THIS IS THE REALITY OF AMERICA. THIS IS WHAT THE GLOBALIST DEMOCRAT PARTY HAS DONE TO AMERICA!
Fleeing California
Why Is Everyone Leaving California?
What’s Happening to California’s Middle Class | Urban Policy Expert Joel Kotkin
What’s Causing an Increase in Crime in California? | Steve Cooley
How to Help the Homeless with Edward Ring | California Insider
How California's Unfunded Pension Liabilities Could Lead to Bankruptcy | Sen. John Moorlach
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFGRA-wztNc
12 dead and over 750 workers infected at Southern California ports
As COVID-19 continues to break record numbers of infections and mounting death tolls in California, dock workers, shipbuilding and logistics workers at the busy ports in Southern Californian have been particularly hard hit in recent weeks. Currently nearly 700 workers have contracted the virus in Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, with another 60 workers infected at the NASSCO shipyard in San Diego.
Since the beginning of the year, over 35,000 confirmed cases have been reported in California every day, with Los Angeles alone seeing over 10,000 daily infections. A dozen longshore workers have died so far this year.
Eugene Seroka, executive director of the Los Angeles port, told the Los Angeles Timesthat nearly 1,800 dock workers are currently not working either due to self-isolation because of limited contact tracing or awaiting test results. Many are staying at home out of fear of contracting the virus. “We’ve got more cargo than we do skilled labor,” Seroka said.
The high numbers of cases at the ports have been the direct result of indifference to the health of port workers. Union representatives of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) have cynically claimed that port executives have been failing to report widespread outbreaks to county health officials all while keeping workers on the job.
Only one of the 12 terminals in Los Angeles has officially declared a virus outbreak of just 15 workers, despite the hundreds who are reporting infections. In reality, the ILWU and the Pacific Maritime Association are colluding to keep workers on the job.
The response by the Democratic mayors of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, and Long Beach, Robert Garcia, has been to write to fellow Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom urging a faster distribution of vaccinations for dock workers. Joined by the ILWU and other elected officials, the call for vaccinations is aimed at creating a false sense of security to keep workers on the job under dangerous conditions.
Given that the vaccine requires two doses and several weeks before immunity, and the fact that the vaccine rollout has been a disaster, the move will not provide protection to workers who have been deemed “essential” and forced to remain on the job.
LA Port Executive Director Seroka recently declared, “My heart goes out to the dock workers. I’ve heard from many of them that there have been a lot of outbreaks. There is a lot of fear.” Such comments, however, could not be more empty since management, with the backing of the union, continues to force workers to move cargo as the death toll skyrockets in the region.
The fears of local authorities, mayors, and union bureaucrats are not, however, for the lives of workers, but of the economic consequences for corporations and the financial elite due to labor shortages. The port of Los Angeles is the busiest port in the Western Hemisphere, handling some $276 billion in cargo, according to 2019 figures.
The Long Beach seaport processes $56.7 billion in cargo and is one of the largest employers in the region, with more than 316,000 employees in Southern California. Much of the personal protection equipment that comes into the United States is from Asia and enters through the Southern California docks. Many economies in the state and the rest of the country depend on imported goods coming through the region.
Shipyard workers at BAE Systems, Inc. and NASSCO (National Steel and Shipbuilding Company) workers in San Diego are currently experiencing a similar outbreak and surge in infections. In the last three weeks alone, 60 positive cases have been reported at just the NASSCO shipyard in San Diego.
NASSCO and union representatives are scrambling to cover up the extent of the severity of the outbreak. Workers have also reported in social media posts that the numbers of infections are grossly underreported, and NASSCO has not done anything to limit, prevent or react to the rising cases.
In large measure, workers have been kept in the dark about positive cases at their job sites, and names of the deceased go unmentioned in the press. These include Ignacio Uribe, who died last year from COVID after he had contracted it from the NASSCO shipyard owned by General Dynamics in San Diego. Many of his co-workers never received official notice of his death or were warned of his infection. By June last year, over 100 official reports of COVID infections had occurred at the NASSCO San Diego shipyard.
Video footage of the San Diego NASSCO site has emerged of filthy bathrooms, dirty sinks with no running water to wash hands, and unkept breakrooms with appliances that have not been cleaned in months. Even the most basic sanitary measures have not been upheld.
Last year shipbuilding workers from Virginia to Maine struck to oppose unsafe working conditions during the pandemic. Wildcat strikes emerged at the Bath Iron Works site in Maine April 2020 in response to the death of an engineer and multiple positive cases. The Bath Iron Works employees demanded that General Dynamics and BAE provide workers with personal protective equipment (masks, gloves, and hand sanitizer) in addition to a coronavirus safety plan.
There are currently 50 active cases of COVID at the Bath Iron Works site, and there have been 168 total infections since the beginning of the pandemic. COVID cases at the Ingalls Shipbuilding site in Mississippi are also on the rise.
Shipyard workers are being forced to remain on the job not because they are essential workers but because the US Navy does not want any delays in repairs on new warships as the Biden administration prepares new imperialist wars and saber rattling.
In order to prevent the further spread of the virus, to contain it and stop the strain on hospital systems, which have hung at zero percent capacity for the last month in the state, the only solution is an immediate halt to all truly nonessential production and the provision of full income for workers to stay at home and remain in safety until the virus is contained.
The WSWS encourages all dock, shipyard and other port workers to begin forming rank-and-file safety committees, independent of the unions and democratically run by workers themselves, to oversee safety conditions and organize collective action against the sacrifice of human life for corporate profits.
These committees must link up with nurses and health care workers, teachers and other educators to close schools and protect their lives and the lives of their students and families. For help starting a rank-and-file safety committee at your workplace, contact us today
California Worst State at Vaccine Distribution
The State of California became the worst of the 50 states in distributing its share of coronavirus vaccines on Thursday, as other states picked up their pace.
Despite improving from 27.5% last week to 37.3% this week, California is “dead last,” as SFGate.com reported Friday:
Thursday’s update to Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker shows that the national rate increased from 38.8% last week to 48.6% this week. Last week’s 50th-ranked state was Alabama, which saw its usage rate jump from 21.2% to 41.1% week-over-week. For reference, California was ranked 49th last week.
This week, the 49th, 48th and 47th ranked states in order are Minnesota (39.8%), Virginia (40.2%) and Alabama (41.1%). The top three states are North Dakota (82.8%), West Virginia (73.0%) and New Mexico (68.6%).
Of the nation’s six largest states, California remains the only one with a usage rate below 40%, as was the case last week. Three have since crossed the 50% threshold this week.
California has become the epicenter of this winter’s coronavirus wave. Though there was some improvement over the past week, the COVID-19 crisis — fueled by a new, more easily transmissible strain of the virus first discovered in the United Kingdom — continues.
The state government, however, is flush with cash. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently reported that the state expects to have a $15 billion surplus this year despite the economic crisis — so much cash, in fact, that it may be required to refund some to taxpayers by law.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is How Not to Be a Sh!thole Country: Lessons from South Africa. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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