The Biden plan assiduously avoids any infringement on the wealth of the financial oligarchy, whether through increased taxes or other means, including the hundreds of billions in new wealth it has amassed in the course of the pandemic.
Every facet of American life is dominated by the immense concentration of wealth at the very top of society. The grotesque levels of wealth amassed by the parasites and criminals who dominate American business, and the flaunting of their fortunes before tens of millions struggling to pay their bills and keep from falling into destitution, are fueling the growth of social anger. This anger will increasingly be directed against the entire economic and political system.
Biden begins tour to promote his stimulus package
President Joe Biden kicked off his “Help is Here” tour on Tuesday with a visit to a small business in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia. Biden and other leading figures in his administration are touring the country to promote the recent passage of the $1.9 trillion “American Recovery Act.”
The Biden administration has paid a significant amount of attention to the impact of the pandemic on small businesses. It estimates that approximately 400,000 small businesses have closed, with millions more struggling to survive. Biden’s relief package includes a $28 billion grant program to support restaurants and drinking establishments, in addition to $15 billion in flexible grants that can be allocated.
Biden is advancing a racialist narrative as a key part of the promotion of his “American Rescue Plan.” He is particularly focusing on minority business owners. On Tuesday, he visited Smith Flooring Inc. in Chester, Pennsylvania, a black-owned business that supplies and installs flooring.
In essentially restating Richard Nixon’s program of “black capitalism,” Biden is seeking to consolidate support within affluent sections of the African-American population and other minority groups.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Biden spoke briefly, mostly promoting his administration’s vaccine program. As part of his pledge to administer 100 million vaccinations within this first 100 days, Biden said he was working to distribute vaccines to pharmacies, community centers and schools in order to better reach minority communities.
“People hardest hit are in minority communities,” Biden said. “The rate at which they get COVID is higher, death rate is higher.”
Biden told Smith Flooring owners Kristin and James Smith that “more help is on the way.” He added that small businesses would see more relief than was available in the first relief package enacted last spring.
Tuesday marked the beginning of a travel blitz across the country. First Lady Jill Biden visited an elementary school in Burlington County, New Jersey on Monday, while Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband were in Nevada. President Biden and Harris will travel to Atlanta, Georgia later this week.
The Democratic Party and allied media outlets have promoted the “American Recovery Act” as one of the most progressive pieces of legislation in US history, with comparisons to social reform programs such as the New Deal and the Great Society. Senator Bernie Sanders applauded the bill for allegedly “cutting child poverty in half.” Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer said it was “the biggest package of relief since the New Deal.”
Congressional Republicans, for their part, are absurdly denouncing the package as “socialist.”
All such claims are grotesquely inflated and false. Michael Gerson, former chief speechwriter and senior policy advisor to President George W. Bush, criticized the rhetorical hyperbole in an opinion piece (“Biden’s plan is far from a new New Deal”) published Tuesday by the Washington Post .
Gerson acknowledged the substantial size of the $1.9 trillion stimulus package, which equals about nine percent of the US gross domestic product, but rightfully called comparisons between the measure and the New Deal or Great Society “strained to the point of silliness.”
“Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson established new federal roles in retirement security and health care, which were fulfilled by vast new federal bureaucracies,” Gerson wrote. “Biden is mainly adding more money to existing programs and mediating institutions. For the most part, he is dramatically increasing the funding pressure in existing pipes. This does nothing to change the fundamental relationship between the citizen and the state.”
Gerson hastened to add, “For me, this is not a criticism.” He goes on to state: “The American Rescue Plan reduces economic inequality—but not in such a way that it punishes the wealthy. According to the Tax Policy Center, the legislation will boost after-tax income in the lowest quintile by about 20 percent. Those in the top quintile will see their after-tax income rise by 0.7 percent. This is a pretty anemic socialist revolution.” He concludes by praising the package for “achieving liberal goals by market-oriented methods.”
In fact, Biden’s relief package does not establish a single social reform. All of its provisions are temporary, ending by 2022. While they provide welcome cash in the immediate term to some families reeling from the economic impact of the pandemic, they are designed to prevent a collapse in consumer spending until Biden’s back-to-school and back-to-work drive, combined with expanded vaccination of the population, can bring about a revival of economic growth. The cash supplements will go largely to pay back rent and accumulated consumer debt, and then disappear.
With his cash handouts to sections of the working class and middle class, Biden and the forces on Wall Street for which he speaks hope to avert a social explosion amid mounting working class anger over being forced to work under unsafe conditions and mounting social inequality, while carrying forward the brutal ruling class policy of reopening the economy and boosting corporate profits, regardless to cost in human lives.
Hence the accompanying endorsement of the unionization drive at Amazon, aimed at further integrating the unions into the state and using them to suppress working class opposition, combined with the promotion of racial politics to sow divisions within the working class.
The New Deal included a series of large scale public works projects, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, which brought electric power to large parts of the country. It included the Social Security Act, which provided a permanent and universal retirement benefit as a social entitlement. Johnson’s Great Society program, through limited and cut short by the Vietnam War, established Medicare and Medicaid, providing basic health insurance to the elderly and the poor.
Roosevelt’s liberal reforms were not freely given, but wrung from the ruling elite through mass struggles of the working class. Roosevelt represented a faction of the ruling class that understood concessions were necessary to preserve the capitalist system, which was widely discredited as the Great Depression devastated workers. The threat of socialist revolution compelled the ruling class to adopt reformist policies.
Similarly, Johnson’s Great Society was implemented amidst social upheavals during the 1960s, including the Civil Rights and anti-war movements, the urban rebellions and a massive strike movement for higher wages, which threatened to develop out of the control of the ruling class. Johnson’s “War on Poverty” ended almost as quickly as it began. It turned out to be not the start of a new period of social reform, but the last gasp of the period of reform that began with the New Deal. By the end of the 1960s, the Democratic Party had largely abandoned its efforts to secure the support of the working class and moved sharply to the right.
The Biden plan assiduously avoids any infringement on the wealth of the financial oligarchy, whether through increased taxes or other means, including the hundreds of billions in new wealth it has amassed in the course of the pandemic.
Biden Puts Obama Economist w/Ethical Problems in Charge of $1.9 Trillion "COVID" Giveaway
What could go wrong?
Biden is appointing Gene Sperling to a role overseeing the implementation of the administration’s coronavirus relief plan, a White House official confirmed on Monday.
The announcement could come as early as Monday, sources familiar with the plans told POLITICO, which first reported the administration’s plans to tap Sperling.
Sperling, who currently lives in Los Angeles with his family, brings a wealth of experience on economic policy issues to the stimulus czar position. He served as head of the National Economic Council under both Clinton and Obama as well as a top adviser at the Treasury Department under Obama.
The Politico bio leaves out some major aspects of Sperling's career. Especially one really big one.
In 2011, Gene Sperling had a problem. He was working as President Obama’s chief economic advisor but his government salary did not cover his expenses. He and his wife lived in a Georgetown townhouse valued today at around $2 million, but did not have enough equity to qualify for a second mortgage or credit line. He didn’t want to sell the house and he wanted to keep working at a prestigious but relatively low-paid public service job.
And so Sperling turned to a close friend from law school: Howard Shapiro. A top partner at the Washington powerhouse law firm WilmerHale, Shapiro had loaned Sperling money before and was willing to do so again. Sperling asked the White House Counsel’s office and the Office of Government Ethics for permission to borrow from Shapiro, whose firm frequently negotiates with the government on behalf of some of the nation’s leading corporations. Officials approved the transactions.
So in 2011, Sperling borrowed between $100,000 and $250,000 from Shapiro at 5 percent, a rate that appears to be well below the interest banks charged at the time for comparable loans. Sperling listed his borrowing on his financial disclosure forms.
In each of the next two years, Sperling went to Shapiro again, taking out two more loans that brought his debt to a total of between $300,000 and $600,000. (The forms require disclosure of a range, not specific figures.) The loans are unsecured. Sperling consolidated earlier loans from Shapiro, one made in 2006 and the 2011 loan, into the later ones.
Today, Sperling is advising the Hillary Clinton campaign on economics. In a “Funny or Die” spoof shown last month to the Democratic National Convention, he warned that Donald Trump’s policies would lead to dangerous levels of debt for the country.
Wouldn't want that.
Shapiro is a partner and litigator at WilmerHale and the firm routinely represents clients with business before the federal government. Shapiro and WilmerHale’s clients have included major financial institutions, such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase.
Sperling also got a bunch of money from Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs paid Sperling the $887,727 for advice on its charitable giving. That made the bank his highest-paying employer.
Sperling told Bloomberg, "My sole work for Goldman Sachs was as lead consultant on the creation, design, and initial implementation of ‘10,000 Women,’ their $100 million philanthropic effort to give business and leadership education to poor women around the world...."
Among other paid speeches, "Sperling spoke at a Washington event hosted by the Houston-based Stanford Group Co. in November 2008, three months before its chairman was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly bilking investors of $7 billion. He also spoke at a Washington event in October 2007 that was sponsored by Citigroup, which has received $45 billion in government assistance."
WALL STREET BIDEN IS ONLY BUILDING ON THE ECONOMICS OF THE OBOMB-BIDEN REGIME THAT SAW THE GREATEST TRANSFER OF WEALTH TO THE RICH IN AMERICAN HISTORY! THERE IS A REASON WHY WALL STREET JUMPED BEHIND THE BIDEN-HARRIS PLATFORM EN MASS!
“In response to the ruthless assault of the financial oligarchy, spearheaded by Obama, the working class must advance, no less ruthlessly, its own policy.”
“The general tone was set by the New York Times in its lead editorial on Wednesday, which described the speech as a “simple, dramatic message about economic fairness, about the fact that the well-off—the top earners, the big banks, Silicon Valley—have done just great, while middle and working classes remain dead in the water.”
“The goal of the Obama administration, working with the Republicans and local governments, is to roll back the living conditions of the vast majority of the population to levels not seen since the 19th century, prior to the advent of the eight-hour day, child labor laws, comprehensive public education, pensions, health benefits, workplace health and safety regulations, etc.”
Industrial Production Unexpectedly Slumped in February
Industrial production in the U.S. fell 2.2 percent in February, the Federal Reserve reported Tuesday.
The Fed said severe winter weather in the south central region of the country in mid-February accounted for the bulk of the decline.
“Most notably, some petroleum refineries, petrochemical facilities, and plastic resin plants suffered damage from the deep freeze and were offline for the rest of the month,” the Fed said. “Excluding the effects of the winter weather would have resulted in an index for manufacturing that fell about 1/2 percent and in an index for mining that rose about 1/2 percent. Both indexes would have remained below their pre-pandemic.”
The results were far worse than expected. Economists surveyed by Econoday had forecast a 0.5 percent gain, with estimates ranging from a o.4 percent loss to a 1.6 percent gain.
Manufacturing output fell 3.1 percent, below the consensus estimate for a 0.6 percent gain. Capacity utilization tumbled to 73.8 percent, highlighting how the Texas freeze hit the industrial sector.
The output of motor vehicles and parts fell 8.3 percent, the fourth decline in the past six months. This sector has been impacted by a shortage of computer chips.
Mining output fell 5.4 percent. Utility output jumped 7.4 percent on elevated demand for heating.
Most economists see the February slump as temporary and due to severe weather rather than a sign that the broader economy faltered in the month. Manufacturing has recovered more quickly than expected, becoming a bright spot in an economy beset by covid and lockdowns.
January’s industrial production number was revised up to 1.1 percent from an initial read of 0.9 percent. Manufacturing output was revised up to 1.2 percent from 1.0 percent.
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