats or Republicans.” Everything is about the symbolism involved in the choice of Harris, with not a word about the program of a Democratic Party administration.
As if any of this makes a bit of difference for workers, whatever their race, gender or ethnicity. As if, moreover, the world has not already had the example of Obama, not to mention Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton and many others.
The selection of Harris exposes the utterly reactionary character of politics that bases itself on race, gender and other forms of identity—anything but class. In response to the eruption of protests against police violence, the Democrats did everything they could to obscure the class issues, promote racial divisions and propagate the lie that the violence of the police is an expression of the oppression of “black America” by “white America.” The outcome of this racialist campaign is the selection as their vice-presidential candidate of a right-wing ex-prosecutor who once covered up evidence to keep an innocent man on death row and worked to tear immigrant children from their parents.
Those invested in the racialist campaign have jumped on the bandwagon to declare the selection of Harris “historic.” Ibram Kendi, author of How to Be An Antiracist and one of the chief inspirers of the New York Times ’ 1619 Project, wrote on Twitter that “the Democrats now have a presidential ticket that reflects the American people better than the GOP ticket and every presidential ticket in US history.”
According to Kendi, politicians “reflect” the American people not because of the socioeconomic forces they represent, but solely by their racial and ethnic background and their gender. Interests are determined by race. This is not progressive politics, but right-wing and racialist politics, which shares much in common with the fascistic politics of Donald Trump.
Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King wrote that he was “incredibly proud to see a brilliant Black woman, and HBCU [historically black colleges and universities] grad, chosen as a vice presidential nominee.” This was, he added, the stuff “dreams are made of.”
Commenters on Twitter quickly pointed to the contrast between this statement and his declaration in November 2018 that he would never support Biden or Harris because “they both helped build & advance mass incarceration.”
Political principles have never been a strong suit of Democratic Party hacks. They look forward to positions within the Biden administration and other opportunities that will reap financial rewards.
Then there is Bernie Sanders. In the Democratic Party primaries, Sanders won widespread support for his attacks on social inequality and his calls for a “political revolution” against the establishment. On this basis, he emerged as the main contender against Biden for the Democratic Party nomination. In the end, however, the “Sanders wing” of the Democratic Party got nothing.
BLOG EDITOR: SANDERS ALSO ENDORSED BANKSTER-OWNED CROOK ON THE LAM, HILLARY CLINTON!
This has not, however, stopped Sanders from praising the outcome. Sanders tweeted that Harris “will make history as our next vice president.”
Since packing in his campaign in mid-March, Sanders has assumed his assigned role as principal cheerleader for the Biden campaign, along with Elizabeth Warren, et. al. The more that social anger grows, and the more the Democrats are exposed, the more determined is his support for the Democratic Party.
What an exposure of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Jacobin magazine and other political agents of the Democratic Party who claimed that Sanders was the path to the transformation of American politics and even the realization of socialism! They make fools of themselves every election. They will tag along with the Democratic Party in one form or another, no doubt accompanied by talk about how they are building a “progressive movement” inside that party of American imperialism, along with other varieties of political fraud. Every four years, the same play is performed.
There is something incredibly degrading and shameful about the whole process, testifying to the intellectual and cultural collapse of American politics.
Certain conclusions must be drawn from this experience, not only about Sanders, but about an entire type of pragmatic politics that hopes for easy answers to the crisis confronting the working class without a direct challenge to capitalism and its state apparatus.
The politics of the working class must begin with a serious theoretical understanding, rooted in a Marxist and class analysis. The Democratic Party is a party of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus. The politics of race and gender identity, which it relentlessly promotes, gives expression to the interests of layers of the upper-middle class, which employ this right-wing ideology in their fight for positions of power and privilege in the state, academia and corporate boardrooms. The pseudo-left, including the DSA and associated organizations, represent this social layer.
All of this is directed against the working class and the development of a genuine movement for socialism. Objective conditions, however, have created the conditions for a powerful eruption of class struggle, in the United States and internationally. The coronavirus pandemic, as the Socialist Equality Party has explained , is a “trigger event in world history that is accelerating the already far-advanced economic, social, and political crisis of the world capitalist system.”
Nothing progressive will emerge except through the intervention—the interference—of the working class. The Socialist Equality Party and our election campaign are oriented to the development of a socialist leadership in the working class. Our campaign is the only campaign that raises critical questions of perspective, exposing the reactionary promoters of racial conflict and the cheerleaders of Sanders’ “political revolution.”
The SEP is spearheading the organization of workers against the homicidal policy of the ruling elite, in opposition to all factions of the ruling class, on the basis of a revolutionary program to put an end to inequality, war, dictatorship and the capitalist system. This is the way forward.
Democratic presidential nominee and former vice president Joe Biden grabs his mask after introducing his vice presidential running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, during their first press conference together in Wilmington, Delaware, on Aug. 12, 2020. (OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images)
Biden Campaign Raised $26 Million in 24 Hours After Picking Harris as VP
The campaign of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden raised $26 million in a day after announcing the selection of Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate.
Biden made the announcement during a grassroots fundraising event with Harris. The former vice president said that the donations included 150,000 first-time donors.
“It’s really palpable, the excitement,” Biden said.
While President Donald Trump maintains an overall lead in total fundraising, the $26 million is a major haul for Biden and signals enthusiasm for Harris. The Trump campaign record is $14 million, which was raised on the president’s birthday in June.
The grassroots fundraiser, which occurred after the 24-hour mark, brought in another $9.6 million, according to the Biden campaign. That total beat the record set during Biden’s fundraiser with former president Barack Obama.
Trump has so far raised $342 million compared Biden’s $278 million.
Biden leads Trump by more than 7 points in an average of national polls maintained by RealClearPolitics. The opponents are scheduled to take place in three debates before the election in November.
Nearly nine out of 10 Democrats approved of Harris as Biden’s pick, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday.
During her first speech on the campaign trail, Harris repeatedly criticized Trump.
“This is a moment of real consequence for America,” she said. “Everything we care about—our economy, our health, our kids, the kind of country we live in—it’s all on the line.”
“America is crying out for leadership, yet we have a president who cares more about himself than the people who elected him, a president who is making every challenge we face even more difficult to solve.”
The speech, delivered in a Delaware high school gymnasium near Biden’s home, featured no cheering crowds. The two candidates wore masks as they arrived and kept their social distance on a stage flanked by state flags.
A day earlier, Trump said Harris was his top pick for Biden’s VP. He said he was nevertheless surprised at the choice because of Harris’s lackluster performance in the Democratic primaries.
The joint appearance came just days before Biden will formally accept the Democratic presidential nomination at next week’s party convention, which will take place largely as a virtual event due to COVID-19.
The Republican convention, where Trump is set to be nominated to seek a second four-year term, follows a week later and kicks off a 10-week sprint to Election Day on Nov. 3.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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